The foundation of an ethic in risk must begin by an understanding of persons.

I saw a curriculum outline recently by one of the safety associations teaching ethics in safety, and it had no mention of persons or human ‘being’.

The best disciplines to help understand human personhood are: psychology, education, anthropology, social psychology, philosophy, biology/neuroscience, jurisprudence, linguistics and history. These are not called ‘humanities’ for nothing. BTW, the study of behaviour (eg. behaviourism) is not the study of human personhood. Similarly, a focus on context is not a focus on persons.

One thing is for certain, you won’t find anything in the safety literature about the phenomenal nature of human personhood. This includes any of the so called ‘new view’ stuff which is little more than traditional safety with new slogans.

The only way to gain a better understanding of persons from a safety point of view, is to leave the safety discipline and engage in a Transdisciplinary approach to human ‘being’.

One of the best places to start in understanding the human ‘being’ of persons is in the philosophy of phenomenology. You can download a good introduction here: https://www.drghazi.net/media/drghazi/365.pdf

Phenomenology is about the phenomenon of ‘being’. It is one of the founding philosophies of SPoR. The most dominant philosophy of safety is the philosophy of deontology (duty to law), nearly the exact opposite of what SPoR is interested in.

This philosophy also explains why most in traditional safety have no interest in questioning their philosophy. Indeed, I’m not sure safety has the capacity to do so. To step outside of the philosophy of deontology, one would have to be non-compliant ie. disobedient to dity..

If you read any books offered for free download (https://www.humandymensions.com/shop/) in SPoR, you will note in references, the dominance of research in existentialist research and phenomenology.

Unfortunately, research like this is not easy to read. If you want the easy stuff, just follow the traditions of safety and its addiction to simplistic slogans and naïve models of linear cause (eg. Heinrich, James Reason etc). One of the primary comforts of traditions is that they offer security and myths that give comfort.

If you want to understand human persons, none of the dominant models in safety will help you. The popular semiotics of: curves, bow-ties, swiss-cheese, pyramids and risk matrix have nothing to do with human persons. Indeed, most of these models hide assumptions about human personhood. Similarly, we see the same in HOP slogans. The purpose of slogans is to hide assumptions about ‘being’ human. Indeed, the clear over emphasis of the brain in HOP, prevents followers from a real understanding of persons. Persons are not brains on a body. The brain does not exclusively direct decision making.

If you are interested in better understanding human personhood, you could start here:

• Buscalglia. (1978) Personhood, The Art of Being Fully Human.
• Martin, Sugarman and Hickinbottom (2010) Persons: Understanding Psychological Selfhood and Agency
• Kirkwood. (2012) The Persons in Relation Perspective
• Coeckelbergh. (2013) Human Being @ Risk
• Benner. (2016) Human Being and Becoming

These are just a few of the sources for a starting point.

It was interesting that our recent free module on enactivism (embodied knowing) was over-subscribed (https://safetyrisk.net/?s=Enactivism) by safety people wanting to know more about personhood.

Yet, to start in learning about human being and personhood, one has to unlearn and turn away from the popular worldview of safety that understands humans as part of systems and deontology (duty to the laws of systems).

Any unlearning is a threat to most in traditional safety (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/the-ethics-of-risk/), which is why the study of ethics in Safety avoids most of the basics in ethics. For example, the AIHS Body of Knowledge chapter in ethics (38) makes no mention of any of the critical elements essential to ethics such as: personhood, power, human being or care. IT is also why Safety has little interest in critical thinking or questioning philosophical assumptions in safety.

The big threat to safety in any study of personhood is that it would have to change its methods and models.

This is why any of the so called ‘new views’ in safety similarly, don’t tackle the challenges of personhood and ethics. It is also why traditional safety finds so much comfort in HOP. HOP only questions the processes and systems of safety not how it understands personhood. It’s also why all the imagery and symbols of HOP are about brains.

There are a host of critical issues about personhood where safety is completely silent. One example is about fallibility (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/). Here are a few questions to consider:

• Where is the discussion in safety about the nature of human fallibility, mortality, imperfection, errancy and consciousness?
• Where in any of the literature in safety on so called ‘human error’ is there any discussion of human personhood and the necessity of fallibility?
• How is someone going to be innovative in safety, if the foundation for safety is compliance to duty (deontology)?
• Why is it that even in psychosocial risk, Safety’s focus is on objects (hazards)? How amazing, the moment Safety has an opportunity to focus on persons, it makes it all about things/objects.

And if there is some small discussion of these matters in safety, where does it come from, let me guess, a so-called ‘safety professional’.

So, how is there a positive way forward? How can you move from a focus on objects to subjects? How can you move from a focus on error to a focus on humans?

Fortunately, in SPoR, we offer positive, practical and constructive ways to learn about personhood and consider persons in the way e tackle risk. There are many free videos and books to get you started.

All it requires is that first step in questioning the dominant worldview of safety.

Keep your eye out for SPoR courses on personhood that will be offered in the new year.