If you want to know more about enactive thinking and risk, you can register for the free online workshops run on 8, 15, 22, 29 September 9am Canberra time with Prof. Rob Long, register here: admin@spor.com.au

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In this video we chat about enactivism (https://iep.utm.edu/enactivism/) through the lens of domains and the domain of pain. You can watch the 17 minute video here: https://vimeo.com/1220078436

We discussed in our last post, the domains of enactivism (https://safetyrisk.net/is-risk-enactive-free-workshops/). When we think of persons enacting in the world and the risks we all face each day, we need to think holistically about these domains.

Humans are neither isolated or individual but everything we do is socially situated. In enactivism we take seriously the human body as a vital part of how we act in the world. In enactivism we don’t separate the nature of the body from the brain as if the brain directs thinking. We know that 95% of all our decisions are undertaken without any connection to the brain. The brain is not a directing organ like a computer but a receiving organ that coordinates.

In the video we consider just one example of how our world moves enactively through considering the nature of pain. The map below shows just three domains and how pain affects movement through the world.

In this map we can see the basic assumptions of enactivism that, humans are inter-corporeal, inter-affected and inter- connected.

In the video Matt and I discuss the affects of a toothache. How does such a simple thing as a toothache change your whole world?

If we use the following map of domains we can see how such a simple thing as pain moves us in the world.

If we consider just one domain such as behaviour, one won’t understand that behaviour without understanding the physiological domain. If one just looks at context in social or psychosocial action, one won’t understand behaviour either, without knowing how the body changes under pain. Unless we see all these domains as inter-related, inter-affected and inter-corporeal, we won’t understand the nature of decisions in the face of risk.

In enctivism, we move away from brain-centrism to understanding human persons as embodied.

In order to move forward, we need to ditch the paradigm of the Mind as brain and start thinking much more broadly about consciousness, the world and decision making as discussed by Varel, Thompson and Rosch in The Embodied Mind (https://www.are.na/block/31785865).

When we ditch the influences of brain as computer metaphors and the semiotics of brains as computational, we start to see the world holistically and better understand risk within such a framework.

If you have 20 minutes to spare, you won’t regret listening to Roger Penrose on Why Consciousness is NOT Computational (https://youtu.be/hXgqik6HXc0?si=VysYcj9VpnygTFn_).

It is only since the invention of computers that we have used metaphors of computers to describe the workings of the brain. In previous times and in many First Nations cultures, this is not how people understand thinking (cognition).

When we understand humans, persons and consciousness beyond the computational metaphors and images of populism, and we follow the research into cognitive neuroscience, we begin to see the world differently and the nature of risk.