Brain-Framing Safety, Free Workshops September
The dominant metaphor and semiotic used in safety for understanding cognition is the brain. The image of the brain and the language of the brain-as-computer dominates the discourse of safety so that the industry believes this is how decisions are made.
95% of all decisions are not made with the brain and, placing this frame on belief, results in the idea that behaviour change can be fostered by presenting information and obtaining new recall.
This is a common approach to training and comprehension, but it doesn’t match the research into the neuroscience of cognition (https://archive.org/details/cognitiveneurosc04edgazz_g5z7). Indeed, whenever we use the word ‘mind’, people often interpret this to mean the brain. Yet, the word Mind really should refer to the whole embodied person.
The reality is humans are embodied beings, not just a body to carry a computer.
Free Embodiment and Risk Workshops (Tues. 9am – 8, 15, 22, 29 September)
Registration
If you want to learn about embodiment and how it affects decision making in risk, you can register here: admin@spor.com.au
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An embodied approach to thinking believes that the body is foundational to understand thinking and decision making (https://ezequieldipaolo.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/dipaolo_thompson_2014.pdf).
In enactive thinking, the brain is just one organ in a collecting of interactive systems (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251877883_The_brain_as_part_of_an_enactive_system).
These systems are: nervous, endocrine, respiratory, integumentary (skin), muscular, digestive, cardiovascular, reproductive, cellular, urinary, feeling/emotional and skeletal systems. These bodily systems all work independently and intra-dependently with each other. We call this inter-corporeality. And our bodies also resonate with the bodies around us. This is called inter-affectivity. This is how a group can so easily share the same moment of fear, the same moment of awe.
The problem is, all of our metaphors and semiotics for thinking and cognition in safety are anchored to the brain-as-computer metaphor. This creates the myth that the brain is a thinking organ.
We also know from extensive research that language frames belief, in a similar way as gestures and rituals frame belief.
If we believe the brain is a computer then we understand thinking consciousness as computational. We then see any problem in judgement as a computational problem. Then to fix that problem simply requires more data and information fed into the computer to get the right output. This is how a Behaviourist and computational lens on safety seeks to understand why people do as they do.
No wonder such a view comes up with more information, data and training and is then astounded that nothing changes. The same view looks at incidents and accidents in the same way and places such framing on the problem and comes out with the same old methods to fix safety (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/seek-investigations-a-semiotic-method/).
Most of the safety investigations systems work on the assumption that the brain is a computational thinking organ. Then the investigations method seeks to find where the wrong thinking was, how the wrong decision was made and invents yet another process to address the computational assumption. And so, the cycle continues.
Scholars like Lakoff show, that the way we ‘frame’ our language (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268183378_Framing_the_Frames_A_Theoretical_Framework_for_the_Cognitive_Notion_of_Frames_of_Reference) determines our belief.
The brain-as-computer model simply cannot answer the problems of memory and perception. It can’t explain how a pianist can play a concerto by muscle memory and feeling. It can’t explain the actions of an athlete who feels their way into performance. It can’t explain how intuition works or why we dream or why in that dream that our whole-body flinches to an unreality.
There are other ways of thinking about decision making that don’t work on the computational model (https://evanthompson.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/making-sense-of-sense-making.pdf).
‘Radical enactivism’ is the name given to thinking about thinking that takes seriously the role of the body in thinking (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369211421_Radical_enactivism_A_guide_for_the_perplexed).
Scholars such as Fuchs (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226829159_Enactive_intersubjectivity_Participatory_sense-making_and_mutual_incorporation) demonstrate that our inter-subjective, inter-affective being in all Socialitie, affects decision making. Much of Social Psychology has studied this for the past 80 years.
The basic question of Social Psychology is: why do people do as they do? And, how do social arrangements affect decision making?
For example, why do people in groups believe as they do despite all the evidence? (Cognitive Dissonance, Confirmation Bias, Affect Bias, Heuristics etc). Scholars such as: Lewin, Festinger, Milgram, Zimbardo, Bandura, Adorno and many others, started this exploration into why people do as they do.
What they discovered is that humans don’t think like machines and don’t make decisions that make sense according to either context or influences. With close connection to the work of Anthropology, they found that many actions are decided based on faith and belief and that these beliefs are culturally given, not rationally constructed.
So, if you are interested in understanding better, the nature of embodied being and human judgement and decision making, you can register for these free workshops.
Prof. Robert Long
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