CONCEPT
Emotioning
Maturana's term for the continuous flow of bodily dispositions that defines, moment by moment, the domain of actions available to an organism — the ground that determines what cognition is possible.
Fear does not happen to an organism; fear is something an organism does. It is a bodily disposition — a specific configuration of nervous system, endocrine system, musculature, viscera — that restricts the domain of behaviors available at a given moment. Under fear, the organism can fight, flee, or freeze. It cannot explore, cannot play, cannot engage in open-ended coordination constituting learning. Joy is a different configuration: musculature relaxes, endocrine system shifts, domain of available action expands. Emotioning in Maturana's framework is not feelings accompanying rational thought like background music; it is the bodily condition that determines what rational thought is possible. A nervous system in the configuration of fear generates different cognitive dynamics than one in the configuration of joy — not because emotion biases thinking but because emotion is the ground on which thinking stands.
In The You On AI Field Guide
This transforms the discourse about AI-assisted work from productivity question to question about bodily dispositions that determine what kind of productivity is possible.
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