Power, Care and Democratic Enaction - A Scybernethics Proposal

(Elaborated with the help of a LLM)

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Table of Contents

Introduction

In the face of today’s multi-scalar crises—social, ecological, epistemic—the urgent call for interdisciplinary dialogue is clearer than ever. The conference “Power and Care: Enactive Approaches and Critical Social Philosophy,” (27th-31st May 2026, convened by Mind & Life Europe and hosted by Universitat Pompeu Fabra), signals precisely such a gathering of minds: an effort to weave together the insights of enactive cognitive science and critical social thought around the axes of power and care. This article, written both as an academic synthesis and as a practical proposal implicitly addressed to the organizers and participants, emerges from ongoing work within the Scybernethics project. It aims to present productive, processual, and peace-oriented strategies for the transformative convergence of these fields, with a special emphasis on participatory democracy and technological mediation.

I. Parsing the Conference Aim: Tensions and Opportunities

The very title “Power and Care: Enactive Approaches and Critical Social Philosophy” embodies dialectical tension: it juxtaposes the ethico-political with the epistemic-methodological and asks us to interrogate the foundational dynamics of relating, knowing, and acting. “Power,” as framed by critical philosophy, is never merely coercive but also constitutive—structuring not only our institutions but the very baseline of subjectivity and agency (Foucault, Lukes, Habermas). “Care,” meanwhile, emerges both as ethical demand and lived practice, situated within relational interdependence and vulnerability (Gilligan, Tronto, Honneth).

The “enactive approach,” as originally developed by Varela, Thompson, Di Paolo, and others, contests Cartesian dualisms; it foregrounds embodiment, sense-making, and the co-emergence of cognition and world. Meanwhile, critical social philosophy, deeply reflexive, investigates how structures of meaning, value, and normativity are shaped, contested, and potentially transformed. The conference thus stages a rare opportunity: to examine not simply how these traditions comment on one another, but how they might be integrated or creatively enacted for contemporary problems.

II. Scybernethics: A Reflexive and Processual Framework

Scybernethics—or “existential enaction, creative cognition, and technological hermeneutics toward a second-order rationality” —arises explicitly within this interdisciplinary crossroads. Drawing on sources as diverse as second-order cybernetics (von Foerster), enactive theory (Varela, Di Paolo), ethical and epistemic non-foundationalism, technophilosophy (Simondon, Stiegler), and dialogical philosophy, Scybernethics brings five key methodological orientations:[^1]

Second-Order Reflexivity: Understanding and transforming not only first-order states (what we observe/think/do) but the processes, blind spots, and meta-cognitive routines by which we observe, think, and act.
Creative Cognition: Centering the lived, generative dimension of cognition—the co-creation of sense between subjects, communities, and environments—over static representations or normative mandates.
Dialogical Dipole Management: Treating oppositional concepts (power/care, autonomy/vulnerability, science/ethics) not as binaries to be resolved, but as dynamic tensions to be dialogically held and transformed.
Technological Hermeneutics: Leveraging computational models and AI not just analytically, but as tools for personal and collective self-writing (hypomnemata, cf. Foucault, Stiegler), intellectual experimentation, and participatory inquiry.
Processual Homeostasis: Framing ethical and cognitive work as iterative cycles of autopoietic adjustment, not fixity—homeostasis, rather than homeostasis: adjustment as process, not stasis.

III. Synthesis: Scybernethics and the Democratic Turn

Central to Scybernethics is an explicit democratic orientation, especially pertinent given the conference’s concern for “creative responses to the crises of power.” Analyzing texts such as “AI, Enactment, and Democratic Self-Governance” and “How to Use AI to Empower Democracy?” , Scybernethics articulates a participatory, process-oriented model for social transformation:

From Governance Optimization to Plural Participatory Sense-Making: Scybernethics critiques the expertocratic, computational paradigm in AI and governance, advocating instead for technologies and institutions that support multiplicity, dialogic confrontation, and radical autonomy.
AI as Civic Pharmakon: Rather than codifiers and aggregators of opinion, AI systems should map dialogical flows, support co-regulation, expose manipulative language practices, and enable diverse publics to define and deliberate shared problems.
Epistemic Empowerment and Anti-Proletarianization: Inspired by Bernard Stiegler and John Dewey, Scybernethics insists that citizens must retain the know-how to engage intellectually—AI and digital tools should offer “intellectual arms,” not dictate political choices or create new forms of epistemic dependency.
Technological Hermeneutics in Practice: Scybernethics recommends collaborative digital artifacts—argument maps, civic dashboards, participatory archives—as lived mechanisms for ethical deliberation and inclusive decision-making.

IV. Proposal: Integrating Scybernethics within the Conference Structure

On this basis, I respectfully propose the following practical angles for the organizers to consider, addressed implicitly as recommendations for session formats, methodologies, and experimental pilots during the conference:

1. Meta-Dialogic Session Opening

Each panel, workshop, or working group could begin with a brief second-order reflection exercise. Participants would be invited not only to state their research or activist positionality, but to articulate their methodological stance and “meta-story”—how they relate to the dialectic of power/care, and how their own process and presuppositions shape the conversation.

2. Dipole-Framing in Group Debate

When encountering points of tension (institutional vs. individual agency; ecological crisis vs. technological optimism), discussion could be explicitly framed as an exploration of “conceptual dipoles.” Rather than seeking synthesis or adversarial resolution, groups would chart the terrain of homeostatic tension, dialogically facilitated toward generative transformation.

3. Techno-Hermeneutic Collaborative Pilots

The conference could host experimental labs and workshops (physical or digital), where participants co-design argument maps, AI-assisted discussion boards, or collective memory repositories. These artifacts would serve as both research tools and processual “devices” for sense-making, reflection, and iterative adjustment—demonstrating a lived hybrid of enactive and critical praxis.

4. Deliberative Democracy Demonstrations

Drawing on Scybernethics’ recommendations for democratic AI , the conference could sponsor or simulate small-scale collective deliberations where various participatory models of technology (federated learning, deliberation layers, participatory audit mechanisms) are trialed and assessed against real-world social dilemmas. These would offer participants hands-on experience of pluralistic, co-regulated, technology-supported debate.

5. Iterative Ethical Pause and Attentional Practice

In recognition of the conference’s “care” axis, organizers might build in regular collective pauses—moments for reflection, mindfulness, or simply collective check-in. These support homeostatic, processual practice for ethical maintenance and inclusive engagement.

6. Open Epistemological Clinics

Offer drop-in epistemic clinics for participants to collectively address the “mind-mind” and “meta-methodological” problems: how do we articulate first and third person perspectives, homeostatically enact abstraction, and manage our own blind spots or limits? These would benefit from Scybernethics’ focus on second-order rationality, meta-level dialogue, and procedural feedback.

V. Anticipated Outcomes: From Dialogue to Enacted Transformation

By implementing these angles, the conference can move decisively beyond the “exchange” model to one of creative, embodied, and democratic enaction. Participants from enactive science, critical theory, philosophy, activism, technology, and the arts will be offered pragmatic, reflexive scaffolds for:

Collective epistemic empowerment
Lived experience of participatory sense-making
Methodological pluralism and meta-dialogical insight
Practical skill-building for deliberative democracy and technological hermeneutics
Peaceful yet transformative engagement with power/care tensions

These outcomes align perfectly with the stated aspiration for the conference to generate “nuanced and caring responses to the social, political, and ecological dilemmas we are witnessing today.”

VI. Conclusion: Toward a Living Laboratory of Power and Care

In summary, this article synthesizes the preceding months of research and collaborative dialogue on Scybernethics and democratic enaction as a practical roadmap for the “Power and Care” conference. The ultimate proposition is for the conference culture itself to become a living laboratory: a prototypical experiential device for participatory enactment, epistemic renewal, and collective ethical care.

Through processual, second-order, dialogical, and pluralist practices—supported by enabling technologies and curated by reflective facilitation—the event can model the highest aspirations of both enactive philosophy and critical social thought. As such, it will not only analyze but enact the creative, peaceful transformation needed for today’s crises, making democratic intelligence the shared resource and emergent result of our collective endeavor.