David Ludwig

The notion of natural kinds has been widely criticized in philosophy of science but also appears indispensable for philosophical engagement with classificatory practices. Rather than addressing this tension through a new definition of “natural kind”, this article suggests materiality as a substitute for naturalness in philosophical debates about scientific classification. It is argued that a theory of material kinds provides an alternative and more inclusive entry point for analyzing classificatory practices, which is specified through an account of “restricted malleability” of materiality and further analyzed as (1) gradual, (2) multi-dimensional, (3) scalable, (4) interactive, and (5) purpose sensitive.

in Dagara Noba yaga teɛroŋ a kyaare a “tendaa bondirii diibu” yɛlɛ maŋ yele la ka a tendaa zaa bondirii yeltare do la saa kyɛ yire tɔnɔ, kyɛ, a meŋ leɛ kyaale la ka a yeltare ama ba are soŋ. A yɛli ŋa e la yelwonaa a Amɛreka ane Yurop Naasaal Paaloŋ poɔ kyɛ pãã na waa yelwonaa yaga ka ba naŋ wa fere a Afereka tenne ane ba koɔrebɔ ka ba sage de a teɛroŋ ŋa. Ne a lɛ zaa, a kyaale la ka saakommine bondirii yeltare sobie maŋ tõɔ̃ are la kpeɛŋaa. A lɛ zuiŋ, a yelzu ŋa yelnyɔgraa la ka o peɛre bɔŋ a yɛlɛ na naŋ maŋ vɛŋ ka a bondirii yeltare e soŋ kyɛ meŋ peɛre bɔŋ lɛnee a Gaana deme na maŋ de bamenne sobie a teɛ ne a yɛlɛ ama. A saakommine baabo ŋa sobie yeltare kyaare la lɛ te naŋ na leɛ noba teɛroŋ yi bon-bonyenaa koɔbo ka ba nyɔge yelsaama naŋ sonnɔ tenne ne ba yelwonni. A yelzu ŋa peɛre la tenne mine ayi koɔbo yɛlɛ a Gaana poɔ: Forikrom naŋ peɛle Tekyima naŋ be a Kɔmpareŋ ane Pavuu-Kalsagri naŋ peɛle Wa naŋ be a sazu paaloŋ poɔ. A yelpeɛre wuli la a yɛlɛ na naŋ vɛŋ ka a saakommine yeltare maŋ are kpeɛŋaa aseŋ a bonkoɔre ne a koɔbo sobie tɛɛtɛɛ, te meŋɛ kuoluŋ maalo ane bombie teroo, sobie naŋ teɛrɛ saakommine yɛŋ yel-erre ane bondirii bimmu ne a pommu. A yelpeɛre meŋ wuli la yelmeŋɛ kaŋ naŋ kyaare a bondirii yeltare kaŋa naŋ maŋ are kpeɛŋaa kyɛ ka ba ba yɛla o yɛlɛ: a bondirii yeltare sobie naŋ taa kpẽɛo maŋ dɛle la a saakommine yɛŋ bɔmmo faŋa. A yelpeɛre nyɛ la yɛŋ kaŋ a yi a ‘Legon tradition in African philosophy’ poɔ ane yɛŋ deme mine aseŋ Kwame Gyekye zie. Saakommine sobie yɛlɛ ane a Legon yɛŋ deme yeltuuri ba dɛle a saakommine bɔmmo ŋa yaga bee a zagre a bare togtogi. A zaa ayi teɛroŋ la ka a seŋ ka a nɔbinne ane saakommine yel-erre sereŋ be be yaga kyɛ meŋ dire teɛroŋ naŋ yire yeŋeŋ. A yelnimizeɛ la ka a saakommine baabo yɛlɛ ane a Afereka saakommine teɛroŋ na tõɔ̃ meele la taa a yel-erre ne yelsonne eebo poɔ. Abstract in English While the dominant ‘feeding the world’-narrative often refers the argument that the global food system is extremely productive and efficient, it also has become clear that the global food system is extremely fragile. This is already problematic in the context of North America and Europe, but it is even more problematic when it is imposed on African countries and farmers. Moreover, Indigenous food systems have shown resilience over time. Therefore the aim of this chapter is to identify features that make Indigenous food systems resilient, and to explore how these are supported through endogenous development approaches in Ghana. Endogenous development approaches focus on community-driven change that resists a narrow focus on increased output of monocultures while embracing change and innovations that support communities and their struggles. This study presents empirical findings of case studies in two communities in different agroecological zones in Ghana: Forikrom in the Transition zone near Techiman and Pavuu-Kalsagri in the Savanna zone near Wa. The findings reveal features that reflect the resilience of Indigenous food systems such as diversity in the food system in terms of crops and practices, self-sufficiency of fertiliser and seed supply, social structures that promote Indigenous knowledge systems, and food preservation and sharing. The study also highlights a crucial dimension for resilient food systems that is not often included, namely: resilient food systems lean on resilience of Indigenous knowledge. The findings have been complemented with insights by what can be called the Legon tradition in African philosophy, including philosophers like Kwame Gyekye. Endogenous development approaches as well as Legon intellectual traditions neither romanticize Indigenous knowledge nor reject it entirely. Instead, both plea for a critical reflection on values and practices that should be maintained within a cultural heritage, while also remaining open to ideas from outside. Moreover, endogenous development approaches and African philosophy can mutually enrich each other through reflectively-grounded practice and practically-grounded reflection.

The notion of natural kinds has been widely criticized in philosophy of science but also appears indispensable for philosophical engagement with classificatory practices. Rather than addressing this tension through a new definition of “natural kind”, this article suggests materiality as a substitute for naturalness in philosophical debates about scientific classification. It is argued that a theory of material kinds provides an alternative and more inclusive entry point for analyzing classificatory practices, which is specified through an account of “restricted malleability” of materiality and further analyzed as (1) gradual, (2) multi-dimensional, (3) scalable, (4) interactive, and (5) purpose sensitive.

This open access edited volume argues that food systems need to be questioned on ethical and epistemic grounds, and firmly posits African philosophy as a valuable and much-needed source in doing so. It presents critical perspectives on the ethical and epistemic complexities of food systems whilst also providing a practical outlook through success stories of food systems underpinned by African ways of thinking and doing. The central premise is the necessity of taking an intercultural approach in examining and re-thinking food systems successfully, which means to draw from and do justice to a diversity of knowledge. As such, it sets out to challenge the status quo and the prevailing western dominant narrative whilst asserting its importance alongside other forms of knowledge in tackling issues in the food system. The book introduces the reader into the politics of food systems, while highlighting the relevance of African philosophy through illuminating the relationship between ongoing western hegemony and the violation of the universal human right to food. Case studies across the continent are presented to unearth and critique inequalities and injustices in various domains of Africa's agricultural sector, ranging from seed systems to markets. However, first and foremost, the book presents African philosophy as an essential source for bringing back balance and justice in food systems that can feed all. To this end, the book starts from African philosophy, such as ubu-ntu, Akan and Shona Philiosophy, and illustrates ethical and epistemic inquiries with real-life examples in practice. This is a must-read for both academics and advanced (masters-level) students interested in African perspectives on food systems.

Science is a complex epistemic and social practice that is organized in a large number of disciplines, employs a dazzling variety of methods, relies on heterogeneous conceptual and ontological resources, and pursues diverse goals of equally diverse research communities. Philosophers of science have often aimed to find order in this complexity through methods of unification and reduction. Pluralism, as an explicit program in philosophy of science, emerged from an increasing frustration with the limitations of unifying frameworks in the light of the disunified reality of scientific practice. As philosophers of science increasingly highlighted in the 1970s and 1980s, scientific theories often do not reduce (Fodor 1974), there is not one universal scientific method (Feyerabend 1975), not only one fundamental scientific ontology (Dupré 1981), and successful science requires not only epistemic but also social diversity (Harding 1988). While scientific pluralism has often been framed in opposition to the unity of science and “the ancient notion of philosophy as unified knowledge” (Cat 2012), pluralist philosophy of science has become a broad platform for negotiating post-positivist philosophy of science in the light of epistemic and social diversity. The literature on scientific pluralism has therefore increasingly moved from a simple contrast between monism and pluralism to debates about different ways of articulating pluralism (Ruphy 2016). This article explores this “plurality of pluralisms” (Wylie 2015) through four main areas of the debate about scientific pluralism: “Theories, Models, and Explanations”, “Practices and Methods”, “Ontologies, Classifications and Concepts”, “The Social Organization of Science”.

The livelihoods of fishing communities are entangled with global socio-environmental challenges such as climate change, declining fishing stocks, and ocean pollution. While these problems are global, they have heterogeneous local materializations that require interventions attuned to local contexts. This chapter discusses the struggles of three Brazilian artisanal fishing communities that live in distinct socio-environmental contexts, and their relations with transdisciplinary projects that highlight the importance of interventions aligned to local circumstances and expertise. While outlining a transdisciplinary approach that emphasizes bottom-up collaboration with local communities instead of top-down environmental governance, this chapter also points out the connections between local struggles that require coordinated action at regional, national, and international scales. Navigating between local and global challenges leads to a perspective of ‘multi-level governance’ that emphasizes the agency of communities while connecting contexts through mutual learning and through social movements that challenge external drivers of local struggles.

The aim of this article is to develop an understanding-based argument for an explicitly political specification of the concept of race. It is argued that a specification of race in terms of hierarchical social positions is best equipped to guide causal reasoning about racial inequality in the public sphere. Furthermore, the article provides evidence that biological and cultural specifications of race mislead public reasoning by encouraging confusions between correlates and causes of racial inequality. The article concludes with a more general case for incorporating empirical evidence about public reasoning into philosophical debates about competing specifications of the concept of race.

The rapid development of CRISPR-based gene editing has been accompanied by a polarized governance debate about the status of CRISPR-edited crops as genetically modified organisms. This article argues that the polarization around the governance of gene editing partly reflects a failure of public engagement with the current state of research in genomics and postgenomics. CRISPR-based gene-editing technology has become embedded in a narrow narrative about the ease and precision of the technique that presents the gene as a stable object under technological control. By tracing the considerably destabilized scientific understanding of the gene in genomics and postgenomics, this article highlights that this publicly mediated ontology strategically avoids positioning the “ease of CRISPR-based editing” in the wider context of the “complexity of the gene.” While this strategic narrowness of CRISPR narratives aims to create public support for gene-editing technologies, we argue that it stands in the way of socially desirable anticipatory governance and open public dialogue about societal promises and the unintended consequences of gene editing. In addressing the polarization surrounding CRISPR-based editing technology, the article emphasizes the need for engagement with the complex state of postgenomic science that avoids strategic simplifications of the scientific literature in promoting or opposing the commercial use of the gene-editing technology.

Based on a mixed-methods study involving triad tasks and ethnobiological models, we analyze local categories and knowledge of key ethnospecies of fish exploring partial overlaps between artisanal fishers’ and academic knowledge in a fishing community in northeast Brazil. We argue that fishers’ and academic knowledge overlaps may provide common ground for transdisciplinary collaboration, while their partiality requires reflection on epistemological and ontological differences. Here, we show how knowledge of artisanal fishers can complement academic knowledge and bring about tensions that need to be addressed through intercultural dialogue. By integrating a general philosophical framework of partial overlaps with a mixed-methods study on fishers’ knowledge, we show how ethnobiology can contribute to reflective and empirically-grounded transdisciplinary practices.

Current debates about the integration of traditional and academic ecological knowledge (TEK and AEK) struggle with a dilemma of division and assimilation. On the one hand, the emphasis on differences between traditional and academic perspectives has been criticized as creating an artificial divide that brands TEK as “non-scientific” and contributes to its marginalization. On the other hand, there has been increased concern about inadequate assimilation of Indigenous and other traditional perspectives into scientific practices that disregards the holistic nature and values of TEK. The aim of this article is to develop a practice-based account of the epistemic relations between TEK and AEK that avoids both horns of the dilemma. While relations between TEK and AEK are often described in terms of the “holistic” nature of the former and the “mechanistic” character of the latter, we argue that a simple holism–mechanism divide misrepresents the epistemic resources of both TEK and AEK. Based on the literature on mechanistic explanations in philosophy of science, we argue that holders of TEK are perfectly capable of identifying mechanisms that underlie ecological phenomena while AEK often relies on non-mechanistic strategies of dealing with ecological complexity. Instead of generic characterizations of knowledge systems as either mechanistic or holistic, we propose to approach epistemic relations between knowledge systems by analyzing their (partly mechanistic and partly holistic) heuristics in practice.

Ethnobiology has become increasingly concerned with applied and normative issues, such as climate change adaptation, forest management, and sustainable agriculture. Applied ethnobiology emphasizes the practical importance of local and traditional knowledge in tackling these issues but thereby also raises complex theoretical questions about the integration of heterogeneous knowledge systems. The aim of this article is to develop a framework for addressing questions of integration through four core domains of philosophy - epistemology, ontology, value theory, and political theory. In each of these dimensions, we argue for a model of "partial overlaps" that acknowledges both substantial similarities and differences between knowledge systems. While overlaps can ground successful collaboration, their partiality requires reflectivity about the limitations of collaboration and co-creation. By outlining such a general and programmatic framework, the article aims to contribute to developing "philosophy of ethnobiology" as a field of interdisciplinary exchange that provides new resources for addressing foundational issues in ethnobiology and also expands the agenda of philosophy of biology.

In this paper we analyze relations between ontology in anthropology and philosophy beyond simple homonymy or synonymy and show how this diagnosis allows for new interdisciplinary links and insights, while minimizing the risk of cross-disciplinary equivocation. We introduce the ontological turn in anthropology as an intellectual project rooted in the critique of dualism of culture and nature and propose a classification of the literature we reviewed into first-order claims about the world and second-order claims about ontological frameworks. Next, rather than provide a strict definition of ontology in anthropological literature, we argue that the term is used as a heuristic addressing a web of sub-concepts relating to interpretation, knowledge, and self-determination which correspond to methodological, epistemic, and political considerations central to the development of the ontological turn. We present a case study of rivers as persons to demonstrate what the ontological paradigm in anthropology amounts to in practice. Finally, in an analysis facilitated by a parallel between the first- and second-order claims in anthropology, and ontology and meta-ontology in philosophy (respectively), we showcase the potential for contribution of ontological anthropology to contemporary philosophical debates, such as ontological gerrymandering, relativism and social ontology, and vice versa.

This article addresses ontological negotiations in the Global South through three case studies of community-based research in Brazil and Ghana. We argue that ontological perspectives of Indigenous people and local communities require an ontological pluralism that recognizes both the plurality of representational tools and of ways of being in the world. Locating these two readings of ontological pluralism in the politics of the Global South, the article highlights a wider dynamic from ontological paternalism to ontological diversity to ontological decolonization. We conclude by arguing that this dynamic provides important lessons for the state for social ontology in academic philosophy and for the design of politically reflexive development interventions.

The aim of this paper is to develop a pluralist interpretation of the phenomenal concept strategy (PCS). My starting point is Horgan and Tienson's deconstructive argument according to which proponents of PCS face the following dilemma: either phenomenal concepts or physical concepts allow us to conceive phenomenal states as they are in themselves. If phenomenal concepts allow us to conceive phenomenal states as they are in themselves, then phenomenal states are nonphysical states and physicalism is wrong. If physical concepts allow us to conceive phenomenal states as they are in themselves, then phenomenal concepts are derivative and PCS is wrong. While Horgan and Tienson assume that their argument shows that PCS leads to dualism, I argue that one can also adopt an 'epistemic pluralism' that rejects the idea of only one fundamental way of conceiving phenomenal states as they are in themselves. However, I also argue that epistemic pluralism eventually leads to a position that is compatible neither with dualism nor physicalism. Instead of justifying a non-reductive 'new wave materialism', PCS may therefore lead to a 'new wave pluralism' that is at odds with all mainstream positions in philosophy of mind.

In the face of planetary crises — from biodiversity loss to climate change to food security — transdisciplinary methods promise effective and just responses through equal collaborations. However, transdisciplinarity also creates complex challenges by bringing together different actors with different frameworks, like scientists, Indigenous and local communities, and policy makers. Successful collaboration among such actors requires navigating different forms of knowledge, worldviews, values, and positions of power. In Transformative Transdisciplinarity, David Ludwig and Charbel N. El-Hani synthesize insights from the philosophy of science and empirical action research to address these challenges through a framework of partial overlaps. On the one hand, the framework highlights the overlapping concerns and perspectives of actors that provide common ground for collaboration and mutual understanding. On the other hand, it emphasizes partialities that require navigating differences and tensions between actors. This book addresses the fundamental epistemological, ontological, and political questions of transdisciplinarity through this framework of partial overlaps, aiming for a transformative vision of collaborative science in the face of planetary crises. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

The aim of this article is to discuss the nature of disagreement in scientific ontologies in the light of case studies from biology and cognitive science. I argue that disagreements in scientific ontologies are usually not about purely factual issues but involve both verbal and normative aspects. Furthermore, I try to show that this partly non-factual character of disagreement in scientific ontologies does not lead to a radical deflationism but is compatible with a “normative ontological realism.” Finally, I argue that the case studies from the empirical sciences challenge contemporary metaontological accounts that insist on exactly one true way of “carving nature at its joints.”

Local knowledges of farmers often remain marginalized in wider agricultural development interventions. Scholars, practitioners and non-profit organisations have stressed the importance of including farmers as veritable experts in their own right, and of recognising their knowledge. Yet these calls for epistemic pluralism have often focused on the interaction between academic knowledge and local knowledge, while the interaction amongst different local knowledges has received less attention. In this ethnographic study, we attempt to unravel dynamics amongst local knowledges by studying interactions amongst migrant and autochthonous farmers in Forikrom, Ghana. We show that migrant and autochthonous farmers form distinct epistemic communities as these farmers pursue different agricultural and epistemic aims. Epistemic diversity becomes most apparent regarding agricultural techniques and certain yam varieties. However, epistemic homogenisation threatens this diversity. For instance, indigenous yam varieties are being displaced in the community in favour of shorter maturing varieties. We provide insights into the ruling relations that guide the choices that migrant farmers make and how this leads to processes of epistemic homogenisation. These drivers include the land tenure system, economic imperatives and labour relations, socio-cultural norms, agricultural policy and local politics. Furthermore, we explore how a community-based “boundary” organisation in Forikrom, the Abrono Organic Farming Project (ABOFAP), counters such homogenisation by mediating pluralistic approaches.

Reflecting on the rapid growth of epistemic injustice scholarship, this article proposes an ‘active alignment account’ for relating epistemic and social justice. The account contains both critical and constructive elements. The critical aim of the article is to argue that debates about epistemic and social justice are commonly misaligned. A focus on epistemic injustice can distort social justice agendas and epistemic recognition can be actively turned against the material interests of epistemically recognized actors. The constructive aim of the article is to show that epistemic justice nonetheless remains central to many social justice agendas. Recognizing both distortions and centrality leads to the demand of ‘active alignment’ according to which epistemic justice needs to be proactively connected with material conditions of social justice.

This article develops a framework for addressing racial ontologies in transnational perspective. In contrast to simple contextualist accounts, it is argued that a globally engaged metaphysics of race needs to address transnational continuities of racial ontologies. In contrast to unificationist accounts that aim for one globally unified ontology, it is argued that questions about the nature and reality of race do not always have the same answers across national contexts. In order address racial ontologies in global perspective, the article develops a framework that accounts for both continuities and discontinuities by looking beyond the referents of narrowly defined core concepts. By shifting the focus from narrow concepts to richer conceptions of race, racial ontologies become comparable through globally related but nonetheless distinct mappings between conceptions and property relations. The article concludes by showing how this framework can generate novel insights in case studies from Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Although Hilary Putnam has played a significant role in shaping contemporary philosophy of mind, he has more recently criticised its metaphysical foundations as fundamentally flawed. According to Putnam, the standard positions in the philosophy of mind rest on dubious ontological assumptions which are challenged by his “pragmatic pluralism” and the idea that we can always describe reality in different but equally fundamental ways. Putnam considers this pluralism about conceptual resources as an alternative to both physicalism and dualism. Contrary to physicalism, Putnam’s pluralism rejects the ontological priority of physical concepts. Contrary to dualism, pragmatic pluralism denies that equally fundamental conceptual systems refer to ontologically distinct realms of reality. The aim of this paper is to discuss and clarify the implications of Putnam’s pragmatic pluralism for the philosophy of mind. The first section introduces Putnam’s concept of conceptual relativity and his rejection of an absolute ontology. In the second section, I argue that conceptual relativity leads to a pragmatic pluralism which undermines the common ontological framework of physicalism and dualism. The third section explains how pragmatic pluralists can reject identity claims without being committed to dualism. The last section discusses the implications of Putnam’s pragmatic pluralism for the mind-body problem by focussing on phenomenal consciousness and mental causation.

The tradition of natural kinds has shaped philosophical debates about scientific classification but has come under growing criticism. Responding to this criticism, Reydon and Ereshefsky present their grounded functionality account as a strategy for updating and defending the tradition of natural kinds. This article argues that grounded functionality does indeed provide a fruitful philosophical approach to scientific classification but does not convince as a general theory of natural kinds. Instead, the strengths and limitations of Reydon and Ereshefsky’s account illustrate why it is time to move beyond general definitions of “natural kind” and experiment with new philosophical frameworks.

This article explores the use of islands as tools of geographical and intellectual containment - or what we call “islanding” - in the scientific and policy literature about gene drive technologies in conservation. In the first part of the article, we explore the narrative of contained gene drive use on islands and discuss how it juggles notions of localness and localization of gene drives and their (test) releases. We question the possibility and narrative of containing the spread of gene drives technologically or geographically, and argue that the gene drives for conservation literature strategically combines contradictory and reductive understandings of islands and containment. The second part of the article is devoted to reflection on nonlocal concerns about gene drives and the possibility of local gene drive decisions. We argue that attempts to legitimize local gene drives through local decision-making evade normative concerns about their nonlocalizability and risk instrumentalizing local communities for nonlocal agendas. Our overarching conceptual aim is therefore to open up a domain of thinking around the possibility of demarcation in our world – of our political, normative decisions, and of our reality – and to argue for the vital importance of reflection on this possibility in technological decision-making.

In bringing together a global community of philosophers, Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science develops novel perspectives on epistemology and philosophy of science by demonstrating how frameworks from academic philosophy (e.g. standpoint theory, social epistemology, feminist philosophy of science) and related fields (e.g. decolonial studies, transdisciplinarity, global history of science) can contribute to critical engagement with global dimensions of knowledge and science. Global challenges such as climate change, food production, and infectious diseases raise complex questions about scientific knowledge production and its interactions with local knowledge systems and social realities. As academic philosophy provides relatively little reflection on global negotiations of knowledge, many pressing scientific and societal issues remain disconnected from core debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. This book is an invitation to broaden agendas of academic philosophy by presenting epistemology and philosophy of science as globally engaged fields that address heterogeneous forms of knowledge production and their interactions with local livelihoods, practices, and worldviews. This integrative ambition makes the book equally relevant for philosophers and interdisciplinary scholars who are concerned with methodological and political challenges at the intersection of science and society.

Until today, an externally imposed epistemological paradigm is dominant in most educational curricula at universities in Africa. Despite ongoing Eurocentrism and Western hegemony in mainstream agricultural trainings in Africa, Indigenous knowledge on agriculture still exists: it has been preserved for generations by farmers and wise elders in rural communities who often are knowledge authorities on African agrarian Indigenous knowledge, values and practices. An imposed epistemological paradigm on the African continent reinforces epistemic injustice by dominating and ignoring Indigenous African ways of doing and knowing, which is deeply dehumanizing. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s ‘humanising pedagogy’ and Mogobe Ramose’s call for mothofatso in human relations, we explore a re-humanising pedagogy for African agrarian philosophy, which addresses the following questions: Can African agrarian philosophy contribute to re-humanization by reviving and restoring Indigenous agricultural knowledge, values and practices? If so, what pedagogy and educational methods are appropriate? In search for answers to these questions, we reflect on a two-week educational program on an endogenous approach to community resilience in Ghana, as a pedagogy that is emerging. In doing so, the chapter is firmly rooted in African soil, both practically—through trainings in Ghana—and theoretically—through African agrarian philosophy. By connecting educational experiences with insights from theory, seven themes for a pedagogy for African agrarian philosophy come to the front: an African agrarian philosophy with memory; a dialogical student–teacher relation; the value of lived experiences; intergenerational and spiritual methods of education; relationality of human beings and Mother Earth; unity between theory and practice; critical consciousness about people’s rights. The thesis defended is that African agrarian philosophy is without relevance if it remains a theoretical exercise that is not developed and put to use with farmers, wise elders and youth in the communities. Instead, when combined with a re-humanising pedagogy, African agrarian philosophy can contribute to reconnecting and reviving African agricultural knowledge, values and practices, which subsequently contributes to transforming African food systems that heals the environment and produces enough food to feed communities.

For several decades, intercultural philosophers have produced an extensive body of scholarly work aimed at mutual intercultural understanding. They have focused on the ideal of intercultural dialogue that is supported by dialogue principles and virtuous attitudes. However, this ideal is challenged by decolonial scholarship as one which neglects power inequalities. Decolonial scholars have emphasized the differences between cultures and worldviews, shifting the focus to colonial history and radical alterity. In return, intercultural philosophers have worried about the very possibility of dialogue and mutual understanding in frameworks that use coloniality as their singular pole of analysis. In this paper, we explore the complex relations between decolonial and intercultural philosophies. While we diagnose tensions between both intellectual discourses, we argue that these tensions turn out to be productive: for intercultural philosophers, decolonial challenges provide an opportunity to critically rethink ideals of equitable dialogue in light of colonial inequity and its deep entrenchment in global philosophical encounters. For decolonial scholars, intercultural philosophies provide an opportunity to sharpen positive proposals of equitable encounters beyond the critique of current forms of colonial domination. Rather than developing a general compromise, we propose a contextualist strategy, highlighting that different situations require different responses that can be strongly confrontational or dialogical in character. Decolonial and intercultural motifs serve different functions in the articulation of a critical global philosophy and can sharpen each other without integrating into a middle ground that is “a little bit intercultural” and “a little bit decolonial”.

Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This paper reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subaltern forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of science and outline a constructive alternative of transdisciplinary philosophy of science. While a demarcationist focus obscures the complex relations between epistemic communities, transdisciplinary philosophy of science provides resources for meeting epistemic and political challenges of collaborative knowledge production.

This article addresses ontological negotiations in the Global South through three case studies of community-based research in Brazil and Ghana. We argue that ontological perspectives of Indigenous and other subjugated communities require an ontological pluralism that recognizes the plurality of both representational tools and ways of being in the world. Locating these two readings of ontological pluralism in the politics of the Global South, the article highlights a wider dynamic from ontological paternalism to ontological diversity to ontological decolonization. We conclude by arguing that this dynamic provides important lessons for reorienting agendas in social ontology through Southern Ontologies.

In this paper we analyze relations between _ontology_ in anthropology and philosophy beyond simple homonymy or synonymy and show how this diagnosis allows for new interdisciplinary links and insights, while minimizing the risk of cross-disciplinary equivocation. We introduce the ontological turn in anthropology as an intellectual project rooted in the critique of dualism of culture and nature and propose a classification of the literature we reviewed into first-order claims about the world and second-order claims about ontological frameworks. Next, rather than provide a strict definition of _ontology_ in anthropological literature, we argue that the term is used as a heuristic addressing a web of sub-concepts relating to interpretation, knowledge, and self-determination which correspond to methodological, epistemic, and political considerations central to the development of the ontological turn. We present a case study of rivers as persons to demonstrate what the ontological paradigm in anthropology amounts to in practice. Finally, in an analysis facilitated by a parallel between the first- and second-order claims in anthropology, and _ontology_ and meta-_ontology_ in philosophy (respectively), we showcase the potential for contribution of ontological anthropology to contemporary philosophical debates, such as ontological gerrymandering, relativism and social _ontology_, and vice versa.