Kat Wehrheim

Contemporary Western alternatives to anthropocentrism – such as sentientism or biocentrism – rely on the scope of human knowledge exceeding its realistic limitations. As a corollary, although these models continue to be helpful in discerning ethical conduct, additional resources are going to be required. Initially arguing from within a representationalist paradigm, this paper shows that besides our inability reliably to assess the capacities of non-human species, we have also yet to learn what other factors, besides capacity, may be relevant to a non-human’s moral considerability. Subsequently arguing from within a participationalist paradigm, this paper shows that we cannot preconceive all we may be in the process of co-creating. This leaves any model grounded solely in the already existing open to finding itself incapable of relating to the new. It is in the co-creativity of the latter that a potential starting point for resolution begins to emerge: drawing upon Indigenous conceptions of performative knowledge processes in non-objectifying relationality, this paper shows dynamics of inter-species kinship, at times partially traceable through evolutionary relationship, to be a source of non-propositional learning relevant to ethical concerns.

This paper argues that currently operative approaches to the protection of Indigenous rights and capabilities cannot help but fall short of accommodating relational, co-creative dynamics of Indigenous being in the world due to insufficient engagement with the participationalist, networked understandings of Indigenous paradigms. Discussions during the preparation of the United Nations’ Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), in a necessary first step, focused on responses to shared histories of subjugation by colonial powers, and on safeguarding Indigenous rights and capabilities in relation to the powers exercised by what have since become encapsulating nation states. While the respect implied in the safeguarding of such rights and capabilities constitutes a crucial first step towards fruitful forms of coexistence, its conception from within a predominantly representationalist, Newtonian, post-Enlightenment Western paradigm necessarily falls short – at least as yet – of allowing space for Indigenous forms of networked, often acausal relationships of inter-species kinship to thrive. As a corollary, it also entails limitations remaining operative with regards to any potential networking between networks: to the extent that an Indigenous network’s own ability to thrive is impeded, so is the ability of its neighbouring networks to fruitfully interact with its contribution to inter-network co-creative activity and thriving. Understandings on their own terms are going to be needed of Indigenous conceptions of agency residing in inter-species relationship, so that space can be opened up for Indigenous societies not only to exercise rights and capabilities at bounded individual or group level, but also to practise participationalist ways of dynamically centering the co-creative agency of relationships.

This thesis attempts to identify and overcome barriers to potential knowledge transfer and collaboration between Western and Indigenous worldviews regarding our human relationship with more-than-human nature. Issues of discrimination and epistemic injustice are contextualised with existing minority and intersectional thought, and distinguished from particular incommensurabilities between the two worldviews requiring their own approach. Part 1 introduces and practises an iterative methodology of utilising, and progressing from, familiar stepping stones on a journey towards understanding of the unfamiliar on its own terms. Indigenous and Western academics’ own journey of “The Dialogues”, a series of conferences, is retraced, exploring parallels between quantum theory and Indigenous thought over a period of ten years, and revealing a shared ethic of responsive responsibility as we interact with those around us. These results are shown to be interwoven with Merleau-Ponty’s and Spinoza’s thinking. An interim conclusion is drawn of the unhelpfulness of human persistence in our assumption of unilateral control of the world. This leads to the Part 2 question of how an alternative to our unilateral control can be lived in the contemporary West, considering our tendency to impose Cartesian distinctions of binary dualism not only of mind and body and of humans versus non-humans, but also of the spiritual versus the material and of the individual versus the whole: learning from Indigenous worldviews would involve our openness to understanding these as being in a non-binary relationship of mutual supportiveness instead, entailing a constitutive role of ritual. Stepping stones to our engagement with an Indigenous, participationalist paradigm are provided by Jacques Ellul’s, John Dewey’s, and William James’s thinking. Three case studies explore the possibility of Western participation in the shared learning and creation inherent in Indigenous understandings of performative knowledge processes. To the extent that we acknowledge the incompleteness of our understanding, we may be able to reclaim our responsiveness to that which, only a few hundred years ago, we in the West, too, might have referred to as the sacred in the material.

Philosophising across paradigms can be problematic. It has not only been guilty of perpetuating injustice, of contributing to unhelpful forms of meaning-making, and of failing to result in useful contribution in the past: fault lines potentially giving rise to these outcomes can be shown to continue to exist. Some of these fault lines reveal themselves to be all the more serious as engagement deepens. How, then, can it be ethical for a Western philosopher to write about Indigenous philosophies? This paper argues that while a family resemblance of necessary prerequisites to potentially fruitful engagement does appear to exist, these cannot be conceived to be sufficient: under a participationalist paradigm, a vital further ingredient must be an expectation of the emergence of the unexpected as agency moves into relationship. Within this dynamic, it is then not exclusively responsiveness in relationship between human philosophers representing each paradigm which is likely to play a role. It is, over and above this, post-Enlightenment Western learning to re-engage in shared becoming in inter-species kinship in our own localities (in the author's case, in the United Kingdom) which is going to be required. In a dynamic of co-creative shared becoming, it cannot be appropriation of another group's propositional knowledge which is going to be helpful: it is the courage, if we can muster it, to begin to learn from Indigenous philosophers some dynamics of sensitisation to our own localities' variations on underlying signature tunes, in order to fall into harmony with these as we co-create tomorrow's. Once we relearn to approach our philosophical engagement as an inter-species process of shared becoming, hope may emerge of our becoming better citizens where we are, as well as better neighbours to those affected elsewhere by our overgrazing of the world's climate commons. In and through this, hope may then arise of our emerging as skillful partners in philosophising across paradigms.

This paper argues that for reasons of epistemic justice and academic rigour alike, methodologies will benefit from allowing themselves to remain open to the unexpected. A well‐documented reason for this is the fact of our capacity for understanding stretching only to verisimilitude rather than to omniscience: we cannot anticipate all relevant questions even about an existing, unfamiliar state of affairs, as initially surprising questions may come into view as our process of familiarisation unfolds. Frequently overlooked, an additional dynamic requires accommodation once the issue is considered from within a participationalist paradigm: we cannot anticipate all that we may be involved in co‐creating. These points are argued first and foremost from the work of contemporary Indigenous philosophers. Aspects of contemporary Western science and philosophy are presented as initial aids to Western familiarisation with these, subsequently to be left behind in favour of engagement with Indigenous paradigms on their own terms.