Non-anthropocentrism as Participation alongside Perspective: Indigenous Philosophers and Dynamics of Inter-species Kinship

Autor: Kat Wehrheim
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: Relations, Vol 12, Iss 1, Pp 29-47 (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2283-3196
2280-9643
DOI: 10.7358/rela-2024-01-wehk
Popis: 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.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals