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

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• american pragmatism
• environmental ethics
• evolutionary relationship
• indigenous philosophies
• inter-species kinship
• non-anthropocentrism
• nonpropositional knowledge
• participationalist paradigm
• performative knowledge processes
• phenomenology