Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T05:11:52.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Exploding Individuals: Engaging Indigenous Logic and Decolonizing Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2020

Rebekah Sinclair
Rebekah Sinclair*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon, Susan Campbell Hall, Eugene, Oregon, 97403
*
Corresponding author. Email: sinclair.rebekah@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite emerging attention to Indigenous philosophies both within and outside of feminism, Indigenous logics remain relatively underexplored and underappreciated. By amplifying the voices of recent Indigenous philosophies and literatures, I seek to demonstrate that Indigenous logic is a crucial aspect of Indigenous resurgence as well as political and ethical resistance. Indigenous philosophies provide alternatives to the colonial, masculinist tendencies of classical logic in the form of paraconsistent—many-valued—logics. Specifically, when Indigenous logics embrace the possibility of true contradictions, they highlight aspects of the world rejected and ignored by classical logic and inspire a relational, decolonial imaginary. To demonstrate this, I look to biology, from which Indigenous logics are often explicitly excluded, and consider one problem that would benefit from an Indigenous, paraconsistent analysis: that of the biological individual. This article is an effort to expand the arenas in which allied feminists can responsibly take up and deploy these decolonial logics.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 35 , Special Issue 1: Indigenizing and Decolonizing Feminist Philosophy , Winter 2020 , pp. 58 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © by Hypatia, Inc. 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atleo, Richard. 2011. Principles of Tsawalk. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Bang, Megan, Curley, Lawrence, Kessel, Adam, Marin, Ananda, Suzukovich, Eli S. III, and Strack, George. 2014. Muskrat theories: Tobacco in the streets and living Chicago as Indigenous land. Environmental Education Research 20 (1): 37–55.10.1080/13504622.2013.865113CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bang, Megan, and Marin, Ananda. 2015. Nature-culture constructs in science learning: Human/non-human agency and intentionality. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 52 (4): 530–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bordenstein, Seth, and Theis, Kevin. 2015. Host biology in light of the microbiome: Ten principles of holobionts and hologenomes. PLoS Biology 13 (8): e1002226. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002226.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bueno, Otávio, Chen, Ruey-Lin, and Fagan, Melinda Bonnie. 2018. Individuality, process, and scientific practices. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cajete, Gregory. 2000. Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Sante Fe, N.M.: ClearLight Publishers.Google Scholar
Cajete, Gregory. 2004. Philosophy of native science. In American Indian thought: Philosophical essays, ed. Waters, Anne. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Clarke, Ellen. 2010. The problem of biological individuality. Biological Theory 5 (4): 312–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Ellen. 2012. Plant individuality: A solution to the demographer's dilemma. Biology and Philosophy 27 (3): 321–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Ellen. 2013. The multiple realizability of biological individuals. Journal of Philosophy 110 (8): 413–35.10.5840/jphil2013110817CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clements, Marie. 2011. The girl who swam forever. In Footpaths and bridges: Voices from the Native American women playwrights archive, ed. Howard, Rebecca Ann and Huston-Findley, Shirly Annette. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Cordova, V. F. 2007. How it is: The Native philosophy of V. F. Cordova. ed. Moor, Kathleen Dean, Peters, Kurt, Jojola, Ted, and Lacy, Amber. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Deloria, Vine Jr.,. 1999. Spirit and reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr. reader, ed. Deloria, Barbara, Foehner, Kristen, and Scinta, Sam. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing.Google Scholar
Deloria, Vine Jr.,. 2004. Evolution, creationism, and other modern myths. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing.Google Scholar
Douglas, Heather. 2016. Values in science. In The Oxford handbook of philosophy of science, ed. Humphreys, Paul. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Eichler, Lauren. 2018. Sacred truths, fables, and falsehoods: Intersections between feminist and Native American logics. APA Newsletter on Native American and Indigenous Philosophy 18 (1): 4–11.Google Scholar
Eastman, Charles. 1980. The soul of the Indian: An interpretation. Lincoln, Neb.: Bison Books.Google Scholar
Feyerabend, Paul. 1978. Science in a free society. New York: Verso Books.Google Scholar
Feyerabend, Paul. 1987. Farewell to reason. New York: Verso Books.Google Scholar
Guay, Alexandre, and Pradeu, Thomas. 2016. Individuals across the sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1986. The science question in feminism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1996 Feminism and science. Women, knowledge, and reality, ed. Garry, Ann and Peasall, Marilyn. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 2010. The mirage of a space between nature and nurture. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2013. Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.Google Scholar
Kovaka, Karen. 2015. Biological individuality and scientific practice. Philosophy of Science 82 (5): 1092–1103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewontin, Richard. 1982. Organism and environment. In Learning, development, and culture, ed. Plotkin, H. C.. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons Ltd.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Elizabeth. 2005. The case of the female orgasm. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McKenzie, Marcia. 2004. The “willful contradiction” of poststructural socio-ecological education. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education 9 (Spring): 177–90.Google Scholar
Magnani, Lorenzo. 2015. Naturalizing logic: Errors of reasoning vindicated: Logic reapproaches cognitive science. Journal of Applied Logic 13 (1): 13–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munevar, Gonzalo. 1982. Allowing contradictions in science. Metaphilosopy 13 (1): 74–78.Google Scholar
Nicholson, Daniel, and Dupré, John. 2018. Everything flows. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198779636.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton-Smith, Thomas. 2010. The dance of person and place: One interpretation of American Indian philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Nye, Andrea. 1990. Words of power: A feminist reading of the history of logic. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Orr, H. Allen, and Coyne, Jerry A.. 2004. Speciation. London: Oxford University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Pierotti, Raymond. 2011. Indigenous knowledge, ecology, and evolutionary biology. New York: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Priest, Graham. 1997. Sylvan's box: A short story and ten morals. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 38 (4): 573–82.Google Scholar
Priest, Graham. 2008. An introduction to non-classical logic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plumwood, Val.. 2002. The politics of reason: Toward a feminist logic. In Representing reason: Feminist theory and formal logic, ed. Falmagne, Rachel Joffe and Hass, Marjorie. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Slater, Matthew 2013. Are species real? London: Palgrave McMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tallbear, Kim. 2013a. Genomic articulations of indigeneity. Social Studies of Science 43 (4): 509–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tallbear, Kim. 2013b. Native American DNA: Tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuana, Nancy. 2004. Coming to understand: Orgasm and the epistemology of ignorance. Hypatia 19 (1): 194–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waters, Anne. 2004a. Language matters: Nondiscrete, nonbinary dualism. In American Indian thought: Philosophical essays, ed., Waters, Anne. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Waters, Anne. 2004b. That alchemical Bering Strait theory. In American Indian thought: Philosophical essays, ed. Waters, Anne. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Whyte, Kyle Powys. 2013. On the role of traditional ecological knowledge as a collaborative concept: A philosophical study. Ecological Processes 2 (7).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Robert. 2005. Genes and the agents of life: The individual in the fragile sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Patrick. 2006. Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research 8 (4): 387–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar