The Perspectives Trap: Metaphysics and Epistemology Grounded in Aboriginal Philosophy

Universities across Australia have committed to embedding Indigenous knowledge in their curriculum, but they have no account of those knowledges as warranted. Aboriginal knowledges are welcomed as ‘perspectives’, ‘context’, ‘experiences’ or ‘principles’ while Western disciplines stay the default for truth. I call this the perspectives trap. This chapter asks what counts as warrant in the university and what is lost when that sense of warrant becomes the test for Aboriginal knowledge.

I use comparative philosophy to explore Plantinga’s proper function account of warrant, and I propose a framework of Aboriginal warrant built on Authority, Protocol, Country, Enactment and Obligation. Within it, Obligation works as a redesigned deontology that sits in relations rather than in the will. The chapter argues that colonisation did more than silence Aboriginal knowers; it damaged the conditions through which Aboriginal knowledge functions properly. Aboriginal knowledges should be held as legitimate, answerable to their own conditions of warrant.

Image credit: Philosophy seminar 15 March.jpg