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Paper short abstract

This paper argues that more-than-human research requires transforming the researcher, not representing nonhumans. Drawing on ekosophy, it proposes that "including" nonhumans fails because it leaves intact the very separation it seeks to overcome. The question is how we know, not what.

Paper long abstract

More-than-human research faces a paradox: we cannot "include" nonhumans without the human interpreter remaining central. This paper argues that this impasse stems from treating relational ontologies as content to be applied rather than processes requiring transformation of the researcher themselves.

Drawing on ekosophy - wisdom for living within the whole of life while becoming oneself as part of it - I propose that the methodological challenge is that relational philosophies cannot simply be transplanted into conventional research frameworks. Just as plants require appropriate soil, relational methodologies demand what I call existential transformation - changes in our ways of knowing, being, and acting, not merely new conceptual vocabularies.

The paper develops two interventions. First, taking seriously the 4E mind (extended, embodied, enacted, embedded) dissolves the interpreter problem: if cognition is already distributed across bodies, tools, and environments, then research is always already more-than-human. The question shifts from "how do we include nonhumans?" to "how do we acknowledge entanglements already operative?"

Second, I argue for practice-based methodologies - what I term "PhilosophyGyms" - where researchers engage in structured exercises that attune them differently rather than extract knowledge about others. This shifts inquiry from representation to response-ability.

The "more" in more-than-human may require researchers to become differently constituted - changed by their entanglements rather than reporting on them.

keywords: relational turn, inner transformation, relational ontologies, metacrisis, polycrisis