Distributed Truth-Telling: A Model for Moral Revolution and Epistemic Justice in Australia

The Distributed Truth-Telling Model

Authors

Nicolas J Bullot, Stephen W Enciso

Abstract

This article provides a philosophical response to the need for truth-telling about colonial history, focusing on the Australian context. The response consists in inviting philosophers and the public to engage in social-justice practices specified by a model called Distributed Truth-Telling (DTT), which integrates the historiography of injustices affecting Indigenous peoples with insights from social philosophy and cultural evolution theory. By contrast to official and large-scale truth commissions, distributed truth-telling is a set of non-elitist practices that weave three components: first, multisite, multiformat, and multiscale inquiries into injustices; second, remedial imaginings and reasoning about moral repair and reconciliated futures; and finally, emotions suitable for motivating agents to cooperatively plan and implement moral revolutions. Distributed truth-telling can entrench virtuous feedback loops that contribute to moral revolutions. However, vicious feedback loops associated with collective denial and biases can impair distributed truth-telling and thwart moral revolutions.

Keywords

Truth-telling, moral revolution and repair, decolonization in Australia, historical and epistemic injustice, rationality and biases, cultural learning and entrenchment

File

Bullot_Enciso_Distributed-Truth-Telling_FINAL-AJP-Template_(Submission_2024_10_11)_ACCEPTE.

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