Real knowledge emerges from “impossible” worldviews. Or, put differently, it is possible to accept knowledge that is produced by people whose ontological presuppositions–their baseline assumptions about the nature of reality–one entirely rejects. How can this fact be accommodated, not by advancing a wishful post-dualism, dangerous post-secularism, or implausible ontological relativism, but by working within the tradition of secular political philosophy so that indigenous knowledge, too, can be a basis for public policy and collective action in secular societies? Via a reframing Amazonian multinaturalist perspectivism–which has so inspired post-dualist civilizational critiques–as a social theory of health and illness that informs contemporary Western epidemiology’s struggles to theorize the distribution of health and illness in mass society, this article advances a general approach to recognizing knowledge that has been developed on the other side of boundaries of ontological difference. It argues that the accuracy or efficacy of any particular indigenous knowledge-practice implies the generative potential as theory of the ontological presuppositions that facilitated the knowledge-practice’s evolution. Combining the ontological turn’s interest in the innovativeness of indigenous concepts with a proposal for superseding its incommensurable worlds and abandonment of the aspiration to more-than-local knowledge, the article shows that indigenous ideas and their underlying ontologies are more than generic alternatives to inspire Western civilizational renewal, and opens a path to their legitimization as actionable knowledge in the terms of secular public reason.

真正的知识源自“不可能”的世界观。或者，换句话来说，接受那些完全拒绝本体论预设（他们对现实本质的基线假设）的人所产生的知识是可能的。如何才能适应这一事实，不是通过推进一厢情愿的后二元论、危险的后世俗主义或难以置信的本体论相对主义，而是通过在世俗政治哲学的传统范围内工作，以便本土知识也可以成为公共政策的基础以及世俗社会中的集体行动？通过将亚马逊多元自然主义视角——它极大地激发了后二元主义文明批评——重新定义为一种健康和疾病的社会理论，为当代西方流行病学对大众社会中健康和疾病的分布进行理论化的斗争提供了信息，本文提出了一种通用方法认识到在本体论差异边界的另一边发展起来的知识。它认为，任何特定本土知识实践的准确性或有效性都意味着作为促进知识实践进化的本体论预设理论的生成潜力。本文将本体论转向对本土概念创新性的兴趣与取代其不可通约世界的提议以及放弃对超越本地知识的渴望结合起来，表明本土思想及其潜在本体论不仅仅是激发西方灵感的通用替代品。文明更新，并为它们作为世俗公共理性方面的可操作知识的合法化开辟了道路。