66 research outputs found
Care versus Justice: Odera Oruka and the Quest for Global Justice
The Kenya-born philosopher Henry Odera Oruka (1944 - 1995) persistently, and consistently, made proposals for a different moral approach to addressing, and possibly solving, some of the root causes of human conflicts across the world. I will call it âtaking suffering seriouslyâ as the basis of his idea of a global-level collective justice which, for him, raised the idea of the ethics of care to the level of global justice. I propose in this paper to show that this concern can be found to be pervasive in Orukaâs works, connecting many of his well known positions as well as less known ones, and to discuss its philosophical merits. Key Words Odera Oruka, Justice, Care, African philosoph
A Review of Kai Kresseâs Philosophising in Mombasa: Knowledge, Islam and Intellectual Practice on the Swahili Coast
No abstract Availabl
This thing called communitarianism: A critical review of Matolino's Personhood in African Philosophy
The subject of personal identity has received substantial treatment in contemporary
African philosophy. Importantly, the dominant approach to personal identity is
communitarian. Bernard Matolino's new book Personhood in African Philosophy
enters into this discussion by way of contesting some of the assumptions underlying
communitarian approaches. His own critical assessment leads him to what I believe
is an unprecedented objection in the literature; the conclusion that communitarian
philosophers are involved in a category mistake when framing the question and
articulating the notion of personhood. I intend to present a brief summary of the
chapters of the book and reflect on some of the main philosophical issues that the
book provokes, noting what I take to be refreshing insights that Matolino brings to
the discussion while also engaging critically with the ones I find most contentious.
In particular, I briefly assess Matolino's implicit suggestion that an Akan inspired
quasi-physicalist account of mind avoids the mind-body interaction problem; I
object to the category mistake charge on behalf of communitarians; and lastly, I raise
questions about, and propose ways Matolino can refine, his proposal concerning
a new way of thinking about personhood, which goes under the rubric of Limited
Communitarianism.IS
A new potassium-based intermediate and its role in the desorption properties of the KâMgâNâH system
In situSR-PXD experiments revealed a new reaction mechanism of amideâhydride anionic exchange for the KâMgâNâH system
Artifact and Artifact Categorization: Comparing Humans and Capuchin Monkeys
International audienceWe aim to show that far-related primates like humans and the capuchin monkeys show interesting correspondences in terms of artifact characterization and categorization. We investigate this issue by using a philosophically-inspired definition of physical artifact which, developed for human artifacts, turns out to be applicable for cross-species comparison. In this approach an artifact is created when an entity is intentionally selected and some capacities attributed to it (often characterizing a purpose). Behavioral studies suggest that this notion of artifact is not specific to the human kind. On the basis of the results of a series of field observations and experiments on wild capuchin monkeys that routinely use stone hammers and anvils, we show that the notions of intentional selection and attributed capacity appear to be at play in capuchins as well. The study also suggests that functional criteria and contextualization play a fundamental role in terms of artifact recognition and categorization in nonhuman primates
African Communitarianism and Difference
There has been the recurrent suspicion that community, harmony, cohesion, and similar relational goods as understood in the African ethical tradition threaten to occlude difference. Often, it has been Western defenders of liberty who have raised the concern that these characteristically sub-Saharan values fail to account adequately for individuality, although some contemporary African thinkers have expressed the same concern. In this chapter, I provide a certain understanding of the sub-Saharan value of communal relationship and demonstrate that it entails a substantial allowance for difference. I aim to show that African thinkers need not appeal to, say, characteristically Euro-American values of authenticity or autonomy to make sense of why individuals should not be pressured to conform to a groupâs norms regarding sex and gender. A key illustration involves homosexuality
Towards a Logic of Epistemic Theory of Measurement
We propose a logic to reason about data collected by a num- ber of measurement systems. The semantic of this logic is grounded on the epistemic theory of measurement that gives a central role to measure- ment devices and calibration. In this perspective, the lack of evidences (in the available data) for the truth or falsehood of a proposition requires the introduction of a third truth-value (the undetermined). Moreover, the data collected by a given source are here represented by means of a possible world, which provide a contextual view on the objects in the domain. We approach (possibly) conflicting data coming from different sources in a social choice theoretic fashion: we investigate viable opera- tors to aggregate data and we represent them in our logic by means of suitable (minimal) modal operators
Towards a Cognitive Semantics of Type
Types are a crucial concept in conceptual modelling, logic, and knowledge representation as they are an ubiquitous device to un- derstand and formalise the classification of objects. We propose a logical treatment of types based on a cognitively inspired modelling that ac- counts for the amount of information that is actually available to a cer- tain agent in the task of classification. We develop a predicative modal logic whose semantics is based on conceptual spaces that model the ac- tual information that a cognitive agent has about objects, types, and the classification of an object under a certain type. In particular, we ac- count for possible failures in the classification, for the lack of sufficient information, and for some aspects related to vagueness
How intra-familial decision-making affects womenâs access to, and use of maternal healthcare services in Ghana: a qualitative study
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