Embodied minds: a critical response to McMahan on personal identity.

Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.No abstract available

Personhood and human rights: a critical study of the African communitarian and normative conception of the self.

Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.No abstract available

A social ontology of “maximal” persons

In this paper, I address a range of arguments put forward by Kwame Gyekye (1992) and Bernard Matolino (2014) denying Menkiti’s twin propositions that persons differ ontologically from human beings and that human attitudes, behaviours and practices constitute persons in social reality. They argue that his account of “maximal” persons, rooted in African traditional thought‐worlds, conflatesissues and ultimately involve him in a category mistake. I argue that their arguments do not succeed, and that Menkiti’s view is not in any predicament because of them. Then, I draw on John Searle’s account of social ontology to clarify the sense in which attitudes, behaviours and practices are constituents of persons. Thus, I characterise persons as social entities belonging in a social ontology

The Making of Ancestral Persons

In this paper, I address a range of arguments put forward by Katrin Flikschuh (2016) casting doubts on a theoretical account ofancestral persons in the work of Ifeanyi Menkiti. She argues both that their ontological status is uncertain and that they areontologically redundant. I argue that she does not succeed in convincing us to settle for a practical justification of ancestors. Ithen supplement Menkiti’s life-history account of post-mortem persistence with Searle’s account of social ontology with a viewto theoretically justify belief in the existence of ancestral persons