Aribiah Attoe took issue with the materialist and the non-materialist African conceptions of death by arguing that the reality of death puts pressure on the human conception of life’s meaning. He admits the reality of an afterlife experience through a causal principle that sees events in the world as the product of interactions between predetermined past events. It is an afterlife where a decomposing body continues interacting with other things in the world, not an afterlife involving consciousness. While conscious meaning-making (...) ends in the death of the body in Attoe’s materialist view, thereby affirming the conclusion that human existence is meaningless and the universe is purposeless, the conviction about life’s meaninglessness is also reinforced by the possibility of a second death, that is, the death of the transcendent consciousness in the traditional African view. In this article, I will mount two objections to Attoe’s submission. First, I argue that Attoe’s refutation of life’s meaning may be faulted by a world view devoid of the ideas of the afterlife and immortality. Life’s meaninglessness for him should have been limited to the facts of human existence in the world, not the human inability to continue meaning after death. Second, Attoe’s conception of death as finality questions his principle of causality that suggests the reality of an endless afterlife. Attoe’s overarching submission on life’s meaninglessness gives the impression that theories of life’s meaning must be anchored on the thought of an afterlife and immortality. (shrink)

Limited communitarianism is presented as an alternative to classical communitarianism in African philosophy. Bernard Matolino, the proponent of this view, argues that personhood can be attained with the constitutive features of the self leading the process, as against the historical, classical communitarian view that prioritises the sociality of the self. He posits that it is a personhood conceived through such view as limited communitarianism that can guarantee individual rights and prioritises the claims of the individual in African philosophy. Matolino’s claim (...) is grounded on the view that Afro-communitarianism, as presented in the classical account such as the radical and moderate communitarianism of Menkiti and Gyekye, respectively, emphasises community essence in African philosophy and hinders the expression of rights. The claim of the classical view informs the nudge to question the relevance and compatibility of Afro- communitarianism with the complex, multicultural modern African societies. As a result, limited communitarianism rejects the mechanism of Afrocommunitarianism – essentialism. While limited communitarianism appears a rejection of what is known as Afro- communitarianism, which has earned it noncommunitarian labels such as being liberal and individualist, I argue that it is simply a well- argued form of moderate communitarianism that avoids the conundrum of community. (shrink)

In a joint article1 with Wenceslaus Kwindingwi, Bernard Matolino declared an end to ubuntu. The declaration, they argue, is a result of the failure of ubuntu in practice and theory in modern African societies. This declaration triggered strong reactions, and an analysis of these responses suggests the need for continuous interrogations of African ideals and beliefs and their relevance to modern African thought. In this article, I argue that Kwindingwi and Matolino’s argument is in line with Matolino’s broader scepticism about (...) Afro-communitarianism in general. In other works, he insists that attempts to theoretically and practically ground postcolonial African philosophy in ideas of Afro-communitarianism exaggerate its functionality. I aim to show that Matolino’s Socratic process and the outcomes, as demonstrated in the “The end of ubuntu”, aim to produce quality understanding and reasoned defence of the traditional ideas aimed to guide modern African thought. The rejectionist approach should be seen as a nudge to make the advocacy for African ideals and beliefs, such as ubuntu, match up with the knowledge of them and how they operate in reality. (shrink)

The idea of afro-existentialism connotes how Africans make sense of living and the meaning and meaninglessness attached to human existence. Different phenomena inform the way humans interpret existence, and one of such in the contemporary period, with great influence on Africans, is human involvement with non-human intelligence, in its different eruptions. This paper focuses on the second-wave AI, which is a period of improved simulation of natural intelligence, whose singularity principle hypothesizes individualist motives. The paper asks, to what extent do (...) Afroexistential norms accommodate second-wave AI? Partly in disagreement with the claim that AI is for everyone, we argue that second-wave artificial intelligence weakly adapts to Afro-existential practices, which is largely communal, emphasizing shared experience. We justify this claim by arguing that Western ethical patterns, which inform the features of the second-wave AI such as statistical patterns, smart algorithm, specialized hardware, and big data sets, emerge from individualist notions. This paper argues that second-wave AI trends do not reflect African norms of existence being factored into ordering algorithmic patterns that set up AI systems and programs. We infer that Afro-existential practices unsettles with the individualist principle which underlines second-wave AI and therefore, a conversation around the development and application of communal interpretation of AI is important. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the problem of knowledge production on economic poverty in Africa as, largely, an instance of epistemic injustice. It applies Karl Popper’s critical rationalism to the issue of knowledge production on poverty. Methodologies of researches on poverty in Africa subtly promotes intended epistemic injustices against the subjects as the poor are underrepresented in knowledge about them; the experiences of the poor are often ignored, and their epistemic capacity for unearthing the push and pull factors of poverty are greeted (...) with much inferiority, skepticism and contempt. In severing the intersection between researching and reporting poverty in Africa and epistemic injustice, this chapter argues that Popper’s critical rationalism is philosophically indispensable. Popper’s scientific and political thoughts are potent theoretical interventions in addressing the epistemic, methodological, social, moral and political problems of poverty in Africa. The elements of scientific method inquiry, rationality, piecemeal social engineering, liberalism and intellectual openness explicit in Popper’s philosophy are explored, applied and found relevant to promoting poverty research ideals and policy development in Africa and beyond. The chapter concludes on the importance of Popper’s works, which span beyond his time and space, to knowledge about Africa. (shrink)

Yleensä Wienin piirin loogista empirismiä kannattaneet filosofit mielletään antirealisteiksi. Tässä artikkelissa kuitenkin argumentoidaan, että piirin johtohahmo Moritz Schlick oli eräänlainen realisti myös nykystandardien valossa. Näin ollen – niin yllättävältä kuin se kuulostaakin – positivismi ja realismi ovat yhteensovitettavissa. Schlick tosin erotti kannattamansa empiirisen realismin jyrkästi metafyysisestä realismista, jota hän piti merkityksettömänä. Schlickin realismin esittelyn lisäksi artikkelissa tarkastellaan yleisellä tasolla hänen epistemologiaansa, kielifilosofiaansa ja metafysiikan kritiikkiään. Tekstissä pohditaan myös Schlickin suosiman realismin asemaa ja relevanssia nykyisessä realismikeskustelussa.

Artikkeli käsittelee J. V. Snellmanin (1806–81) varhaisvaiheen filosofiaa ja sen suhdetta hänen 1840-luvun alun filosofiseen pääteokseensa "Persoonallisuuden idean spekulatiivisen kehittelyn yritys" (Versuch einer speculativen Entwicklung der Idee der Persönlichkeit). Varhaisvaiheen filosofia viittaa Snellmanin julkaistuihin kirjoituksiin vuosina 1835–40 sekä luentokäsikirjoituksiin ja muihin muistiinpanoihin. -/- Artikkelin keskiössä on Snellmanin varhainen luenta G. W. F. Hegelin (1770–1831) filosofiasta. Snellmanin filosofian on yleensä katsottu seuraavan Hegelin esikuvaa uskollisesti. Tämä pitää pääasiassa paikkansa, mutta toisaalta Snellman ei missään vaiheessa uraansa epäröinyt poiketa Hegelin viitoittamalta tieltä. Hän (...) ei tosin juuri korostanut eroja itsensä ja saksalaisen esikuvansa välillä. Snellman esitti varhaisfilosofiassaan muun muassa omaperäisen tulkinnan Hegelin subjektiivisen hengen filosofiasta. Hän pyrki myös yhdistämään Hegelin kaksi logiikan pääesitystä yhdeksi kokonaisuudeksi. Snellman myös täydensi joiltain osin Hegelin systeemiä. Hegel ei esimerkiksi koskaan vastannut yksiselitteisesti kysymykseen siitä, tarvitseeko hänen systeeminsä itsenäisen johdannon. Snellman katsoi johdannon tarpeelliseksi ja esitti varhaisfilosofiassaan oman versionsa johdannosta. Snellmanin johdanto keskittyi itsetietoisuuden käsitteeseen, joka oli keskeisessä roolissa myös hänen vuonna 1841 julkaisemassaan teoksessa "Persoonallisuuden idean spekulatiivisen kehittelyn yritys". (shrink)

Theism maintains that God is a moralagent. Classical Christian theism also maintains that God is unable tosin. The latter claim is entailed by the proposition that the being whois God is essentially God, and this proposition is one which would beendorsed by all or most classical theologians. It would thus appearthat the claim that God is unable to sin is an important, if notfundamental, part of classical Christian theism. It follows that, at acrucial point, classical Christian theism is incompatible (...) with theassumption that moral agency logically involves the ability to sin -an assumption which is an essential part of the free will defense asthat defense is normally presented. Since (as I suggested earlier) theuse of the free will defense also plays a very important role in clas-sical Christian theism, classical Christian theism would appear toexhibit a major incoherance. While the difficulty can be overcome byemploying a modified version of the free will defense, the modifiedversion is not as attractive as the original. (shrink)