Religion is approached from an African point of view but is as accessible to readers who belong to non-African societies as it is to those who have grown up in ...

Purpose: To reawaken the consciousness of all Africans to the implications of the metaphysical trajectory of time in Africa, which John S. Mbiti presents, in relation to personal and collective human development in Africa. Methodology: This work is expository, critical, and evaluative in its methodology. Findings: In Western thought, there is mathematical and linear time, as dominant ideas. Dominant because some philosophers, in particular Bergson, have their notion of time as mainly inclined to be lived, organic. It is (...) linear time in the sense that, it is an imagined line through which the distant past, present and infinite future is figured. Linear time as such does not exist, but it is a metaphysical notion existing in our minds. Linear time is unidirectional and mathematical. In Africa, African Philosophy is still fledgling. That is, it is not fully developed and documented. Consequently, even the field of “time” lacks a robust written commentary. Unique Contribution to theory, practice and policy (recommendation): Within the traditional African milieu, according to Mbiti, time is a two dimensional phenomenon, with a long past, a present and virtually no future. This is contrary to the linear time concept in western thought, with an indefinite past, present and future. This work is expository, analytical and critical in its methodology. The first part of the discussion is concerned with the nature of time (and its constituent elements) as a metaphysical concept. The second part focuses on the ordering of time as found among the Africans. Finally, the third part discusses some of the different activities (in customs and traditions), which point to the future. These include the meaning of life, rites of passage, painting and divination, etc. In the conclusion, a fundamental question is raised regarding, whether or not, the present organization of time, in Africa, as presented by John S. Mbiti, be perpetuated or changed, taking into account the pros and cons it bears. (shrink)

In African society today, ubuntu as a notion of African humanism has been, and still is, subject to critical discussion. In African literature, philosophy, ethics, anthropology and theology, ubuntu plays a vast role and scholars in Africa and globally find the notion highly debated. The concept of identity development on the African continent has been written about broadly. This article unpacks the ubuntu philosophies of Augustine Shutte, Kwame Gyekye and John Mbiti. The views of these scholars will be (...) contrasted to critically engage the conceivable commonalities for identity development through cultures. The question addressed herein is: What are the similarities and dissimilarities of ubuntu as a cornerstone for identity development in modern Africa? This article also examines the divergent definition and historical development of ubuntu culture, ubuntu philosophy of identity development, environmental development and various thinkers’ understanding of this African worldview in current Africa and further afield. Contribution: This research contributes to African theological ethics of the new landscape identity and explores the ubuntu worldviews as a developmental process of identities across cultures. Since identity development across cultures is highly dynamic, the hermeneutical interpretation of the principles of ubuntu is crucial. (shrink)

John Mbiti, in his attempt to disprove the charge of paganism by EuroAmerican ethnographic and anthropological scholars against African Traditional Religions argues that traditional African religions are monotheistic. He insists that these traditional religious cultures have the same conception of God as found in the Abrahamic religions. The shared characteristics, according to him are foundational to the spread of the “gospel” in Africa. Mbiti’s effort, though motivated by the desire to refute the imperial charge of inferiority against (...) African religions ran, I argue, into a conceptual and descriptive conflation of ATRs with monotheistic faiths. In this paper, I challenge the superimposition of Judeo-Christian categories upon African religions. I argue that monotheism is just a strand, out of many, that expresses belief in God, and that it differs substantially from the polytheistic pre-colonial African understanding of religion. I provide a panentheistic paradigm using traditional Igbo ontology and religion to refute Mbiti’s generalization. Keywords: Monotheism, African Traditional Religion, Igbo, Paganism, Theology. (shrink)

"--Joel Cracraft, American Museum of Natural History "This is not the potted history that one usually finds in texts and review articles.

Essentialism in philosophy is the position that things, especially kinds of things, have essences, or sets of properties, that all members of the kind must have, and the combination of which only members of the kind do, in fact, have. It is usually thought to derive from classical Greek philosophy and in particular from Aristotle’s notion of “what it is to be” something. In biology, it has been claimed that pre-evolutionary views of living kinds, or as they are sometimes called, (...) “natu-ral kinds”, are essentialist. This static view of living things presumes that no tran-sition is possible in time or form between kinds, and that variation is regarded as accidental or inessential noise rather than important information about taxa. In contrast it is held that Darwinian, and post-Darwinian, biology relies upon varia-tion as important and inevitable properties of taxa, and that taxa are not, therefore, kinds but historical individuals. Recent attempts have been made to undercut this account, and to reinstitute essentialism in biological kind terms. Others argue that essentialism has not ever been a historical reality in biology and its predecessors. In this chapter, I shall outline the many meanings of the notion of essentialism in psychology and social science as well as science, and discuss pro- and anti-essentialist views, and some recent historical revisionism. It turns out that nobody was essentialist to speak of in the sense that is antievolutionary in biology, and that much confusion rests on treating the one word, “essence” as meaning a single notion when in fact there are many. I shall also discuss the philosophical implica-tions of essentialism, and what that means one way or the other for evolutionary biology. Teaching about evolution relies upon narratives of change in the ways the living world is conceived by biologists. This is a core narrative issue. (shrink)

Few problems in the philosophy of evolutionary biology are more widely disseminated and discussed than the charge of Darwinian evolution being a tautology. The history is long and complex, and the issues are many, and despite the problem routinely being dismissed as an introductory-level issue, based on misunderstandings of evolution, it seems that few agree on what exactly these misunderstandings consist of. In this paper, I will try to comprehensively review the history and the issues. Then, I will try to (...) present the following “solution”, or, one might say, “dissolution”, of the problem, and consider the wider implications of formal, or schematic, explanations in science: yes, the principle of natural selection is a tautology, and so what? It is a promissory note for actual, physical, explanations in particular cases, and is none the worse for that. This is not a new argument, of course, but it does point up the importance of formal schematic models in science. (shrink)

Geoffrey Rose’s prevention paradox points to a tension between two prima facie plausible moral principles: that we should save the greater number and that weshould save the most at risk. This paper argues that a novel moral theory, ex-ante contractualism, captures our intuitions in many prevention paradox cases, regardless of our interpretation of probability claims. However, it goes on to show that it might be impossible to square ex-ante contractualism with all of our moral intuitions. It concludes that even if (...) ex-ante contractualism cannot furnish an entire ethics of risk, it does identify important considerations for any such theory. (shrink)

In this book, John Dryzek criticizes the dominance of instrumental rationality and objectivism in political institutions and public policy and in the practice of political science. He argues that the reliance on these kinds of politics and to technocracies of expert cultures that are not only repressive, but surprisingly ill-equipped for dealing with complex social problems. Drawing on critical theory, he outlines an alternative program for the organization of political institutions advocating a form of communicatively rational democracy, which he (...) terms discursive democracy, that stresses the importance of active citizenship and public discourse. He draws out the limitations of instrumental rationality and investigates how policy analysis and political science may be reformed to help constitute and comprehend democracy. Discursive Democracy examines how the political process can be made more vital and meaningful. At the same time it shows how such an invigorated process will serve as a more effective agent for social problem solving. (shrink)

Translation previously published in: The Huainanzi. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Few have done more than Martin Gutzwiller to clarify the connection between classical time-dependent motion and the time-independent states of quantum systems. Hence it seems appropriate to include the following discussion of the origins of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation in this volume dedicated to him.

In this paper, I set out two ethical complications for Rid and Wendler’s proposal that a “Patient Preference Predictor” (PPP) should be used to aid decision making about incapacitated patients’ care. Both of these worries concern how a PPP might categorize patients. In the first section of the paper, I set out some general considerations about the “ethics of apt categorization” within stratified medicine and show how these challenge certain PPPs. In the second section, I argue for a more specific—but (...) more contentious—claim that proper respect for the autonomy of incapacitated patients might require us to act on reasons which they could endorse and show how this claim places important limits on the categories employed by an ethically acceptable PPP. The conclusion shows how these concerns about apt categorization relate to more familiar worries about Rid and Wendler’s proposals. (shrink)

This paper relates to Lyotard's philosophy of a différend. The paper has a dual purpose. The first is to explain what is meant by a différend and also a petit différend. The intention here is to preserve both the intrinsic validity and ethico-political value of the concept in cases where its legitimacy might easily be denied. This feeds into the second and main purpose of the paper, which is to testify to a petit différend in quality of care, so that (...) care may be taken in how the term ‘quality of care’ is actually used. It is here that the implications of a petit différend in quality of care are opened up from the perspective of cared-for and professional carers, respectively. It will be shown that the idea of quality of care is open to multiple interpretations, and therefore to disputes that judgement cannot resolve to the satisfaction of all parties. (shrink)

Now a section in my 2018 book _Species: The evolution of the idea_. -/- It is often claimed that species are the units of evolution, but this is not defined or clearly explained. In this paper I will argue that species are phenomenal objects that stand in need of explanation, but that they are not objects required by any theory of biology. I further define, or rather describe, species as the genealogical cluster of various lineages at the genetic, haplotype, genomic, (...) organismic, and population level, in keeping with my previous discussions. (shrink)

It is proved that there is a formula$\pi \left$in the first-order language of group theory such that each component and each non-abelian minimal normal subgroup of a finite groupGis definable by$\pi \left$for a suitable elementhofG; in other words, each such subgroup has the form$\left\{ {x|x\pi \left} \right\}$for someh. A number of consequences for infinite models of the theory of finite groups are described.

Nutrition and hydration are common problems in advanced dementia. There has been growing opposition to the use of tube feeding in these patients both in and out of the Catholic Church. This article takes a critical look at current medical research on the subject and presents a vigorous defense of the use of artificial nutrition and hydration in dementia. A revealing case study is presented and a clear medical and ethical rationale are offered to support the appropriate use of ANH (...) in accord with Church teaching. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 9.4 (Winter 2009): 697–710. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy puts communication and talk at the centre of democracy. Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance takes a fresh look at the foundations of the field, and develops new applications in areas ranging from citizen participation to the democratization of authoritarian states to the global system.

Over the past few years, blogging (“web logging”) has become a major social movement, and as such includes blogs by scientists about science. Blogs are highly idiosyncratic, personal and ephemeral means of public expression, and yet they contribute to the current practice and reputation of science as much as, if not more than, any popular scientific work or visual presentation. It is important, therefore, to understand this phenomenon.

Species, or ‘the Species Problem’, is a topic in science, in the philosophy of science, and in general philosophy. There is not one, but many, species problems, and these are dealt with in this volume. Species are often thought of as units of biology, to be used in ecology, conservation, classification, and theory. The chapters in this book present opposing views on the current philosophical and conceptual issues of the Species Problem in biology. -/- Divided into four sections Theories and (...) Concepts, Practice and Methods, Ranks, Trees and Names, and Metaphysics and Epistemologies, the book is authored by systematists, philosophers, historians and working biologists, many leaders in their fields. Topics include Essentialism and individuals, speciation modes, theory and the species rank, nomenclature and diagnosis, scale of species, and ecology, conservation, and species. -/- Species Problems and Beyond aims to clarify the contemporary issues of the Species Problem. It is ideal for use in upper-level seminars and courses in Evolutionary Biology, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Biology, Systematics and Taxonomy, and Phylogenetics/Cladistics, and for any scholar in these fields. (shrink)

AA 180& 'What has to be accepted, the given, is, so one could say, forms of life'. (PI p 226) Compare with Nietzsche. Nietzsche works out a theory of demoralisation. Understanding of the logic of language games makes a difference to those one will play. Compare Heraclitus. The form of life as the will, prana, that which determines whatever it is that is said or believed. The language is merely the medium. Yet this is not something to be set up (...) as a metaphysical theory. It is too particular, and any motive for demolishing it is likely to be sufficient to do so. There is no one way which is true over and above all others. To be able to talk on this plane we need a kind of higher logic. There are those who are desperate to discover the one explanation which is in a sense true. For them, an philosophy which focus on the nature of explanation itself, and thus dissolves the problem will appear irrelevant. Henceforth what is needed is not philosophical statements but logical tools. What we do with these tools is not the business of philosophy. 'one wonders what philosophy would have been like in Britain and the United States if it had not been for the accident of Wittgenstein, for he might not have been on the scene at all…. I meant that he became known to the world of philosophy through the very special circumstances of making a strong impression on Bertrand Russell, and being accepted into the world of philosophy through the bold initiative of Cambridge. Nature is wasteful, and if one wants to get something exceptionally good, one must take great risks about having a great deal that is simply wild. I am sure that both Russell and Cambridge were right to adopt such a policy. Cambridge is possibly the only university in the world that would have touched Wittgenstein at any price. Had it not been for Cambridge, and had it not been for Russell, - and some people would hold that he made an error of judgement- almost certainly nothing more would have been heard of Wittgenstein'.. (shrink)