We investigate the growing use of information and communication technology in Nigeria and its potential as a tool to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic through information management. Potential applications include data gathering for research and disease tracking, knowledge sharing, and dissemination of information on research findings, prevention methods, available care and support, and patient rights. The research is based on 1450 responses to a widely distributed questionnaire.

We investigate the growing use of information and communication technology in Nigeria and its potential as a tool to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic through information management. Potential applications include data gathering for research and disease tracking, knowledge sharing, and dissemination of information on research findings, prevention methods, available care and support, and patient rights. The research is based on 1450 responses to a widely distributed questionnaire.

While most business ethics texts focus exclusively on individual decision making--what should an individual do--this resource presents the whole business ethics story. Highly realistic, readable, and down-to-earth, it moves from the individual to the managerial to the organizational level, focusing on business ethics in an organizational context to promote an understanding of complex influences on behavior. The new Fifth Edition is the perfect text for students entering the workplace, those seeking to become professionals in training, communications, compliance, in addition to (...) chief ethics officers, corporate counsel, heads of human resources, and senior executives. (shrink)

This study explores the semiotics of humor and political disaffection in the online feedback discourse evaluating party performance in a post-election era in Nigeria’s democratic practice. It examines the incongruities in multimodal digital humor as semiotic resources of subversive play to criticize a political party for its perceived weak program-to-policy linkage. Data for the study comprise some purposively sampled political internet memes which were deployed to express political disaffection at the party All Progressives Congress in the first half of its (...) four-year tenure. The study applies Algirdas J. Greimas’ semiotic theory by drawing upon the notions of narrativity and modalities to read the selected political internet memes, which run profound social commentaries on the anxieties and frustrations of the ordinary citizens in a failing economy, thereby underpinning the thrust of the theory, which lies not only in the signification of texts but also in the signification of the living experience. The study reveals the power of signs evidenced in the deployment of objects, behaviors, practices, images, and symbols within the socio-economic sub/culture of the production of the internet memes to configure backlashes of democratic deficits relating largely to worsening poverty, hunger, struggle for survival, and political cynicism in an emerging democracy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines the discursive practices of coercive persuasion deployed by Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Communications to justify the rebranding Nigeria campaign as a policy designed for value reorientation of the citizenry in the wake of the country’s image crisis both domestically and internationally. Sampling data from select addresses and interviews of the country’s chief image maker during the campaign, the study analyses some discourse structures and strategies in the public discourse, drawing theoretical insights from van Dijk’s Critical (...) Epistemic Discourse Analysis to re-examine and re-interpret meaning in relation to knowledge claims in the organised persuasive communication. The article demonstrates that there is artful management of information and construction of knowledge in the persuasive discourse largely to present an institutional version of reality in re/telling Nigeria’s national identity narratives. The study concludes that the rhetorical means of controlling the discourse and managing the minds of the audience typify leadership practices of knowledge construction to achieve policy dominance given certain norms and conventions of nation branding practices. (shrink)

(1992). The Effects of a Social Studies Course on the Philosophic Orientations of History and Geography Graduate Students in Botswana. Educational Studies: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 235-243.

The aim of this study was to find out whether the achievement of high school social studies students differs significantly according to whether they are taught by the reflective teaching method or the lecture approach method. A stratified random sample of 215 year three social studies students was randomly assigned to two groups: 107 students into the reflective approach group and 108 into the lecture approach group. An achievement test was used as the pre‐ and the post‐test. The means of (...) the aggregate mean performance scores were compared by the use of Student's t‐test. There was no significant difference between the two groups on the pre‐test scores but there was a significant difference between the post‐test scores, in favour of the group taught by the reflective approach method. (shrink)

One of the most popular forms of humour on the Internet is memes. Given the identity construction motif that is associated with memes, agents of memes select targets outside the in-group and criticise the targets’ behaviour for ideological purposes. This study examines the patterns of humour evidenced in the deployment of Internet memes in the online campaign discourse of the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria. Data for the study consist of Internet memes produced and disseminated during the presidential election campaign (...) between December 2014 and March 2015. Considering Archakis and Tsakona’s view that humour can be a very efficient means of identity construction, the study applies Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model with particular reference to the theoretical concept of the ‘ideological square’, which encapsulates the twin strategies of positive ‘in-group’ description and negative ‘out-group’ description. This theoretical approach is complemented with Neuendorf et al.’s taxonomy of theoretical perspectives on humour. The study reveals that the memes deployed in the presidential election online campaign discourse largely serve subversive purposes to detract greatly from the electoral value of the targets. In terms of the reinforcing function of humour, however, serious socio-political issues were raised to express the public’s worries and desires in a bottom-up communication flow. (shrink)

In chapter 3 of Wild Animal Ethics Johannsen argues for a collective obligation based on beneficence to intervene in nature in order to reduce the suffering of wild animals. In the same chapter he claims that the non-identity problem is merely a “theoretical puzzle” which doesn’t affect our reasons for intervention. In this paper I argue that the non-identity problem affects both the strength and the nature of our reasons to intervene. By intervening in nature on a large scale we (...) change which animals come into existence. In doing so, we enable harmful animals to inflict harms on other animals, and we put other animals in harm’s way. The harms that these animals will inflict and endure are foreseeable. Furthermore, since non-human animals aren’t moral agents, harmful animals cannot be morally responsible for their harmful actions. I argue therefore that by causing animals to exist, knowing that they will inflict and suffer harms, we become morally responsible for those harms. By engaging in identity-affecting actions then we take on secondary moral duties towards the animals we have thereby caused to exist, and these secondary moral duties may be extremely demanding, even more so than the initial costs of intervention. Finally, these duties are duties of justice rather than duties of beneficence, and as such are more stringent than purely beneficence-based moral reasons. Furthermore, this conclusion flows naturally from several plausible principles which Johannsen explicitly endorses. (shrink)

National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. Searching (...) for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham. (shrink)

Esta dissertação encontra-se construída em torno de um núcleo central - a exposição, aná-lise e discussão do chamado 'Argumento da linguagem privada', de Wittengstein. A dinâmica própria da abordagem e discussão do tema leva necessariamente a percorrer o conjunto da obra de Wittengstein, o que motiva um notável aprofundamento do assunto e torna ainda mais aliciante este ensaio.

The most important clarification we bring in our reply to commentators concerns the problem of the “explanatory gap”: that is, the gulf that separates physical processes in the brain from the experienced quality of sensations. By adding two concepts (bodiliness and grabbiness) that were not stressed in the target article, we strengthen our claim and clarify why we think we have solved the explanatory gap problem, – not by dismissing qualia, but, on the contrary, by explaining why sensations have a (...) “feel” and why “feels” feel the way they do. We additionally clarify our views on: internal representations (we claim internal representations cannot explain why sensation has a feel), on behaviorism (we are not behaviorists), on perception and action (we believe there can be perception without action), and on the brain (we believe the brain does do something important in perception). (shrink)

This is the first modern, annotated and scholarly edition of Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ _Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting_, one of the seminal works of modern aesthetics in any language.

An article of mine in The Heythrop Journal a decade ago discussed Descartes’ “Olympica” dream-sequence, the original of which is lost, but the details of which are preserved in a French version in...

This article examines the interactions of verbal and visual signifiers to advertise shares offers in the 2005 bank recapitalisation in Nigeria. It considers such signifiers as rhetorical devices to influence the prospective subscribers to invest in shares, thereby saving for the proverbial rainy day. Data for the study comprise eight adverts culled from some of Nigeria’s national daily newspapers and news magazines between March and December 2005. Lemke’s multimodal semiotic theory and Barthes’ conception of the interaction of signs as encapsulated (...) in the concepts of ‘anchorage’ and ‘relay’ provide the theoretical perspective for the data analysis. The study reveals that the advertisers creatively blend verbal and visual cues in the discourse largely to elicit certain sensibilities in the readers so as to make them think and act in the direction of the investment offer being touted. Generally, the advertisers’ appropriation of culture-specific issues in the Nigerian context, building a strong and credible brand to enhance the integrity of the respective banks and harping on the exigency of keying into the investment offers, serves as useful rhetorical appeals for the effectiveness of the multimodal semiotic resources in the discourse. (shrink)

Providing a vibrant four-color design, market-leading BUSINESS ETHICS: ETHICAL DECISION MAKING AND CASES, Ninth Edition, thoroughly covers the complex environment in which managers confront ethical decision making. Using a proven managerial framework, this accessible, applied text addresses the overall concepts, processes, and best practices associated with successful business ethics programs--helping readers see how ethics can be integrated into key strategic business decisions. Thoroughly revised, the new ninth edition incorporates coverage of new legislation affecting business ethics, the most up-to-date examples, and (...) the best practices of high-profile organizations. It also includes 20 all-new or updated original case studies. (shrink)

What sorts of things really exist, in the world or out of it? What can we know about them? How do your thoughts and words relate to reality? What are human beings? What do their freedom and consciousness amount to? How should people act? What would a just society be like? These are the perennial problems of philosophy, which have been examined and debated for thousands of years and are still confronted by philosophers today. In his superb general introduction to (...) contemporary philosophy and its concerns, Anthony O'Hear shows how differing answers to these questions lead to differing conceptions of ourselves and the world. (shrink)

The phenomenon of action in which the mind moves the body has puzzled philosophers over the centuries. In this new edition of a classic work of analytical philosophy, Brian O'Shaughnessy investigates bodily action and attempts to resolve some of the main problems. His expanded and updated discussion examines the scope of the will and the conditions in which it makes contact with the body, and investigates the epistemology of the body. He sheds light upon the strangely intimate relation of awareness (...) in which we stand to our own bodies, doing so partly through appeal to the concept of the body-image. The result is a new and strengthened emphasis on the vitally important function of the bodily will as a transparently intelligible bridge between mind and body, and the proposal of a dual aspect theory of the will. (shrink)

Although vast and complex, the universe is orderly in many ways, and conditions at its beginning were right for the eventual evolution of life on this planet. But with life there is death, and with sentient life there is great pain and suffering, often with no apparent justification or purpose. Taking these things together, is it reasonable to conclude that the universe was brought about by God? Moreover, does the magnitude of seemingly pointless suffering square with the idea that God (...) exists, or is it good reason to think there is no God? These questions come up for many people, not just religious believers, and are examined in this engaging and thought-provoking book. Starting out with no pre-disposition to theism, atheism, or agnosticism, God, Evil, and Design takes up these questions in order to see where an impartial investigation leads. To achieve impartiality, the reader is invited to simulate ignorance insofar as his or her own religious preference is concerned. With this approach, God, Evil, and Design provides both a fresh look at important and controversial issues in philosophy and an excellent introduction to the contemporary debates surrounding them. Lively and non-technical, this book will be accessible to anyone with an interest in these topics. (shrink)

Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempt to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a `constructivist' vindication of reason and a moral vision (...) in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, automony and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasises differences between Kant's ethics and recent 'Kantian' ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. This reassessment will add significantly to the understanding of Kantian practical philosophy. (shrink)

In this first systematic reconstruction of the concept of human flourishing, Eri Mountbatten-O'Malley addresses the central problems with the treatment of the concept in psychology, education, policy and science. He develops a sophisticated methodology of conceptual analysis and makes the case for paying closer attention to complex human contexts, purposes and uses. Re-humanizing current research on the concept that is technicalized and detached from ordinary uses, this volume takes the 'human' in conceptions of human flourishing seriously.

This book presents a comprehensive, accessible survey of Western philosophy of music from Pythagoras to the present. Its narrative traces themes and schools through history, in a sequence of five chapters that survey the ancient, medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary periods. Its wide-ranging coverage includes medieval Islamic thinkers, Continental and analytic thinkers, and neglected female thinkers such as Vernon Lee (Violet Paget). All aspects of the philosophy of music are discussed, including music and the cosmos, music's value, music's relation (...) to the other arts, the problem of opera, the origins of musical genius, music's emotional impact, the moral effects of music, the ontology of musical works, and the relevance of music's historical context. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars in philosophy and musicology, and all who are interested in the ways in which philosophers throughout history have thought about music. (shrink)

Background:The right of children to have their voice heard has been accepted by researchers, and there are increasing numbers of qualitative health studies involving children. The ethical and methodological issues of including children in research have caused worldwide concerns, and many researchers have published articles sharing their own experiences.Objectives:To systematically review and synthesise experts’ opinions and experiences about ethical and methodological issues of including children in research, as well as related solution strategies.Research design:The research design was a systematic review of (...) opinion-based evidence, based on the guidelines by Joanna Briggs Institute.Methods:A search of five computerised databases has been conducted in April 2014 and 2271 articles were found. After screening the titles, abstracts, full texts and appraising the quality, 30 articles were finally included in the review. A meta-aggregative approach was applied in the data analysis and synthesis process.Ethical considerations:Ethical approval is not needed as it is a systematic review of published literature.Results:Six themes were identified, including evaluating potential risks and benefits, gaining access, obtaining informed consent/assent, protecting confidentiality and privacy, building rapport and collecting rich data. The similarities and differences between research involving children and that involving adults were indicated.Conclusion:All potential incentives should be justified when designing the study. Further studies need to research how to evaluate individual capacity of children and how to balance protecting children’s right to participate and their interests in the research. Cultural differences related to researching children in different regions should also be studied. (shrink)