A new resolution of the mind-body problem that reconciles materialism and idealism.

Ontologized Ethics is a collection of essays in meta-ethics with an emphasis on philosophical discourse in the African context. It focuses primarily on the extent to which metaphysical beliefs may or may not justify moral beliefs, thereby revisiting the issue of the ‘is-ought’ relationship.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty did not author an ethic, and yet it is possible to extend his ontological descriptions to an ethic similar to that espoused by post modern thinkers. It is even possible to distill an environmental ethic, or at least, one of consideration of the more-than-human, from his work. This paper attempts to do some preliminary work in light of this, and lays some groundwork for the future direction of an environmental ethic inspired by a Merleau-Pontian ontology. At the (...) same time, it challenges the popularised view of Merleau-Ponty espoused by David Abram – viz., of Merleau-Ponty as an animist – and properly situates Merleau Ponty. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty did not author an ethic, and yet it is possible to extend his ontological descriptions to an ethic similar to that espoused by post modern thinkers. It is even possible to distill an environmental ethic, or at least, one of consideration of the more-than-human, from his work. This paper attempts to do some preliminary work in light of this, and lays some groundwork for the future direction of an environmental ethic inspired by a Merleau-Pontian ontology. At the (...) same time, it challenges the popularised view of Merleau-Ponty espoused by David Abram - viz., of Merleau-Ponty as an animist - and properly situates Merleau Ponty. (shrink)

This volume explores new and urgent applications of collective action theory, such as global poverty, the race and class politics of urban geography, and culpable conduct in organizational criminal law. It draws attention to new questions about the status of corporate agents and new approaches to collective obligation and responsibility.

Confucius associates the good and the beautiful. Li (translated variously as “ritual propriety,” “ritual,” “etiquette,” or “propriety”) embodies the entire spectrum of interaction with humans, nature, and even material objects. I argue that Confucius attempts to introduce an ethical ontology, not of “what,” but of “the way.” The “way” of reality becomes known with the deliberate participation to the Dao. In other words, through interaction. The way people co-exist demonstrates the rationality of the associations of living and functioning together. Li, (...) as an aesthetic-moral principle, embodies the entire spectrum of one’s interaction with humans, nature, and even material objects. Li is a constitutive element of Confucian ethics and politics, highlighting the importance of beauty, and not only goodness, in human action. The worthiness of human action is judged both aesthetically and morally. Moreover, I hold that Confucius’ ethical ontology is not an ontology of “whatness” but of “howness,” according to the Dao, since Confucius primary concern was not to define the Dao, but to restore the Dao of the ancient sage-kings. The morality of the action is dependent on the way it is performed, according to the mandates of the Dao. (shrink)

Its preoccupation with ontology presents radical democracy with a thorny dilemma: how to combine commitment and affirmation with a distinctive emphasis on contingency and contestability. The article addresses this dilemma by engaging with three different perspectives. Ernesto Laclau’s work shows the intrinsic constraints of ontology and the inadequacy of a simple distinction between ontology and ethico-political decision. Simon Critchley opposes tying radical politics to ontological prefiguration and argues for a particular ethico-political orientation. But ethics and politics come entwined (...) with ontological assumptions, and the ethical direction of politics can be as restrictive as its ontological framing. William Connolly weds ontology and ethics to a sharp awareness of their contestability. But his approach does not reach deep enough. It is not alive to the contestability of the very recognition of contestability. To enhance openness and reflexivity, projects of radical democracy should combine a dimension of substantive, detailed accounts with a reflexive commitment to contestability, which disrupts, questions and renews the thicker descriptions in the name of democracy and truth. (shrink)

Gene patenting was enabled by strained interpretations of legal precedent and with very little consideration of its ultimate ethical implications. The sciences of justice, ethics, and morals remain in their dark ages, with their practitioners all ascribing to differing values and modes of inquiry, besieged in their various camps of deontological, or consequentialist, or emotive or theistic dogmas. Ownership and property rights in moveables are good candidates for grounded relations as opposed to intellectual property. The groundedness of a valid (...) possession rests on the intentional state of the possessor and other external and objective facts of the possession. The ontology of the social and legal institution of ownership reveals that it is grounded in certain states of affairs, such as brute‐worldly facts and intentional states, as well as social acts revealing intentions of the parties. (shrink)

In this brief book one of the most distinguished living American philosophers takes up the question of whether ethical judgments can properly be considered ...

메를로-퐁티의 철학은 그의 철학적 기술들(descriptions)에서 발견되는 미학적 관점, 언어적 관점, 정치적 관점 등의 세부 논의를 제외하면 크게 신체의 현상학적 관점과 살의 존재론적 관점으로 구분할 수 있다. 그런데 그것이 무엇이건 특정한 철학이 취하는 인식론적, 존재론적 틀 속에는 그러한 틀에 부합하는 윤리적 해석이 또한 내재할 수밖에 없으며, 이는 메를로-퐁티의 철학도 마찬가지이다. 따라서 비록 그가 윤리학을 구체적으로 이야기하고 있지 않다고 하더라도 메를로-퐁티의 철학을 윤리학적 관점으로 해석하고, 그의 철학을 윤리학의 범위로 확장하고자 하는 노력들이 그의 철학이 갖는 현상학적 특징과 존재론적 특징에 의해 폄하될 필요는 없을 (...) 것이다.BR 본 텍스트는 아직은 메를로-퐁티 철학에 대한 주요 논의로 인정되고 있지 않은 지각과 살 철학에 대한 윤리학적 해석 가능성을 넓히기 위해 다음과 같은 문제의식으로부터 출발한다. 그 문제의식이란 메를로-퐁티 철학에 대한 동시대의 윤리학적 해석 방향은 그 본래의 취지와는 달리 그의 철학을 일방향적으로 해석하는 흐름을 띤다는 것이며 이는 첫째, 상호신체성에 치중한 신체 윤리학의 구도 잡기와 둘째, 존재의 원소로 해석되는 살에 대한 이해에 공통적으로 자리한 하나의 역설, 즉 가역적 과정에 요구되는 상관항들의 필요를 배제한 체 살 일원론적 상황만을 강조할 수밖에 없는 신체-살에 대한 일반적 해석에 기인하는 것으로 보인다.BR 본 논문은 이러한 문제점을 구체화하고, 메를로-퐁티 윤리학이란 그의 존재론에 담긴 가역성을 그 원리로 가질 때 닫힌 체계가 아닌 열린 해석의 체계로 이루어져야 하며 이를 위해서는 신체와 살 각각의 개념에 상이한 해석의 가능성이 담겨야 한다는 점을 주장한다. (shrink)

In this brief book one of the most distinguished living American philosophers takes up the question of whether ethical judgments can properly be considered objective--a question that has vexed philosophers over the past century. Reviewing what he deems the disastrous consequences of ontology's influence on analytic philosophy--in particular, the contortions it imposes upon debates about the objective of ethical judgments--Putnam proposes abandoning the very idea of ontology.

Self-discovery leads to the development of the ethics of self-mastery. Many ethical systems prescribe how the individual could attain self-mastery by means of critical self-examination or self-analysis. Once such critical self-examination or self-analysis is successfully carried out, the individual begins to use himself, his personal preferences, as the standard of what is right or wrong. This is the background to the Confucian, Kantian and Existentialist ethics of categorical imperatives. Even in religious ethical systems that attribute the source of (...) the moral law to divine authority, the individual still has to take a leap of faith to discover God's purpose for his existence, which he then internalizes. In the final analysis, any ethics that truly works must issue forth from the self. Hence self-mastery is the absolutely fundamental premise upon which to erect a sound moral character. (shrink)

The book develops a philosophical foundation to the field of management education using the work of Martin Heidegger as a guiding philosophy. It asks the questions ‘what is a corporation?’ and ‘what is corporate management?’ These two questions are foundational for management thought in general and management ethics in particular. Most other academic fields are in some way defined and guided by a philosophical discourse. This philosophical discourse is largely missing in the field of management thought and education. Without (...) this foundation it can never be clear what actually belongs into a certain academic discipline and what does not. It also therefore lacks a sound and well articulated ontological foundation critical for developing approaches to ethical management. This book seeks to fill this gap and consequently represents an interdisciplinary effort between the academic field of management/business administration and philosophy, which is vital for business ethics. Intended as required reading for an elective on philosophy of management that is offered annually at the Wits Business School / University of the Witwatersrand / Johannesburg. The structure of the course will be largely based on the structure of the book. (shrink)

While the presence of monsters in popular culture is ever-increasing, their use as an explicit or implicit category to frame, stigmatise, and demonise the other is seemingly on the rise. At the same time, academic interest for monsters is ever-growing. Usually, monstrosity is understood as a category that emerges to signal a transgression to a given order; this approach has led to the demystification of the insidious characterisations of the (racial, sexual, physical) other as monstrous. While this effort has been (...) necessary, its collateral effects have reduced the monstrous to a mere (socio-cultural) construction of the other: a dialectical framing that de facto deprives monstrosity from any reality. 'Monstrous Ontologies: Politics, Ethics, Materiality' proffers the necessity of challenging these monstrous otherings and their perverse socio-political effects, whilst also asserting that the monstrous is not simply an epistemological construct, but that it has an ontological reality. There is a profound difference between monsters and monstrosity. While the former is an often sterile political and social simplification, the end-product of rhetorical and biopolitical apparatuses; the latter may be understood as a dimension that nurtures the un-definable, that is, that shows the limits of these apparatuses by embodying their material excess: not a 'cultural frame', but the limit to the very mechanism of 'framing'. The monstrous expresses the combining, hybridising, becoming, and creative potential of socio-natural life, albeit colouring this powerful vitalism with the dark hue of a fearful, disgusting, and ultimately indigestible reality that cannot simply be embraced with multicultural naivety. As such, it forces us towards radically changing not the categories, but the very mechanisms of categorisation through which reality is framed and acted upon. Here lies the profound ethical dimension that monstrosity forces us to acknowledge; here lies its profoundly political potential, one that cannot be unfolded by merely deconstructing monstrosity, and rather requires to engage with its uncomfortable, appalling, and revealing materiality. This book will appeal to postgraduate students, PostDocs, and academics alike in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, humanities, sociology and social theory, criminology, human geography, and critical legal theory. (shrink)

Starting with the point of freedom being one of unavoidable ideas of existential philosophy, as well as philosophy in general, we shall consider ethical and ontological aspects of contemplation of freedom in Kierkegaard’s philosophy. We deem that existential philosophy, “contemplated” in all its variations, represents the very horizon or manner of philosophical comprehension of freedom phenomena, where freedom is integrally observed, thus allowing us to talk about unique bliss of ontological and ethical dimension, both of those appearing to (...) be equally important. Therefore, freedom dominates the Kierkegaard’s determination of individual, co-determines all its leap stages but also continually makes possible the sense of human existence. (shrink)

This article is concerned with two interrelated questions: what, if anything, distinguishes synthetic from natural organisms, and to what extent, if any, creating the former is of moral significance. These are ontological and ethical questions, respectively. As the title indicates, I address both from a broadly neo-Aristotelian perspective, i.e. a teleological philosophy of life and virtue ethics. For brevity’s sake, I shall not argue for either philosophical position at length, but instead hope to demonstrate their legitimacy through their (...) explanatory power. I firstly argue that synthetic organisms differ in kind from natural organisms and machines, and differ only by degree from genetically modified organisms. I then suggest that this is nevertheless sufficient to give us specific ethical reservations about synthetic biology: namely, that more than any other widely used biotechnology, it is characterised by a drive to mastery that stands opposed to due appreciation of the giftedness of life. (shrink)

This paper addresses the persistent philosophical problem posed by the amoralist—one who eschews moral values—by drawing on complementary resources within phenomenology and care ethics. How is it that the amoralist can reject ethical injunctions that serve the general good and be unpersuaded by ethical intuitions that for most would require neither explanation nor justification? And more generally, what is the basis for ethical motivation? Why is it that we can care for others? What are the underpinning ontological structures (...) that are able to support an ethics of care? To respond to these questions, I draw on the work of Merleau-Ponty, focusing specifically on his analyses of perceptual attention. What is the nature and quality of perceptual attention that underwrite our capacities or incapacities for care? I proceed in dialogue with a range of philosophers attuned to the compelling nature of care, some who have also drawn on Merleau-Ponty and others who have examined the roots of an ethics of care inspired or incited by other thinkers. (shrink)

I begin by distinguishing two general approaches to metaethics and ontology. One in effect puts our experience as engaged ethical agents on hold while independent metaphysical and epistemological inquiries, operating by their own lights, deliver metaethical verdicts on acceptable interpretations of our ethical lives; the other instead keeps engaged ethical experience in focus and allows our reflective interpretation of it to shape our metaphysical and epistemological views, including our ontology. While the former approach often leads to deflationary views, the latter (...) may lead us to enrich our metaethical picture as needed to capture robust objectivity and categorical normative authority for ethics. Assuming, as I have argued elsewhere, that this requires positing irreducibly evaluative or normative properties and facts, the question I take up here is what ontological implications this has. I argue against quietist non-naturalist views, which maintain that positing such properties and facts either has no ontological implications or has only domain-specific ontological implications that likewise imply nothing about what the world contains. Against these views, I advocate a worldly, dual-aspect view, locating irreducibly evaluative or normative properties as features of relevant worldly things. But while I have previously defended this view as a form of non-naturalism, I here explore the possibility of instead seeing it as a new, more expansive form of naturalism—what might be called “Non-Scientistic Naturalism”—inspired by parallel attempts in the philosophy of mind to accommodate irreducibly phenomenal properties within a more expansive physicalism. (shrink)

According to a view attractive to both metaphysicians and ethicists, every period in a person’s life is the life of a being just like that person except that it exists only during that period. These “subpeople” appear to have moral status, and their interests seem to clash with ours: though it may be in some person’s interests to sacrifice for tomorrow, it is not in the interests of a subperson coinciding with him only today, who will never benefit from it. (...) Or perhaps there is no clash, and a subperson’s interests derive from those of the person it coincides with. But this makes it likely that our own interests derive from those of other beings coinciding with us. (shrink)

This paper provides an exposition and critical assessment of a fundamental disagreement between Løgstrup’s and Levinas’s otherwise closely aligned ethical phenomenologies. The disagreement concerns the putative compatibility of ethics and ontology, where in stark contrast to Levinas’s ethics, which proceeds from a critique of the ‘primacy of ontology’ in Western thought, Løgstrup brands his own ethical project as ‘ontological ethics’. First, I provide an interpretation of Løgstrup’s ontological ethics, clarifying in particular the influence of (...) hermeneutic and existential analysis on Løgstrup’s methodology. Second, I bring Løgstrup’s ontological ethics into critical dialogue with Levinas’s thought. Here, I home in on two Levinas-style worries that appear to have traction against Løgstrup’s ontological ethics. However, ultimately, I argue that both can be defused. (shrink)

In their paper “Sixteen Days” Barry Smith and Berit Brogaard try to answer the question: when does a human being begin to exist? In this paper we will address some methodological issues connected with this exercise in ontology. We shall begin by sketching the argument of “Sixteen Days”. We shall then attempt to characterize what is special about the ontological realism of “Sixteen Days” as contrasted to the linguistic constructivism which represents the more dominant current in contemporary analytic philosophy. (...) This will allow us to infer guidelines for assessing the quality of ontological theories of various types. We shall argue that ontological parsimony, groundedness, faithfulness to ordinary language, consistency with science, coherence, and fruitfulness are at least part of the adequacy criteria for such theories. These criteria will then be applied to the theory presented in “Sixteen Days”, and they will lead us to some revisions of this theory as well as to some reflections on its ethical implications. (shrink)

Putnam has given a different twist to the ethical issues in his philosophical writing on ethics. In his book on ‘Ethics Without Ontology,’ he has given the different interpretation to the ethical issues. Putnam states that there is no ‘ontology’ in ethics. For him, there is nothing wrong with ethics, rather there is something wrong with metaphysics. The ethics cannot be justified from a non-ethical standpoint of view. In this way, Putnam challenges both inflationary (...) class='Hi'>ontological ethics and deflationary ontological ethics and he bids goodbye to all varieties of ontologies. This idea of ethics goes against the possibility of Vedanta, Buddhism, Aristotelian metaphysics, Platonic forms, Islam, Kantian category, Levinas’s ‘being’, and Heidegger’s ontology. He replaced ‘ethical ontology’ with that of pragmatic pluralism: the recognition that we employ in our everyday lives different kinds of discourses, discourses subject to different standards and possessing different sorts of applications that all contribute to the description of reality. Putnam is right in many of his criticisms of metaphysical ethics, but it is not clear how he can avoid the idea of absolute values, which are transcendental as proposed by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein accepts both aspects of ethical life, i.e., transcendental and empirical. I shall try to show that we have every reason to accept Wittgenstein’s view that there is ontology in ethics. (shrink)

Beneath important ethical questions about the impacts of de-extinct species on ecosystems and the potential harms to individual organisms lies a more fundamental assumption; namely, that the thing being "de-extinct-ed" is indeed a member of previously existing species. This is the ontological assumption: that genetic make-up of the individual is both a necessary and sufficient condition for species membership. Questioning this ontological assumption poses an even more critical challenge for de-extinction. Genes a member of a species do not (...) make. They represent a mere necessary condition. Sufficiency entails a broad set of ecological connections, inside and out. In this commentary on Kasperbauer’s target article, I argue for the primacy of ontology in the ethical analysis of de-extinction. (shrink)

Presents a good mapping of Williams’s argument in the larger context, relative to other thinkers, especially McDowell. With a short conclusion that there is something transcendent about ethical value that ecumenical projects reconciling the naturalist and the realist tend to miss.

Abstract:In this paper I argue that ecofeminist theory needs a clearly stated ontological grounding in order to strengthen its ethical framework. In Karen Warren's work, she proposes an ecofeminist ethic delineated by "boundary conditions" which determine the approaches that cohere to ecofeminist concerns. One such condition is a reconceptualization of "what it is to be human." Here I trace the ontological assumptions present in Karen Warren's work in order to argue for the acceptance of a feminist, relational and (...) context-dependent ontology as a boundary condition of an ecofeminist ethic. I propose that Karen Warren's approach to ontology functions similarly to her ethic in that she allows for a pluralistic approach to ontology and presents a number of boundary conditions that limit which ontologies can be deemed "ecofeminist ontologies." I conclude that Warren's ethic and ontology are closely intertwined and suggest that further ontological analysis of ecofeminist work could strengthen the growing field of ecofeminist ethics. (shrink)

Scientific breakthroughs rarely yield the potential to engage a foundational ethical question. Recent studies on direct reprogramming of human skin cells reported by the Yamanaka lab in Japan and the Thomson lab in Wisconsin suggest that scientists may have crossed both a scientific and an ethical threshold. The fascinating science of direct nuclear reprogramming highlights empirical data that may clarify the ontological status of cellular activity in the early stages of what could become a human fetus and justify ethical (...) options for research in this controversial field. The ontological and ethical implications that accrue here are connected with the biological or natural potentiality of these cells. (shrink)

Philosophers exploring the ethical implications of closeness, or ‘given intersubjectivity’, favor an essential human predicament over an essential sexual dualism to explain their positions on responsibility for and response to the Other. This article proposes a feminist ethical ontology that rejects an essentialist base, turning instead to semiotics as a tool for describing the condition of human agency in a context of oppression. The discussion attends to the problems of downplaying the importance of difference and of blurring the distinction between (...) necessary and accidental actions and occurrences. In challenging the contention that response to the Other is beyond the realm of choice and will, this article considers the ethical implications in how this givenness substantiates inequality and gendered embodiment. The effects of hierarchical ontological dualism should not be ignored or misconstrued in an effort to isolate the definitive nature of human response. (shrink)

A novel rereading of the relationship between ethics and ontology in Aristotle.

This paper examines Hannah Arendt’s account of the relationship between politics and morality. Many critics have argued that Arendt’s conception of political action lacks any moral foundations, while others have tried to focus on her understanding of thinking as a normative source of her ethics. In contrast to these views, I present an alternative explanation and argue that the sources of Arendt’s political ethics are located neither in the faculty of thinking nor in extrapolitical moral norms or rules, (...) but in the ontological conditions of action, specifically worldliness, natality and plurality. This interpretation allows us to make sense of Arendt’s fragmented, unsystematic accounts of the various virtues and moral dispositions required for authentic politics: courage, responsibility, care, respect, moderation, solidarity and gratitude. In particular, an inquiry into the ontological sources of political ethics provides a solid normative grounding for the two moral dispositions—promise and forgiveness—that form an explicit “moral code” of political action for Arendt. (shrink)

Continuity and difference in Heidegger's sophist -- To think as mortals : Heidegger and the finitude of philosophical existence -- The contingency of freedom : Heidegger reading Kant -- Dimension and difference : from undifferentiatedness to singularity -- Heidegger and Weyl on the question of continuity -- The experience of language as such.

Both Foucault and Deleuze define ethics as a form of creative activity. Yet, given certain ontological features indicated by both thinkers, ethics must be more than just creative and critical activity. Forgoing a transcendent ground for ethics, the ontological condition of ethics – what Foucault calls liberté and Deleuze calls the plane of immanence – is an opening for change that makes possible normalizing modes of existence as well transformative ones. In this context, (...) class='Hi'>ethics must be a practice that comprehends the dangers of such open-ended creation. The concept of problematization, emphasized by Foucault and Deleuze, leads to an enhanced understanding of their conception of ethics. On this understanding, ethics is a practice of problematization requiring a determination and assessment of the most pressing problems to which one must respond rather than attempt to solve once and for all. Ethics is necessarily a responsive engagement with the problems of one’s present. (shrink)

Starting with the point of freedom being one of unavoidable ideas of existential philosophy, as well as philosophy in general, we shall consider ethical and ontological aspects of contemplation of freedom in Kierkegaard’s philosophy. We deem that existential philosophy, “contemplated” in all its variations, represents the very horizon or manner of philosophical comprehension of freedom phenomena, where freedom is integrally observed, thus allowing us to talk about unique bliss of ontological and ethical dimension, both of those appearing to (...) be equally important. Therefore, freedom dominates the Kierkegaard’s determination of individual, co-determines all its leap stages but also continually makes possible the sense of human existence. (shrink)

Normative theory, in various idioms, has grown wary of questions of ontology—social and otherwise. Thus modern debates in ethics have tended to take place at some distance from debates in social theory. One arguable casualty of this has been due consideration of relational factors in the interrogation of ethical values. Part 1 of this paper addresses some examples of this tendency, and some of the philosophical assumptions which might underlie it. Parts 2 and 3 discuss two issues of growing (...) prominence—disability, and environmental concern—due attention to which, I argue, highlights strong reasons why severing ethics from social ontology is neither possible nor desirable. I conclude by recommending a qualified ethical naturalism as a promising candidate through which, non-reductively, to reunite these two areas of theoretical focus. (shrink)

The idea inspiring the eco-phenomenological movement is that phenomenology can help remedy our environmental crisis by uprooting and replacing environmentally-destructive ethical and metaphysical presuppositions inherited from modern philosophy. Eco-phenomenology's critiques of subject/object dualism and the fact/value divide are sketched and its positive alternatives examined. Two competing approaches are discerned within the eco-phenomenological movement: Nietzscheans and Husserlians propose a naturalistic ethical realism in which good and bad are ultimately matters of fact, and values should be grounded in these proto-ethical facts; Heideggerians (...) and Levinasians articulate a transcendental ethical realism according to which we discover what really matters when we are appropriately open to the environment, but what we thereby discover is a transcendental source of meaning that cannot be reduced to facts, values, or entities of any kind. These two species of ethical realism generate different kinds of ethical perfectionism: naturalistic ethical realism yields an eco-centric perfectionism which stresses the flourishing of life in general; transcendental ethical realism leads to a more 'humanistic' perfectionism which emphasizes the cultivation of distinctive traits of Dasein. Both approaches are examined, and the Heideggerian strand of the humanistic approach defended, since it approaches the best elements of the eco-centric view while avoiding its problematic ontological assumptions and anti-humanistic implications. (shrink)

At the end of Being and Nothingness Sartre made the curious claim that his ethical views follow from his ontology and are based on it. Yiwei Zheng argues that there are unbridgeable gaps between Sartre's ontology and ethics that cannot be filled in, and in the process provides a careful study of some notoriously murky notions in Sartre's early philosophy.

The ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is a research topic with both theoretical and practical significance. However, the ethical and moral aspects of conceptual, ontological, semantic, and knowledge modeling, more specifically, and which are sometimes found in AI applications, is not being given sufficient attention. I argue that it should. Whether considering using or developing these meaning-focused models, there are ethical aspects. This paper offers a preliminary outline about this potentially new research field, discussing: some questions and areas (...) of concern, their significance; scenarios of ethical import, and initial ethical guidelines. A focus area, potential case study, and lens through which to see the ethical significance at hand, is ontologies, with emphasis on the most abstract ontologies (so-called generic, foundational, top-level or upper ontologies). This would aim to show the ethical import of highly abstract (often philosophical) ontological choices, assumptions, and their effects on data, developers, users, and society. In particular, I stress the need for critical examination of such models, their content, their intended meanings, assumptions, ideologies, as well as the development process. Both the ethics of, and ethics in, these activities are, therefore, of interest. Topics in the ethics of AI that are relevant include: transparency, bias, data-sharing, privacy, control over data, etc. This paper thereby contributes to the ethics of AI, as well as the ethics of information, of knowledge managment and relevant topics by developing and discussing the ethics of ontology (and similar systems). Future development will refine and add to the ideas expressed in this paper. (shrink)

This extensive collection develops the philosophical content of sections from the previously published The Structure of the Mind . Dr. Belfiore begins from the basic ontological conception that considers the human 'mind' or 'spirit' as an evolving, conscious triad composed of intellect, sensitivity, and power, each exerting a selfish or moral activity. Through this approach the author develops new concepts about ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of law. Dr. Belfiore poses these and other concepts under the opinion (...) that issues concerning human beings can only be discussed by referring to what humans are as ontological entities. Thus, the notions of good and norms of morality, law, and society are derived from the structure and function of the mind. It follows that the solutions Dr. Belfiore presents are the results of a discovery and not the consequence of a conscious choice. Otherwise stated, ethics, politics, and law are given an ontological foundation. For each topic considered, Dr. Belfiore shows how his thought can reinterpret the views of other philosophers. The result of this is an innovative and highly stimulating text, which is of interest to graduate students and scholars in the philosophical branches of ethics, politics, and law. (shrink)

In this revised edition, Belfiore adds new concepts and discusses the views of additional thinkers. He gives an ontological foundation to ethics, politics, and law and shows how his thought can reinterpret the views of other philosophers regarding these topics.

Important philosophical work has gone into debunking thoroughly entrenched positivist notions that objective science proceeds in a value neutral manner. Dr. Tamara Kayali Browne's article "A Role for Philosophers, Sociologists, and Bioethicists in Revising the DSM" admirably takes the next step. Given the evaluative elements that permeate, in this case, the science of nosology—how do we deal responsibly with those evaluative elements? She correctly, in my opinion, concludes that dealing with evaluative issues responsibly is tantamount to dealing with them ethically. (...) But, as her concrete example of the ethics of premenstrual dysphoric disorder demonstrates, dealing with the ethics of the science of... (shrink)

The production of knowledge should be premised on the inclusion of all epistemologies to provide possibilities to build a more just world. However, knowledge production, as we have it today, is premised on Western epistemology which is used to distil other knowledges before they could be accepted as legitimate. This approach stifles possibilities to find different ways of knowing that could contribute to imagining the world anew. There is a need, therefore, to unthink the West such that we find other (...) ways to understand the world. The article helps in unthinking the West to allow an authentic understanding of the indigenous people of South Africa. I argue that the ontology of AmaZulu – one of the indigenous groups in South Africa – is an ethic-orientated ontology that is expressed through the concept of ukukhonza – a process where one surrenders their identity in order to belong to the group (this can also refer to worship). In ukukhonza, the surrendering of one’s identity is to ensure harmonious living centred on a common identity that is unified by the principles of ubuntu. Drawing on the nuances of ukukhonza, this article argues that the ontology of AmaZulu is centred on respecting life in its different forms because it is believed that everything is interconnected. This understanding of life provides a different conceptualisation of God which anchors the religion that is practised everyday such that doing good is inescapable. This is an ethic-oriented ontology which when brought forth in its authentic form can address the many ills of modern society.Contribution: This is the conceptual article that contributes to rethinking religion from an African perspective to provide a possibility of an ethic-centred society that can inform the new ways of being in the world. (shrink)