ABSTRACT: Virtue, the centerpiece of ancient ethics, has come under attack by virtue skeptics impressed by results of psychology experiments including Milgram's obedience studies. The virtue skeptic argues that experimental findings suggest that character structures are so fragile vis-å-vis situational factors as to be explanatorily superfluous: virtues and robust character traits are a myth, and should be replaced by situation-specific "narrow dispositions" (Gilbert Harman) or "local traits" (John Doris). This paper argues that the virtue skeptics' sweeping claims are ill-founded. First, (...) blending Aristotelian and contemporary insights about virtue, I reach a decision about a reasonable, non-straw definition of "virtue" and of "character trait." Next, I argue that explanations give by Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett for the Milgram findings covertly invoke character traits. Reflection reveals that more robust, cross-situationally consistent traits are needed for explanation of subject behavior, and that it is reasonable to suppose that such traits were in place. (shrink)

In arguing against the likelihood of consciousness in non-human animals, Descartes advances a slippery slope argument that if thought were attributed to any one animal, it would have to be attributed to all, which is absurd. This paper examines the foundations of Thomas Willis’ comparative neuroanatomy against the background of Descartes’ slippery slope argument against animal consciousness. Inspired by Gassendi’s ideas about the corporeal soul, Thomas Willis distinguished between neural circuitry responsible for reflex behaviour and that responsible for cognitively or (...) consciously mediated behaviour. This afforded Willis a non-arbitrary basis for distinguishing between animals with thought and consciousness and those without, a methodology which retains currency for neuroscience today. (shrink)

Philosophers of language are increasingly engaging with derogatory terms or slurs. Only few theorists take such language as a starting point for addressing puzzles in philosophy of language with little connection to our real-world problems. This paper aims to show that the political nature of derogatory language use calls for non-ideal theorising as we find it in the work of feminist and critical race scholars. Most contemporary theories of slurs, so I argue, fall short on some desiderata associated with a (...) non-ideal approach. They neglect crucial linguistic or political aspects of morally and politically significant meaning. I argue that a two-stage project is necessary to understand the perniciousness of slurs: accounting for the derogatory content of derogatory terms in general and, additionally, explaining the communicative function of slurs more specifically. I end by showing how inferentialism is well-suited to account for the content of derogatory terms whilst allowing for further explanations of the communicative functions of slurs. (shrink)

There are different narratives on mathematics as part of our world, some of which are more appropriate than others. Such narratives might be of the form ‘Mathematics is useful’, ‘Mathematics is beautiful’, or ‘Mathematicians aim at theorem-credit’. These narratives play a crucial role in mathematics education and in society as they are influencing people’s willingness to engage with the subject or the way they interpret mathematical results in relation to real-world questions; the latter yielding important normative considerations. Our strategy is (...) to frame current narratives of mathematics from a virtue-theoretic perspective. We identify the practice of mathematizing, put forward by Freudenthal’s ‘Realistic mathematics education’, as virtuous and use it to evaluate different narratives. We show that this can help to render the narratives more adequately, and to provide implications for societal organization. (shrink)

Virtue, the centerpiece of ancient ethics, has come under attack by virtue skeptics impressed by results of psychology experiments including Milgram’s obedience studies. The virtue skeptic argues that experimental findings suggest that character structures are so fragile vis-à-vis situational factors as to be explanatorily superfluous: virtues and robust character traits are a myth, and should be replaced by situation-specific “narrow dispositions” (Gilbert Harman) or “local traits” (John Doris). This paper argues that the virtue skeptics’ sweeping claims are ill-founded. First, blending (...) Aristotelian and contemporary insights about virtue, I reach adecision about a reasonable, nonstraw defmition of “virtue” and of “character trait.” Next, I argue that explanations give by Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett for the Milgram findings covertly invoke character traits. Reflection reveals that more robust, crosssituationally consistent traits are needed for explanation of subject behavior, and that it is reasonable to suppose that such traits were in place. (shrink)

This article asks whether states have a right to close their borders because of their right to self-determination, as proposed recently by Christopher Wellman, Michael Walzer, and others. It asks the fundamental question whether self-determination can, in even its most unrestricted form, support the exclusion of immigrants. I argue that the answer is no. To show this, I construct three different ways in which one might use the idea of self-determination to justify immigration restrictions and show that each of these (...) arguments fails. My conclusion is that the nature and value of self-determination have to do with the conditions of genuine self-government, not membership of political society. Consequently, the demand for open borders is fully consistent with respect to self-determination. (shrink)

I here defend historical entitlement theories of property rights against a popular charge. This is the objection that such theories fail because no convincing account of original appropriation exists. I argue that this argument assumes a certain reading of historical entitlement theory and I spell out an alternative reading against which it misfires. On this reading, the role of acts of original appropriation is not to justify but to individuate people’s holdings. I argue that we can identify which acts count (...) as original appropriation against the background of a general justification for a practice of property rights. On this view, what I will call ‘natural’ acts of original appropriation are acts by which a person begins to satisfy the general conditions for justified ownership. Finally, I offer an interpretation of John Locke's theory of appropriation along these lines and argue that it provides an attractive reading of his view. (shrink)

This paper analyses the hidden use of new axioms in set-theoretic practice with a focus on large cardinal axioms and presents a general overview of set-theoretic practices using large cardinal axioms. The hidden use of a new axiom provides extrinsic reasons in support of this axiom via the idea of verifiable consequences, which is especially relevant for set-theoretic practitioners with an absolutist view. Besides that, the hidden use has pragmatic significance for further important sub-groups of the set-theoretic community---set-theoretic practitioners with (...) a pluralist view and set-theoretic practitioners who aim for ZFC-proofs. By describing this, the paper gives a more complete picture of new axioms in set-theoretic practice. These observations, for instance, show that set-theoretic practitioners interested in ZFC-proofs use tools that go beyond ZFC. The analysis is based on empirical data that was collected in an extensive interview study with set-theoretic practitioners. (shrink)

State legitimacy is often said to have two aspects: an internal and an external one. Internally, a legitimate state has the right to rule over its subjects. Externally, it has a right that outsiders not interfere with its domestic governance. But what is the relation between these two aspects? In this paper, I defend a conception of legitimacy according to which these two aspects are related in an importantly asymmetrical manner. In particular, a legitimate state’s external right to rule affords (...) it protections that include and go beyond what its internal right to rule enables it to do. This asymmetrical view, I argue, is preferable to its two main rivals: the view that a state’s internal and external legitimacy are separate issues, and the view that internal and external legitimacy are mirroring. (shrink)

Most treatments of territorial rights include a discussion (and rejection) of Locke. There is a remarkable consensus about what Locke’s views were. For him, states obtain territorial rights as the result of partial transfers of people’s property rights. In this article, I reject this reading. I argue that (a) for Locke, transfers of property rights were neither necessary nor sufficient for territorial rights and that (b) Locke in fact held a two-part theory of territorial rights. I support this reading by (...) appealing to textual and contextual evidence. I conclude by drawing a lesson from Locke’s views for current debates on territorial rights. (shrink)

The idea that law claims authority (LCA) has recently been forcefully criticized by a number of authors. These authors present a new and intriguing objection, arguing that law cannot be said to claim authority if such a claim is not justified. That is, these authors argue that the view that law does not have authority viciously conflicts with the view that law claims authority. I will call this the normative critique of LCA. In this article, I assess the normative critique (...) of LCA, focusing predominantly on the arguments presented by its most incisive proponent Philip Soper. I defend a twofold conclusion. First, LCA, understood roughly along the lines put forward by Joseph Raz, is part of the most attractive analysis of law. Second, proponents of the normative critique, and in particular Soper, are committed to accepting LCA. (shrink)

This article aims to read feminist new materialisms (Barad), together with ‘postulated’ linguistic or cultural primacy of Queer Theory (Butler), to show how both are engaged in similar critical-ethical endeavours. The central argument is that the criticism of Barad and new materialisms misses Butler’s materialistic insights due to a narrow interpretation of Butler's alleged social-constructivist position. There is, therefore, a specific focus on where they both make similar ethical appeals. Moreover, the article relies on Adorno's negative dialectic to highlight an (...) interpretation of Barad and Butler as being part of the same dialectical movement, in which materialism and idealism fluctuate in their mutual criticisms, thus continuing the procession towards 'new knowledge' and emancipation, or freedom, through their motions back and forth. (shrink)

This volume includes nineteen articles by scholars from Asia, North America, and Europe on Chinese thinkers from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. Included here are intellectual biographies of literati such as Zhou Dunyi, the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, Zhang Shi, Hu Hong, Wang Yangming, and Dai Zhen. Essays are arranged chronologically, and most begin with a biographical sketch of their subject. They provide variety rather than uniformity of approach, but all in all these essays are remarkably rich and offer (...) much new material on both familiar and lesser-known thinkers. (shrink)

The ji 己self is a site, storehouse, or depot of individuated allotment associated with the possession of things and qualities: wholesome and unwholesome desires (yu 欲) and aversions, emotions such as anxiety, and positive values such as humaneness and reverence. Each person's allotment is unique, and its "contents" are collected, measured, reflected on, and then distributed to others. The Analects, Mencius, Xunzi, Daodejing, and Zhuangzi each have their own vision for negotiating the space between self and other. Works as seemingly (...) dissimilar as the Analects and Daodejing both agree that positive qualities located within the self should be shared with others, and that the self can be optimized rather than maximized through sharing, emptying, or clearing. Sommer compares the ji self with other terms for body and person current in classical times. This self is strongly individuated, but it exists primarily in relation to other human beings (ren 人 ). These "others" are almost never one's own kind and are usually people who fall outside one's ascribed familial and social relationships. Negotiations between self and other often reflect apprehension regarding degrees of distance, intimacy, worth, recognition, or understanding (zhi 知) between people. (shrink)

Beyond “A Lecture on Ethics,” Wittgenstein says little on the topic of ethics, despite professing a great respect for ethics. I argue that while Wittgenstein ceases to speak of ethics, his account fits equally within his Tractarian and post-Tractarian writing. On both accounts of language, ethics remains nonsense, but it is not insignificant nonsense. However, because Wittgenstein holds ethics to concern absolute values that are in principle inexpressible, his anti-theoretical conception of ethics fails to offer guidance in how one ought (...) to live. That is, ethics ultimately cannot be show unless it can, in some sense, be said. (shrink)

While feminist philosophy has had much to say on the topic of reason, little has been done to develop a specifically feminist account of the concept. I argue for a virtue account of mind grounded in contemporary approaches to rationality. The evolutionary stance adopted within most contemporary theories of mind implicitly entails a rejection of central elements of Cartesianism. As a result, many accounts of rationality are anti-modern is precisely the sorts of ways that feminists demand. I maintain that a (...) virtue account of rationality can provide a satisfactory answer to Benhabib’s question in Situating of the Self: what concept of reason are we willing to defend? (shrink)

Feminist philosophy is highly critical of Cartesian, and more broadly Enlightenment, conceptions of rationality. However, feminist philosophers typically fail to address contemporary theories of rationality and to consider how more current thoeories address feminist concerns. I argue that, contrary to their protestations, feminists are “obsessing over an outdated conception of reason” and that even the most suspect of “malestream” philosophers express an understanding of rationality that is closer to feminist concerns than Cartesian ones. I begin by briefly examining key features (...) of Cartesian rationality and discuss how these features are largely rejected by contemporary philosophy and cognitve science. I then discuss how the philosophical accounts of Robert Nozick and Robert Audi refelect this rejection of Cartesian rationality. Finally, I discuss how the views of Nozick and Audi are in line with many feminist concerns, and I argue that feminists need to take seriously some theory of rationality. (shrink)

Although feminists have spilled a great deal of ink criticizing Enlightenment conceptions of rationality, the time has come to consider constructing a positive account. Recent attempts to construct an account of rationality as a virtue concept reflect many feminist complaints concerning Enlightenment rationality, and, thus, I maintain that feminism should take seriously such a conception. Virtue rationality offers a more diverse account of rationality without sacrificing the fundamental normativity of the concept. Furthermore, the narrower concept of reasonableness, promises to provide (...) a ground for distinguishing among better and worse epistemic perspectives, which is a task critical to the success of the feminist project. (shrink)

This article examines the complaint that arbitrary algorithmic decisions wrong those whom they affect. It makes three contributions. First, it provides an analysis of what arbitrariness means in this context. Second, it argues that arbitrariness is not of moral concern except when special circumstances apply. However, when the same algorithm or different algorithms based on the same data are used in multiple contexts, a person may be arbitrarily excluded from a broad range of opportunities. The third contribution is to explain (...) why this systemic exclusion is of moral concern and to offer a solution to address it. (shrink)

Penelope Maddy’s Second Philosophy is one of the most well-known ap- proaches in recent philosophy of mathematics. She applies her second-philosophical method to analyze mathematical methodology by reconstructing historical cases in a setting of means-ends relations. However, outside of Maddy’s own work, this kind of methodological analysis has not yet been extensively used and analyzed. In the present work, we will make a first step in this direction. We develop a general framework that allows us to clarify the procedure and (...) aims of the Second Philosopher’s investigation into set-theoretic methodology; pro- vides a platform to analyze the Second Philosopher’s methods themselves; and can be applied to further questions in the philosophy of set theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that poet M. Nourbese Philip's Zong! allows us to radically rethink the possibility of historical restitution and recovery. The formal ideas in Zong!, I argue, imply a metaphysical and ontological revolution in the way memory and mnesic traces are to be conceived. The evidentiary status of the voices and narratives that Zong! retrieves cannot be certified by historical-epistemological conceptions of evidence but rather find their warrant in alternative, ontological (or hauntological) registers.

In On Touching, Derrida commends philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy for ‘taking into account [the] plasticity and technicity “at the heart” of the “body proper.”’ Specifying the meaning of this plasticity and technicity, Derrida writes, the"[s]upplementarity of technical prosthetics originarily spaces out, defers, or expropriates all originary properness: there is no “the” sense of touch, there is no “originary” or essentially originary touching before it." What is ‘proper’ or ‘original’ to the body, it seems, is not any set of properties or capacities (...) – including sensorial or perceptual powers – but rather the ‘plastic and substitutive structure of prosthetics’, the very possibility of the body’s ‘technical’ supplementation. (shrink)

An overview and comparison of the major teaching philosophies is discussed to determine their applications in the field of education. In the end, it is important to reflect on how our practices align with our philosophies.

In this paper I respond to Bernd Krehoff’s article ‘Legitimate Political Authority and Sovereignty: Why States Cannot Be the Whole Story’. I criticize Krehoff’s use of Raz’s theory of authority to evaluate the legitimacy of our political institutions. Krehoff argues that states cannot (always) claim exclusive authority and therefore cannot possess exclusive legitimacy. Although I agree with his conclusion, I argue that the questions of legitimacy and (Razian) authority are distinct and that we need to focus more on the former (...) in order to really support and defend Krehoff’s conclusions. (shrink)

This paper focusses on the relationship among structural adjustment policies and practices, the business activities of transnational corporations and what Robert Reich has called the coming irrelevance of corporate nationality. The argument presented is that the force of these combined factors makes environmental sustainability impossible.

Pekakak adalah salah satu tokoh yang memiliki pengetahuan mendalam dan perencanaan yang cermat. Saat fajar menyingsing, ia terlihat bertengger di atas pohon. Dengan kemampuan sempurna untuk mengontrol kecepatan penerbangan miliknya, seperti kapan harus memperlambat atau mempercepat, dia dapat dengan mudah menghitung cara optimal untuk menangkap ikan.

A pair of C functions are defined such that D has the halting problem proof's pathological relationship to simulating termination analyzer H. When H correctly determines that D correctly simulated by H must be aborted to prevent its own infinite execution then H is necessarily correct to reject D as specifying non-halting behavior. This exact same reasoning is applied to the Peter Linz Turing machine based halting problem proof. ...

Consider the concept combination ‘pet human’. In word association experiments, human subjects produce the associate ‘slave’ in relation to this combination. The striking aspect of this associate is that it is not produced as an associate of ‘pet’, or ‘human’ in isolation. In other words, the associate ‘slave’ seems to be emergent. Such emergent associations sometimes have a creative character and cognitive science is largely silent about how we produce them. Departing from a dimensional model of human conceptual space, this (...) article will explore concept combinations, and will argue that emergent associations are a result of abductive reasoning within conceptual space, that is, below the symbolic level of cognition. A tensor-based approach is used to model concept combinations allowing such combinations to be formalized as interacting quantum systems. Free association norm data is used to motivate the underlying basis of the conceptual space. It is shown by analogy how some concept combinations may behave like quantum-entangled particles. Two methods of analysis were presented for empirically validating the presence of non-separable concept combinations in human cognition. One method is based on quantum theory and another based on comparing a joint probability distribution with another distribution based on a separability assumption using a chi-square goodness-of-fit test. Although these methods were inconclusive in relation to an empirical study of bi-ambiguous concept combinations, avenues for further refinement of these methods are identified. (shrink)

Using artificial intelligence (AI) to make decisions in human resource management (HRM) raises questions of how fair employees perceive these decisions to be and whether they experience respectful treatment (i.e., interactional justice). In this experimental survey study with open-ended qualitative questions, we examine decision making in six HRM functions and manipulate the decision maker (AI or human) and decision valence (positive or negative) to determine their impact on individuals’ experiences of interactional justice, trust, dehumanization, and perceptions of decision-maker role appropriate- (...) ness. In terms of decision makers, the use of human decision makers over AIs generally resulted in better perceptions of respectful treatment. In terms of decision valence, people experiencing positive over negative decisions generally resulted in better perceptions of respectful treatment. In instances where these cases conflict, on some indicators people preferred positive AI decisions over negative human decisions. Qualitative responses show how people identify justice concerns with both AI and human decision making. We outline implications for theory, practice, and future research. (shrink)

An anthology on Panarchy edited by Gian Piero de Bellis for World Wide Wisdom, Saint-Imier, 2023.

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.

Tradução para o português do ensaio "Freedom and Resentment”, de P. F. Strawson. Publicado originalmente em Proceedings of the British Academy, v. 48, 1960. Republicado em Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Londres: Methuen, 1974. [Routledge, 2008, p. 2-28]. Publicado na coletânea: Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Strawson: com a tradução de Liberdade e ressentimento & Moralidade social e ideal individual. Organizadores: Jaimir Conte & Itamar Luís Gelain. Editora da UFSC, 2015. ISBN: 9788532807250.

Tradução para o português do ensaio "Social Morality and Individual Ideal”. Publicado originalmente em Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, vol. XXXVI, n. 136, p. 1-17, Jan. 1961. Republicado em: STRAWSON, P. F. Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Londres: Methuen, 1974. [Routledge, 2008, p. 26-44]. ]. Publicado na coletânea: Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Strawson: com a tradução de Liberdade e ressentimento & Moralidade social e ideal individual. Organizadores: Jaimir Conte & Itamar Luís Gelain. Editora da (...) UFSC, 2015. ISBN: 9788532807250. (shrink)

The no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much-discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for why the two most prominent `wholesale' arguments in the literature seem irresolvable. Framed probabilistically, we can see very clearly why realists (...) and anti-realists have been talking past one another. We then formulate a dilemma for advocates of either argument, answer potential objections to our criticism, discuss what remains (if anything) of these two major arguments, and then speculate about a future philosophy of science freed from these two arguments. In so doing, we connect the point about base rates to the wholesale/retail distinction; we believe it hints at an answer of how to distinguish profitable from unprofitable realism debates. In short, we offer a probabilistic analysis of the feeling of ennui afflicting contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

One of the predominant debates in AI Ethics is the worry and necessity to create fair, transparent and accountable algorithms that do not perpetuate current social inequities. I offer a critical analysis of Reuben Binns’s argument in which he suggests using public reason to address the potential bias of the outcomes of machine learning algorithms. In contrast to him, I argue that ultimately what is needed is not public reason per se, but an audit of the implicit moral assumptions of (...) societies within which algorithms are built and applied. Public justification is appealing since it offers us the possibility to align the decision-making outcomes of the algorithm with the core moral values of stakeholders within a constitutional democratic society. My concern is that the common moral principles that form the foundation of public reason are not necessarily neutral, as they still express specific moral ideals and normative standards even if there is moral agreement by society as a whole, or among different stakeholders within society. Appealing to such normative standards may thus still lead to algorithmic outcomes being biased as common moral values may very well still be discriminatory even though they are formed from a consensus, and even if public reason is applied as a kind of filter for potential algorithmic outcomes. Hence, I argue that these implicit moral norms within society that we take as a given in public reasoning, need to be audited from generation to generation in order to effectively mitigate potential algorithmic bias. (shrink)

In this paper, I reply to 18 of the essays on panpsychism in this issue. Along the way, I sketch out what a post-Galilean science of consciousness, one in which consciousness is taken to be a fundamental feature of reality, might look like.

Imperatives cannot be true, but they can be obeyed or binding: `Surrender!' is obeyed if you surrender and is binding if you have a reason to surrender. A pure declarative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are declaratives — is valid exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is true if the conjunction of its premisses is true; similarly, I suggest, a pure imperative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are imperatives — is obedience-valid (alternatively: bindingness-valid) exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is (...) obeyed (alternatively: binding) if the conjunction of its premisses is. I argue that there are two kinds of bindingness, and that a vacillation between two corresponding variants of bindingness-validity largely explains conflicting intuitions concerning the validity of some pure imperative arguments. I prove that for each of those two variants of bindingness-validity there is an equivalent variant of obedience-validity. Finally, I address alternative accounts of pure imperative inference. (shrink)

Standard accounts of civil disobedience include nonviolence as a necessary condition. Here I argue that such accounts are mistaken and that civil disobedience can include violence in many aspects, primarily excepting violence directed at other persons. I base this argument on a novel understanding of civil disobedience: the special character of the practice comes from its combination of condemnation of a political practice with an expressed commitment to the political. The commitment to the political is a commitment to engaging with (...) others as co-members in the on-going political project of living together. I show how such an understanding of civil disobedience is superior to the Rawlsian strain of thought, which focuses on fidelity to law. Rawls was concerned with civil disobedience solely in the context of overriding political obligation. The project of characterizing a contestatory political practice that can be distinguished and used in a wider variety of contexts than Rawls is concerned with, including under illegitimate regimes, beyond the nation-state, or on behalf of anarchism, requires a different understanding of civil disobedience. (shrink)

The influential proposal that the analytical component of a theory is captured by its ‘Carnap sentence’ is critically scrutinized. A counterexample which makes the suggestion problematic is presented.

Exclusionary defeat is Joseph Raz’s proposal for understanding the more complex, layered structure of practical reasoning. Exclusionary reasons are widely appealed to in legal theory and consistently arise in many other areas of philosophy. They have also been subject to a variety of challenges. I propose a new account of exclusionary reasons based on their justificatory role, rejecting Raz’s motivational account and especially contrasting exclusion with undercutting defeat. I explain the appeal and coherence of exclusionary reasons by appeal to commonsense (...) value pluralism and the intermediate space of public policies, social roles, and organizations. We often want our choices to have a certain character or instantiate a certain value and in order to do so, that choice can only be based on a restricted set of reasons. Exclusion explains how pro tanto practical reasons can be disqualified from counting towards a choice of a particular kind without being outweighed or undercut. (shrink)

When we ask what natural kinds are, there are two different things we might have in mind. The first, which I’ll call the taxonomy question, is what distinguishes a category which is a natural kind from an arbitrary class. The second, which I’ll call the ontology question, is what manner of stuff there is that realizes the category. Many philosophers have systematically conflated the two questions. The confusion is exhibited both by essentialists and by philosophers who pose their accounts in (...) terms of similarity. It also leads to misreading philosophers who do make the distinction. Distinguishing the questions allows for a more subtle understanding of both natural kinds and their underlying metaphysics. (shrink)

Philosophy in Africa has for more than a decade now been dominated by the discussion of one compound question, namely, is there an African philosophy, and if there is, what is it? The first part of the question has generally been unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. Dispute has been primarily over the second part of the question as various specimens of African philosophy presented do not seem to pass muster. Those of us who refuse to accept certain specimens as philosophy (...) have generally been rather illogically said also to deny an affirmative answer to the first part of the question. In a paper presented at the International Symposium in Memory of Dr William Amo, the Ghanaian philosopher who taught in German universities in the early part of the eighteenth century, Professor Odera Oruka identified four trends, perhaps more appropriately approaches, in current African philosophy. (shrink)