The University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica: UWI Journals
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A Philosophical Reflection on Some Key Issues in Yoruba Indigenous Knowledge System
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The discourse of indigenous knowledge system is no absolute preserve of any intellectual outlook; humanities, social-sciences or basic sciences. The enterprise of philosophy is not an exemption in this regard. From a philosophical angle, this discourse addresses certain key issues identified in Yoruba indigenous knowledge system (IKS). Adopting conceptual and critical methodology, it argues that the Yoruba indigenous knowledge system could be explicated from an internalist perspective, drawing upon the intricacies of key issues like Ifá , the environment, arts (beliefs and practice), as well as human-animal relations in Yoruba worldview. Basically, it emphasizes that Yoruba IKS is underscored by an internalist framework of understanding (knowing) inherent in beliefs, reflected in attitudes and practices, which are suffused with ontological cum existential assumptions of reality.
Keywords: Yoruba, Indigenous knowledge system, internalism, beliefs and practice
Yoruba Values and the Environment
Get PDFOur interest in this discussion is to appreciate the linkage between what may be discerned as the overarching Yoruba value systems in the natural relationship which members of Yoruba society display in relating to the environment – environment here being natural, social, political, moral, cultural, etc. We will use Yoruba ontology (metaphysics), epistemology and axiology to evince a Yoruba ecosophy; in the process we will show that, by contrast with the Judeo-Christian tradition of environmental domination as the destiny of humanity, the Yoruba value system in more eco-respecting, eco-friendly and geared toward sustainable human habitation in a world in which he/she constitute one small fraction of sentience. Our discussion will be developed as responses to the following questions: a) What are values? b) How are values derived? c) Are there Yoruba values? d) What is the environment? e) How are concepts of Environment derived? f) What is the relationship between values and the environment? g) What is the relationship between Yoruba values and the environment? h) Inferences for One Health Approach to the Environment and Sustainable Human Global Co-existenc
Caribbean Society – toward a culturally sensitive Philosophy of Education in the 21st Century
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Having claimed immunity from all possible errors of omission and commission, real and imaginary, I will now proceed to the task on hand – attempting to see if one can determine a “Philosophy of Education suitable for the Caribbean in the 21st Century” and beyond. My discussion will be in three sections. In section 1, I look at education and society. In section 2, I look at Caribbean society, using my very limited understanding, and the need for a culturally, socially, economically, technologically sensitive and comprehensively humanizing educational system. In Section 3, I examine the place of philosophy and philosophy of education in the dynamics of international system within which the Caribbean society must exist, survive and thrive. I conclude my discussion with some remarks about implications of the ideas we have raised, and how these must bear on our reflections, behaviour and attitude to reality and existence
CYBERETHICS, SPYWARE AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM IN AN AGE OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
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This essay juxtaposes the notion of human freedom, which liberal democracy advocates, with the menace of terrorism, which is fast becoming an atrocious impediment to national development and social order in virtually all the countries of our global world. Since the commencement of the information revolution age, there is hardly anything that can be done in the world without recourse to Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Hence, in virtually every activity known to or undertaken by humans today, information technology, especially the internet plays a very significant role. Terrorist and counter-terrorist efforts also rely heavily on the ICT. Terrorists now mostly plan their attacks using one form of communication or information technology platform or the other. Hence, an effective measure against terrorist activities, especially in this era of information revolution, cannot afford not to look in the direction of the ICT in finding immediate and urgent solution to the problem of security threats which terrorism poses. A tool of surveillance which can be used to uncover terrorists’ plans in order to forestall attacks or to bring terrorists to book after an attack has been perpetrated is spyware. However, the challenge, which the use of spyware by government security agencies poses is that it does not promote the human right to privacy and freedom. This paper argues that this quandary can be overcome with the adoption of utilitarianism, a traditional ethical theory. In this sense, what brings safety to the greatest number is considered ethical
The Contested Terrain of Epistemology: a Critical Review of the Goal of Naturalising Epistemology
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Epistemology, for so long, laid claim to being first philosophy and saddles itself with the responsibility of dealing with the foundation of scientific knowledge. However, the challenge to this claim, championed by proponents of naturalised epistemology, is that epistemologists should desist from handling epistemology as a normative, a priori, philosophical enterprise that seeks to evaluate the aims, procedures, and results of scientific inquiry. They would rather have epistemology treated as an arm of science that seeks to describe and explain how knowledge is acquired. Although, as has been rightly pointed out, one cannot address in one essay the entire project of naturalised epistemology (Code 1996, 1), we, in this essay, seek to examine the goal of naturalised epistemology directed at replacing the philosophical method of conducting epistemological inquiries with the scientific method.
Our contention is that the proposal for naturalised epistemology undermines the importance of the methodology of conducting philosophical inquiries, and hence the philosophical treatment of that branch of philosophy that deals with the branch of philosophy that deals with the theory of the origin, nature and limits of knowledge, as well as the importance of philosophical inquiry into science. We will further argue that the modification of the claim that rather than totally replacing epistemology with science, that what we should have is a collaboration between epistemology and science, in other words that the method of studying epistemology need only consider progress made in science, says nothing new that had not hitherto been accommodated. The essay, thus, considers why traditional epistemology, even if other means of analysing knowledge should emerge, will have to continue to evaluate human knowledge philosophically
Communique of the 1st Africa Indigenous Religions (AIR) Symposium, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, August 2016
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Some actions to control e-rumors
No full textWith the development of new communication technologies and the emergence of social media on the Internet, the dissemination of information can be done very rapidly and on a very large scale. In the case of e-rumors, significant damage in many sectors of society such as politics, finance and private life can be brought about. It is therefore important to investigate strategies in order to control the spread of rumors on social networks. In the past few decades, many studies were carried out on this topic in order to understand and help prevent the propagation of rumors. In this paper, we consider a SIR type model examining spreading of e-rumors and we modify it by adding some external actions. We then control these external actions in order to minimize the propagation of a rumor. For this, we use a mathematical concept named optimal control theory
Philosophy and the Disciplines: The Borderlines
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This work examines the borderlines between philosophy in relation to the central concern of the disciplines. As a preliminary step towards our examination, we attempt to uncover the specific nature of philosophy on the basis of its subject matter. We argue that while philosophy asks ‘second order’ questions about the totality of reality, other disciplines ask ‘first order’ questions about different aspects of the same reality. In spite of this distinction however, the paper agrees that the disciplines though lacking in consensus over fundamentals share borderlines with philosophy in their areas of discourse. As the argument runs, the work posits that the central thread running through the disciplines including philosophy is their use of language as reflected in the meaning of words to depict social reality. The major difference is that while the practitioners of the disciplines are concerned with mere definitions or meaning of concepts, the philosopher from the stand point of Wittgenstein’s reaction to the Cartesian conception of the mind and his ideas on language goes beyond mere definitions or meaning to the analysis of concepts that we employ in the human world of our day to day experience. In this way, philosophy to a greater extent than the disciplines leads to the improvement in language for the purpose of expressing and communicating our ideas