:Recent attempts to engage and develop modes of ethological practice that avoid deterministic and mechanistic accounts of animal action have often relied on affect as a way of articulating how animal bodies affect and are in turn affected by the animate and inanimate bodies around them. In this context affect has often functioned as an instigating site of change that opens up the experience of a particular animal to new possibilities for action and relation. This paper seeks to bring the (...) significant role that affect has played in opening up new directions in ethological theory and practice in contact with a discussion of two currents in affect theory – one shaped by the genealogy of philosophical thought that stretches from Spinoza, through Gilles Deleuze, to contemporary thinkers such as Brian Massumi, and the other emerging from the reception of the American psychologist and cybernetics thinker Silvan Tomkins, in the context of queer theory, through the work of Eve Sedgwick and Adam Frank. The locus of intersection for these different modes of theoretical practice is the site-specific case study of monk parakeets who have drawn on and incorporated the ornamental elaborations of human architecture into their own complex architectural nest constructions at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. (shrink)

This paper examines Nietzsche’s conception of what persists, or occurs, as becoming in relation to Ramose’s reconceptualization of what persists, or occurs, as be-ing becoming with a view to showing how divergence and convergence of thought in the western and African contexts can inform cross-cultural philosophizing. Nietzsche radically subverts the traditional notion of an eternal immutable being that constitutes the ground of change and replaces it with the notion of becoming. Ramose’s notion of being, which is grounded in ubuntu philosophy, (...) integrates a dynamic perspective into a process view of reality. While Nietzsche seeks to abandon the categories of being, unity, and purpose altogether, Ramose ambiguously retains them and, in fact, endorses the category of unity. I highlight the dynamics of Nietzsche’s notion of becoming and articulate the basic principles of Ramose’s idea of being as be-ing becoming and argue that both thinkers’ struggle to subvert substance-based understanding of being invites us to question the intelligibility of the binary opposition of being with becoming and to regard both concepts as indicating different ways of understanding reality. (shrink)

After Plato's Forms, and Aristotle's substances, the Stoics posited the fundamental reality of lekta - the meanings of sentences, distinct from the sentences themselves. This volume analyses the resulting unique, complex, and consistent cosmic view in which lekta are the keystones of the structure of reality: they are all there is to say.

"In this highly original book, Ada Agada responds to the question of how a philosophy can be African and at the same time universally relevant by constructing an original philosophical system that is at once African and universal. Drawing on African forms of thought and conceptual schemes like ethnophilosophy, ubuntu, sage philosophy, négritude, ibuanyidanda philosophy, and ezumezu logic, the author introduces new concepts and conceptual schemes like mood and proto-panpsychism into philosophical vocabulary and weaves them into a coherent and original (...) system that promises to significantly impact contemporary African philosophy. Arguing for intercultural and comparative philosophy as a desirable mode of philosophising in a continually globalising and interconnected world, the book demonstrates the universal applicability of consolationism. This book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of African Studies, intercultural philosophy, philosophy of mind, and existentialism"--. (shrink)

Perspective taking is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct characterized by three components: cognitive, affective, and visual. The experience of psychological maltreatment impairs the child’s emotional competence; in particular, maltreated children present difficulty in understanding and regulating emotions and in social understanding ability. In addition, the literature contains several contributions that highlight maladaptive behaviors of children with a history of maltreatment in peer interactions in the school context. Perspective taking ability has rarely been studied in maltreated children and the existing studies (...) have produced different and often conflicting results that require further insights. On the grounds of these premises, the main objective of the present research is to investigate perspective taking ability in preschool children from maltreating and non-maltreating family contexts and its role in social adjustment, in terms of prosocial and aggressive behavior toward peers inside the kindergarten. A second objective is to verify the effectiveness of a training aimed to promote perspective taking ability in victims of psychological maltreatment. This research, organized into two separate studies, involved 249 preschool children: 206 children from non-maltreating family contexts and 43 brought up in psychologically maltreating families. Perspective taking was measured via the administration of several tests, and prosocial behavior and aggressiveness were observed via non-participant observations in the school context. The training involved maltreated children in small-group meetings based on familiar and appealing activities within the mother–child community. The overall results show that children’s perspective taking ability, in particular the affective perspective taking, contributed to social adjustment. In fact, greater affective perspective taking ability was correlated to a higher frequency of prosocial behaviors toward peers and minor frequency of aggressiveness. Finally, the results of the training showed an increase in perspective taking, especially in the affective dimension, and a consequent increase in prosocial behaviors and a decrease in aggressive ones. Therefore, the affective perspective taking ability seems to represent a very significant protective factor, which should be focused and strengthened in order to improve the social adaptation of preschool children who are victims of psychological abuse. (shrink)

This article provides a brief overview of the efforts to develop and refine the Critical thinking Assessment Test and its potential for improving the design of classroom assessments. The CAT instrument was designed to help faculty understand their students’ strengths and weaknesses using a short answer essay format. The instrument assesses a broad collection of critical thinking skills that transcend most disciplines. The questions were deliberately designed around real-world scenarios that did not require specialized knowledge from any particular discipline. Various (...) faculty who collaborated in the national dissemination of the CAT instrument found that it was a helpful model for designing better course assessments to grade student work. Classroom assessments modeled on the CAT emphasize more critical thinking within the discipline and less rote retention of factual information. We describe the ongoing work to help faculty successfully adapt the CAT to applications that can be used in each discipline’s courses to evaluate and encourage students’ critical thinking. (shrink)

This paper explores the contradiction of positing the existence of a God who is at once omnipotent and not omnipotent in respect of his power that arises in the thought of two African philosophers of religion, John A.I. Bewaji and Ademola Kazeem Fayemi who accept the limitation thesis that projects a limited God and deny the legitimacy of the transcendence view in Yoruba and, by extension, African thought. I demonstrate in this paper that the contradiction arises from the fact that (...) while Bewaji and Fayemi explicitly deny the legitimacy of the transcendence view in Yoruba and, by extension, African thought, they implicitly accept the view and unwittingly and illegitimately attempt to reconcile the conflicting views through the analysis of the notions of God’s creatorship, co-creatorship, and controllership. I conclude by recommending that instead of attempting to reconcile the antinomy of God’s existence in African philosophy of religion, African philosophers should acknowledge the legitimacy of the two conflicting theses constituting the antinomy and, accordingly, sustain logical consistency by strictly thinking within either the framework of limitedness or the framework of transcendence. (shrink)

Lodovico Dolce, nel suo trattato _Dialogo di M. Lodovico Dolce della institution delle donne secondo li tre stati, che cadono nella vita humana_, sottolinea che per la formazione della donna è necesario coltivare le virtù morali, ma allo stesso tempo sostiene “Che la donna de’imparar lettere” e crede che “li studi delle lettere fanno le Donne buone”. Così i suoi ragionamenti, allineati allá prospettiva litterae e mores, mirano a formare un testo pedagogico-educativo adatto per le donne appartenenti allo stato verginale, (...) maritale o vedovile. Per rafforzare la sua convinzione riguardo all’importanza delle lettere come elemento essenziale dell’educazione femminile, presenta ed elogia delle donne letterate e le rappresenta come modello virtuoso e rispettabile. Lodovico Dolce, tra le varie figure elogiate, esalta Cassandra Fedele, Vittoria Colonna Marchesa di Pescara, Veronica Gambara Contessa di Correggio e altre. (shrink)

: Standing before one of Ada Medina's works in a museum recently, I knew myself to be in the company of a distinct presence. The exquisite form was so novel, yet its layers of organicity were deeply familiar. The piece effectively conveyed complex relationality, and pointed toward innovative forms of being, without resorting to didacticism, melodrama, or cliché. I had a strong urge to hug it. I needed to step back and figure it out.

While advancing the idea that morality is a universal human phenomenon, Kwasi Wiredu suggests that human reason, rather than the will of God, grounds morality and determines what is good in traditional Akan society. I note in this chapter that while Wiredu’s rationalism deviates from the traditional African theistic view that God is the source of morality, his appeal to reason rather than divine authority is consistent with his religious philosophy. This religious philosophy accommodates what I call the limited God (...) view in the African philosophy of religion. I compare Wiredu’s humanistic moral framework with the moral framework sustained by traditional African theism and argue that from a practical standpoint, both moral frameworks are attractive, as they enhance the dignity of the human being. (shrink)

According to recent scholarship within queer theory, heterosexuality maintains itself as a class by employing its epistemological authority for identifying and defining homosexuals. Heterosexuality is thus an ideological abstraction that privileges those with social and material advantages, rather than an accurate description of the actual, and thus heteronormative descriptions of sexuality correspond to Charles W. Mills’ description of ideal-as-idealized theory. Since ideological arguments cannot be overturned simply by appeals to rational debate, to what can we turn to subvert the sense (...) of entitlement and rightness that heteronormativity provides? Recent feminist philosophers have stressed the distinction between guilt as emotional self-assessment and existential guilt. Taking up Kierkegaard’s existential account of guilt, I claim that in order to advance a non-ideal theory of desire, which grounds critique in actual conditions, it is important to consider the nature of subjective attachments to exclusive, idealized conceptions of the ‘normal.’. (shrink)

This paper argues that the continued emphasis on ethno-philosophy and the relative absence of intellectual passion and curiosity are the greatest challenges facing African philosophy. The paper rejects the racist lamentation of scholars such as Olufemi Taiwo who blame the West for Africa’s absence from the stage of world philosophy. It highlights the link between L.S. Senghor’s doctrine of negritude, the philosophy of Innocent Asouzu, and the emerging synthesis of consolationism to underline the fact that African philosophy has made some (...) progress, although things could be much better. The paper concludes by urging African philosophers to be more radical and innovative in their thinking, as innovation and originality are the only conditions for the universal acceptance of, and interest in, African philosophy. (shrink)

1. Dal dogmatismo teologico al teismo morale. (1755-1783).

Sexual selection provides an adequate partial explanation for the difference in means between the distributions, but fails to explain the difference in variance, that is, the overrepresentation of both boys with outstanding mathematical reasoning ability and boys with mental retardation. Other genetic factors are probably at work. While spatial ability is correlated with OMRA, so are other cognitive abilities. OMRA is not reducible to spatial ability; hence selection for navigational skill is unlikely to be the only mechanism by which males (...) have gained an advantage in OMRA. (shrink)

There is a problem with the definition of talent as presented by Howe et al. that makes it dependent on experts' ability to detect it in the untrained. In addition, the choice of musical performance as the example for innate talent is inappropriate, and musical board results are selective and biased tests of it. Outstanding mathematical reasoning ability offers much better evidence of genetic influence.

Kwame Gyekye has been called a dualist to the extent that he accepts the ontological distinction between mind and matter, with both phenomena interacting with each other. I argue in this article that Gyekye’s presentation of the sunsum as a universal animating principle that is itself nonmaterial and irreducible to a material base warrants a second look at his philosophy of mind to determine whether he can be considered a pan-psychist and whether a pan-psychist reading can resolve the Gyekyean problem (...) of interaction. I assert that, while Gyekye’s interpretation of the Akan notion of sunsum invites a pan-psychist scrutiny, the interpretive difficulties surrounding the concept, as highlighted by Kwasi Wiredu and Safro Kwame, render a pan-psychist conclusion problematic even if persuasive. I recommend that the notion of sunsum as a nonmaterial principle that underlies material entities is significant enough to warrant further interrogation by African philosophers of mind. (shrink)

In this paper I compare Kwame Gyekye’s transcendentalist interpretation of the Akan conception of God with Kwasi Wiredu’s immanentist interpretation. I highlight the tension between the two thinkers’ interpretations of Akan religious thought within the broader conflict between transcendence and immanence. Using the analytic, critical, and interpretative method, I show how the reconciliation of Gyekye and Wiredu’s divergent, yet paradoxically overlapping visions can be effected in the idea of panpsychism. In the process of effecting this reconciliation, I open up a (...) new area of research in African philosophy of religion that African philosophers will find rewarding to engage. (shrink)

The ongoing debate among African philosophers on the relation of the individual and the community has spawned radical, moderate, and limited communitarian views. In this paper we will insert the question of interpersonal communication into the individual-community conundrum and raise the discourse to the level of cross-cultural engagement. We will highlight the dominant perspectives in Afro-communitarianism with particular emphasis on the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye and the Nigerian philosopher Ifeanyi Menkiti. Expanding the discourse into the domain of intercultural/comparative philosophy, this (...) paper will engage Gyekye and Menkiti’s Afro-communitarianism and Jean-Paul Sartre’s radical individualism and the resulting conflictual presentation of interpersonal relation. The paper adopts the conversational method. Keywords: Ifeanyi Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye, Afro-communitarianism, community, individual, Jean-Paul Sartre. (shrink)

The third chapter of the Thoughts of Blaise Pascal is presented as a letter that leads us to seek God. The seventeenth century, however, is not yet the ideal space for the freely passionate personal conscience to trace the Spirit wherever it wants to be found. The sensitivity of the philosopher intends first of all to emancipate the religious discourse, to lighten it from the diving suit of terror, which is unjustly placed on it by the most widespread preaching. This (...) leads itself to fueling terror, thus hoping to cause man, small, miserable, and sinner, to take refuge in the faith forcibly induced for a sort of merchandise, which guarantees, in exchange, salvation. Pascal reverses the itinerary and recovers within it the tools of reason and conscience. The search for God appears as a flame lit not by terror, but by what, in comparison, looks like the refined tool of autonomous thought, namely doubt. The certainty of the existence of God is not affirmed either as a dogma or as evidence, it is not a presupposition of reasoning. The presence of God is a hypothesis. It is not irreverent, it does not devalue the value of the research or its purpose. It does not disown the person-God relationship. Rather, he wishes to nourish it from a different perspective, which allows the person to perceive the irreplaceable value of his soul. Following Pascal's discussion on the matter, it is useful to ask ourselves a question that can bring it up to date: why does human life change, based on the hypothesis of whether God exists or not? Keywords: Pascal, God, soul, philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Kwame Gyekye’s interpretation of traditional Akan religious thought leads him to the conception of God as a being that possesses the properties of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Adopting an analytical and hermeneutical method, I argue in this article that Gyekye’s understanding of God as the direct source of the sunsum, or spirit, in the context of his presentation of the sunsum as a wholly immaterial and ubiquitous principle introduces a clear panpsychist dimension to his commitment to theism. I point out (...) that just as Gyekye’s account of the sunsum raises the question of its nature, so does his description of God as the direct source of the sunsum raise the question of God’s nature, whether he is indeed a wholly immaterial entity or not. I explore possible ways that Gyekye can defend the claim that a God who distributes sunsum in the physical world is wholly immaterial, and conclude that the claim cannot be sustained on account of the interpretive difficulty that the idea of sunsum raises. (shrink)

This article examines the configuration of domestic service within local milieus under globalization. Using Taiwan as a case study, the author argues that the state continues to have an impact even in this age of global interdependence. The management of foreign domestics within employers’ households is not only important for labor control but also central to the state’s administration over alien subjects. The case of Taiwan calls attention to the necessity of bringing the state back into the analysis of gender (...) and carework. (shrink)

The religious right often aligns its patriarchal opposition to same-sex marriage with the defence of religious freedom. In this article, I identify resources for confronting such prejudicial religiosity by surveying two predominant feminist approaches to same-sex marriage that are often assumed to be at odds: discourse ethics and queer critical theory. This comparative analysis opens up to view commitments that may not be fully recognizable from within either feminist framework: commitments to ideals of selfhood, to specific conceptions of justice, and (...) to particular definitions of secularism. I conclude by examining the "postsecular" turn in feminism, suggesting that we can see the same-sex marriage debate not in terms of an impasse between differing feminist approaches, but in terms of shared existential and ethical affinities. (shrink)

Increasingly, feminist theorists, such as Alison Martin and Ellen T. Armour, are attending to the numerous religious allusions within texts by Luce Irigaray. Engaging with this scholarship, this paper focuses on the problematic of evil that is elaborated within Irigarayan texts. Mobilizing the work of Catherine Malabou, the paper argues that Malabou's methodology of reading, which she identifies as "plastic," illuminates the logic at work within Irigaray's deployment of sacred stories.