The present study scrutinizes the role of societal culture in cases of sexual violence in Greek sport, as presented in the media after a two times Olympic medalist of Greece fired up the “‘me too’ Movement” in the country. Specifically, data for this study consisted of 36 media articles, reporting multiple cases of sexual abuse and harassment in Greek sport and were published between January 2021 and January 2022. We drew on the cultural praxis heuristic to explore how the cultural (...) setting operates as an underlying factor in priming athletes for harassment and abuse and in oppressing them into not speaking up. Our thematic analysis of media data revealed two overarching themes, namely, keeping the home intact and failed negotiations with power. Based on these findings, we discuss how subtle manifestations of patriarchy and collectivism perpetuate sexualized violence in Greek sport as they promote a climate of silence, prevent safeguarding, maintain underreporting of sexual violence, and delayed the arrival of the #metoo. We conclude that under the current circumstances, change seems to be a threat to all involved in Greek sport, yet for different reasons. For the coaches, sport officials, stakeholders, state system, change would require them to relinquish male powers and authority, find new meaning of what it means to be and do as a man, and allow women to be seen as counterparts. For the female athletes-survivors, it would require them to prioritize the self and their self-care and let go of the in-group loyalty and subordination learned and exhibited from infancy. We also contend that mere translations of international and regional safeguarding guidelines and toolkits cannot foster awareness raising, nor the implementation of measures within cultural settings that divert from the Global North. If we care to combat the universal phenomenon of sexualized violence in sport, a glocal approach is needed, where local socio-cultural factors are acknowledged, their role is addressed, and violence is understood within its context. (shrink)

Vocational education is generally structured around self-evaluation and the analysis of the practice of people in training, in order to favour their autonomy to face unprecedented situations. In this sense, a central position is given to experience in training which is observed and analysed each time it is possible. This approach that the institution - and its teachers - have to fundamentally rethink dual education. But rethinking dual education taking into account the experience of the teachers in training as well (...) as the situations they face, results in a questioning on various temporalities which are sometimes competing, in education. The meso time of the institution not always being in phase with the micro and very personal time of learning, this dysphasia can become a source of schizo-chronie, a discontinuity of which the rhythmicity, will naturally be different from one person to another. This research thus gives us an opportunity to understand more fully the rhythms of adult learning in the situation of on-the-job training in order to take this into consideration in future teaching and andragogic system. It is addressed to teachers designing dual educational systems and teachers involved in such trainings. More generally to any teacher or designer, even if he/she does not act in a situation of dual training, as dual training is not just a simple juxtaposition of place and/or time, but also a process of explicitation and mediatisation of professional practice. (shrink)

I evaluate a hypothetical society of human clones. Cloning implies the production of exact copies of an organism from a replication of one of the organism’s cells without any recourse to the genealogical protocol of male and female reproduction. I thus pose the question: Can we regard a cloned copy of Mr. James as a son of Mr. James or Mr. James once again? I consider certain implications of human cloning to the concepts of individual uniqueness, and thus of genealogical (...) family tree and the future of the naming and identification of humanity? (shrink)

Violent conflicts in emerging democracies or societies in transition threaten the stability of state governance institutions, which brings about insecurity of lives, property and deepens the vicious cycle of poverty and criminality in Africa. The first responsibility of any government is to provide security of lives and property. At no time since Nigeria’s civil war has the country witnessed the resurgence of violence and insecurity that claims hundreds of lives weekly. It is a sectarian insurgence of multiple dimensions. This article (...) makes the case that Boko Haram is not just a religious phenomenon but a reflection of a so- cio-political, economic and ethnic problem caused by bad governance. As a result, Boko Haram has witnessed a cross-border influence and impact which has expanded its frontiers beyondNigeriato neighboring countries in the West African region. The theoretical framework employed in this article posits that Boko Haram has its roots fundamentally in poverty caused by bad governance in the Northern Moslem bend, in Nigeria and the West African Region where corruption, human rights violations, marginalization of cultural, political and religious groups have created the situation whereby weak state structures have abysmally failed to deliver on the development promises made during elections. So the emergence of Nigeria’s Boko Haram violence, as a result of the street poverty and the rise of unemployed street beggars, popularly known as Almajiris, and their use for electoral and party violence, was encouraged by the neglect and abandonment of the masses by the governors and other elected leaders. The expansion and consolidation of the Boko Haram insurgence to other parts of the country and neighboring West African nations was made possible by the already existing failed state institutions, bad governance and corruption and the existing band of small criminal sectarian groups that depend upon their survival on aids from Al Quaeda, drug gangs and sea piracy. The religious dimension is a marginal factor fueled by fundamental socio-economic and political variables which have been thrown up in the first place by bad governance and leadership in Nigeria. (shrink)

Kwame Nkrumah invokes the doctrine of emergentism in the hope of reconciling theism - a tenacious part of the African worldview - with materialism. However, in this article I seek to show that this reconciliation is not only ultimately unsuccessful, but is actually impossible. Towards this end, I identify weaknesses in what I call the six argumentative pillars of Nkrumah’s theory of emergentism (which he calls “philosophical materialism”), namely, his arguments regarding the origin of the cosmic material, the primary reality (...) of matter, idealism, categorial convertibility, dialectic change, and the self-motion of matter. The article should provide not only alternative perspectives to Nkrumah’s metaphysics, but also highlight some broader metaphysical implications for both strong and weak emergentism. (shrink)

Strong emergentists face a quadruple dilemma: accept the physical closure principle and deny strong emergentism, deny the closure principle and court either substance or property dualism, accept substance dualism and kill emergentism by accepting vitalism or accept property dualism and get locked into the fallacy of reconciling upward emergence with downward causation without the help of any external agency. Strong emergentists would most likely choose, and I seek to show that it contains contradictions that kill emergentism nonetheless. This is because (...) emergentists would ultimately have to admit the role of external agency or environmental input regarding upward/downward interaction. But once this happens, there seems no need to discuss emergence, since we are no longer entirely sure that properties alleged as emergent actually emerged from the base properties from which we would say they emerged. (shrink)

Having taken note of, and critically analyzed, Professor Maduabuchi Dukor’s epochal work entitled“Theistic Humanism of African philosophy-the great debate on substance and method of philosophy”(2010), I am much encouraged and rationally convinced that he has succeeded in building the core critical and essential foundational pillars of what can safely pass for professional African philosophy, though much remains to be done by way of further research from other scholars. Based upon that conviction and the great prospects that the African philosophy project (...) breakthrough holds for every African philosopher in the global village, I am also motivated to take a closer look at, and carry out a critical exposition of the concept of justice in the context of African cultural values, using the propositions of what he calls the canons of cultural values that are native to African philosophy. These cultural values define African identity and delineateAfrica’s contributions to the advancement of the global ideas of justice, axiology, gender and globalization. The essence and methodology of this article, therefore, will lift the relevant thematic thrusts and arguments made by the erudite Professor of African philosophy to“properly locate African philosophy in the context of globalism, cosmopolitanism, science and what it could contribute to emerging global culture”(Dukor,2010:p.ix). The central point of this critical exposition is that his theistic inspired cultural humanism has enhanced the global understanding of not only justice but feminist rights and the urgent needs for African philosophy to make its contributions towards the emancipation of and empowerment of women both in the continent and globally. The feminist search for justice, according to Dukor, is“the current global pool where the African is needed urgently to intervene”, since“feminism and women liberation has truncated the equilibrium and balance of relations between man and woman. African contribution to this class struggle between man and woman is a neutral one that absorbs the man and woman to their respective natural places in the nature’s womb”. Women’s search for global justice and the struggle to have their human rights recognized as a part of mankind’s gender balancing process would be philosophically enriched by Professor Dukor’s cultural value propositions and canons of justice. (shrink)

The history of women has been defined by a world enmeshed in woes, frustration, oppression, maltreatment and inequalities. Feminism as a philosophy of change sought to fight, end and change this woeful scenario of women that denied their self respect, dignity and led to a loss of self confidence. Fundamentally, feminist philosophy sought for explanations and justifications why women were denied a voice and why they were historically not treated as coequals of men. The basis of inequality is historically rooted (...) in cultural and philosophical falsities that were not evidenced based but were used to justify oppression against women. The Universal Declaration of human rights gave women and the world the platform that empowered them with rights and led to fresh processes that sought to end oppression and their underdevelopment inspired by inequality, iniquities, denial of opportunities for growth and empowerment. The millennium development goal of ending inequality and oppression against women should achieve equality and women’s empowerment in Africa. Since the declaration of the MDGS, considerable gains had been made inAfricabut challenges and problems are still identified in the areas of cultural inequality complicated by the weakness of the major governance institutions and corruption. Other challenges centre on women’s lack of genuine empowerment, violence against women, trafficking in women, denial of human rights, lack of participation in policy and governance. Since empowerment is the key to achieving mainstreaming and gender equality, this paper seeks to redefine the concept of empowering women as the platform to ending inequality, social injustice and achieving equality in the context of the unique challenges of underdevelopment facingAfrica. It will identify the policy implications of establishing empowerment structures that address multiple challenges facing gender inequality and how these structures will assist in building the necessary feminine human resources that will make women as partners of sustainable growth and development after 2015. (shrink)

I argue that when conceiving or assessing normative ideas about how we should organize society into the kind of ecosystem we desire, it is unwise to completely ignore empirical conditions. I also demonstrate that when evaluating empirical difficulties attending a social system, it is also unwise to do so in total oblivion to the normative idea or objective informing the establishment of such a system. Each of these assessments I call an under informed single-level analysis. By contrast I advocate a (...) multi-level analysis (by which we evaluate both the normative and empirical dimensions of an idea or a social system) or, at the least, an informed single-level analysis (by which we evaluate either a normative idea or an empirical system with an implicit awareness of the content of the other level). I demonstrate that these models of analysis would never yield the same conclusions as an under informed single-level analysis. For my case studies I focus on the various models of analyses used in the debate about liberal majoritarian and consensus/communal democracies. (shrink)

Critical history is a philosophy of history that highlights the peculiarity and originality of the epistemology and methodology of Bernard Lonergan in the study of history. It is a method of reading the movement of history, through the Lonerganian creative criticism as well as a critical instrument that can help one rise above diverse forms of oversight and bias while working for progress in a human community. It tries to expound on how one can build personal capacities that work for (...) the advantage of the common good. Its precepts can help one achieve self-transcendence and authenticity which are essential in the making of a creative society. It can inspire and create symbols that link one's experience, imagination, rationality, responsibility and affectivity to authentic lived history. It can arouse an intellectual conversion that brings moral revival and can offer insights that help community planners in proposing proper solutions by identifying the actual drivers of progress, decline and re-covery in a society. Critical history creates an intellectual cultivation of mind and character achieved by insight which helps to build an authentic human person and progressive community. Its critical elements can lead to higher viewpoints that rise above prejudices, and these higher viewpoints can move one to integration to higher values. The result will be an authentic subjectivity and emergence of republic of virtues guided by objectivity and sound ethics. (shrink)

I focus on a certain epiphenomenalist syllogism summarized by Sarah Patterson. Contemporary epiphenomenalists believe that (A) mental properties are distinct from physical properties, (B) the physical properties of mental events are causally sufficient for the physical effects of those events, (C) given (B), no properties of mental events distinct from their physical properties are causally efficacious in bringing about their physical effects, and (D) the mental properties of mental events are therefore not causally efficacious in bringing about the physical effects (...) of those events. I argue that (C) is at tension with the principle of nomological necessity supposedly binding supervening to subvenient properties, and I argue that (B), upon which (C) is based, is contradicted by the reality of intentionality, a reality that I demonstrate through, among other ways, a thought experiment about a counterfactual involving the possibility of changes in society at the removal of morality and law. (shrink)

In his proposal for a democracy by consensus, Wiredu argued that deliberation is an activity that depends solely on the logical persuasiveness of ideas. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze and I had objected to this view of deliberation. Bernard Matolino has responded separately to Eze and me by sticking to Wiredu’s position that deliberation is a purely rational activity. In this article, I support my earlier claim that persuasion (and hence deliberation) is not an entirely logical activity, and our concern as human (...) beings is to recognize the influence of non-rational factors, for the purpose of minimizing the role of these non-rational factors. My general aim here is to explore the implications of a counterfactual situation in which we assume that deliberation is a purely rational activity, and these implications are unpalatable even to proponents of deliberation as a purely rational activity. My conclusion is that it is only by recognizing the role of non-rational factors in deliberation that we are driven to institute mechanisms to ensure that logic dominates over non-rational factors as much as practicable in either persuading or in being persuaded. Assuming that deliberation is a purely rational activity, on the other hand, forestalls any measures and allows non-rational influences to fester undeterred. (shrink)

This research exposes the connection between economic inequality and racism. The central argument is that racism is predicated on the economic superiority of the racist. The corollary argument is that conceptions of skin colour are consequences rather than causes of racism: racism does not arise because of skin colour, but because different skin colours have become associated with certain economic conditions for a very long period of time in history. The argument is in fact extended to posit that the topography (...) of the racist relationship would be reversed if the economic tables were also reversed. The conclusion is that the relationship between racism and economic inequality is, therefore, more significant than the relationship between racism and skin colour. This conclusion has consequences regarding how races at the receiving end of racism should respond to racism. (shrink)

This article aims to put face to face the positions of Deleuze and Lacan in relation to the theories regarding the idea of the Oedipus complex inherited from Freudian psychoanalysis. This confrontation will become manifest by reviewing the concepts of desire, repression and castration, from the point of view of the subject’s relationship with language. In order to achieve this purpose, we will go through the topological proposals whereby both Deleuze and Lacan render account of that which is housed outside (...) the signifying logic, the paradigmatic axis of which is precisely the Oedipal Logic, thus forging a cutting-edge work in which the materiality of language, its sonority and texture will acquire relevance to rethink the status of the unconscious itself. (shrink)

I revisit in this article the question of the possibility of political integration of the Afri- can continent, something rst proposed by Kwame Nkrumah and then re-proposed by Muamar Gaddaf . My focus here is not to examine the extent of African leaders’ willing- ness to bring about integration, nor will I concentrate on the political intrigues surround- ing it (though these will be brie y acknowledged). Further, I will not contest Nkrumah’s economic argument (which is commonsensically correct and in (...) line with mainstream eco- nomics) but will, instead, take up the more normative question of the possibility, and thus practicability, of political integration in light of cultural and ethnic heterogeneity on the continent. I argue that political integration is possible, and I support the gradualist view- point by drawing lessons from Nicholas Taleb’s concept of antifragility and pointing out that there is almost as much heterogeneity at individual and simpler society levels as there is in ethnically diverse societies. (shrink)

Wiredu’s call for democracy by consensus is illustrated by his description of traditional African consensual rationality. This description contains the attribution of immanence to African consensual rationality. This paper objects to this doctrine of immanence. More importantly, the doctrine of immanence has led to the attribution of pure rationality to traditional African consensual practices. With reference to Aristotle’s three components of persuasion, I object to deliberation as purely rational and impervious to extraneous factors. I further argue that it is because (...) deliberation is not always perfectly rational that the process of consensus can suffer three forms of social conformity: conformity to dominant players, to numerical opinion majority, and to group-centrism. These forms of conformity mean that a consensus task order could lead to decisions of more inclusive value, but not necessarily decisions of more epistemic value. The concept of agonistic inquiry is employed to tackle what I see as the dangers of conformity and complacency in the project of inclusivity, and this is to strike a crucial balance between too-consensual and purely adversarial forms of deliberation. (shrink)

Aims To examine the understanding of the ethical dilemmas associated with Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) among Jordanian medical students, physicians in training, and senior practitioners. Methods We implemented a literature-validated questionnaire to examine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the target population during the period between April and August 2023. Themes of ethical debate included privacy breaches, consent, ownership, augmented biases, epistemology, and accountability. Participants’ responses were showcased using descriptive statistics and compared between groups using t-test or ANOVA. (...) Results We included 466 participants. The greater majority of respondents were interns and residents (50.2%), followed by medical students (38.0%). Most participants were affiliated with university institutions (62.4%). In terms of privacy, participants acknowledged that Big Data and AI were susceptible to privacy breaches (39.3%); however, 59.0% found such breaches justifiable under certain conditions. For ethical debacles involving informed consent, 41.6% and 44.6% were aware that obtaining informed consent posed an ethical limitation in Big Data and AI applications and denounced the concept of “broad consent”, respectively. In terms of ownership, 49.6% acknowledged that data cannot be owned yet accepted that institutions could hold a quasi-control of such data (59.0%). Less than 50% of participants were aware of Big Data and AI’s abilities to augment or create new biases in healthcare. Furthermore, participants agreed that researchers, institutions, and legislative bodies were responsible for ensuring the ethical implementation of Big Data and AI. Finally, while demonstrating limited experience with using such technology, participants generally had positive views of the role of Big Data and AI in complementing healthcare. Conclusion Jordanian medical students, physicians in training and senior practitioners have limited awareness of the ethical risks associated with Big Data and AI. Institutions are responsible for raising awareness, especially with the upsurge of such technology. (shrink)

Preoccupation with multiparty aggregative democracy in Africa has produced superficial forms of political/electoral choice-making by subjects that deepen pre-existing ethnic and primordial cleavages. This is because the principles of the multiparty system presuppose that decision-making through voting should be the result of a mere aggregation of pre-existing, fixed preferences. To this kind of decision-making, I propose deliberative democracy as a supplementary approach. My reason is that deliberation, beyond mere voting, should be central to decisionmaking and that, for a decision to (...) be legitimate, it must be preceded by deliberation, not merely the aggregation of pre-existing fixed preferences. I agree with arguments that when adequate justifications are made for claims/demands/conclusions, deliberation has the potential to have a salutary effect on people’s opinions, transform/evolve preferences, better inform judgments/voting, lead to increasingly ‘common good’ decisions, have moral educative power, place more burden of account-giving on public officers, and furnish subjects/losers/outvoted with justifications for collectively binding decisions. I argue that a deliberative turn in politics in Africa will have a mitigating effect on tribal and money politics. (shrink)

Les recherches présentées dans cet ouvrage s'inscrivent dans deux grandes familles épistémologiques, celle des approches narratives et celle de l'analyse de l'activité. Les auteur(e)s convoquent les principes théoriques et méthodologiques de ces deux approches pour interroger la place du sujet dans le travail éducatif à partir de plusieurs points de vue : l'intersubjectivité d'une situation éducative et la spécificité de la rencontre qu'elle génère ; le rôle des outils narratifs et réflexifs dans l'émancipation de l'individu ; la prise en compte (...) de la temporalité dans l'élaboration et l'analyse de ces outils ; l'importance d'une posture de recherche collaborative prenant en compte l'ensemble des sujets impliqués dans cette rencontre. Impulsé par l'équipe Profeor du laboratoire CIREL et ouvert à d'autres auteurs experts de ces champs, l'ouvrage propose un dialogue entre ces deux familles épistémologiques, souvent abordées de façon distincte, ainsi qu'entre chercheurs, professionnels de l'éducation et de la formation et apprenants."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In his plea for consensual democracy in Africa, Kwasi Wiredu recommends unanimity about what is to be done, not what ought to be done, or unanimity on action rather than unanimity of values, beliefs and opinion. I caution the use of this procedural instrument by showing that some issues are so value-laden that a group decision cannot be value-neutral. It may sometimes be more productive to entertain value differences to keep them from going underground and becoming dangerous. However, the ability (...) to locate some common interest or ground seems to be crucial for such value confrontation. (shrink)

According to Wiredu, the Akan profess secular esteem rather than religious worship to supra-natural beings, who they perceive in an empirical sense. He backs this up by re-reading what he sees as the Akan general ontology in a way that denies them of the concepts of the supernatural, the transcendental, the mental, the spiritual, and an ontologically distinct mind. At the end of denying the three criteria of worship as well as all of these other concepts which might otherwise be (...) available to the Akan, one might struggle to find any evidence that the Akan even had a religion. I dispute this secular reading, and I more generally demonstrate that the characterizations of the Akan attitude to divinity as non-worshipping, non-supernatural, non-transcendent, and non-spiritual, are either conceptually flawed, factually incorrect, or both. (shrink)

This paper tries to explore the origin of an Ifrīqiyan historical school active in the middle of the 9th century throughout the unfortunately lost work of the chronicler ʿĪsā b. Muḥammad b. Sulaymān b. Abī l-Muhājir Dīnār. This paper opens with a gathering of all the excerpts of this list work which have been copied by other writers. Apart from the study of the historical importance of those “new” fragments, we’ll try to understand the nature of this work and the (...) strategies of its composition. (shrink)

The hegemonic role of technology on the mental structures of contemporary society is analyzed in five pieces which comprise the first part of a collection of essays dedicated to the philosophical meditation on different topics.

Prior research has demonstrated that accountants differ from the general population on many personality traits. Understanding accountants’ personality traits is important when these characteristics may impact professional behavior or ability to work with members of the business community. Our study investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism, ethical orientation, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias in Canadian accountants. We find that Canadian accountants score much higher on the Machiavellianism scale than U.S. accountants. Additionally, our results show a significant relationship between Machiavellianism and (...) relativism, idealism, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias. Our results indicate that professional Canadian accountants may not share the same personality characteristics as U.S. accountants. We extend previous research investigating Canadian accountants, by explicitly recognizing the impact of social desirability response bias, and by including anti-intellectualism. (shrink)

In this interview with curator Cécile Bourne Farrell, artist Jananne Al-Ani discusses her aerial films Shadow Sites I (2010) and Shadow Sites II (2011) and the representation of landscape, from the Middle East to the American south-west, in relation to Kitty Hauser’s book Shadow Sites: Photography, Archaeology, & the British Landscape 1927–1955 (2007) a study on the emergence of aerial archaeology and the role of the sun’s movement in materializing latent histories embedded in the landscape. A French translation of the (...) interview first appeared in issue 59 of the journal Multitudes. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide an axiomatic foundation of pessimism and optimism towards ambiguity that emerges due to growing awareness. In our setup, this corresponds to a discovery of finer “descriptions” of the original contingencies. A decision-maker can form subjective probabilistic beliefs on the original state space and behaves as an expected utility maximizer. However, as finer contingencies are discovered, he may perceive ambiguity with respect to the newly identified states and thus be unable to extend her initial probabilistic beliefs (...) to the expanded state space in an additive way. As a result, the decision-maker’s new beliefs are now “ambiguous” and represented by a probability distribution combined, for each refinement of an original state, with a degree of confidence in this probability estimate. We provide a parametric representation of preferences, identify the DM’s degree of ambiguity as well as his attitude towards ambiguity as captured by the degree of optimism and pessimism. We illustrate the relation of our model to some well-known capacities, such as the E-capacities introduced by Eichberger and Kelsey, the JP-capacities of Jaffray and Philippe and the NEO-additive capacities developed by Chateauneuf et al.. (shrink)

Qualitative researchers, particularly those researching business and society topics, should embrace artificial intelligence (AI) to conduct efficient, explicatory, and equitable research but also exercise caution to avoid its pitfalls.