scholarly journals Reincarnation, Predestination and Moral Responsibility: Critical Issues in Akan Philosophy

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
H M Majeed

African scholars such as Bolaji Idowu and John Mbiti have argued that belief in reincarnation is alien to African thought. However, this article argues that an adequate understanding of the Ghanaian Akan culture points to the presence of reincarnation in Akan, and for that matter African, philosophy. Nevertheless, unlike in Indian philosophy, for instance, where reincarnation depends on the quality of an individual’s moral life and is a means of ensuring moral responsibility, in Akan philosophy reincarnation is not dependent on moral considerations. Yet there is the idea of moral responsibility in Akan philosophy. The article interrogates how moral responsibility, an idea which is ordinarily regarded as reasonable in the presence of free will, is in the case of the Akan held alongside predestination. The article also reveals some serious philosophical difficulties which this Akan conception of moral responsibility generates in respect of the ‘reincarnated’ person. KeywordsReincarnation, predestination, moral responsibility, Akan philosophy, immortality, dualism, life and death

2015 ◽  
Vol 156 (12) ◽  
pp. 472-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Péter Kincses ◽  
Norbert Kovács ◽  
Kázmér Karádi ◽  
János Kállai

This paper is a summary report on the basic questions of the biopsychosocial approach to Parkinson’s disease. It deals with cognitive, affective and psychological health issues which significantly influence the outcome of the physical rehabilitation. In spite of the unchanged cognitive status, the psychological burden of the changes in the quality of life, the obstruction, the change in the affective tone, and the shrinking ability to fulfil social roles decrease the patient’s quality of life. An interdisciplinary approach is best suited for mitigating these effects. Not only the patient but also his/her family and environment is seriously affected by the disease and its consequences. Treatment and rehabilitation options for increasing or maintaining the quality of life of the affected patients are diverse, and significantly depend on the features of the health care system. The authors believe that the following review emphasizing health psychological principles may contribute to the work of professionals working in clinical and rehabilitational fields and through them may increase the quality of life of patients and their family. Orv. Hetil., 2015, 156(12), 472–478.


Author(s):  
Laily Yahya

The article review of ‘The Impact of Fun and Enjoyment on Adult Learning’ (Lucardie, 2014) opens doors to the kaleidoscope of fun and enjoyment amongst adult learners. The essence of this review is an informative snapshot on the critical issues of how fun and joy have impacted adult learning through a qualitative research drawing upon traditions of phenomenology. It aims to explore the affective experiences of fun and enjoyment. This article review attempts to highlight an insightful assessment of the ideas and the arguments that are being discussed by the author. The different interpretation of this concept draws out contrasting elements between learners and teachers’ beliefs. A twist to this review is a reflective stance procured to address central issues emerging in the article related to the Malaysian context. It is through the lens of the reader, Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI):4R is proposed. This refers to the process of continuously improving the quality of teaching and learning of an educational programme. This review concludes with the framing of CQI:4R to illustrate reflect, revisit, realign and reconstruct processes that could possibly navigate the architectural landscape of the Malaysian Teacher Education.


Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin

This chapter lays out the book’s central question: Assuming agency reductionism—that is, the thesis that the causal role of the agent in all agential activities is reducible to the causal role of states and events involving the agent—is it possible to construct a defensible model of libertarianism? It is explained that most think the answer is negative and this is because they think libertarians must embrace some form of agent-causation in order to address the problems of luck and enhanced control. The thesis of the book is that these philosophers are mistaken: it is possible to construct a libertarian model of free will and moral responsibility within an agency reductionist framework that silences that central objections to libertarianism by simply taking the best compatibilist model of freedom and adding indeterminism in the right junctures of human agency. A brief summary of the chapters to follow is given.


Author(s):  
John Deigh

The essay offers an interpretation of P. F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” on which attributions of moral responsibility presuppose a practice of holding people morally responsible for their actions, and what explains the practice is our liability to such reactive attitudes as resentment and indignation. The interpretation is offered to correct a common misinterpretation of Strawson’s essay. On this common misinterpretation, attributions of moral responsibility are implicit in the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation, and consequently our liability to these attitudes cannot explain these attributions. The reason this is a misinterpretation of Strawson’s essay is that Strawson’s compatibilist solution to the free will problem requires that our liability to the reactive attitudes be conceptually prior to our attributions of moral responsibility.


This is the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility. The papers were drawn from the fourth biennial New Orleans Workshop in Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), held November 2–4, 2017. The essays cover a wide range of topics relevant to agency and responsibility: the threat of neuroscience to free will; the relevance of resentment and guilt to responsibility; how control and self-control pertain to moral agency, oppression, and poverty; responsibility for joint agency; the role and conditions of shame in theories of attributability; how one might take responsibility without blameworthy quality of will; what it means to have standing to blame others; the relevance of moral testimony to moral responsibility; how to build a theory of attributabiity that captures all the relevant cases; and how thinking about blame better enables us to dissolve a dispute in moral philosophy between actualists and possibilists.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
VERONICA JOHANSSON ◽  
SURJO R. SOEKADAR ◽  
JENS CLAUSEN

Abstract:Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) can enable communication for persons in severe paralysis including locked-in syndrome (LIS); that is, being unable to move or speak while aware. In cases of complete loss of muscle control, termed “complete locked-in syndrome,” a BCI may be the only viable solution to restore communication. However, a widespread ignorance regarding quality of life in LIS, current BCIs, and their potential as an assistive technology for persons in LIS, needlessly causes a harmful situation for this cohort. In addition to their medical condition, these persons also face social barriers often perceived as more impairing than their physical condition. Through social exclusion, stigmatization, and frequently being underestimated in their abilities, these persons are being locked out in addition to being locked-in. In this article, we (1) show how persons in LIS are being locked out, including how key issues addressed in the existing literature on ethics, LIS, and BCIs for communication, such as autonomy, quality of life, and advance directives, may reinforce these confinements; (2) show how these practices violate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and suggest that we have a moral responsibility to prevent and stop this exclusion; and (3) discuss the role of BCIs for communication as one means to this end and suggest that a novel approach to BCI research is necessary to acknowledge the moral responsibility toward the end users and avoid violating the human rights of persons in LIS.


2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Keim Campbell

This paper is a defense of traditional compatibilism. Traditional compatibilism is, roughly, the view that (a) free will is essential to moral responsibility, (b) free will requires alternative possibilities of action, or alternatives for short, and (c) moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. Traditional compatibilism is a version of the traditional theory of free will. According to the traditional theory, a person S performed an action a freely only if S could have done otherwise, that is, only if S had alternatives. The traditional theory is often contrasted with the source theory: S performed a freely only if S was the source of a (McKenna 2001; Pereboom 2003). One may adopt a combined view of free will that sanctions both the traditional and source theories (Kane 1996, 72-3; van Inwagen 1983). As I use the terms ‘source theorist’ and ‘traditional theorist,’ the former refers to folks who accept the source theory and reject the traditional theory; the latter refers to folks who accept the traditional theory whether or not they accept the source theory.


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