Framing and conflict: the case of the Asante Akyem North district’s farmer-herder conflict in Ghana

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how framing of conflict in different phases is constructed and how the specific framing affects the development of the conflict and its management in the farmer–herder conflict in the Asante Akyem North District of Ghana. Design/methodology/approach The study area is Agogo which falls within the Asante Akyem North District in Ghana. The study used a qualitative approach whose philosophical ontology and epistemology believe that meaning is constructed (interpretivism). It further used a case study design using in-depth interviews, focus group discussion and observation guide. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to select the respondents. The data were analysed using the thematic analysis approach. Ethical considerations such as informed consent, willingness and anonymity of respondents were duly respected. Findings The findings highlighted that the conflict actors formed frames such as identity-relational, affective-intellectual and negotiation-win frames as the drivers of the conflict. In this conflict, the farmers who are indigenes and custodians of the land feel more potent over the transnational migrants who are pastoralists and argue that the herdsmen be flushed out without negotiation. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the papers that bring to light the psychological dimension of the causes of the farmer–herder conflict in Ghana.

Philosophy and the Future of Human Being

Social Philosophy is a discipline that deals with social behaviour and interprets society and its institutions according to ethical values instead of empirical relations. Bearing this in mind, I decided to explore the phenomenon of the crisis regarding the modern ethos of postmodern culture in the context of the history of classical philosophy. I have done so by relating it to new theoretical and epistemological frameworks of social, philosophical ontology on the one hand, and to the attempt to find an appropriate linguistic paradigm though philosophical semantics on the other hand that would have the potential to create an alternative ethical category. The ultimate goal is to show that philosophy becomes philosophy through the human being himself.

PHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHICAL ONTOLOGY: FORMS OF INTERNAL UNITY

It is shown that physics and philosophical ontology in the bases are involved in the same general being. However these sources are unevident for the physics, they are covered by construction of theoretical schemes. Ways of ontological interpretation of physics and the problems connected with them are analyzed.

MONOTHEISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY. THEOS HYPSISTOS AND THE ORACLE OF APOLLO OF CLAROS

Monotheism in Late Antiquity is a multidimensional topic. The article deals with only one aspect of the formation of monotheistic tendencies in Greco-Roman religious conceptions, both traditional pagan and Judeo-Christian, including "Judaizing" paganism and Gnosticism. Both folk cults (an epigraphically attested cult of the Theos Hypsistos) and the new monotheistic religion of the revived oracles (the inscription from Oenoanda and the Tübingen Theosophy 13) are considered. We also see how the eschatological and soteriological motifs characteristic of monotheistic religions are revealed in the context of a kind of philosophical ontology.

Ontological Categorizations and Selection Biases in Cosmology: The Case of Extra Galactic Objects

One of the innovative approaches in contemporary philosophical ontology consists in the assumption of a plurality of ontologies based on different metaphysical presuppositions. Such presuppositions involve, among others, the identification of relevant properties for the objects of our domain as a guiding principle in uncovering what it is to be considered intrinsic and what could be the mere effect of selection preferences based on objective or subjective criteria. A remarkable example of the application of a background metaphysical theory in astrophysics is the problem of selection biases in detecting cosmological objects, such as supernovae, galaxies and gamma-ray bursts. We will show that it is valuable to be aware of the importance of uncovering this type of background theory to better understand selection effects and to promote a novel approach in scientific research.

Terminologia a współczesna rzeczywistość naukowa.

The author refl ects on a new interpretation framework in research on terminology. Referring to the philosophy of science and modern science studies, he distinguishes two types of doing science: traditional science and modern science. The centre of the linguistic cognitive space is located in traditional science. The naturalistic cognitive perspective determined also the shape of terminology studies. After philosophical ontology, the author adopts four ways in which a term can exist: in specifi c texts and in the system as well as in the individual and collective consciousness. This requires giving consideration to various perspectives (including the anti-naturalistic one) in terminological research and diverse cognitive methods, as well as a theoretical consolidation of the obtained results.

The Fundamental Principles and Laws of the Ontology of Systems Aesthetic Philosophy

This chapter notes that the philosophical ontology of system aesthetics is also the ontology of the systems philosophy and points out that system philosophy is the foundation of systemic beauty and explains the basic rules of systemic aesthetics. According to the view of systems philosophy, beauty lies in the unity of system diversity: the regularity and the rationality of the unity, the symmetry and non-conservation of the universe, the fit-for-purpose of the least action principle, and the hierarchy and structure of optimization. Those all constitute the overall beauty of systems aesthetics.

Philosophical Ontology and Rational Justification: The Ontological Aspects of Theoretical Knowledge

Philosophical ontology is a difficult to define category of objects, right up to the mixing of different levels of abstraction. As a result, various interpretations are possible, even paradoxical ones. Modern logical theories, unlike traditional logic, make it possible to identify the difficulties and outline ways to explain different types of ontological premises of theoretical knowledge, including philosophical doctrines.

What’s Wrong With the Assemblage Theory?

The paper examines Manuel DeLanda’s assemblage theory in order to show that two of its key concepts - flat ontology and the idea of emergence - are incompatible with each other. The philosophical context of assemblage theory is outlined with a brief consideration of different interpretations of Deleuze’s ideas and an examination of DeLanda’s reconstruction of Deleuze’s ontology, which served as the conceptual foundation for assemblage theory. The author then exposes key flaws in this reconstruction, in particular the conversion of the scientific ontology of dynamic systems theory into a univocal philosophical ontology and metaphysics of assemblages. When coupled with the universalization of relations of exteriority, this leads to numerous conceptual deficiencies ranging from infinite reductionist regress and mereological atomism to overlooking the relations of necessity between assemblages. The lack of such a relation is a key to evaluating assemblage theory. DeLanda interprets the concept of emergence as a product of exclusively exterior relations while ignoring interior (internal) relations. Consequently, he refuses to regard assemblages as ontologically dependent on each other. The existence of interior relations between parts of assemblages suggests that causal interactions between those parts precede assemblages with emergent properties not only, or not merely, as a matter of logic or chronology. They precede assemblages transcendentally as conditions of their possibility. This presupposes that there is ontological dependence between an assemblage and its elements, and this dependence itself presupposes a hierarchical structure in the world such that, for an assemblage to exist as a whole, its parts must also exist. This structure is incompatible with the main tenet of assemblage theory, which is the concept of flat ontology. In closing, the implications of the epistemological problems in assemblage theory are discussed, and a position that follows logically from solving these problems is considered. This position is the ontic structural realism of James Ladyman and Don Ross, and its main thrust is that mathematical structures are all that really exists.