Papers by Jonathan O K E K E Chimakonam
Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions, 2013
By predication alone, Africans say many things with seeming ease which ordinarily they would not ... more By predication alone, Africans say many things with seeming ease which ordinarily they would not and could not say. The metalogical beauty of it is that they say without having said and they make hills flat without having lifted a hoe. In this one finds African predicate logic a lot richer than its western counterpart. Predicate logic, sometimes called quantification logic was invented by the German Logician Gottlob Frege 1 in his monumental book Bergriffsschrift. It has since been broken down to a number of classifications namely first-order, second-order and higher-order. In African demarcation, we shall treat just the first and the second order. The mainline of difference between the western and the African versions of these logics are to be found in the quantifiers, rules, evaluations, operators, variables, proof mechanisms and the criterion for logically valid formulae. For the latter, while validity depends on subject matter in African logic, in western logic it depends primarily on logical form. Logical form in its secondary role is just like another tool in a kit box for African logic. In what follows, I shall outline the main doctrines of the first and the second order logics.
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Polylog, 2015
In this paper, we shall ask; what is the nature of Igbo thought on law? What constitutes jus-tice... more In this paper, we shall ask; what is the nature of Igbo thought on law? What constitutes jus-tice in Igbo and modern1 thought? What is the place of reconciliation in Igbo and mod-ern thought? To what extent are the models of justice and reconciliation in Igbo thought relevant to modern political thought? Are the Igbo and the modern conceptions of justice and reconciliation adequate? These shall form the spring board of my inquiries in this work.
Generally, the idea of justice is pursued in three principal ways, to wit, as retributive where offences are punished (classical), as distributive where properties are shared (seeAristotle 1999);(see Rawls 1999); (see Nozick 1974) and as harmony where order is restored (see Plato 1991). Although I will touch on all for the purpose of clarity, my arguments will center on justice as retributive which will dovetail into justice as corrective.
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Dialogue and Universalism, 2021
A special issue on 'racism'. Dialogue and Universalism 2021 Issue Guest Edited by Jonathan O Chim... more A special issue on 'racism'. Dialogue and Universalism 2021 Issue Guest Edited by Jonathan O Chimakonam, et al.
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Journal of Biology Agriculture and Healthcare, 2012
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IOSR Journal of Pharmacy and Biological Sciences, 2012
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IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2012
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Globalization is a motor that exports Western ideologies such as liberal democracy, capitalism to... more Globalization is a motor that exports Western ideologies such as liberal democracy, capitalism to Africa, and other parts of the world. Hence, the situation in Africa since the post-colonial era demonstrates a discontent for liberal democracy and its economic option of capitalism. Thus, in this paper, we show that the discontent in Western individualistic ontology is in conflict with traditional African communalistic ontology, and therefore, it is detrimentally hunting the practice of liberal democracy in post-colonial Africa.
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This conversation is inspired by Uduma O. Uduma's essay entitled " The Question of the 'African' ... more This conversation is inspired by Uduma O. Uduma's essay entitled " The Question of the 'African' in African Philosophy: In search of a Criterion for the Africanness of a Philosophy ". In this essay, Uduma coined what he calls " the Africanness of a Philosophy Question which consists in the ultimate criterion for African philosophy. He was not the first to dwell on the Africanness issue in African philosophy but he was the first, to my knowledge, to christen it as such. Before Uduma framed the question into a proper metaphilosophical concern in African philosophy, old campaigners like Paulin Hountondji, Odera Oruka, Peter Bodunrin, Kwasi Wiredu, Sophie Oluwole, Innocent Onyewuenyi, etc., have all dwelt on it with some going more in-depth than others. I have also dwelt partly on this question before in an essay entitled " The Criteria Question in African Philosop hy: Escape from the Horns of Jingoism and Afrocentrism ". Incidentally, my treatment of the issue was not digestive enough as I did not mention the likes of Bodunrin, Wiredu, Oluwole and even Uduma himself—a terrible short-sightedness—one that I wish to correct in this discussion. My first aim in this work is to attempt to settle this metaphilosophical vicious circle once and for all. On the basis of this, I wish also to orchestrate a shift from the vicious circle of metaphilosophical engagements to a more f ruitful conversational engagement in contemporary African philosophy. Our method shall consist in critical conversationalism. 1
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This paper has shown that the feed the world argument as the main justification for the
applicati... more This paper has shown that the feed the world argument as the main justification for the
application of biotechnology/genetic engineering to the mainstream of agriculture has collapsed
vis-à-vis the “terminator” or the “traitor” technology. Financial gain has also been established as
the main motive for the promoters of this technology. In doing this, we have raised health and
ethical concerns because it has been shown among others that applying GM on food crop
production could have unforeseen health consequences. This we argued out-weighs financial
benefits and called for caution and censorship in the application of biotechnology to food crop
production.
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Feminists all over the world are united in their contentions on many fronts such as societal norm... more Feminists all over the world are united in their contentions on many fronts such as societal norms and conditions that militate against a woman’s expression of her rights and abilities. In as many fronts, they have gained grounds, if not outright victories. However, we observe that among the Igbo women of Eastern Nigeria there is a front which accounts for substantial female deprivation, and which feminists have consistently passed over in their contentions, namely, the feminine cognition also known as epistemology of womanhood. In this paper, using the random sampling method, we have arrived at the conclusion that consciousness of their own gender has deprived Igbo women of free expression of their rights and abilities, sometimes as much as constraining societal norms and conditions have done. Consequently, we recommend a conscious adjustment of the epistemology of womanhood among Igbo women.
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Whether the revolutions in North Africa are Marxist or democratic, they sure have Marxist touch i... more Whether the revolutions in North Africa are Marxist or democratic, they sure have Marxist touch in that they grew out of people’s frustration with unemployment, elitist corruption, high cost of food, human right abuses, lack of freedom of speech and general poor living conditions. Although they are inspired by democratic desires and supported by democratic influences which are curiously excessive, they nonetheless exhibit elements of Marxism. This paper aims at three things: to provide a Marxist interpretation to the revolutions in North Africa, to point out the influence which democracy or the democratic ideals had on them, and to extrapolate on the unintended consequences of excessive democratic influence.
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Igbo Studies Review, 2015
ABSTRACT
Among the Igbo of today it is often mistaken that our fore-fathers lived in darkness, k... more ABSTRACT
Among the Igbo of today it is often mistaken that our fore-fathers lived in darkness, knew nothing and did nothing of worth. Any mention of the past was readily greeted with one scornful remark or another. The Igbo man of the pre-colonial era was a bush man, primitive, untamed, untutored and uncivilized. He had no civilization of his own and he had learned none from the outside world. However, Igbo scholars in the recent times have unearthed so much to contradict these false positions. In this work, we investigated the metric system of the Igbo some of which have been in practice for centuries. It was our goal to unearth and systematize the Igbo metric system that lies suppressed and hidden since colonial times in order to falsify the claim that prior to the coming of the Europeans the Igbo were a primitive, uncivilized people with no high cultures and a system of thought but, far beyond this, it was also our goal to push through these discoveries into the modern historical place for the sake of posterity and our invaluable identity.
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Author House, Indianapolis, 2012
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A thought system is the... more A thought system is the technical platform or the archimedean point of any culture. It is the inverter of raw, invisible human resource to technical and sophisticated industrial efficiency and genius. Aristotle was the first to mechanize the thought system of the western peoples with a gallant bivalent model of the classical two valued logic as its product. This logic as a technical tool accounts for the developments in all the human spheres of knowledge, western science became its eventual prodigy. We showed in this work that since a thought system characterizes a people's unique reasoning pattern, Africans have not excelled in the inventive exercises of science and technology because the imposed thought system of the western colonialists was a bane. Hence, in much the same way as Aristotle did, three centuries before Christ, we attempted a mechanization of African thought system so as to make it a handy tool in the hands of African artists and scientists. The result was a peculiar trivalent model capable of engendering unique metanarratives which would mark Africa's return to history.
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Papers by Jonathan O K E K E Chimakonam
Generally, the idea of justice is pursued in three principal ways, to wit, as retributive where offences are punished (classical), as distributive where properties are shared (seeAristotle 1999);(see Rawls 1999); (see Nozick 1974) and as harmony where order is restored (see Plato 1991). Although I will touch on all for the purpose of clarity, my arguments will center on justice as retributive which will dovetail into justice as corrective.
application of biotechnology/genetic engineering to the mainstream of agriculture has collapsed
vis-à-vis the “terminator” or the “traitor” technology. Financial gain has also been established as
the main motive for the promoters of this technology. In doing this, we have raised health and
ethical concerns because it has been shown among others that applying GM on food crop
production could have unforeseen health consequences. This we argued out-weighs financial
benefits and called for caution and censorship in the application of biotechnology to food crop
production.
Among the Igbo of today it is often mistaken that our fore-fathers lived in darkness, knew nothing and did nothing of worth. Any mention of the past was readily greeted with one scornful remark or another. The Igbo man of the pre-colonial era was a bush man, primitive, untamed, untutored and uncivilized. He had no civilization of his own and he had learned none from the outside world. However, Igbo scholars in the recent times have unearthed so much to contradict these false positions. In this work, we investigated the metric system of the Igbo some of which have been in practice for centuries. It was our goal to unearth and systematize the Igbo metric system that lies suppressed and hidden since colonial times in order to falsify the claim that prior to the coming of the Europeans the Igbo were a primitive, uncivilized people with no high cultures and a system of thought but, far beyond this, it was also our goal to push through these discoveries into the modern historical place for the sake of posterity and our invaluable identity.
Generally, the idea of justice is pursued in three principal ways, to wit, as retributive where offences are punished (classical), as distributive where properties are shared (seeAristotle 1999);(see Rawls 1999); (see Nozick 1974) and as harmony where order is restored (see Plato 1991). Although I will touch on all for the purpose of clarity, my arguments will center on justice as retributive which will dovetail into justice as corrective.
application of biotechnology/genetic engineering to the mainstream of agriculture has collapsed
vis-à-vis the “terminator” or the “traitor” technology. Financial gain has also been established as
the main motive for the promoters of this technology. In doing this, we have raised health and
ethical concerns because it has been shown among others that applying GM on food crop
production could have unforeseen health consequences. This we argued out-weighs financial
benefits and called for caution and censorship in the application of biotechnology to food crop
production.
Among the Igbo of today it is often mistaken that our fore-fathers lived in darkness, knew nothing and did nothing of worth. Any mention of the past was readily greeted with one scornful remark or another. The Igbo man of the pre-colonial era was a bush man, primitive, untamed, untutored and uncivilized. He had no civilization of his own and he had learned none from the outside world. However, Igbo scholars in the recent times have unearthed so much to contradict these false positions. In this work, we investigated the metric system of the Igbo some of which have been in practice for centuries. It was our goal to unearth and systematize the Igbo metric system that lies suppressed and hidden since colonial times in order to falsify the claim that prior to the coming of the Europeans the Igbo were a primitive, uncivilized people with no high cultures and a system of thought but, far beyond this, it was also our goal to push through these discoveries into the modern historical place for the sake of posterity and our invaluable identity.
The idea of democratic practice in Nigeria being a nascent one is bankrupt; where it is not a farce, it is an outright self-delusion. Liberal democracy has failed in Nigeria. It may yet succeed but at the moment, it has FAILED! In modern civilized world, the practice of liberal democracy is not hinged on trial and error, like it is some team sport that requires time and a lot of practice to blend. Liberal democracy is a factory finished system—a form of LCM where its application simply demands the fixing of hundreds, tens and units where they belong and the engine is good to go. However, where there are millions, thousands and units, no matter how long one takes, they will not fit into the LCM. That is the story of the postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa and Nigeria in particular. That we occasionally sprinkle in elections that are in fact, selections as we do today the 28th of March 2015, does not make ours a democracy, let alone a nascent one. It must be said that the postcolonial African has yet to evolve mental or intellectual capacity that is adequate for modern life. As bitter as this might taste, it is nonetheless true. Democracy is a system crafted to ride on the crest of majority opinion out of which authority and power emanate. Where the majority of citizenry are not enlightened (i.e. possess the ability to will, judge and act on the basis of reason rather than emotion) like in Nigeria, the failure of democracy as a system is inevitable. Being enlightened or civilized is not possessing academic certificates; it is not the same as having read a lot of books; it is never the idea of having gone to many schools; it is squarely a matter of having developed the internal vision and illumination which predisposes one to transcend the ego/emotions and have the courage to use his/her own reason (Sapere Aude). To prepare Nigeria and Nigerians for the proper practice of democracy, there is a need for a temporary sixty years switch from this shamble of democracy to the enlightened dictatorship—the only system that has the capacity to transform the mass of ignorant people into enlightened citizens in one generation. Mao Tze Dung’s China is a close albeit not a good example. Thereafter, democracy can be restored. The alternative to this is a vicious circle of sham democracy for some 450 years required for a people to naturally evolve mental capacity adequate for modern life. In this public lecture, I defended the Thesis of Enlightenment, Thesis on Reason, Thesis on Modernity and Thesis on the Enlightened Dictator as counter measures against the failure of liberal democracy in Nigeria.
—J. O. Chimakonam
March 28, 2015
decision procedure for first-order logic – that is, of finding a mechanism
whether recursive or computational which, when applied to an arbitrary
formula of first-order logic, outputs 1 if the formula is a logical truth in
classical logic and outputs 0 otherwise. Church and Turing’s thesis shows
that there is no such decision procedure. But that was many decades ago,
events and time have since elapsed and newer insights have emerged. In this
work, we developed a recursive algorithm for resolving the
Entscheidungsproblem.
Expressions, words and symbols without reference to something else which could be called their
meanings are semantically helpless. But not all expressions and words refer; some even come
with ambiguities and equivocations like Golden Mountain, Chimera etc., however, any symbol
which does not refer could not properly be called a symbol. So because every symbol necessarily
refers to something definite, it is not the case that ambiguities and equivocations would sneak
into symbolic expressions. Hence, logic becomes that science which prefers symbolic or artificial
or formal language to natural language. Therefore, since “meaning” or semantics is a central
focus of logic together with syntax, we attempted in this work to obtain a logical derivation of it
in the symbolic language of logic.
and conditions which militate against a woman’s expression of her rights and abilities. In as
many fronts, they have gained grounds if not outright victories. However, among the Igbo
women of eastern Nigeria there is a front which accounts for a great means of female
deprivations and which feminists have consistently passed over in their contentions-this is the
feminine cognition a.k.a epistemology of womanhood. In this work we have argued that knowing
that one is a woman or being conscious of this fact has deprived Igbo women of free expressions
of their rights and abilities sometimes as much as societal norms and conditions. We therefore,
recommend a conscious adjustment of epistemology of womanhood among the Igbo women of
eastern Nigeria.
of the most important goals of science. In some cases scientists seek
explanations for practical purposes. At other times, they seek
explanations just to satisfy intellectual curiosity. In many cases, modern
science has fulfilled these goals. But in some other cases it has failed thus
generating the question, can science truly explain everything? Models
have been developed over time in attempt to satisfactorily explain every
scientific experience yet in many ways some of these models like
Hempel’s covering law, causality etc., have failed. The attempt in this
work was to develop a model of explanation based on Ozumba’s
integrative humanism in order to answer some of the questions left over
by other models chiefly the so-called metaphysical.
In this second part of the paper, we not only posited the existence of an African brand of
Science but we also systematized same. We raised a standard for this science by constructing
its methods, criteria, processes, theories and laws. An important dimension to this exercise
which also distinguished African Science from its Western counterpart is that we constructed
our theory on the foundation of African logic which is an offshoot of a peculiar African
thought system. Finally, we considered a resume of possible challenges to the new discipline.
Western Science is a metanarrative, there is no scientific story that is untold in it. In these two
series paper, we opposed this exclamation from two perspectives. In this first part, we discredited
the absolutist viability of Western Science and constructed the elementary foundations of African
science. The justification for this project we summarized in three stellar points: that we construct
a safer science able to solve African problems and other nagging world problems, that Africa
may enter history and contribute to world civilization, and that Africans would excel if they
learned to reason within their native thought system.
The practice of cross species transplantation has generated enormous controversies over
time. Recently the lack of human organ donors has prompted an intense research effort
throughout the medical community towards the possibility for animal organ transplants.
Taking advantage of the overwhelming success of human to human transplantation, xenotransplantation
aims to reduce the demand-supply gap for organs. This paper examined
whether the potentiality of saving thousands of lives should annihilate the ethical
implications of xeno-transplantation and whether the possibility of ethical and health
problems should overshadow the benefits of this new technology.
A thought system is the technical platform or the Archimedean point of any culture. It is the inverter of raw, invisible human resource to technical and sophisticated industrial efficiency and genius. Aristotle was the first to mechanize the thought system of the western peoples with a gallant bivalent model of the classical two valued logic as its product. This logic as a technical tool accounts for the developments in all the human spheres of knowledge, western science became its eventual prodigy. We showed in this work that since a thought system characterizes a people's unique reasoning pattern, Africans have not excelled in the inventive exercises of science and technology because the imposed thought system of the western colonialists was a bane. Hence, in much the same way as Aristotle did, three centuries before Christ, we attempted a mechanization of African thought system so as to make it a handy tool in the hands of African artists and scientists. The result was a peculiar trivalent model capable of engendering unique metanarratives which would mark Africa's return to history.