In this article, we argue that language-based techniques have the capacity to generate original ideas and thus account for progress in any discipline. We claim that language-based techniques used by some African scholars such as hermeneutics and related ones such as transliteration are creatively inadequate to inspire progress because they do not lead to the creation of new concepts and original ideas in African thought. We claim also that the technique of intellectual decolonisation with its foremost expression in Kwasi Wiredu’s (...) ‘conceptual decolonisation’ and Kwesi Tsri’s ‘conceptual liberation’, are two recent language-based strategies aimed at overcoming the creative problem inherent in the techniques of hermeneutics and transliteration. We argue that these two techniques are equally inadequate because they are tantamount to what can be called ‘conceptual manipulation’, which is not a creative strategy for progress in African thought. The goal of this paper therefore is to expose the creative weaknesses in these techniques in order to show that there is a dearth of creative language-based techniques in African studies and make a call for the formulation of one. Keywords: African philosophy, hermeneutics, transliteration, conceptual manipulation, conceptual decolonisation, conceptual liberation. (shrink)

There are a number of contentious issues in the study of philosophy of science. There is the issue of method, there is the issue of subject-matter, there is the issue of truth and certainty as well as the issue of rationality, and the utility of scientific discoveries. Popper demonstrated a lot of interest in the issue of method, stressing ways and means science as a living enterprise could make progress. His theory of conjecture and refutation, or falsifiability is in pursuance (...) of this. He rejected induction as a method of science, insisting that falsifiability is a cardinal factor in any scientific research programme. In this paper I shall examine what Popper consider critical in the advancement of scientific knowledge. That is the task of this paper. (shrink)

Law is a powerful force in human civilization. The growth and stability in society are generally linked with the gradual development of a system of legal rules, in addition to the instruments for their regular and effective enforcement. Law can be used to protect or harm the interest of man. This dimension raises the issue of the ‘validity of law’. The legal positivists posit that law is a ‘moral-neutral’ entity, and once it is enacted by the appropriate authority, it cannot (...) be adjudged immoral or unjust, by any standard outside the province of the law in question. The valid law for the legal positivists is law as enacted by the appropriate authority within agiven legal system. The Naturalists think otherwise. Cicero for instance believes that the validity of law is rooted on right reason in agreement with nature. In this paper I am more persuaded by the arguments of the Naturalists. I however present liberally the standpoints of the two opposing schools of thought – The naturalists and the positivists, with emphasis on the works of John Kelsen, Justice Homles, Cicero and Aquinas. (shrink)