Sri Aurobindo’s Yogic Vision of ‘Electron’ as a Form of Consciousness and the ‘Probability Wave’ of the Quantum Theory
October 2023
On a very high plane of yogic consciousness, Sri Aurobindo has discovered consciousness to be the ‘fundamental thing in existence’. It is the consciousness which arranges itself to come into the forms of ‘electron, atom, and material existence’. Such yogic discovery comes into the vision of the scientific mind when the scientists working on the Quantum Theory discover a wave which is not...
Purism: Desire as the Ultimate Value, Part Two – An Appeal to Intuition
July 2023
In this two-part article series, I aim to demonstrate that a special category of desire – a state which is sought unconditionally, as an end (sought in and of itself) – is the only ultimate value that logical observers can conceive upon consideration of sufficient conceptual depth. In the first part, I attempt to demonstrate this through appealing to logical reason. In this second part, I subsequently...
Purism: Desire as the Ultimate Value, Part One – An Appeal to Logical Reason
February 2023
This article aims to demonstrate that a special category of desire – a state which is sought unconditionally, as an end (sought in and of itself) – is the only ultimate value that logical observers can conceive upon consideration of sufficient conceptual depth. This demonstration appeals to logical reasoning, and ultimately, the reader’s inability to conceive alternate conclusions which are logically...
As History Beckons: Expectations from Fiji’s upcoming Budget and Election- 2022
December 2022
The research paper aims to share information about the upcoming budget address and elections. Fiji has become one of the first Pacific Island nations to do a budget review. Moreover, the government has been continuously changing their budget reforms, policy and reporting over the years. As the elections loom, the government changes their budget address to benefit the public. The changes are certain to benefit the...
Multiple spatialities, temporalities, and gender identities
June 2022
This paper seeks to develop a conception of time as a category open to continuous rethinking and to consider it in the mid of multiple forces like space and gender. Guided by the postcolonial perspective on temporal difference, emphasis is put on how revisiting historical processes disrupts the linear notion of time by narrating various moments as disjunctive parts of the same story. Nonlinear narratives highlight the...
Big bang: The apologetic of Quran and the Will of God
July 2019
Muslims believe Quran as the word of God (Allah), sent as verbal revelation to Prophet Mohammad S.A.W. through the angel Gabriel. In the paper from segregate verses of Quran, the main events taking part in the time-line of one of the most widely accepted theories Lambda-Cold Dark Matter ‘model’ which is the current "standard model" of Big Bang cosmology is derived. The six long periods that took...
Existential phenomenology of religious liberty and security in religion and politics: A case study of Nigeria
June 2019
That peace and justice is the solution to the flux and insecurity in the church and in the state cannot be denied. In fact, it is exigent to ask this question thus: can there be peace and justice in the religious institution in the first instance, without religious liberty and of course, civil liberty untwisted? There is no gain-saying the fact that sacred and secular histories have tended to answer this question in a...
A review on normative and other factors contributing to Africa’s adolescent development crisis
January 2019
The objective of this review is to examine factors influencing African adolescents’ identity development. The review begins with defining identity and discuses major theories of identity development. Moreover, this review focuses on colonialism, globalization, media and other factors which are considered to influence youth identity development. The author has used the terms ‘adolescence’ and...
Decentralisation and constitutionalism in Africa: A theoretical exploration for sustainable distributive justice
March 2018
Central to the problem of most of the states in Africa as a whole and Nigeria in particular is the excessive centralization of the federal system. The centralized federalism denied the opportunity for self-expression, autonomy and by extension prevented avenues for negotiations towards attaining equity and justice. Similar to this is the defect on the constitution which is meant to define what is right by creating a...
The philosophy behind some Adinkra symbols and their communicative values in Akan
April 2016
This paper represents selected Adinkra symbols of the Akan and brings out the philosophical, educational, historical and moral values inherent in them. It seeks to encourage the understanding and usage of the Adinkra symbols in a more meaningful way by Ghanaians and foreigners, contemporary artists, designers, craftsmen, teachers, and all who appreciate the traditional symbols. It discusses 14 Adinkra symbols grouped...
Philosophical paradigm of Islamic cosmology
February 2016
Humans have been examining the cosmic bodies for many millennia, but scientific discoveries and ideas about the origin of the universe have changed the religious discourse and rely completely on empiricism. Many theories were put forth by the physicists, philosophers and even religions at large but Islam has its prime source of information “Quran” upon which Muslim cosmologists builds their theories and...
Hayek’s concept of orders in relation to technicism and neo-liberalism
January 2016
Since the 1970s, neo-liberalism has become a key ideology driving the global economy. It originates in the liberalism of enlightenment thinkers, neo-classical economics (marginal utility) and a resistance to totalitarianism. In 1938 a colloquium of prominent economists/philosophers, discussed how 19th century liberalism could be renewed without a naturalistic ‘laissez-faire’ approach. From 1944, with the...
On Western and Chinese conception of time: A comparative study
September 2015
While Western thinking considers change within a unique process stretching ad infinitum, Eastern thinking conceives change within a process that hold together repetition and transformation. Making sense to this is to simply recognize that the issues regarding time understanding in ontological and metaphysical terms, serve to support the idea that how we consider the nature of history it will impact the interpretation...
Culture in society, society in culture: Understanding threads of cultural-social dialectic
April 2015
This paper aims at exploring the provinces of social and cultural dialectical threads. In doing so, it offers an account of (1) why it is quite often confusingly believed that there is a methodological and epistemological “difference” between social and cultural ones[i], and (2) how this belief cloaks some inherent weaknesses and obstacles to change. It is, therefore, within this rationale that this paper...
Foundational myths of Zionism: An inquiry into the light of sacred text
March 2015
Zionist movement is based on some historical and religious myths. They propagate that Palestine is their ancestor’s home and the entire Holy Land was promised to them as a covenant between Abraham and God and they are the sole legitimate heirs of Abraham. They say that this covenant was unconditional and the Holy Land would be given to them whatever they may do. But when we examine their claims in the light of...
The sociology and social science of ‘evil’: Is the conception of pedophilia ‘evil’?
February 2015
This paper approaches ‘evil’ from sociological and social science perspectives, using them to increase our insight into the concept of ‘evil’ since they have long neglected direct analyses of ‘evil’. For example, sociology has focused on questions of the good, treating its other as an absence or a residual category. Durkheim suggested to avoid using common sense categorisations,...
Some Hermeneutics implications of Heidegger’s phenomenology of religion
May 2014
The phenomenological understanding of religion begins within the ambit of the ontotheological. That is, the relationship between the mortal and the divine is in essence, one of the sharing of a spiritual form of Being. The ‘mode of Being spiritual’ is the factical manifestation of the spirit-Being. That which we are a vehicle for, the breath of life and consciousness becomes conscious for us through the...
Varieties of representationalism and their approach to sensory experience
April 2014
Sensory states have a subjective, qualitative element that constitutes the phenomenal character of experience, and at the same time they have an intentional or representational component that we can describe as their phenomenal content. The main question that will occupy us throughout this essay is the question of how these two elements are related. The logical space with respect to this question is mapped...
Determining the determined state: A sizing of size from aside/the amassing of mass by a mass
September 2013
A philosophical exploration is presented that considers entities such as atoms, electrons, protons, reasoned (in existing physics theories) by induction, to be other than universal building blocks, but artifacts of a sociological struggle that in elemental description is identical with that of all processes of matter and energy. In a universal context both men and materials, when stressed, struggle to...
The structure of scientific revolutions (Thomas S. Kuhn, 1970, 2nd ed. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press Ltd. 210 pages)
September 2013
This book has thirteen chapters and a postscript developed after seven years of this edition. The organization of the book is disclosed here with. First, the book tried to see the contribution of history to the very existence of science in the different epochs. Secondly, it also considered the route, nature, and puzzle solving role of normal science. Third, the reason why paradigms are considered as the...
Krishna – the catalyst for emancipation
August 2013
Hinduism (Dasa, 2009) unlike Buddhism, Christianity and Islam does not have a founder. While most major religions derive from new ideas taught by a charismatic leader, Hinduism, the Santana Dharma or the eternal tradition is simply the religion of the people of India, which has gradually developed over four thousand years. The origins and authors of its sacred texts are largely unknown. Yet an understanding...
Disquieting tendencies towards the pulverization of social reality-The Venezuelan case
August 2013
The new structural tendencies inherent in the process of globalizing modernity and based on the market and instrumental rationality are generating implosive socialization, loss of culture, a subjectivity model leading to regressive individualism, and the downfall of traditional socio-cultural and identity producing structures. Its ultimate consequence is the emergence of a phenomenon causing the...
Violence, attachment styles and Kierkegaard
May 2013
The purpose of this paper is to consider potential causes of violence behaviour by bringing together a disparate array of theorists. Violence is considered, specifically, in light of psychological literature dealing with attachment styles. In a nutshell, how our relations with early caregivers shapes our personality. Some well-known developmental theorists, namely, Piaget and Vygotsky are touched upon; as well as...
The Qur’anic universe in knowledge, time and space with a reference to matrix game in Islamic behavioural financial decision-making
May 2013
The paper is a Qur’anic socio-philosophical rarity on the theme of learning model. Such a model is derived from the Tawhidi (monotheistic oneness) foundation of knowledge (epistemology). It is shown to construct a moral-social world-system of consciousness (phenomenology). The specific problem of Islamic behavioural economics and finance is shown to respond to such a learning model of Tawhidi unity of...
Who lives a life worth living?
April 2013
For years, philosophers have thought about what makes a life worth living. Recent research in psychology has put new light on that. This paper places itself in-between philosophy and psychology, and the thoughts about well-being. The title of this paper raises one question: Who lives a life worth living? Based on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and subsidiary, recent studies in ‘positive psychology’, this...
Faith-based ethical reform for social stability and sustainable development
April 2013
Modern human societies, floating on the so-called secular values, seem to be disoriented, despondent and disarrayed without having specific goals in life and commitment to God and His creation, and thus suffering from unprecedented level of moral decadence. Humanity is at the cross-roads of secular (atheistic) and sacred (religious) approaches to civilization. Secular humanism without any theology of its own and...
The reflections of the concept of beauty in the religious architecture: The example of the Ottoman period between the 13th and 17th centuries
June 2012
Based on the assumption that religious concepts affect the architecture and therefore, that the concepts have their own inherent languages, this study seeks to find the reflections of the concept of beauty in the religious architecture. In other words, the study attempts to answer the extent of the effect of the concept of beauty on the architectural formation of religious buildings. The concept of beauty and...
Sri Aurobindo and Einstein’s theory of relativity
June 2012
Sri Aurobindo is a poet and yogi of the unknown eternal heights. In his epic Savitri which he has written from a very high plane of yogic consciousness he finds ‘Space’ as ‘a vast experiment of the soul, the soul which is a portion of the Divine in the constitution of the being of man, more to say, the individual poise of the Supreme Divine at the centre of the being of man. Since...
Habitual lying
October 2010
In the paper the authors discuss phenomenon of habitual (or automatic) lying and compare it with a standard criterion of lying. Habitual lying seems to occupy middle ground between telling the whole truth and telling a lie with previous intent to deceive. Finally, they try to answer some, it appears, most probable objections to such criterion of habitual lying. The criterion itself rests on the basic...
A Cartesian critique of the artificial intelligence
October 2010
This paper deals with the philosophical problems concerned with research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular with problems arising out of claims that AI exhibits ‘consciousness’, ‘thinking’ and other ‘inner’ processes and that they simulate human intelligence and cognitive processes in general. The argument is to show how Cartesian mind is...
Sa’di’s educational philosophy
July 2010
Sa’di is one of the greatest Muslim Iranian poets and writers. In addition to this, he can be considered a very great and wise educator. The goal of this article is to extract and explain Sa’di’s views on philosophy of education as portrayed in his poetry and prose texts. To reach this goal, his two most important books, Gulistan and Boostan, which are prose and poetry respectively and have...
Integration of rational and conscious experience is the base of planetary society
July 2010
In every country in the world we teach our children that they belong to a certain nation and religion. The fact that we all live on the same planet Earth is not taken into consideration. The result is that we raise people with narrow personal identification, which can always be manipulated and used for violence and war with people of other nations and religions. In order to stop this centuries-long...
Globalization and the future of African culture
April 2010
No man is an island to himself. In the same logic, no nation is an island to herself. In the process of international interactions, there is an interaction of cultures and thus, a borrowing and diffusion of cultures amongst nations. This is in itself not unusual. But unusual and unfortunate is the domination of one culture over the other. This is an evil, an evil of forced acculturation. This is true of...
In what way are psychological and physical time related?
April 2010
Recent neurological research shows that, psychological time (“past-present-future”) is a result of neuronal dynamics of the brain. Through psychological time, we experience motion in the universe. The puzzle with time in physics is that in the universe, we can perceive only motion and not time. Here, it is proposed that physical time, t, is run of clocks. The fourth coordinate, , is...
The influence of curriculum diversification and ethnic culture on student cognitive functioning
November 2009
This study examined the influence of curriculum diversification on student use of learning strategies; EFL Arab students’ patterns of strategy use; and how they differ from other ethnic groups in their strategy use. The study made use of positivism at the levels of ontology (one form of reality), epistemology (detachment from the subjects) and methodology (‘nomothetic’/...
The being of culture: beyond representation
November 2009
This work begins with the general question of whether it is possible to think of the idea of culture beyond the confines of representationalism, and discusses Heidegger’s ‘matter’ of Ereignis as the ‘mis-appropriability’ of cultures and cultural objects. In the second section, it moves on to the question of the ontological difference and its significance for a...
Tracing contemporary Africa’s conflict situation to colonialism: A breakdown of communication among natives
October 2009
The problems of violent conflicts in Africa today can be traced back to situations deeply rooted in exploitation and colonial domination of Africa. As far back as the days of the Atlantic slave trade to the period of colonial subjugation, Africa witnessed one form of violent conflicts or the other virtually unprecedented in the life of a typical African. Further on was the scrabble for African territories...
“Recent trends and future prospects in epistemology†- A review of John Kekes
October 2009
The paper is a critical survey of John Kekes’ perspective on the recent trends and future prospects of epistemology. The three fundamental issues in contemporary epistemology that engaged the attention of Kekes are intimately connected to justification: foundationalism, skepticism and rationality. The paper argues that Kekes’ epistemic survey of these issues is on the one hand commendable as...
Ricoeur’s narrative theory applied to science
September 2009
Ricoeur’s narrative theory can be applied to scientific theories. Scientific theories as well as narrative plots represent a “synthesis of heterogeneous” based on productive imagination. On the other hand, narrative plots can be perceived as an answer to the “why?” questions as well as scientific explanations. In this paper it will be argued that an analogy between narrative and scientific...
Theistic panpsychic naturalized epistemology: The scientific philosophy of Africanity and einsteinism
September 2009
The objective of this those is to postulate Theistic panpsychism as a version of naturalized epistemology it is a cognitive science of essences, substances and modes of physical world (phenomenon) and the a priori world (nuomena). The traditional epistemology is that with experiences in the form of impressions or sense data, we justify our claims to know objects such tables, or molecules etc. Theistic Panpsychic...
Review of Baum Bruce: Re-reading power and freedom in J.S. Mill, University of Toronto press, 2000
July 2009
One of the most interesting books about J.S. Mill’s political and social philosophy is Bruce Baum’s PhD thesis. His book is one of the very few that seriously try to lift to the surface economic freedom and distributive justice in Mill’s social theory and to relate liberty and equality in this philosopher’s social thought. Key words: Social expediency, democracy, working class,...
Does submission to a deity relieve depression? Illustrations from the book of Job and the Bhagavad Gita
July 2009
Two ancient texts feature a hero who does not submit completely to his deity. One, Arjuna, depicted in the Bhagavad Gita, decided not to fight in defiance of his mentor and deity Krishna. The other, Job of the Old Testament, complained bitterly that his god treated him unfairly. Both suffer affective disturbance. Arjuna, dejected, displays a panic attack, Job shows severe depression. After each interacts with his god...
Ethical views of Ibn miskawayh and Aquinas
May 2009
Ibn Miskawayh is one of the greatest Iranian Muslim philosophers in the eleventh century. His views particularly on ethics are very famous and important. On the other hand, Thomas Aquinas is the greatest Christian theologian and philosopher in the thirteenth century. He has also many famous and interesting ideas regarding ethics. The study of these tow scholars, as the representatives of Islamic and Christian philosophy...
Which of the two? - Knowledge or time
April 2009
Knowledge and time, truth versus falsehood, unity versus dualism, these and the like are the subjects for philosophical discourse in the light of the two contrasting worldviews of unity of knowledge versus rationalism. The emerging formalism also leads to practical considerations in the circular causation model of unity of knowledge. The Qur’an is invoked in this formalism to build the arguments underlying the...
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