Mosley, Albert - Witchcraft, Science, and the Paranormal in Contemporary African Philosophy

03/30/2007

African Philosophy: New and Traditional Perspectives, L. Brown, ed., Oxford University Press, 2004

Author is concerned with the study of the paranormal, and the widespread refusal to countenance it as a legitimate fact in the world by some western philosophers. Author takes some time in enumerating the various supposed occurrences: telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and precognition. Author points out that there is some problem in distinguishing these, given the possibility of one or the other. For example, is precognition just subconscious psychokinesis? Is telepathy the same as clairvoyance? Given different manners of describing the same phenomena, it may be possible to reduce these attributes.

The debate about whether such paranormal abilities can be a source of knowledge was taken on by Bodunrin. His claim was that this might be a way to get a belief, but certainly not a justified one. Author first says that this approach conflates being able to justify a belief and having it be justified. A 'knowing how/knowing that' distinction. Further, if you're a reliabilist, then perhaps that belief can be justified, if the relationship between the belief and the paranormal ability is of the kind that tends to produce true beliefs.

The reliabilist position is attacked by Bonjour, who offers various (4) counterexamples, all of which are designed to show that even if paranormal traits could ascertain true beliefs, nobody would be justified in believing them. But in each case, author replies, this is in a culture where nobody believes in the paranormal anyway, so it 'intuitively' seems unjustified to believe in them.

Another problem for the paranormal in the general atmosphere in the west is that most believe all claims about paranormal beliefs have been debunked 'in the laboratory'. Author gives examples of higher-than-chance occurrences that have been produced in the lab. Author also suggests that it might be more useful to study these processes 'in the field', as a field biologist would. (pg 145-6)

Horton argues that the spiritual beliefs in Africa take the place of naturalistic explanations that the west has given over to germs, molecules, and a modern scientific worldview. The rest of the paper is a survey of various different beliefs about the paranormal found in Africa.