Personhood, Consciousness and Human Communication in Akan Philosophy

Abstract

In explanations about the basic features and behaviour of a human being, mainstream discourses in philosophy are dominated by the one-aspect and two-aspect concepts of person. Physicalist concepts of mind evoke one-aspect concepts of person, and Descartes’ substance dualism (mind and body) is a two-aspect concept of person. It is thus necessary to ask how a three-aspect concept of person of African origin compares with those Western concepts at performing the same tasks. The chosen three-aspect concept is the Akan concept of person, which says a human being is made up of metaphysical aspects, okra and sunsum, and a physical aspect, honam. Kwame Gyekye (1995) explains that okra is the bearer of life, sunsum is the receptacle for personality and character traits, while honam is the body. He argues that okra and sunsum perform different functions but are metaphysically identical. However, this thesis explains that okra and sunsum execute different functions because they are slightly different in metaphysical ness. Yet in explaining that okra and sunsum perform separate roles, Gyekye affirms the original Akan philosophy position that a living human being is made up of three aspects. This thesis is thus a comparative analysis of the relative conceptual efficiencies of one-aspect, two-aspect and three-aspect concepts of person. Such comparative analysis is not new. Before constructing a conception of consciousness, James (1904) discarded substance dualism and chose “one stuff of material in the world, a stuff of which everything in the world is composed” (1904, p. 478). When Wiredu (1996) wanted to construct a framework of human communication, he discarded the mind inherent in substance dualism and constructed a reductive physicalist concept of mind. This project thus takes the Akan concept of person out of the Akan conceptual scheme and sets it among its peers, that is, other concepts of person, in what is regarded as mainstream philosophy. The three concepts are referred to as peers, because each is, at the pain of repetition, a concept of person, which stipulated the ontological constitution of a human being; this establishes a criterion in the common framework for this comparative analysis. The objective is to see which of the three concepts of person explains with relatively high efficiency the human features of personhood, consciousness and the human behaviour of communication. To attain that objective this project will perform two broad tasks. One, discuss the characteristics of each of the chosen concepts of person to determine how each explain mental or metaphysical lives. Two, conduct a comparative analysis of how each of these concepts explains selected issues in each of the three chosen areas of philosophy. Since the three selected areas are separate fields, it is important to highlight the points of coherence of this thesis. One, the three concepts of person are applied to conduct the comparative analysis in the three areas. Also, concept of person is used to explain ontological personhood, which enables us to comprehend and explain consciousness, the expression of which, consequently, is imperative to the expression of human communication. Another issue that runs through all the chapters is the issue of ontological gap between the metaphysical and physical aspects of a human being. Physicalist concepts of person avoid discussing it, while substance dualism fails to explain the heterogeneous interaction that would have purged it of the gap. However, a proposed hypothesis of the feature of sunsum allows the Akan model to account for the interaction that seamlessly over-rides corelation, which then allows the Akan concept of person to explain ontological personhood, anidaho (consciousness), and human communication. From the foregoing, the central question for this project is: What are the relative conceptual efficiencies of a one-aspect, two-aspect and three-aspect concepts of person? And the main thesis is: When it comes to explaining the basic features and behaviour of a human being, the Akan concept of person is relatively more efficient compared to substance dualism, which is also more efficient compared to physicalist concepts of person. This discussion commences with a look at how by their characteristics one-aspect and two-aspect concepts of person account for mental (metaphysical) lives, at how a three-aspect concept accounts for metaphysical lives, and then at how all three concepts explain ontological personhood. This is followed by a discourse on consciousness, on how each of the three concepts – viewed from African, Western and Asian philosophical traditions – explains it, and then on how all that could lead to a holistic conception of consciousness. The discussion ends with a discourse on language as a medium of human communication and on whether Wiredu’s framework of human communication allows (what is herein termed) porting. Porting is how the human being accepts tangible terms of language and transmutes these into abstract concepts of thought and emotion, etc. within a human being, and vice versa; that is, to enable the individual to participate in communication in the social arena. Generally, this project contributes to knowledge by showing that compared to one-aspect and two-aspect concepts of person of Western philosophy, the Akan (African) concept of person is relatively more efficient at explaining the basic features and behaviour of a human being.