This work is aimed at giving an insight into the issues raised by Goldman in his argument that social epistemology is ‘real epistemology’. Goldman wants to convince the mainstream epistemologists and the philosophical world in general that social epistemology is real epistemology by distinguishing between three forms of social epistemology: revisionist, preservationist, and expansionist. These three forms of social epistemology construed and proposed by Goldman differ in how they relate to the basic assumptions of traditional/classical epistemology. While acknowledging the various authors for their divergent views and contributions to social epistemic discourse, this work holds that though Goldman, more than any other social epistemologist, raised a fresh perspective in social epistemology, yet, there is a missing link in his submission. Goldman’s preservationist social epistemology, which he argued is “real epistemology”, fails to give at least, a spotlight on what this work calls historical social epistemology. This does not in any way downplay Goldman’s giant stride in awakening epistemologists from their slumber which led some scholars to include issues like analytic social epistemology, diagnostic social epistemology, naturalistic social epistemology, and political social epistemology in the epistemic lexicon; and by so doing, expanding the frontiers of the epistemic domain of philosophical enterprise. It is the position of this research that Goldman’s social epistemology elicited a renewed interest in epistemologists and scholars alike in the social dimension of knowledge. This work employs historical, conceptual, contextual, and textual methods of analyses.

Ibuanyidanda and The Principle of Non-Contradiction aims at instantiating the claims of Asouzu’s Complementary Reflection that whatever exists serves as a missing link of reality. Reality has been construed within a bifurcating frame of mind, a project that was characterized by the elitist mindset of Plato and was further espoused in Aristotle’s philosophy of essence. For Aristotle, the wise is destined to rule the unwise. This divisive mentality permeates the entire Western culture. Unfortunately, Placid Tempels made some African scholars to erroneously believe and argue that the Western understanding of being is static, while that of Africa is dynamic. This anomaly, among other things, is what Ibuanyidanda as a philosophy and a method of doing philosophy sets out to address. Ibuanyidanda ontology contends that reality can be better understood from the complementary point of view. The principle of non-contradiction championed by Aristotle and the Western scholars sees the opposite of being as non-being, but Asouzu’s complementary reflection sees the opposite of being as to be alone (ka so mu di). This work holds that ibuanyidanda complementary reflection is capable of handling the problems of contradiction that are apparent in the Western mode of philosophising. Opposites do not contradict themselves, they complement each other. Ibuanyidanda philosophy and its position are contrary to the views of Aristotle’s metaphysics and open to sight ontological updating - a good recipe for the advancement of 21st-century philosophizing. Analytic, textual, contextual, and historical methods are employed in this work.

This work, “An Analysis of Alvin Goldman’s Naturalistic Epistemology,” aims at presenting the contributions of Alvin Goldman in am epistemic bent. As a branch of philosophy, epistemology has significantly advanced right from the classic, medieval, modern, and contemporary epochs. The effects of postmodernist thinkers’ radical approach to philosophy are evident in almost all philosophy branches. With the notion of doing epistemology through science championed by W.V.O. Quine, Alvin Goldman, John Kuhn, and some other scholars have raised objections and counter objections to such a deconstructionist mindset within the epistemic circle. Expectedly, these naturalistic epistemologists had discontinuity with one another in their positions. Goldman is concerned with such traditional epistemological problems as developing an adequate theoretical understanding of knowledge and justified believing. This paper shows that in his naturalistic discontinuity with Quine, Alvin Goldman did not conceive epistemology as part of science the same way Quine conceived it. Goldman’s view that answering traditional epistemological questions requires both a priori philosophy and the application of scientific results. Goldman’s naturalism is the view that epistemology “needs help” from science. His primary concern is in the area of traditional epistemological problems, including developing an adequate theoretical understanding of knowledge and justified believing. In this paper, I see Goldman’s divergence in the opinion of his naturalistic epistemology with Quine and other naturalistic epistemologists not as a problem but indeed part of epistemic consolidation. In the course of this work, analytic, evaluation, library research, and descriptive methods as well as internet materials, were employed.

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