Emmanuel Asia

One of the most important and most discussed problems of traditional and contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science is the problem of causality. The problem has generated a lot of controversies and debates from scholars. One clear point amidst these discussions on the causality problem is that the last has neither been written nor heard. It remains an open-ended issue for philosophical consideration. The causation problem itself is not just a problem but a cluster of problems with puzzling questions such as; how do causes bring about their effects? Our concern in this paper is not to examine all the problems that are embedded in the relationship between cause and effect, but to focus on the metaphysical problem of how cause, conceived as a separate event is related or connected to the effect. Several theories have been postulated by Western scholars like Aristotle, Spinoza, Hume, Hempel, Russell, Kant, Mill, among others to explain the kind of causal connection obtainable between causes and effects. Some of these theories of causation are traditional view or common sense view, Humean, and the host of others. It is a fact that some of these theories have failed in proffering a philosophical solution to the traditional causation problem. In an attempt to further reflect on the traditional causation problem, this paper undertakes an exposition of the nature of causality, determinism, freedom and predestination in traditional African thought with the aim of proffering better explanation towards resolving the traditional causation problem.

Truth and knowledge are essentially the dictates of some rationality or metaphysical ordainment. By sense experience man is capable of accounting for his past, contemplate his life and predict his future and all of reality, for traditional Africa, however (as is the case with most native societies), there is another mode of knowing beyond man’s immediate capacity in search of truth and reality. An analysis of this perception indicates that there is some metaphysical tinge to epistemology or knowledge claims—whether in the spheres of justice, morality/ethics, religion, political authority, prosperity, law, or ontology/world-view. Put on a plain pedestal: Isn’t there an African mode of knowing? By the study among the Afemai-Etsako of Southern Nigeria, this article tersely adumbrates the scope and nature of knowledge and discovers that, beside the common routes to it (experience and reason), the gamut of knowledge among the traditional Africans also have several metaphysical strands reducible to creative determinism, reactive interference, and representativeness in timing and naming.