Suchergebnisse

A review essay on a book by C. George Kahama, T. L. Maliyamkono, & Stuart Wells, The Challenge for Tanzania's Economy (London: James Currey Ltd, & NH: Heinemann, 1986 [see listing in IRPSPPD No. 16]). A reference work on Tanzania that includes an accurate & well-informed discussion & criticism of the government's policy. Written from a social-democratic perspective, the opinions expressed gain credibility because of Kahama's experience in a number of cabinet posts between 1958 & 1984 in Tanzania, & as the ambassador to the People's Republic of China. F. Rasmussen

The subject I am discussing here deals with a very peculiar kind of knowledge — a kind of knowledge whose means is not concepts and reasoning, but affective inclination or affinity, and which is often disregarded by philosophers interested only in the rational kind of knowing. Henri Bergson liked to quote a sentence he found in the letters of a French philosopher; the sentence was as follows: "I have suffered from this friend enough to know him." When I know a friend to the core — not through having submitted him to a complete series of psychological tests, but because I have suffered from him and have got in myself the habit of his nature — then we may say in philosophical language that I know this man by connaturality.

The first part of this commentary attempts to get "inside" the octopus mind a little further than Mather does, drawing on her description of octopus cognition in many places but diverging in others. The second part outlines other disagreements with her account of the animals, especially in the area of social behavior.