Browsing by Author "Aleke, Patrick Owo."

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The impact of assistive devices on individuals with special visual needs and its ethical implications: exploring the experiences of students with special visual needs in University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus.
(2024) Sithole, Mgcini Emmanuel Eric.; Aleke, Patrick Owo.
The development of assistive devices has resulted in a more promising society, particularly for people with special visual needs. The invention gives people with special visual needs more opportunities to study, be independent, and work. However, in this modern world, there are still some ethical considerations and implications for using assistive devices. Students with special visual needs face accommodation and adaptation challenges, limiting their full interaction with other students and community members. The aim of this study is to explore the experiences of students with special visual needs at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Pietermaritzburg campus with the use of assistive devices, and to assess the impact and ethical implications of these assistive devices. This study has used a qualitative research approach. In this study, semi-structured in-depth face-to-face and online interviews were conducted. The study includes 20 students with special visual needs at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Pietermaritzburg campus. In this study, I argue that poorly designed physical environments continue to create difficulties that continue to exclude people with special visual needs from participating in their societies. Students also face the challenge of high cost of necessary assistive devices, a lack of training, and being misunderstood by other members of the community. In order to sensitize non-special needs individuals, the University of KwaZulu-Natal must make campuses more accessible and friendly to all individuals with special visual needs. This includes raising awareness and ensuring that individuals with special visual needs participate fully in university life and beyond.
Truth as correspondence reconsidered.
(2018) Aleke, Patrick Owo.; Giddy, John Patrick.
Contemporary philosophical investigations of truth (especially in the analytical philosophical tradition) treat the concept as a “thin concept”, and so reduce truth discourses to conceptual analysis of intentional signs (concepts, propositions) or analysis of the truth predicate by considering its logical, semantic and anaphoric function in sentences (or propositions). This reductive conception of truth neglects the importance of the conscious and intentional act of the subject and thus results in an explosion of deflationary theories, and even the quest for the elimination of truth. Contrary to the views that consider truth as a “thin” concept, I argue that a robust substantive conception of truth as correspondence is essential if we are to account for the importance of truth in philosophy and daily human existence. To account for such an understanding of truth, a philosophical investigation of truth must be explored within a wider context of the human quest for knowledge and self-transcendence. Such examination requires an explicit articulation of the cognitional theory on which a conception of truth is founded. This is because a philosopher’s conception of truth is influenced by the cognitional theory that he or she subscribes to. In other words, a philosophical investigation of truth that aims at adequate exposition must account for the conscious and intentional acts of the human subject, since the importance of the role of the knowing subject in the quest for knowledge and truth cannot be underestimated. To account for the role of the subject and the importance of foundational cognitional theory, the conception of truth as correspondence that is defended in this thesis is based on a comprehensive tripartite (experiencing, understanding and judging) cognitional structure. Moreover, an explicit examination of the cognitional theory on which a theory of truth is based is vital to establish the relation between knowledge, truth, objectivity and being (reality).