Logic in Selected African Languages and Proverbs

This chapter discusses perspectives of African logic in African philosophy. The question is, though it is commonly accepted that African philosophy exists, does it mean certain branches of philosophy like logic also exist? Airoboman and Odia and Nweke, among others, Some authors deny the existence of African logic. The reason they give is the universal nature of logic. However, they also acknowledge that Africans have the capacity for logic because logic is a given to humans. The problem is to think logic is universal to humans, yet Africans have the capacity to do logic, but they have no logic. For, to have the capacity to do logic without actually doing logic is itself illogical. Ndubisi, with whom I concur, Other authors accepts that African logic exists and is essential, and that it is the criterion or yardstick for presenting knowledge. The emphasis that logic is the only way in which both written and oral languages are intelligible. Without logic, no human language would be understandable. African logic, for that matter, does not need to be an anti-thesis of other people’s logic, regardless of variations with other’s logic. Taking the example from Acholi language, this chapter discovered that in logic, similarity is not a proof of connectedness; time is linear; exclusive disjunctions exist but not inclusive disjunctions; the law of the excluded middle is not always true, since water can be neither hot nor cold; valid and sound arguments can easily be deduced by intuition and not always by reasoning.