Reminder: CAP September Talk Series
amara esther
PHENOMENOLOGY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:
CONVERSATIONS WITH AFRICAN PHENOMENOLOGY AND BEYOND
Centre for African Phenomenology (CAP),
University of Fort Hare, South Africa
Convenors: Amara Esther Chimakonam and Jean du Toit
PROGRAM
Date: September 11, 2026
Time: 1 pm-3 pm (SAST)
LOGIN DETAILS
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/98082249320?pwd=u4x0JtWibyHztB0w1Dhj6KBaJ6HPPS.1
Meeting ID: 980 8224 9320
Passcode: 403533
KEYNOTE LECTURE
Prof. Bruce B. Janz
(University of Central Florida, USA)
Limits as Cognitive Strengths: AI, Cognition, and African Phenomenology
AI presents itself to the user as another person, without the limitations of other people. Its knowledge seems infinite; its expression seems impeccable. It does not tire or lose focus. When there are problems such as hallucinations, the solution is always more – more training, more processing power, and more elaborate strategies for providing minimally satisfactory responses. The cognitive strategy, then, is to always solve problems by providing more. Humans, on the other hand, have a different strategy for addressing cognitive deficits. Because we live in the physical world and are social from the outset, our limits are not just deficits to be routed around but the occasion for creating something new. We scaffold our knowledge and skills in place and with each other. It is not that humans are different from AI (it was, after all, designed on a version of human cognition), but we have the capacity to question our own ends, a stake in our answers that is rooted in our finitude, a fundamentally relational nature, and care. Drawing on phenomenology in general and African phenomenology in particular, I argue that AI’s logic of “more” is a legacy of a Cartesian, internalist picture of the person, and that an externalist account such as we see in relational approaches to persons makes the distinction between human and AI cognition most clear. Our limits are our strengths.
RESPONDENTS
Prof. Carlos Morujão
(Faculty of Human Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon)
Asso. Prof. Martin T. Adam
(University of Victoria, Canada)
OPEN DIALOGUE