There are long-standing doubts about whether data from subjective scales—for instance, self-reports of happiness—are cardinally comparable. It is unclear how to assess whether these doubts are justified without first addressing two unresolved theoretical questions: how do people interpret subjective scales? Which assumptions are required for cardinal comparability? This paper offers answers to both. It proposes an explanation for scale interpretation derived from philosophy of language and game theory. In short: conversation is a cooperative endeavour governed by various maxims (...) (Grice 1989); because subjective scales are vague and individuals want to make themselves understood, scale interpretation is a search for a focal point (Schelling 1960). A specific focal point it hypothesised; if this hypothesis is correct, subjective data will be cardinally comparable. Four individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for cardinal comparability are specified. The paper then argues this hypothesis can be empirically be tested, makes an initial attempt to do so using subjective well-being data, and concludes it is supported. Numerous areas for further research are identified including, at the end of the paper, how certain tests could be used to ‘correct’ subjective data if they are not cardinal. (shrink)

This article explores the main similarities and differences between Derek Parfit’s notion of imprecise comparability and a related notion I have proposed of parity. I argue that the main difference between imprecise comparability and parity can be understood by reference to ‘the standard view’. The standard view claims that 1) differences between cardinally ranked items can always be measured by a scale of units of the relevant value, and 2) all rankings proceed in terms of the trichotomy of (...) ‘better than’, ‘worse than’, and ‘equally good’. Imprecise comparability, which can be understood in terms of the more familiar notions of cardinality and incommensurability, rejects only the first claim while parity rejects both claims of the standard view. -/- I then argue that insofar as those attracted to imprecise comparability assume that all rankings are trichotomous, as Parfit appears to, the view should be rejected. This is because imprecise equality is not a form of equality but is a sui generis ‘fourth’ basic way in which items can be ranked. We should, I argue, understand imprecise equality as parity, and imprecise comparability as entailing ‘tetrachotomy’ – that if two items are comparable, one must better than, worse than, equal to, or on a par with the other. Thus those attracted to the idea that cardinality can be imprecise should abandon trichotomy and accept parity and tetrachotomy instead. -/- Finally, I illustrate the difference between Parfit’s trichotomous notion of imprecise comparability and parity by examining how each notion might be employed in different solutions to the problem posed by the Repugnant Conclusion in population ethics. I suggest that parity provides the arguably more ecumenical solution to the problem. (shrink)

A narrative review of the major evidence concerning the relationship between emotional regulation and depression was conducted. The literature demonstrates a mediating role of emotional regulation in the development of depression and physical illness. Literature suggests in fact that the employment of adaptive emotional regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal) causes a reduction of stress-elicited emotions leading to physical disorders. Conversely, dysfunctional emotional regulation strategies and, in particular, rumination and emotion suppression appear to be influential in the pathogenesis of depression and physiological (...) disease. More specifically, the evidence suggests that depression and rumination affect both cognitive (e.g., impaired ability to process negative information) and neurobiological mechanisms (e.g., hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis overactivation and higher rates of cortisol production). Understanding the factors that govern the variety of health outcomes that different people experience following exposure to stress has important implications for the development of effective emotion-regulation interventional approaches (e.g., mindfulness-based therapy, emotion-focused therapy, and emotion regulation therapy). (shrink)

Georg Cantor was the genuine discoverer of the Mathematical Infinity, and whatever he claimed, suggested, or even surmised should be taken seriously -- albeit not necessary at its face value. Because alongside his exquisite in beauty ordinal construction and his fundamental powerset description of the continuum, Cantor has also left to us his obsessive presumption that the universe of sets should be subjected to laws similar to those governing the set of natural numbers, including the universal principles of cardinal (...) comparability and well-ordering -- and implying an ordinal re-creation of the continuum. During the last hundred years, the mainstream set-theoretical research -- all insights and adjustments due to Kurt G\"odel's revolutionary insights and discoveries notwithstanding -- has compliantly centered its efforts on ad hoc axiomatizations of Cantor's intuitive transfinite design. We demonstrate here that the ontological and epistemic sustainability} of this design has been irremediably compromised by the underlying peremptory, Reductionist mindset of the XIXth century's ideology of science. (shrink)

The essay compares Peirce's pragmatist approach to the problem of perceptual experience as a fallible foundation of knowledge to a sophisticated empiricist take on the issue. The comparison suggests that, while empiricism can accommodate the idea of perception as fallible, theoretically laden, and containing conjectural elements, the cardinal difference between pragmatism and empiricism consists in the pragmatist insistence on the intrinsic intelligibility of experience, which also serves as the ultimate source of all forms of intelligibility; whereas empiricism retains a (...) penchant for fitting experiences into abstract conceptual schemes. (shrink)

We live with the legacy of injustice, political as well as personal. Even if our governments are now democratically elected and governed, our societies are scarred by forms of power and privilege accrued from a time in which people’s race, sex, class and religion were grounds for denying them a role in government, or in the selection of those who governed them. What does that past imply for the treatment of religion in democratic states? The problem is particularly pressing once (...) one accepts that religious freedom is not just a matter of individuals’ freedom of conscience and worship, but of people’s claims to associate with others through institutions whose powers, status and commitment to equality are very different (Laborde, 2015). If this means that churches pose some of the same philosophical and practical problems as families, from a democratic perspective, the fact that churches have no obvious point or justification, beyond being the repository of the claims to conscience of their members, appears to distinguish them from the former. In principle, this should make it easier to think about the claims of government, as compared to those of churches. In practice, however, it may simply bring into sharper focus philosophical and political challenges to equality that contemporary democracies now face. (shrink)

For aggregative theories of moral value, it is a challenge to rank worlds that each contain infinitely many valuable events. And, although there are several existing proposals for doing so, few provide a cardinal measure of each world's value. This raises the even greater challenge of ranking lotteries over such worlds—without a cardinal value for each world, we cannot apply expected value theory. How then can we compare such lotteries? To date, we have just one method for doing (...) so (proposed separately by Arntzenius, Bostrom, and Meacham), which is to compare the prospects for value at each individual location, and to then represent and compare lotteries by their expected values at each of those locations. But, as I show here, this approach violates several key principles of decision theory and generates some implausible verdicts. I propose an alternative—one which delivers plausible rankings of lotteries, which is implied by a plausible collection of axioms, and which can be applied alongside almost any ranking of infinite worlds. (shrink)

In a single framework, I address the question of the informational basis for evaluating social states. I particularly focus on information about individual welfare, individual preferences and individual (moral) judgments, but the model is also open to any other informational input deemed relevant, e.g. sources of welfare and motivations behind preferences. In addition to proving some possibility and impossibility results, I discuss objections against using information about only one aspect (e.g. using only preference information). These objections suggest a multi-aspect informational (...) basis for aggregation. However, the multi-aspect approach faces an impossibility result created by a lack of inter-aspect comparability. The impossibility could be overcome by measuring information on non-cardinal scales. (shrink)

Describes a Neoplatonic hierarchy of the cardinal virtues extending to immaterial beings, and compares its appropriation by Bonaventure and Aquinas.

By pure calculus of names we mean a quantifier-free theory, based on the classical propositional calculus, which defines predicates known from Aristotle’s syllogistic and Leśniewski’s Ontology. For a large fragment of the theory decision procedures, defined by a combination of simple syntactic operations and models in two-membered domains, can be used. We compare the system which employs `ε’ as the only specific term with the system enriched with functors of Syllogistic. In the former, we do not need an empty name (...) in the model, so we are able to construct a 3-valued matrix, while for the latter, for which an empty name is necessary, the respective matrices are 4-valued. (shrink)

Suppose one has a system, the infinite set of positive integers, P, and one wants to study the characteristics of a subset (or subsystem) of that system, the infinite subset of odd positives, O, relative to the overall system. In mathematics, this is done by pairing off each odd with a positive, using a function such as O=2P+1. This puts the odds in a one-to-one correspondence with the positives, thereby, showing that the subset of odds and the original set of (...) positives are the same size, or have the same cardinality. This counter-intuitive result ignores the “natural” relationship of one odd for every two positives in the sequence of positive integers, which would suggest that O is one-half the size of P. However, in the set of axioms that constitute mathematics, it is considered valid. Fair enough. In the physical universe (i.e., the starting system), though, relationships between entities matter. In biochemistry, if you start with an organism, say a rat, and you want to study its heart, you can do this by removing some heart cells and studying them in isolation in a cell culture system. But, the results often differ compared to what occurs in the intact animal because studying the isolated cultured cells ignores the relationships in the intact body between the cells, the rest of the heart tissue and the rest of the rat. In chemistry, if a copper atom were studied in isolation, it would never be known that copper atoms in bulk can conduct electricity because the atoms share their electrons. In physics, the relationships between inertial reference frames in relativity, and observer and observed in quantum physics can't be ignored. Relationships matter in the physical world, but the mathematics of infinite sets is still used to describe it. Does this matter? It seems to, at least in physics. Infinities cause numerous problems in theoretical physics such as non-renormalizability and problems in unifying quantum mehanics and general relativity . This suggests that the pairing off method and the mathematics of infinite sets based on it are analogous to a cell culture system or studying a copper atom in isolation if they are used in studying the physical universe because they ignore the inherent relationships between entities. In the real, physical world, the natural, inherent, relationships between entities can't be ignored. Said another way, the set of axioms that constitute abstract mathematics may be similar but not identical to the set of physical axioms by which the real, physical universe runs. This suggests that the results from abstract mathematics about infinities may not apply to or should be modified for use in physics. (shrink)

The thesis of Weak Unrestricted Composition says that every pair of objects has a fusion. This thesis has been argued by Contessa and Smith to be compatible with the world being junky and hence to evade an argument against the necessity of Strong Unrestricted Composition proposed by Bohn. However, neither Weak Unrestricted Composition alone nor the different variants of it that have been proposed in the literature can provide us with a satisfying answer to the special composition question, or so (...) we will argue. We will then go on to explore an alternative family of purely mereological rules in the vicinity of Weak Unrestricted Composition, Cardinal Composition: A plurality of pairwise non-overlapping objects composes an object iff the objects in the plurality are of cardinality smaller than $$\kappa $$ κ. As we will show, all the instances for infinite $$\kappa $$ κ s determine fusion and are compatible with junk, and every instance for a $$\kappa > \aleph _0$$ κ > ℵ 0 is furthermore compatible with gunk and dense chains of parthood. (shrink)

There are multiple formal characterizations of the natural numbers available. Despite being inter-derivable, they plausibly codify different possible applications of the naturals – doing basic arithmetic, counting, and ordering – as well as different philosophical conceptions of those numbers: structuralist, cardinal, and ordinal. Nevertheless, some influential philosophers of mathematics have argued for a non-egalitarian attitude according to which one of those characterizations is more “legitmate” in virtue of being “more basic” or “more fundamental”. This paper addresses two related issues. (...) First, we review some of these non-egalitarian arguments, lay out a laundry list of different, legitimate, notions of relative priority, and suggest that these arguments plausibly employ different such notions. Secondly, we argue that given a metaphysical-cum-epistemological gloss suggested by Frege’s foundationalist epistomology, the ordinals are plausibly more basic than the cardinals. This is just one orientation to relative priority one could take, however. Ultimately, we subscribe to an egalitarian attitude towards these formal characterizations: they are, in some sense, equally “legitimate”. (shrink)

The cardinal role that notions of respect and self-respect play in Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has already been abundantly examined in the literature. However, it has hardly been noticed that these notions are also central for Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice. Respect and self-respect are not only central topics of his chapter on “recognition”, but constitute a central aim of his whole theory of justice. This paper substantiates this thesis and elucidates Walzer’s criticism of Rawls’s that we need (...) to distinguish between “self-respect” and “self-esteem”. (shrink)

Permissivist metaontology proposes answering customary existence questions in the affirmative. Many of the existence questions addressed by ontologists concern the existence of theoretical entities which admit precise formal specification. This causes trouble for the permissivist, since individually consistent formal theories can make pairwise inconsistent demands on the cardinality of the universe. We deploy a result of Gabriel Uzquiano’s to show that this possibility is realised in the case of two prominent existence debates and propose rejecting permissivism in favour of substantive (...) ontology conducted on a cost–benefit basis. (shrink)

This paper presents a model-theoretic semantics for discourse "about" natural numbers, one that captures what I call "the mathematical-object picture", but avoids what I can "the mathematical-object theory".

The cardinal role that notions of respect and self-respect play in Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has already been abundantly examined in the literature. In contrast, it has hardly been noticed that these notions are also central to Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice. Respect and self-respect are not only central topics of his chapter “Recognition”, but constitute a central aim of a “complex egalitarian society” and of Walzer’s theory of justice. This paper substantiates this thesis and elucidates Walzer’s criticism (...) of Rawls that we need to distinguish between “self-respect” and “self-esteem”. (shrink)

We reexamine some of the classic problems connected with the use of cardinal utility functions in decision theory, and discuss Patrick Suppes's contributions to this field in light of a reinterpretation we propose for these problems. We analytically decompose the doctrine of ordinalism, which only accepts ordinal utility functions, and distinguish between several doctrines of cardinalism, depending on what components of ordinalism they specifically reject. We identify Suppes's doctrine with the major deviation from ordinalism that conceives of utility functions (...) as representing preference differences, while being non- etheless empirically related to choices. We highlight the originality, promises and limits of this choice-based cardinalism. (shrink)

As a representative of the papacy Bellarmine was an extremely moderate one. In fact Sixtus V in 1590 had the first volume of his Disputations placed on the Index because it contained so cautious a theory of papal power, denying the Pope temporal hegemony. Bellarmine did not represent all that Hobbes required of him either. On the contrary, he proved the argument of those who championed the temporal powers of the Pope faulty. As a Jesuit he tended to maintain the (...) relative autonomy of the state, denying the temporal powers ascribed by radical papalists and Augustinians. Their argument was generally framed as a syllogism: Christ, who possessed direct temporal power as both God and man, exercised it on earth; the Pope is the vicar of Christ; therefore the Pope possesses and may exercise direct temporal jurisdiction. Bellarmine simply denied that Christ had exercised the temporal power, which as God, it is true, he possessed. Moreover, he drew up and circulated a list of patristic passages collected under the title De Regno Christi quale sit, to prove to the Pope the orthodoxy of his position. (shrink)

We argue that all comparative expressions in natural language obey a principle that we call Comparability: if x and y are at least as F as themselves, then either x is at least as F as y or y is at least as F as x. This principle has been widely rejected among philosophers, especially by ethicists, and its falsity has been claimed to have important normative implications. We argue that Comparability is needed to explain the goodness of (...) several patterns of inference that seem manifestly valid, that the purported failures of Comparability would have absurd consequences, and that the influential arguments against Comparability are less compelling than they may have initially seemed. (shrink)

Creationism about fictional entities requires a principle connecting what fictions say exist with which fictional entities really exist. The most natural way of spelling out such a principle yields inconsistent verdicts about how many fictional entities are generated by certain inconsistent fictions. Avoiding inconsistency without compromising the attractions of creationism will not be easy.

The essentially comparative conception of value entails that the value of a state of affairs does not depend solely upon features intrinsic to the state of affairs, but also upon extrinsic features, such as the set of feasible alternatives. It has been argued that this conception of value gives us reason to abandon the transitivity of the better than relation. This paper shows that the support for intransitivity derived from this conception of value is very limited. On its most plausible (...) interpretations, it merely provides a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for intransitivity. It is further argued that the essentially comparative conception of value appears to support a disjunctive conclusion: there is incommensurability of value or betterness is not transitive. Of these two alternatives, incommensurability is preferable, because it is far less threatening to our other axiological commitments. (shrink)

It is a consequence of the theory of imprecise credences that there exist situations in which rational agents inevitably become less opinionated toward some propositions as they gather more evidence. The fact that an agent's imprecise credal state can dilate in this way is often treated as a strike against the imprecise approach to inductive inference. Here, we show that dilation is not a mere artifact of this approach by demonstrating that opinion loss is countenanced as rational by a substantially (...) broader class of normative theories than has been previously recognised. Specifically, we show that dilation-like phenomena arise even when one abandons the basic assumption that agents have (precise or imprecise) credences of any kind, and follows directly from bedrock norms for rational comparative confidence judgements of the form `I am at least as confident in p as I am in q'. We then use the comparative confidence framework to develop a novel understanding of what exactly gives rise to dilation-like phenomena. By considering opinion loss in this more general setting, we are able to provide a novel assessment of the prospects for an account of inductive inference that is not saddled with the inevitability of rational opinion loss. (shrink)

The independence phenomenon in set theory, while pervasive, can be partially addressed through the use of large cardinal axioms. A commonly assumed idea is that large cardinal axioms are species of maximality principles. In this paper, I argue that whether or not large cardinal axioms count as maximality principles depends on prior commitments concerning the richness of the subset forming operation. In particular I argue that there is a conception of maximality through absoluteness, on which large (...) class='Hi'>cardinal axioms are restrictive. I argue, however, that large cardinals are still important axioms of set theory and can play many of their usual foundational roles. (shrink)

We offer a novel account of metalinguistic comparatives, such as 'Al is more wise than clever'. On our view, metalinguistic comparatives express comparative commitments to conventions. Thus, 'Al is more wise than clever' expresses that the speaker has a stronger commitment to a convention on which Al is wise than to a convention on which she is clever. This view avoids problems facing previous approaches to metalinguistic comparatives. It also fits within a broader framework—independently motivated by metalinguistic negotiations and convention-shiftingexpressions— (...) that gives linguistic conventions a role in the semantics. (shrink)

Recently, many philosophers and psychologists have claimed that the explanation that grounds both passivity phenomena in the cognitive domain and passivity phenomena that occur with respect to overt actions is, along broad lines, the same. Furthermore, they claim that the best account we have of such phenomena in both scenarios is the “comparator” account. However, there are reasons to doubt whether the comparator model can be exported from the realm of overt actions to the cognitive domain in general. There is (...) a lingering worry concerning such explanations of thought insertion: the "What is compared to what?" problem. Here I examine two ways to tackle this problem. First: thought insertion consists of the misattribution of strings of inner speech which are not attenuated (thought insertion is thus another name for auditory verbal hallucinations). Second: thought insertion is misattributed inner speech which exhibits the same phenomenological characteristics as normal inner speech. After explaining the types of problem that each of these potential solutions faces, I conclude with a set of open questions that the comparator theorist has to tackle. (shrink)

What is Comparative Philosophy? -/- Synkretic: Journal of Indo-pacific Philosophy.

Wittgenstein’s atomist picture, as embodied in his Tractatus, is initially very appealing. However, it faces the famous colour-exclusion problem. In this paper, I shall explain when the atomist picture can be defended in the face of that problem; and, in the light of this, why the atomist picture should be rejected. I outline the atomist picture in Section 1. In Section 2, I present a very simple necessary and sufficient condition for the tenability of the atomist picture. The condition is: (...) logical space is a power of two. In Sections 3 and 4, I outline the colour-exclusion problem, and then show how the cardinality-condition supplies a response to exclusion problems. In Section 5, I explain how this amounts to a distillation of a proposal due to Moss, which goes back to Carruthers. And in Section 6, I show how all this vindicates Wittgenstein’s ultimate rejection of the atomist picture. The brief reason is that we have no guarantee that there are any solutions to a given exclusion problem but, if there are any, then there are far too many. (shrink)

This collection of new essays focuses on metaethical views from outside the mainstream European tradition. The guiding motivation is that important discussions about the ultimate nature of morality can be found far beyond ancient Greece and modern Europe. The volume’s aim is to show how rich the possibilities are for comparative metaethics, and how much these comparisons can add to contemporary discussions of the foundations of morality. Representing five continents, the thinkers discussed range from ancient Egyptian, ancient Chinese, and the (...) Mexica (Aztec) cultures to more recent thinkers like Augusto Salazar Bondy, Bimal Krishna Matilal, Nishida Kitarō, and Susan Sontag. The philosophical topics discussed include religious language, moral discovery, moral disagreement, essences’ relation to evaluative facts, metaphysical harmony, naturalism, moral perception, and the nature of moral realism. This volume will be of interest to anyone interested in metaethics or comparative philosophy. (shrink)

Interfaith dialogue is a vital tool for promoting understanding and cooperation between different religious communities. This article presents a comparative study of the Islamic and Buddhist perspectives on interfaith dialogue. Drawing on primary sources from both religions, this study explores the theological foundations of interfaith dialogue and the practical strategies employed by Muslims and Buddhists in promoting interfaith understanding. The similarities and differences between the two religions’ approaches to interfaith dialogue are analysed, examining how their respective beliefs, practices, and histories (...) shape their attitudes towards religious diversity. The research design is qualitative using library research by emphasizing content analysis on Islam and Buddhism scripture. The results show that Islamic paradigms of interreligious dialogue is da’wah (propagation, invitation or introducing Islam) that rooted from Tawḥīd, in contrast Buddhism, promotes on liberation from human suffering which rooted Bhavana and mindfulness. The study contributes to the principle of interfaith dialogue and provides insights into the potential of interfaith relation for sustaining harmony, peace, and mutual respect in diverse societies. Studies suggest the understanding of each fundamental to encourage Muslim and Buddhists scholars to produce comprehensive interreligious dialogue, theologically and philosophically. (shrink)

This paper addresses the field of economic measurements of the value of assets, carried out by the methods of independent expert evaluation. The mathematical principles of application, within a comparative methodical approach, of additive and multiplicative models for correcting the cost of single indicator of compared objects have been considered. The differences of mathematical basis of the compared models were analyzed. It has been shown that the ambiguity in the methodology of correction procedure requires studying the advantages and disadvantages of (...) known models, as well as the justification and elaboration of recommendations for their application. Possible forms of correction representation using several alternative units of measurement have been defined; formulas for their interconnection have been built. Analytic expressions have been derived that mathematically describe the algorithms for performing the evaluation correction procedure using various forms of correction representation. The influence of the correction execution model on the characteristics of uncertainty in the independent evaluation result has been analyzed. The scope of two possible types of correction introduction models has been determined. A specific numerical example was used to demonstrate the methodological advantages of using a multiplicative model when summarizing percentage corrections. The independence of the correction result on the sequence of correction introduction has been confirmed. It is proposed to use the selected measure of partial corrections as a criterion for the adequacy of the correction introduction model. It is proved that the result of the independent expert evaluation depends on the chosen model and does not depend on the sequence of correction introduction. The reported study results are important in terms of theory and practice since they make it possible to improve the accuracy and reliability of the result of independent expert evaluation. (shrink)

Abstract: The efficiency and performance of sorting algorithms play a crucial role in various applications and industries. In this research paper, we present a comprehensive comparative analysis of popular sorting algorithms on datasets of different sizes and characteristics. The aim is to evaluate the algorithms' performance and identify their strengths and weaknesses under varying scenarios. We consider six commonly used sorting algorithms: QuickSort, TimSort, MergeSort, HeapSort, RadixSort, and ShellSort. These algorithms represent a range of approaches and techniques, including divide-and-conquer, hybrid (...) sorting, and simple comparison-based methods. To assess their performance, we employ a diverse set of datasets, including the Iris dataset (1K), student dataset (5.8K), Wine dataset (6.5K), Uniform (10K), Normal (10K), Exponential (10K), Bimodal (10K), Yelp dataset (10K), MNIST dataset (42K), Uniform (100K), Normal (100K), Exponential (100K), Bimodal (100K), Uniform (500K), Normal (500K), Exponential (500K), Bimodal (500K), Uniform (1M), Normal (1M), Exponential (1M), and Bimodal (1M). These datasets cover a wide range of sizes and characteristics, allowing us to analyze the algorithms' performance across different dimensions. We measure and compare several key metrics, including execution time, memory usage, algorithmic complexity and stability. By analyzing these metrics, we gain insights into the efficiency and suitability of each algorithm for different dataset sizes and characteristics. We also discuss the implications of the findings in practical applications. Our results reveal important trade-offs among the sorting algorithms. While some algorithms excel in certain scenarios, others demonstrate better scalability or memory efficiency. We identify the best-performing algorithms for specific dataset characteristics and highlight their strengths and limitations. This research can assist developers and practitioners in selecting appropriate sorting algorithms based on their specific requirements and dataset characteristics. In conclusion, this comparative analysis provides a valuable contribution to the understanding of sorting algorithm performance. The findings contribute insights into the efficiency and suitability of popular sorting algorithms across datasets of different sizes and characteristics. By evaluating key metrics and discussing the implications, we offer guidance for selecting the most appropriate sorting algorithm in various practical scenarios. (shrink)

Anthropological problems are among the eternal problems of philosophy. This issue is especially actualized at critical moments in the development of society. This is the period humanity is going through today. The revival of anthropocentric types of research, finding new ways and a holistic approach to human research proves the relevance of this study. Humanity is once again experiencing a paradigm shift in world history. The first quarter of the XXI century showed itself as an intensification of globalization processes, which (...) in turn led to multiple ups and downs of cultural and social life. The idea of a polycentric, multipolar world remained only in the mode of a categorical imperative. The coming form of human existence, if it takes place, should not only restore to people the meaning lost during the industrial civilization, but also avoid the costs of a dangerous alliance of information technology and biotechnology. In the context of the next threat of total war and the threat of a split in the world, an appeal to comparative philosophy should contribute to the final approval of such a worldview, which is based on the value of human life, brotherhood and spiritual unity of all people. The modern, global world is characterized by the inevitable interpenetration of cultures, the erasure of the boundaries of cultural areas. The article provides a comparative analysis of modern philosophical and anthropological concepts. Speaking as an approach and method, philosophical comparative studies continue its development in philosophical and anthropological knowledge, where it becomes one of the methodological directions. The article analyzes the modern anthropological concepts of the West, which have found their reflection in the concept of mental causality by D. Kim and in the concept of "homo compensator" by O. Marquard. And also carried out a philosophical analysis of the philosophical and anthropological concepts of the East, which are reflected in the works of the Chinese philosopher F. Yulan, in Japanese existentialism N. Kitaro and in the concept of "hoodie" M. Iqbal. (shrink)

This entry in the ACPI Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides a very brief description of the nature and history of East-West comparative philosophy.

¿Qué ha pasado con el problema del cardinal del continuo después de Gödel (1938) y Cohen (1964)? Intentos de responder esta pregunta pueden encontrarse en los artículos de José Alfredo Amor (1946-2011), "El Problema del continuo después de Cohen (1964-2004)", de Carlos Di Prisco , "Are we closer to a solution of the continuum problem", y de Joan Bagaria, "Natural axioms of set and the continuum problem" , que se pueden encontrar en la biblioteca digital de mi blog de (...) Lógica Matemática y Fundamentos de la Matemática (ver). También en la entrada "The Continuum Hypothesis" de la web de Enciclopedia de Filosofía de la Universidad de Stanford existe información importante y actualizada al respecto. En esta breve nota se comenta sobre el tema de una manera divulgativa. (shrink)

Comparisons of causal efficacy are ubiquitous in the practice of science and indeed everyday life. I focus on just one aspect of this task – one to my knowledge nowhere yet addressed satisfactorily – namely, comparing the efficacies of two causes that work in apparently incommensurable ways. Contrary to common opinion I argue that, to be comparable, it is neither necessary nor sufficient that two causes also be commensurable.

It will be shown in this article that an ontological approach for some problems related to the interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (QM) could emerge from a re-evaluation of the main paradox of early Greek thought: the paradox of Being and non-Being, and the solutions presented to it by Plato and Aristotle. More well known are the derivative paradoxes of Zeno: the paradox of motion and the paradox of the One and the Many. They stem from what was perceived by classical (...) philosophy to be the fundamental enigma for thinking about the world: the seemingly contradictory results that followed from the co-incidence of being and non-being in the world of change and motion as we experience it, and the experience of absolute existence here and now. The most clear expression of both stances can be found, again following classical thought, in the thinking of Heraclitus of Ephesus and Parmenides of Elea. The problem put forward by these paradoxes reduces for both Plato and Aristotle to the possibility of the existence of stable objects as a necessary condition for knowledge. Hence the primarily ontological nature of the solutions they proposed: Plato’s Theory of Forms and Aristotle’s metaphysics and logic. Plato’s and Aristotle’s systems are argued here to do on the ontological level essentially the same: to introduce stability in the world by introducing the notion of a separable, stable object, for which a ‘principle of contradiction’ is valid: an object cannot be and not-be at the same place at the same time. So it becomes possible to forbid contradiction on an epistemological level, and thus to guarantee the certainty of knowledge that seemed to be threatened before. After leaving Aristotelian metaphysics, early modern science had to cope with these problems: it did so by introducing “space” as the seat of stability, and “time” as the theater of motion. But the ontological structure present in this solution remained the same. Therefore the fundamental notion ‘separable system’, related to the notions observation and measurement, themselves related to the modern concepts of space and time, appears to be intrinsically problematic, because it is inextricably connected to classical logic on the ontological level. We see therefore the problems dealt with by quantum logic not as merely formal, and the problem of ‘non-locality’ as related to it, indicating the need to re-think the notions system, entity, as well as the implications of the operation ‘measurement’, which is seen here as an application of classical logic (including its ontological consequences) on the material world. (shrink)

An overview of what Frege accomplishes in Part II of Grundgesetze, which contains proofs of axioms for arithmetic and several additional results concerning the finite, the infinite, and the relationship between these notions. One might think of this paper as an extremely compressed form of Part II of my book Reading Frege's Grundgesetze.

I compare Frith and colleagues’ influential comparator account of how the sense of agency is elicited to the multifactorial weighting model advocated by Synofzik and colleagues. I defend the comparator model from the common objection that the actual sensory consequences of action are not needed to elicit the sense of agency. I examine the comparator model’s ability to explain the performance of healthy subjects and those suffering from delusions of alien control on various self-attribution tasks. It transpires that the comparator (...) model needs case-by-case adjustment to deal with problematic data. In response to this, the multifactorial weighting model of Synofzik and colleagues is introduced. Although this model is incomplete, it is more naturally constrained by the cases that are problematic for the comparator model. However, this model may be untestable. I conclude that currently the comparator model approach has stronger support than the multifactorial weighting model approach. (shrink)

Since Circular 34 from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam required the head of the national project to have project results published in ISI/Scopus journals in 2014, the field of economics has been dominating the number of nationally-funded projects in social sciences and humanities. However, there has been no scientometric study that focuses on the difference in productivity among fields in Vietnam. Thus, harnessing the power of the SSHPA database, a comprehensive dataset of 1,564 Vietnamese authors (854 males, (...) 705 females) with 2,410 publications in the 2008 – 2018 period was extracted and analyzed. Various factors were considered including age, gender, new authors, leading authors, co-authorship, and Impact Factor. The findings suggest a high level of contribution from authors at the age of 40 – 44 in economics (858 publications) in a 12-years period, which is equivalent to the social medicine total output, and two times more than the total output of the education. Moreover, the presence and reinforcement of male researchers are still dominating in Economics and other fields, with the only exception of education. Despite the rapid rise in the number of Vietnamese lead authors, gender disparity among disciplines is an issue. Contrary to the strong international collaboration-oriented tendency in social medicine, economics, and other fields, educational authors are not open to international collaborating. Finally, most of the publications in economics belong to the group with JIF from 0 to 2, in contrast with the high number of social medicine publications with JIF from 2 to 5, which suggesting the field of economics is fulfilling the quantity, but still, need more quality publications. (shrink)

The standard model of cosmology is acclaimed in physics as accurate, robust, well-tested, our best scientific theory of the cosmos, but it has had serious anomalies for a while, including the Hubble tension, anomalous galaxies, and the completely unexplained nature of dark energy and dark matter. And lurking behind it all is the lack of a unified theory: General Relativity (GR) and quantum mechanics (QM) are inconsistent. Now startling new observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2022 of (...) the early universe present the strongest challenge yet to the standard model, and whispers have started that this shows there is something wrong with the fundamental theory, General Relativity itself. This would be a crisis for cosmology. But haven’t they tested this theory already, and shown it is correct? How could it turn out wrong at this late stage? Here we compare the standard cosmology with an alternative fundamental theory, that has a strikingly different overall cosmological behavior: a simple cyclic expansion function. It is simple and deterministic. There are only two or three general parameters. The interesting result is that this alternative cosmology: (A) closely matches the expansion observed and modelled through the CDM standard model, now going back to red-shifts of 5-15; and (B) it also predicts unexpected early galaxy formation now being reported by the JWST. The point here is not to try to prove this alternative theory however, but rather show how it compares to the conventional cosmology. This show us clearly how weak the empirical evidence for the standard model really is against a counterfactual fundamental theory. Some results established in science are robust against theory change, but we find the standard cosmological model and the implications drawn from it are not robust at all. (shrink)

In 1947, the U.S. Secretary of State, George C. Marshall announced that the USA would provide development aid to help the recovery and reconstruction of the economies of Europe, which was widely known as the ‘Marshall Plan’. In Italy, this plan generated a resurgence of modern industrialization and remodeled Italian Industry based on American models of production. As the result of these transnational transfers, the systemic approach known as Fordism largely succeeded and allowed some Italian firms such as Fiat to (...) flourish. During this period, Detroit and Turin, homes to the most powerful automobile corporations of the twentieth century, became intertwined in a web of common features such as industrial concentration, mass flows of immigrations, uneven urban sprawl, radical iconography and inner-city decay, which characterized Fordism in both cities. In the crucial decades of the postwar expansion of the automobile industries, both cities were hubs of labor battles and social movements. However, after the radical decline in their industries as previous auto cities, they experienced the radical shift toward post-Fordist urbanization and production of political urbanism. This research responds to the recent interest for a comparative (re)turn in urban studies by suggesting the conceptual theoretical baseline for the proposed comparative framework in post-Fordist cities. In better words, it develops a “theory” on the challenges of comparative urbanism in post-Fordist cities. (shrink)

Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī (1058–1111 c.e .) is well known, among other things, for his account, in al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (Deliverance from error), of a struggle with philosophical skepticism that bears a striking resemblance to that described by Descartes in the Meditations . This essay aims to give a close comparative analysis of these respective accounts, and will concentrate solely on the processes of invoking or entertaining doubt that al-Ghazālī and Descartes describe, respectively. In the process some subtle differences between them (...) in this regard will be brought to light that are relevant to the comparative issue of the respective solutions at which they arrive. The latter issue will not be touched upon here, although the present discussion is intended as a prelude to a future treatment of that topic. (shrink)

The city of Kruja dates back to its existence in the 5th and 6th centuries. In the inner city are preserved great historical, cultural, and architectural values that are inherited from generation to generation. In the city interact and coexist three different typologies of dwellings: historic buildings that belong to the XIII, XIV, XV, XIII, XIX centuries (built using the foundations of previous buildings); socialist buildings dating back to the Second World War until 1990; and modern buildings which were built (...) from 1990 onwards. According to the questionnaires, the creation of mathematical models applied to each category will result in contradictory attitudes but also fairy ones based on different percentages. There are underlined 5 quality of life indicators(questions) from a total of 30 questions of the questionnaire, which are involved in mathematical regression and are statistically significant with a significance level p<5% (with a reliability of 95%), which interact for all three categories of buildings. The quality of life indicators: dwelling area, heating mode during winter, level of dwelling improvement, time spent in the dwelling, and monthly electricity payments, are the main actors who will be compared in order to draw conclusions. According to the statistical calculations trend, it is noted that the socialist buildings category does not directly participate in the debate between historic and modern buildings by means of the quality of life indicators (questions). (shrink)

We present evidence from a pre-registered experiment indicating that a philosophical argument––a type of rational appeal––can persuade people to make charitable donations. The rational appeal we used follows Singer’s well-known “shallow pond” argument (1972), while incorporating an evolutionary debunking argument (Paxton, Ungar, & Greene 2012) against favoring nearby victims over distant ones. The effectiveness of this rational appeal did not differ significantly from that of a well-tested emotional appeal involving an image of a single child in need (Small, Loewenstein, and (...) Slovic 2007). This is a surprising result, given evidence that emotions are the primary drivers of moral action, a view that has been very influential in the work of development organizations. We did not find support for our pre-registered hypothesis that combining our rational and emotional appeals would have a significantly stronger effect than either appeal in isolation. However, our finding that both kinds of appeal can increase charitable donations is cause for optimism, especially concerning the potential efficacy of well-designed rational appeals. We consider the significance of these findings for moral psychology, ethics, and the work of organizations aiming to alleviate severe poverty. (shrink)

Disciplinary issues -- Field studies -- Appendix: Theory of law : legal ethnography, or, the theoretical fruits of the inquiries into folkways. /// Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1995 to 2008 /// DISCIPLINARY ISSUES -- LAW AS CULTURE? [2002] 9–14 // TRENDS IN COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDIES [2002] 15–17 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES: ATTEMPTS AT CONCEPTUALISATION [1997] 19–28: 1. Legal Culture in a Cultural-anthropological Approach 19 / 2. Legal Culture in a Sociological Approach 21 / 3. Timely Issues of (...) Central and Eastern Europe 24 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES? [2001] 29–48: 1. Legal Comparativism Challenged 29 / 2. Comparative Legal Cultures versus Comparative Law 34 / 3. Contrasting Fields 40 [a) The Historical Understanding of Socialist Law 42 / b) Convergence of Civil Law and Common Law 44] 4. Concluding Remarks 46 // THEATRUM LEGALE MUNDI: ON LEGAL SYSTEMS CLASSIFIED [2005] 49–75: 1. Preliminaries 49 / 2. Proposals 50 / 3. Impossible Taxonomy, or the Moment of Practicality in Legal Mapping 69 / 4. Diversity as a Fundamental Quality of Human Existence 74 // LEGAL TRADITIONS? IN SEARCH FOR FAMILIES AND CULTURES IN LAW [2004] 77–97: 1. Comparative Law and the Comparative Study of Legal Traditions 78 / 2. ‘System’, ‘Family’, ‘Culture’, and ‘Tradition’ in the Classification of Law 80 / 3. Different Traditions, Differing Ways of Thinking 85 / 4. Different Expectations, Differings Institutionalisations in Law 88 / 5. Different “Rationalities”, Differing “Logics” 92 / 6. Mentality in Foundation of the Law 94 / 7. Defining a Subject for Theoretical Research in Law 96 // SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD IN THE EUROPEAN IDENTITY OF LAW? [1995] 99–102 --- FIELD STUDIES -- MEETING POINTS BETWEEN THE TRADITIONS OF ENGLISH–AMERICAN COMMON LAW AND CONTINENTAL-FRENCH CIVIL LAW: DEVELOPMENTS AND EXPERIENCE OF POSTMODERNITY IN CANADA [2002] 105–130: I. Canadian Law in General 105 / II. Canadian Legal Developments in Particular [1. The Transformation of the Role of Precedents 112 / 2. The Transformation of Law-application into a Collective, Multicultural and Multifactorial Search for a Solution 116 / 3. Practical Trends of Dissolving the Law’s Positivity 120 / 4. New Prerogatives Acquired by Courts 125 {a) Unfolding the Statutory Provisons in Principles 126 / b) Constitutionalisation of Issues 127 / c) The Supreme Court as the Nation’s Supreme Moral Authority 129}] // MAN ELEVATING HIMSELF? DILEMMAS OF RATIONALITY IN OUR AGE [2000] 131–163: I. Reason and its Adventures 1. Progress and Advance Questioned 131 / 2. The Human Search for Safety Objectified 133 / 3. Knowledge Separated from Wisdom 135 / 4. Pure Intellectuality thereby Born 137 / II. The Will-Element Formalised in Law 5. Mere Voluntas in the Foundation of Legal Positivism 141 / 6. Formalism with Operations Fragmented 145 / III. The State of America Exemplified 7. “Slouching into Gomorrah” 147 / IV. Consequences 8. Utopianism-cum-Voluntarism 154 / 9. With Logic in Posterior Control of Human Formulations Only 159 / V. Perspectives 10. And a Final Resolution Dreamed about 161 // RULE OF LAW? MANIA OF LAW? ON THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN RATIONALITY AND ANARCHY IN AMERICA [2002] 165–180: {Transformation of American Law and Legal Mentality 165 / With Repercussions on the Underlying Ethos 168 / Legislation through Processualisation 170 / With Hyperrationalism Added 172 / Example: Finding Lost Property 172 / Practicalness Veiled by Verbal Magic 173 / Ending in Jurispathy 175 / Transubstantiating the Self-interest of the Legal Profession 178 / Post-modernity, Substituting for Primitiveness 178} // TRANSFERS OF LAW: A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS [2003] 181–207: 1. Terms 182 / 2. Technicality 190 / 3. Contrasts in Transfers of Law 200 {Contrasts 200 / Criticisms 202 / Alternatives205} 4. Conclusions 206 // THE DANGERS FOR THE SELF OF BEING SELF-CENTRED: ON STANDARDS AND VALUES [2002] 209–212 --- APPENDIX -- THEORY OF LAW – LEGAL ETHNOGRAPHY, OR THE THEORETICAL FRUITS OF THE INQUIRIES INTO FOLKWAYS [2008] 213–234 1. Encounters 213 / 2. Disciplines 218 / 3. The Lawyerly Interest 223 / 4. Law and/or Laws 226 / 5. Conclusion 233 --- Index of Subjects 235 / Index of Normative Materials 242 / Index 244 . (shrink)

This paper aims to address the question of how one ought to choose when one is uncertain about what outcomes will result from one’s choices, but when one can nevertheless assign probabilities to the different possible outcomes. These choices are commonly referred to as choices (or decisions) under risk. I assume in this paper that one ought to make instrumentally rational choices—more precisely, one ought to adopt suitable means to one’s morally permissible ends. Expected utility (EU) theory is generally accepted (...) as a normative theory of rational choice under risk, or, more specifically, as a theory of instrumental rationality. According to EU theory, when faced with a decision under risk, one ought to rank one’s options (from least to most choiceworthy) according to their EU and one ought to choose whichever option carries the greatest EU (or one of them in the event that several alternatives are tied). The EU of an option is a probability-weighted sum of each of its possible utilities. In this paper, I argue that EU theory is not the correct theory of instrumental rationality. In its place, I argue for a new theory of instrumental rationality, namely expected comparative utility (ECU) theory. I first show that for any choice option, a, and for any state of the world, G, the measure of the choiceworthiness of a in G is the comparative utility of a in G—that is, the difference in utility, in G, between a and whichever alternative to a carries the greatest utility in G. On the basis of this principle, I then argue, roughly speaking, that for any agent, S, faced with any decision under risk, S ought to rank her options (in terms of how choiceworthy they are) according to their ECU and S ought to choose whichever option carries the greatest ECU (or one of them in the event that several alternatives are tied). For any option, a, a’s ECU is a probability‐weighted sum of a’s comparative utilities across the various possible states of the world. In this paper, I show that in some commonplace decisions under risk, ECU theory delivers different verdicts from those of EU theory. (shrink)