Comparison is fundamental to the practice and subject-matter of philosophy, but has received scant attention by philosophers. This is even so in “comparative philosophy,” which literally distinguishes itself from other philosophy by being “comparative.” In this article, the need for a philosophy of comparison is suggested. What we compare with what, and in what respect it is done, poses a series of intriguing and intricate questions. In Part One, I offer a problematization of the tertium comparationis (the third of comparison) (...) by examining conceptualizations of similarity, family resemblance, and analogy, which it is sometimes argued can do without a tertium comparationis. In Part Two, I argue that a third of comparison is already required to determine what is to be compared, and insofar as that determination precedes the comparison that tertium may be called “pre-comparative.” This leads me to argue against incomparability and to show how anything can indeed be compared to anything. In Part Three, I relate my arguments to what is today commonly labelled “comparative philosophy.” Finally, I raise some questions of ontology and politics in order to demonstrate the relevance of a philosophy of comparison. (shrink)

This is the first book in which contemporary scientists and mystics share with us-in their own words-their views on space, time, matter, energy, life, consciousness, creation and on our place in the scheme of things. The book is also the story of an American philosopher who-with these dialogues-ventures into ground-breaking territory, and of her search in America, Europe, India and Nepal for people whose work is at the center of our understanding of reality.

Leading figures in comparative philosophy and cultural studies demonstrate what the future of comparative philosophy might look like in practice.

From early on, comparative philosophy has had on offer a high variety of goals, approaches and methodologies. Such high variety is still today a trademark of the discipline, and it is not uncommon of representatives of one camp in comparative philosophy to think of those in other camps as not really being about ‘comparative philosophy’. Much of the disagreement arguably has to do with methodological problems related to the concept of comparison and with the widely prevailing but unwarranted assumption that (...) comparative philosophy should be about comparing ‘culturally different philosophies’. This paper seeks to problematize this assumption by clarifying conceptually the notions of ‘comparative philosophy’ and of ‘comparison’, by showing the prevalence of the assumption in recent second-order discussions of methodology in comparative philosophy and its restraining implications in a randomly selected contribution of ‘Chinese philosophy’. At the end, a rallying call for a (self-)critical comparative philosophy is issued. (shrink)

We prove that there exists a noncomputable c.e. real which is low for weak 2-randomness, a definition of randomness due to Kurtz, and that all reals which are low for weak 2-randomness are low for Martin-Löf randomness.

We characterize the class of c.e. degrees that bound a critical triple as those degrees that compute a function that has no ω-c.e. approximation.

An apparently quite specific question that was addressed by both Confucius and Socrates has attracted much attention in Sino-Hellenistic comparative philosophy. Their respective responses to the question of how a son should respond if his father commits a crime are found in Confucius' Analects 13:18 and in Plato's Euthyphro. This essay assesses three comparative analyses of these responses with particular reference to their underlying assertions of commonality, that is, the assumptions or presuppositions of commonality that serve to justify the comparative (...) exercise in the first instance. The authors suggest that two of the analyses assert commonality between their two responses from a Confucian standpoint, while the third constructs commonality from a Socratic standpoint. The authors argue that the response of Confucius focuses specifically on the issue of xiao in the concrete situation presented to him, whereas Socrates uses the issue to investigate the different question known as the "Euthyphro dilemma." Some brief conclusions are drawn regarding comparative philosophical analysis in general and about comparing the responses of Confucius and Socrates in these passages in particular. (shrink)

An apparently quite specific question that was addressed by both Confucius and Socrates has attracted much attention in Sino-Hellenistic comparative philosophy. Their respective responses to the question of how a son should respond if his father commits a crime are found in Confucius' Analects 13:18 and in Plato's Euthyphro. This essay assesses three comparative analyses of these responses with particular reference to their underlying assertions of commonality, that is, the assumptions or presuppositions of commonality that serve to justify the comparative (...) exercise in the first instance. The authors suggest that two of the analyses assert commonality between their two responses from a Confucian standpoint, while the third constructs commonality from a Socratic standpoint. The authors argue that the response of Confucius focuses specifically on the issue of xiao in the concrete situation presented to him, whereas Socrates uses the issue to investigate the different question known as the "Euthyphro dilemma." Some brief conclusions are drawn regarding comparative philosophical analysis in general and about comparing the responses of Confucius and Socrates in these passages in particular. (shrink)

Contemporary proponents of Confucian political philosophy often ignore the fact that any sizeable future Confucian political order will have to accommodate many “non-Confucians.” The guiding question of this paper is therefore the following: how could a Confucian political philosophy, if it can at all, adequately take into account a plurality of comprehensive worldviews? I first turn to John Rawls and his account of these terms and of reasonable pluralism more generally. I then examine some particularly relevant developments and criticism of (...) Rawls’ account. Finally, I offer a discussion of some recent proposals for a Confucian political philosophy, and examine to what extent each recognizes the fact of pluralism, sees it as a challenge, and deals with it in a persuasive manner. The paper concludes with a depiction of two major stumbling blocks that might stand firmly in the way of such a pluralism-accommodating political Confucianism. (shrink)

An apparently quite specific question that was addressed by both Confucius and Socrates has attracted much attention in Sino-Hellenistic comparative philosophy. Their respective responses to the question of how a son should respond if his father commits a crime are found in Confucius' Analects 13:18 and in Plato's Euthyphro. This essay assesses three comparative analyses of these responses with particular reference to their underlying assertions of commonality, that is, the assumptions or presuppositions of commonality that serve to justify the comparative (...) exercise in the first instance. The authors suggest that two of the analyses assert commonality between their two responses from a Confucian standpoint, while the third constructs commonality from a Socratic standpoint. The authors argue that the response of Confucius focuses specifically on the issue of xiao (filial piety) in the concrete situation presented to him, whereas Socrates uses the issue to investigate the different question known as the "Euthyphro dilemma." Some brief conclusions are drawn regarding comparative philosophical analysis in general and about comparing the responses of Confucius and Socrates in these passages in particular. (shrink)

We examine the sequences A that are low for dimension, i.e. those for which the effective dimension relative to A is the same as the unrelativized effective dimension. Lowness for dimension is a weakening of lowness for randomness, a central notion in effective randomness. By considering analogues of characterizations of lowness for randomness, we show that lowness for dimension can be characterized in several ways. It is equivalent to lowishness for randomness, namely, that every Martin-Löf random sequence has effective dimension (...) 1 relative to A, and lowishness for K, namely, that the limit of KA/K is 1. We show that there is a perfect [Formula: see text]-class of low for dimension sequences. Since there are only countably many low for random sequences, many more sequences are low for dimension. Finally, we prove that every low for dimension is jump-traceable in order nε, for any ε > 0. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What about the Billeter-Jullien Debate? And What Was It about? A Response to Thorsten Botz-BornsteinRalph WeberNo doubt Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is right to highlight that the debate of 2006 and 2007 (if indeed it can be called a debate1) between Jean François Billeter and François Jullien was particularly heated. It was to some extent a personal affair in that both protagonists overstepped the scholarly bounds set for an exchange of (...) arguments, the heat at times reaching the boiling point. Billeter reproached Jullien for no less than instrumentalizing China, fashioned as the absolute Other and instrumentalized for almost no other purpose than to continue a philosophical discourse established by Jullien himself, a discourse that became ever more auto-referential, furthering only the most dubious of ideological interests. In one passage, Billeter goes so far as to claim that, rather than allowing the “Chinese authors” their own voice and letting them develop their own arguments, in the end “it is always him [i.e. Jullien] who talks” (Billeter 2006a, p. 45). Regardless of just how personal Billeter’s opposition to Jullien was meant to be—and at least one commentator claims that beyond the polemical title the text offers a “rigorous argumentation” (Danjou 2006; cf. also Zufferey 2006)—Jullien certainly took it personally, asking himself in his riposte, Chemin faisant, just why Billeter was so angry at him (Jullien 2007, p. 137).His riposte is marketed on the title page in big letters as a “Réplique à ***,” which is explained by the series editors, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, in terms of the reaction to a splinter that more often than not swiftly removed is quickly forgotten but that occasionally provokes a considerable reflexive gesture, of just the kind that Jullien offers, thanks to ***. A quote by Foucault precedes the text itself, reading: “There are critiques to which one responds and others to which one gives a riposte. [End Page 228] Perhaps wrongly so, for why not similarly lend an ear that is attentive to incomprehension, to banality, to ignorance or to insincerity?” Only once, at the very beginning of the text, is Billeter’s name (by implication the subject either of incomprehension, banality, ignorance, insincerity, or a combination of all four) fully mentioned; thereafter only his initials, JFB, are used. Even until recently the practice of giving the silent treatment has persisted, as when Jullien in the interview with Martin and Spire simply observes “that the sinologists who criticize me … have themselves produced nothing since that critique—do you need names?” (Martin and Spire 2011, p. 209; italics in original), before referring the reader to the many books he has written since Chemin faisant. Needless to add, this point is premised on quantity trumping quality, which is at least slightly disconcerting given that Jullien’s works have been found as early as 1996 to be marked by “a great deal of overlapping if not outright repetition (or at least rewriting)” (Reding 1996, p. 162)—something that apparently still is the case in his many books “produced” since then.From one standpoint, Botz-Bornstein is also right in referring to the affair as mainly a French debate, involving a sizable number of participants and spanning a considerable period of time, from Billeter and Jullien’s 1989 and 1990 exchange in the pages of Études chinoises over how to read Wang Fuzhi (see Billeter 2006a, p. 37 n. 1); to several volumes on and in co-operative works with Jullien (Jullien and Marchaisse 2000, Marchaisse 2003, Cornaz and Marchaisse 2004, Chartier and Marchaisse 2005, Jousset 2006, and Serrurier and Bricout 2011); to the publication of the partisan Oser Construire: Pour Jullien (Chartier 2007) and Billeter’s answer to it (Billeter 2007); to the many discussions of Jullien that continue to take as their starting point the exchange with Billeter (cf. Keck 2009). The text by Martin and Spire, for instance, makes ample reference to the debate, as Botz-Bornstein mentions, and speaks out in favor of Jullien (Martin and Spire 2011, pp. 77–97). Yet, the debate is also the starting point for Jean Levi’s (2011) recent criticism of Jullien. Beyond the borders of France... (shrink)

Pragmatism is ever more popular amongst those who study international relations. Its emphasis on practice is generally acknowledged as a defining characteristic. There is, however, a general tension within pragmatist thought concerning practice, for pragmatism may emphasize the theorizing of practice. It is, then, distinguished from other theories in International Relations (IR) such as neo-realism or constructivism as a contender in their midst. We delineate a pragmatist theory of IR in the first part of this article, but insist on going (...) beyond merely establishing the next paradigm, for pragmatism may also emphasize the practice of theorizing. Theories are, then, considered different tools useful for dealing with the social world. This will be corroborated in the second part by a close reading of William James. Finally, we submit that instead of a paradigm war, a metaphor such as that of the Papini hotel is needed in IR — a metaphor that accounts for theory competition without neglecting the limitations set by the practice of theorizing itself. (shrink)

This chapter explores the case of Switzerland as a “small power” in the currently emerging new world order. Particularly, we address the Swiss position amid the growing strategic competition between the United States (US) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and given its long-standing but evolving practice of neutrality. In our chapter, we set off by discussing Switzerland’s foreign policy positioning against the backdrop of three theoretical perspectives: Switzerland as a state like all others; Switzerland as a small state; (...) and, finally Switzerland as a small neutral state. With the help of these three categories, we further locate Switzerland’s foreign policy firmly in the “hedging zone,” especially concerning the country’s China policy. The chapter then discusses four key documents, all of which have been released in recent years, drawing out the country’s foreign policy framework, before reaching some conclusions. (shrink)

Invention is an important source of technology, and, to understand invention, one needs a model system or prototype. A candidate model system is the hand tool. Using the hand tool as an example, the authors present a systematic approach to invention, dealing with description, classification, and joining or integrating simpler forms. Heuristics for when to integrate are presented. Finally, the authors introduce a new way of thinking about hand tools: simple spatial transformations applied to an abstract element make possible the (...) re-creation of a large number of tools. (shrink)

This article is about François Jullien and a controversy that arose over the publication of a pamphlet by Jean François Billeter entitled Against François Jullien, replied by Jullien in a volume subtitled Reply to *** and followed by collections of essays by French intellectuals—one of them entitled For Jullien. The controversy assumed a weight that went beyond Jullien and the French debate to the heart of sinology and also of philosophy. The question, what and where China is philosophically speaking, is (...) discussed with regard to the role of context, the notion of heterotopy, and the political side of talk about China. (shrink)

Based primarily on original interviews, this article compares the treatment of gender as an ergonomic consideration within military and commercial cockpit design. Both defense and civilian cockpits have traditionally been built to engineering specifications based on male anthropometry and tend to embody a physical bias against women and smaller- statured men. However, the design of defense aircraft has been more highly regulated, and more efforts have been taken to ensure that a larger pool of otherwise eligible female pilots are accommodated (...) by future systems, such as the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System. The article demonstrates how and why the interests of women pilots could prevail in the traditionally male preserve of the military. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What about the Billeter-Jullien Debate? And What Was It about? A Response to Thorsten Botz-BornsteinRalph WeberNo doubt Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is right to highlight that the debate of 2006 and 2007 (if indeed it can be called a debate1) between Jean François Billeter and François Jullien was particularly heated. It was to some extent a personal affair in that both protagonists overstepped the scholarly bounds set for an exchange of (...) arguments, the heat at times reaching the boiling point. Billeter reproached Jullien for no less than instrumentalizing China, fashioned as the absolute Other and instrumentalized for almost no other purpose than to continue a philosophical discourse established by Jullien himself, a discourse that became ever more auto-referential, furthering only the most dubious of ideological interests. In one passage, Billeter goes so far as to claim that, rather than allowing the “Chinese authors” their own voice and letting them develop their own arguments, in the end “it is always him [i.e. Jullien] who talks” (Billeter 2006a, p. 45). Regardless of just how personal Billeter’s opposition to Jullien was meant to be—and at least one commentator claims that beyond the polemical title the text offers a “rigorous argumentation” (Danjou 2006; cf. also Zufferey 2006)—Jullien certainly took it personally, asking himself in his riposte, Chemin faisant, just why Billeter was so angry at him (Jullien 2007, p. 137).His riposte is marketed on the title page in big letters as a “Réplique à ***,” which is explained by the series editors, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, in terms of the reaction to a splinter that more often than not swiftly removed is quickly forgotten but that occasionally provokes a considerable reflexive gesture, of just the kind that Jullien offers, thanks to ***. A quote by Foucault precedes the text itself, reading: “There are critiques to which one responds and others to which one gives a riposte. [End Page 228] Perhaps wrongly so, for why not similarly lend an ear that is attentive to incomprehension, to banality, to ignorance or to insincerity?” Only once, at the very beginning of the text, is Billeter’s name (by implication the subject either of incomprehension, banality, ignorance, insincerity, or a combination of all four) fully mentioned; thereafter only his initials, JFB, are used. Even until recently the practice of giving the silent treatment has persisted, as when Jullien in the interview with Martin and Spire simply observes “that the sinologists who criticize me … have themselves produced nothing since that critique—do you need names?” (Martin and Spire 2011, p. 209; italics in original), before referring the reader to the many books he has written since Chemin faisant. Needless to add, this point is premised on quantity trumping quality, which is at least slightly disconcerting given that Jullien’s works have been found as early as 1996 to be marked by “a great deal of overlapping if not outright repetition (or at least rewriting)” (Reding 1996, p. 162)—something that apparently still is the case in his many books “produced” since then.From one standpoint, Botz-Bornstein is also right in referring to the affair as mainly a French debate, involving a sizable number of participants and spanning a considerable period of time, from Billeter and Jullien’s 1989 and 1990 exchange in the pages of Études chinoises over how to read Wang Fuzhi (see Billeter 2006a, p. 37 n. 1); to several volumes on and in co-operative works with Jullien (Jullien and Marchaisse 2000, Marchaisse 2003, Cornaz and Marchaisse 2004, Chartier and Marchaisse 2005, Jousset 2006, and Serrurier and Bricout 2011); to the publication of the partisan Oser Construire: Pour Jullien (Chartier 2007) and Billeter’s answer to it (Billeter 2007); to the many discussions of Jullien that continue to take as their starting point the exchange with Billeter (cf. Keck 2009). The text by Martin and Spire, for instance, makes ample reference to the debate, as Botz-Bornstein mentions, and speaks out in favor of Jullien (Martin and Spire 2011, pp. 77–97). Yet, the debate is also the starting point for Jean Levi’s (2011) recent criticism of Jullien. Beyond the borders of France... (shrink)

In the history of Chinese and European philosophy, metaphysics has played an outstanding role: it is a theoretical framework which provides the basis for a philosophical understanding of the world and the self. A theory of the self is well integrated in a metaphysical understanding of the totality of nature as a dynamic process of continuous changes. According to this view, the purpose of existence can be conceived of as the development and realization of the full potential given to the (...) individual by its nature. In regard to human nature specifically, this idea of self-realization includes the development of all cognitive faculties as well as of the moral character. Metaphysics has, however, suffered a loss of importance in current debates, especially in ethics. As a result, we observe the emergence of such philosophical views as moral skepticism and even nihilism. The consequence of this tendency has been the renunciation of a claim to understanding and to providing a solid ground for ethics. Yet an intercultural dialogue can provide us with some hope as the consolidation of debates on crucial topics of our traditions might indeed serve as the basis for a more powerful philosophy in the future. (shrink)

It is not unusual to think of Rorty’s work as a success in rhetoric and a failure in political philosophy. In this article we re-evaluate this assessment by analyzing a typical feature of Rorty’s writing: his frequent use of “we so-and-so.” Taking stock of the existing literature on the subject we discuss how Rorty’s use of the “we” was received by peers and how he himself made sense of it. We then analyze Rorty’s oeuvre in order to show that a (...) better understanding of his rhetorical “we” could make his politico-philosophical “we” more appealing. We suggest that Rorty’s pragmatist take on “ethnos” is preferable to other notions that are currently championed in political theory and philosophy. (shrink)

This introductory chapter reviews the history of the reception of philosophy from Asia and the Islamic World in Western philosophy and argues in favor of conceptualizing philosophy from a more globally informed point of view.

We investigate notions of randomness in the space ${{\mathcal C}(2^{\mathbb N})}$ of continuous functions on ${2^{\mathbb N}}$ . A probability measure is given and a version of the Martin-Löf test for randomness is defined. Random ${\Delta^0_2}$ continuous functions exist, but no computable function can be random and no random function can map a computable real to a computable real. The image of a random continuous function is always a perfect set and hence uncountable. For any ${y \in 2^{\mathbb N}}$ , (...) there exists a random continuous function F with y in the image of F. Thus the image of a random continuous function need not be a random closed set. The set of zeroes of a random continuous function is always a random closed set. (shrink)

Modeling Interpretation and the Practice of Political Theory addresses these questions of political theory in a refreshing and hands-on manner. It does not only model in the abstract, but also test in practice eight basic schemes of interpretation with which any ambitious reader of political texts should be familiar.

Addressing arguments that comparative philosophy is itself impossible, or that it is indistinguishable from philosophy more generally, this collection challenges myopic understandings of comparative method and encourages a more informed consideration. Bringing together a wide variety of methodological options, it features scholars spread across the globe representing multiple philosophical traditions. From the beginnings of comparative philosophy in the 19th century to present-day proposals for more global philosophy departments, every chapter serves as a viable methodological alternative for any would-be philosophical comparativist. (...) With contributions from leading comparativists that are both distinctive in their method and explicit about its application, this valuable resource challenges and enriches the awareness and sensitivity of the beginning comparativist and seasoned veteran alike. (shrink)

Open discourses and the free formation of opinions through unfettered information flows and communicated diversity of opinion are unthinkable without independent media and essential prerequisites for a functioning democracy. Notwithstanding the importance of the linkage between media and democracy, there is no harmonized framework addressing this issue. By adopting a legal perspective, this study shall outline existing and emerging regulations, with a particular focus on broadcast, print, and online media Two regulatory tiers are distinguished: At the international level, the establishment (...) of aWorld Information Order as well as the human rights perspective intrinsic to the subject matter will be addressed. At the national level, legal approaches to particular tensions accompanying state regulation of the media will be examined. (shrink)

Prevention neuroscience investigates the brain basis of attitude and behavior change. Over the years, an increasingly structurally and functionally resolved “persuasion network” has emerged. However, current studies have only identified a small handful of neural structures that are commonly recruited during persuasive message processing, and the extent to which these (and other) structures are sensitive to numerous individual difference factors remains largely unknown. In this project we apply a multi-dimensional similarity-based individual differences analysis to explore which individual factors—including characteristics of (...) messages and target audiences—drive patterns of brain activity to be more or less similar across individuals encountering the same anti-drug public service announcements (PSAs). We demonstrate that several ensembles of brain regions show response patterns that are driven by a variety of unique factors. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for neural models of persuasion, prevention neuroscience and message tailoring, and methodological implications for future research. (shrink)