FRAMES OF COMPARISON Anthropology and Inheriting Traditional Practices

This essay seeks to develop and illustrate an approach to comparison based on ad hoc frames. A frame is defined by a question, to which different thinkers can be seen as offering complementary and/or competing responses. Pursuing a middle ground between universalist conceptions of comparison and particularist rejections of comparison, this approach brings various positions into dialogue in a manner that is not inherently totalizing. The article draws extensively on Hegel's philosophy of religion to articulate this approach to comparison and its presuppositions. The second section of the essay seeks to illustrate the value of this approach by using the question of how traditional practices are inherited to frame a comparison of Hegel on habit and the Confucian thinker Xunzi on ritual. This comparison functions principally to indicate the process of comparison and suggest the value of pursuing this comparison in greater depth.     

An examination of indexes for determining the number of clusters in binary data sets

The problem of choosing the correct number of clusters is as old as cluster analysis itself. A number of authors have suggested various indexes to facilitate this crucial decision. One of the most extensive comparative studies of indexes was conducted by Milligan and Cooper (1985). The present piece of work pursues the same goal under different conditions. In contrast to Milligan and Cooper's work, the emphasis here is on high-dimensional empirical binary data. Binary artificial data sets are constructed to reflect features typically encountered in real-world data situations in the field of marketing research. The simulation includes 162 binary data sets that are clustered by two different algorithms and lead to recommendations on the number of clusters for each index under consideration. Index results are evaluated and their performance is compared and analyzed.Author names are listed in alphabetical order.This piece of research was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) under grant SFB#010 (Adaptive Information Systems and Modeling in Economics and Management Science).The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and especially the associate editor for their helpful comments and suggestions.     

Thinking about the Needy, Justice, and International Organizations

This article has three main parts, Section 2 considers the nature and extent to which individuals who are well-off have a moral obligation to aid the worlds needy. Drawing on a pluralistic approach to morality, which includes consequentialist, virtue-based, and deontological elements, it is contended that most who are well-off should do much more than they do to aid the needy, and that they are open to serious moral criticism if they simply ignore the needy. Part one also focuses on the United States, and illustrates both how incredibly wealthy the U.S. is and some of the spending habits of its citizens; however, its considerations apply to the well-off generally. Section 3 considers whether justice provides reasons for helping the needy. Noting that justice in an extremely complex notion, it discusses numerous considerations relevant to justices scope and implications, including an extended Rawlsian conception of justice, an absolute conception, a comparative conception, the distinction between natural and social justice, and various elements of common-sense morality. Section 2 also distinguishes between agent-relative justice-based reasons, which are relevant to whether we act justly, and agent-neutral justice-based reasons, which are relevant to whether we have reasons of justicefor acting. Correspondingly, it argues that even if one can ignore the needy without acting unjustly, as philosophers like Robert Nozick and Jan Narveson contend, there may be powerful reasons of justicefor addressing their plight. Section 4 briefly address the responsibilities of international organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO). Drawing on Section 2, it is suggested that in addition to standard reasons to act justlytowards needy members of the worlds community, there will be reasons of justicefor such organizations to aid the needy in both present, and future, generations. The article concludes by contending that the well-off in countries like the U.S. have reason to view international organizations like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO as their agents, and to seek to insure that they alleviate misfortunes amongst the worlds needy.     

Set-Theoretic Absoluteness and the Revision Theory of Truth

We describe the solution of the Limit Rule Problem of Revision Theory and discuss the philosophical consequences of the fact that the truth set of Revision Theory is a complete 1/2 set.     

On Consistent Subsets of Large Sets of Satisfiable Sentences

We extend some results of Adam Kolany to show that large sets of satisfiable sentences generally contain equally large subsets of mutually consistent sentences. In particular, this is always true for sets of uncountable cofinality, and remains true for sets of denumerable cofinality if we put appropriate bounding conditions on the sentences. The results apply to both the propositional and the predicate calculus. To obtain these results, we use delta sets for regular cardinals, and, for singular cardinals, a generalization of delta sets. All of our results are theorems in ZFC.     

年龄相关性黄斑变性治疗的比较分析

从治疗原理、费用、疗效、不良反应等方面对年龄相关性黄斑变性的不同治疗方法进行比较和分析,为患者进行治疗上的选择提供帮助,同时指导和规范该类疾病治疗的临床决策,以期能在目前条件下不仅提高病人的治疗效果和生活质量同时又达到降低医疗费用的目的。     

Optimistic and pessimistic biases and comparative judgmental processes in Japan: Do people really compare themselves to their peers?

Studies on above-average and unrealistic-optimism effects have recently claimed that they are the consequence of an over-utilization of self-relevant and under-utilization of peer-relevant information, despite the assumption that people would refer to both themselves and their average peer to make a comparative judgment. However, there is a possibility that these tendencies are prevalent only in Western cultures. The present paper reports on three studies of comparative self-other judgments conducted with Japanese university students. The results consistently showed that participants tended to focus simply on their own abilities, traits, or the likelihood of experiencing future life events, without paying much attention to their peers. These findings suggest first that there is a consistent tendency for people to place a greater weight on the self than normative standards when considering their comparative position in a group, and that this tendency is independent of the size or direction of comparative biases.     

Ambiguous comparative judgment: Fuzzy set model and data analysis

Abstract:  This paper proposed two types of fuzzy set models for ambiguous comparative judgments, which did not always hold transitivity and comparability properties. The first type of model was a fuzzy theoretical extension of the additive difference model for preference that was used to explain ambiguous preference strength. The second was a fuzzy logic model for explaining ambiguous preference in which preference strength was bounded, such as a probability measure. In both models, multi-attribute weighting parameters and all attribute values were assumed to be asymmetric fuzzy L-R numbers. For each model, a method of parameter estimation using fuzzy regression analysis was proposed. Numerical examples were also provided for comparison. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of the proposed models were discussed.     

MULTIDIMENSIONAL THINKING ABOUT FORCE ETHICS: A Matter of Method and Content

Analyses of religious and cultural perspectives on the use of force continue to receive criticism for questionable motives, for insufficient holism, and for exaggerating uniqueness. Claims of recurrent problems educe consideration of interdisciplinary proposals designed to resolve related challenges. Thought together, some suggest that a transversal research program into ethical orientations toward war can facilitate fair and rigorous exploration of crosscultural similarities and differences. Tentative findings emphasizing textual precepts indicate some resonance amid diversity across eleven ethical frameworks including Western just war thinking. Maximizing relevance depends upon expanding the range of orientations and practices studied. Future results might be integrated with knowledge about the influence of other variables to more completely capture the phenomenon of making judgments regarding the use of force in all its manifestations.