Metaphilosophical Criteria for Worldview Comparison

Abstract

Philosophy lacks criteria to evaluate its philosophical theories. To fill this gap, we introduce nine criteria to compare worldviews, classified in three broad categories: objective criteria (objective consistency, scientificity, scope) subjective criteria (subjective consistency, personal utility, emotionality) and intersubjective criteria (intersubjective consistency, collective utility, narrativity). We first define what a worldview is and expose the heuristic used in our quest for criteria. After describing each criterion individually, we show what happens when each of them is violated. From the criteria, we derive assessment tests to compare and improve different worldviews. These include the is-ought, ought-act and is-act first-order tests; the critical and dialectical second-order tests; the mixed-questions and firstsecond-order synthetical third order tests; and the we-I, we-it and it-I tests. Then we apply these criteria and tests to a concrete example, comparing the Flying Spaghetti Monster deity with Intelligent Design. As another application, we draw more general fruitful suggestions for the science-and-religion dialog.

A Systematic Framework for Exploring Worldviews and Its Generalization as a Multi-Purpose Inquiry Framework

“…Initially our motivation was to understand how worldviews might be challenged by research findings in frontier science, but as we developed the framework we realized that it might be a useful contribution to all of the fields we have drawn on in developing it, including anthropology, religious studies, social science, theology, cosmology, psychology, philosophy, and systemology, e.g., [9,21,22,25,29,30,34,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. We realized early on that systemology would provide a natural home for our work in this area, because:…”

Is the Universe Enough? Can It Suffice as a Basis for Worldviews?

“…A worldview, then, is a kind of "view of everything" that may matter in a person's life or a group's functioning, e.g., survival, human affairs, facts and values, meaning and purpose, death and afterlife, epistemology and ontology, transcendent realities, etc. This is not different in its essence from characterizations offered by others, and given this kind of characterization, we can see why worldviews can drive very specific details of what we believe, how we think, and why we act in certain ways (Koltko-Rivera 2004, Johnson et al 2011, Vidal 2012. Worldviews can be comforting and inspiring, but also dangerous.…”

“…This short treatment cannot include the myriad details of cosmic evolution and all the relevant details regarding the philosophy and psychology of belief and worldviews and how they impact human behavior, but we will certainly draw from some of that work, much of which can be found in academic and popular treatments, e.g. : Aerts et al 1994, Babbage and Ronan 2000, Wilson 2002, Shermer 2002, Koltko-Rivera 2004, Gershenson et al 2007, Bulbulia et al 2008, Johnson et al 2011, Henriques 2011, Vidal 2012, Nilsson 2013, 2014, Hedlund de-Witt et al 2014, Saucier 2013.…”

Teaching resident physicians to work with the previously incarcerated patient

“…14 It is often unconscious and undisclosed. 15 Participants were asked to visually place themselves on a continuum that identified their own personal concept of time, focus of identity, concept of speech, and way of thinking. Seeing how different participants in the room viewed time as linear or circular, identity as individual or collective, speech as direct or circular, and way of thinking as rational or abstract sparked dialogue on how those worldviews impact how we act, speak, and form opinions about others.…”