Thursday, September 1, 2016

The concepts of "best" and "better"

I have argued that with vector utility/value there is no such thing as "the best college." (See chapter 2 of my book Twelve Papers, at www.robert-w-jones.com under "book".) Similarly, it may be that there is no such thing as "the best of all possible worlds."
 But world A might be "better than" world B. Suppose the vector value of worlds had only 2 incommensurable components (x,y) and that there were 3 possible worlds with:  W1=(1,2), W2=(2,1), and W3=(3,1).  Then W3 is better than W2.  They are equally good according to component y and W3 is better than W2 according to component x.  But we can not judge which of the 3 worlds is the best of all.  W2 and W3 are better than W1 according to component x but W1 is better than W2 and W3 according to component y. If some one world had the highest value for ALL of the components (x,y,z,....) only then does a "best of all possible worlds" exist.

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