Sentence examples for fundamentally arbitrary from inspiring English sources

"Whiteness studies" have so proliferated in the last two decades that historians might be forgiven a yawn in response to being told that racial divisions are fundamentally arbitrary, and that deciding who is white has been not only fluid but also heavily influenced by class and culture.

But what is it about morality that precludes it being fundamentally arbitrary?

They would each entail that moral demands are fundamentally arbitrary in a way that is incompatible with morality's claim to authority.

While setting cutoff criteria is fundamentally arbitrary, it is possible to assess whether our criteria have created false negatives as a result of being too stringent.

The first approach starts from the premise that human food preferences are fundamentally arbitrary--i.e., that food preferences are the results of irrational cultural prejudices--whereas the second theory posits that human food habits are rational adaptations to material conditions.

The Dean's (or the Dean's designee's) decision is limited to deciding whether the decision or action being grieved was fundamentally unreasonable, arbitrary or unfair.

This is such an affront to the notion of "a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal," guaranteed in writing elsewhere in the constitutional firmament, and is so fundamentally illogical and arbitrary, that it cannot be reconciled with the concept of the rule of law itself.

The Court of Appeals reversed, concluding that the trial was arbitrary and fundamentally unfair in violation of due process.

In addition, the court believed that the trial court's instruction on the use of prior act evidence allowed a finding of guilt based simply on a judgment that McGuire committed the prior bad acts. 1 The court concluded that the admission of the evidence, in conjunction with the prejudicial instruction, "rendered McGuire's trial arbitrary and fundamentally unfair" in violation of due process.

Glass [ 15] viewed all standard-setting methods that involved judges making arbitrary decisions as fundamentally flawed.

First, it relies on an arbitrary definition of "fundamentally unethical" research as either intended to seriously harm participants or that fails to obtain informed consent.