That means that technique and one particular stance is not as important as principle and fundamentals.
For some, the issue was not as much about biblical principles or same-sex marriage as it was about freedom of speech.
Just days ago, the Supreme Court gave its ruling that where and how personal data is stored is not as important as the principle behind why our founders added protections against search and seizure.
Its solution tends to be impressionistic, depending on the skillful use of numerous and often contradictory decisions, which can be used only as helpful guidelines and not as rigid principles.
"What distinguished him as a jurist was his seeing law not as abstract principles, but in terms of what it meant in people's lives," Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an email.
In the structure of the Mohist theory, however, they are conceptualized not as universal principles, applied by deductive reasoning, but as models or exemplars, applied by pattern recognition and analogical reasoning, against which we compare social practices or individual conduct to determine what is shi (right) and fei (wrong).
If many universes exist, our own may simply be one of a small minority capable of supporting life -- fortunate, but not (as anthropic-principle theorists sometimes seem to imply) miraculous.
As for the one-China policy, Mr Chen himself has made it clear: Taiwan is prepared to discuss this with China as one of many topics, but certainly not as a "principle", a precondition for talks to begin.
I buy the artist as free-to-do-what-he-likes not as a principle but when he proves himself a better singer and dancer than a social worker.
If you accept the principle of a love economy, regulating the universe, which Dante does, certainly does, then you understand this notion of hazard in — not as a principle of just chance in the sense of casual blind randomness, but in the sense of this risk — proposition risk element.
