The Traveller, a philosophical comparison of the differing national cultures of western Europe and the degrees of happiness their citizens enjoy, is narrated by a restless wanderer whose heart yet yearns after his own native land, where his brother still dwells.
"I wager a sport such as you, so large and strong, knows how to show a girl a good time!" Yet no sooner had I tendered the invitation to hear my lecture tomorrow on "European and American Farming Implements, a Philosophical Comparison," than the mask of amiability fell away and she turned her attentions to a nearby mule skinner, leaving me to pay for her Champagne.
Some experimental philosophers have used the survey method to do cross-cultural comparisons, most often comparing philosophical intuitions in the United States to those in China and other East Asian Countries.
Indeed, its popularity was fostered by the chemical revolution inaugurated by Lavoisier in the late eighteenth century, the comparison between philosophical analysis and chemical analysis being frequently drawn.
The philosophical implications of this comparison between dreaming and waking mind wandering are only just beginning to be explored (Metzinger 2013 a,b).
Computational hardware inspired by CA can help in solving important technological problems (see Ilachinski 2001, p. 8), but apart from engineering issues, (CA1) also points to major conceptual questions, such as how exactly a universal Turing machine and an automaton can be compared and what are, if any, the philosophical implications of this comparison (see Wolfram 2002, Ch. 12).
In adopting these orientations, philosophers, historians, and philosophers of history may learn from philosophical and cultural anthropology that constructive comparisons can be made between understanding what individuals do and understanding what they say.
It is a revelatory comparison with large philosophical implications, suggesting that fine art, commercial art and fashion grow out of the same soil of collective consciousness.
For the great majority of Anglophone and European comparative philosophers of China the Western philosophical heritage is the basis for the comparisons.
(For some comparisons between contemporary philosophical modal logic and thirteenth-century views, see also Uckelman 2009).
One issue is methodological commensurability -- whether and how comparisons between different philosophical traditions, in this case the Chinese and Western, are to be conducted.
