Nietzsche’s Critical Target

This chapter characterizes ‘morality’, the object of Nietzsche’s critique. It locates the discussion within a wider interpretive issue, commonly called the Scope Problem, that bears on the coherence of his revaluative project: how to separate his critical target from positive ideal, while leaving the latter immune to the objections informing the critique. As a first step to resolving the Scope Problem, the chapter characterizes Nietzsche’s critical target via two sets of conditions. One of these identifies various values he associates with morality. The other concerns morality’s foundational commitments. Central to these is the idea that morality is normatively authoritative: compliance with it is categorically required. The chapter explains what this involves and why opposing morality’s normative authority is crucial to Nietzsche’s critique.

Perfectionism

This exegetically focused chapter outlines the perfectionism I attribute to Nietzsche. It suggests that he is a value-pluralist rather than (power-based) value-monist. It then raises doubts about certain political and ethical readings (though gives a developmental story about his changing ambitions), and instead attributes to him an individualist perfectionism focused on the highest forms of human flourishing and excellence (with strong quasi-aesthetic and anti-theoretic leanings). This gives part of the resolution to the Scope Problem. The chapter then considers how immoral the resulting perfectionism is and examines how it might be justified.

Tempering the cosmic scope problem in Christian soteriology: hylemorphic animalism and Gregory of Nazianzus

Christian scripture provides good reason to think that Christ's redemptive work has cosmic scope (cf. Colossians 1:19–20). Explanations of how Christ's work might extend to all creation (including any sufficiently human-like extraterrestrials) have not, however, received significant sustained attention in theology. In this article, I consider two attempts to explain the cosmic scope of redemption, and after identifying shortcomings with each explanation, I offer a philosophical anthropology (hylemorphic animalism), which when combined with a principle of soteriology due to Gregory of Nazianzus provides a full explanation for how Christ's redemptive work might extend to all creation.

Scales for Scope: A New Solution to the Scope Problem for Pro-Attitude-Based Well-Being

Theories of well-being that give an important role to satisfied pro-attitudes need to account for the fact that, intuitively, the scope of possible objects of pro-attitudes seems much wider than the scope of things, states or events that affect our well-being. Parfit famously illustrated this with his wish that a stranger may recover from an illness: it seems implausible that the stranger's recovery would constitute a benefit for Parfit. There is no consensus in the literature about how to rule out such well-being-irrelevant pro-attitudes. I argue, first, that there is no distinction in kind between well-being-relevant and irrelevant pro-attitudes. Instead, well-being-irrelevant pro-attitudes are the limiting cases on the scale measuring how much of a difference pro-attitudes make to the subject's well-being. Second, I propose a particular scalar model according to which the well-being-relevance of pro-attitudes is measured either by their hedonic tone, or by the subject's conative commitment.

Empirical Studies on the Functional Complexity of Software in Large-Scale Software Systems

Functional complexity is one of the most fundamental properties of software because almost all other software attributes and properties such as functional size, development effort, costs, quality, and project duration are highly dependent on it. The functional complexity of software is a macro-scope problem concerning the semantic properties of software and human cognitive complexity towards a given software system; while the computational complexity is a micro-scope problem concerning algorithmic analyses towards machine throughput and time/space efficiency. This paper presents an empirical study on the functional complexity of software known as cognitive complexity based on large-scale samples using a Software Cognitive Complexity Analysis Tool (SCCAT). Empirical data are obtained with SCCAT on 7,531 programs and five formally specified software systems. The theoretical foundation of software functional complexity is introduced and the metric of software cognitive complexity is formally modeled. The functional complexities of a large-scale software system and the air traffic control systems (ATCS) are rigorously analyzed. A novel approach to represent software functional complexities and their distributions in software systems is developed. The nature of functional complexity of software in software engineering is rigorously explained. The relationship between the symbolic and functional complexities of software is quantitatively analyzed.

Empirical Studies on the Functional Complexity of Software in Large-Scale Software Systems

Functional complexity is one of the most fundamental properties of software because almost all other software attributes and properties such as functional size, development effort, costs, quality, and project duration are highly dependent on it. The functional complexity of software is a macro-scope problem concerning the semantic properties of software and human cognitive complexity towards a given software system; while the computational complexity is a micro-scope problem concerning algorithmic analyses towards machine throughput and time/space efficiency. This paper presents an empirical study on the functional complexity of software known as cognitive complexity based on large-scale samples using a Software Cognitive Complexity Analysis Tool (SCCAT). Empirical data are obtained with SCCAT on 7,531 programs and five formally specified software systems. The theoretical foundation of software functional complexity is introduced and the metric of software cognitive complexity is formally modeled. The functional complexities of a large-scale software system and the air traffic control systems (ATCS) are rigorously analyzed. A novel approach to represent software functional complexities and their distributions in software systems is developed. The nature of functional complexity of software in software engineering is rigorously explained. The relationship between the symbolic and functional complexities of software is quantitatively analyzed.