Universals, disjunctions

Therefore, it would be nice to refute that premise. Unfortunately, I have no general argument to show this. The standard move against relativism is to say that it is self-refuting, because if it is true, it undermines its own validity. Since it denies universal validity, it cannot be universally valid itself. This move cannot be employed here, since the premise about disjunct cultures in itself is not a fully-fledged relativistic claim. I think the only way to deal with it is to take particular cases and to show that even quite distant cultures have much in common. This would be a useful exercise also because it would also help to sharpen our understanding of practices. Flowever, I cannot undertake that task now. 

The universal set Q, which contains all conceivable events, is called the certain event, its complement 2 the impossible event. Two events for which A n B = 0 is true, are called incompatible or disjunct, where 0 denotes the empty set. 

Abadi L, (1995). Flowshop scheduling problems with no-wait and blocking environments A mathematical programming approach, Ph.D. thesis. University of Toronto. Bjorkqvist J., Westerlund T., (1999). Automated reformulation of disjunctive constraints in MINLP optimization. Computers and Chemical Engineering Supplement, pp. Sll-S14... 

Note that a single-disjunct general example is different from an atomic property (a property with no body), because properties have universal quantifiers. If there is no ambiguity whether we are referring to an atomic property or a general example, we omit quantifiers. 

FIGURE 2.3 Floristic regions within the Cerrado Biome of Brazil. C SE, central and south-eastern CW, central-western DA, disjunct Amazonian savannas FWM, far-western mesotrophic sites N NE, north and north-eastern S, southern. Reprinted with permission of Cambridge University Press Ratter, J.A., Bridgewater, S., and Ribeiro, J.F. 2003. Analysis of the floristic composition of the Brazilian cerrado vegetation. Ill Comparison of the woody vegetation of 376 areas. Edinburgh J. Bot. 60 57-109. 

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