comparison

Distinction (the capacity and practice of differentiating between entities) existed long before comparison (the structured practice of examining two or more entities side by side). Distinction is the prerequisite cognitive and cultural act that fed into the development of comparison as a formal method of analysis. Historical test: which existed first? Distinction predates comparison.

Removal test: remove comparison — does decoy-effect stop operating? Yes. The decoy effect operates by making one option look more attractive through comparison with a dominated decoy option. Without the mechanism of comparison between options, the decoy has no effect. The phenomenon is entirely defined by how comparison shifts preference.

Comparison existed first and fed into precedence. Which came first? The concept of comparing two items is more fundamental; the concept of one item having priority or being earlier than another (precedence) was built on top of comparison. Precedence requires comparison as its logical precondition.

Incommensurability is the property that two things lack a common standard for comparison. Remove comparison and incommensurability has no substrate — the concept dissolves. Object-level dependency (Law 8b).

Analogy is a specific kind of comparison — it draws structural parallels between two different domains to explain or reason about one in terms of the other. Law 9: a competent speaker would call an analogy 'a comparison'.

Envy DERIVED_FROM comparison — the capacity to compare oneself to others existed first and fed into the specific emotional experience of envy. Per Law 7 (which-came-first-test): comparison is a basic cognitive capacity predating the named emotion of envy. Comparison came first and provided the mechanism envy builds on.

Merit as a concept exists to enable comparing worth between entities. Its designed purpose is to serve the operation of comparison — you invoke merit precisely to rank, weigh, or discriminate value across candidates. The servant (merit) points at the master (comparison).

Analogical reasoning operates by mapping similarities across domains — it requires comparison as its constitutive mechanism. Remove comparison (the operation of noting similarities/differences between entities) and analogical reasoning cannot function at all. This is object-level: comparison is not a meta-level condition shared by all concepts, but a specific cognitive operation that analogical reasoning performs. The removal test passes: without comparison, the reasoning process stops working.