Abstract Philosophy lacks criteria to evaluate its philosophical theories. To fill this gap, this essay introduces nine criteria to compare worldviews, classified in three broad categories: objective criteria (objective consistency, scientificity, scope), subjective criteria (subjective consistency, personal utility, emotionality), and intersubjective criteria (intersubjective consistency, collective utility, narrativity). The essay first defines what a worldview is and exposes the heuristic used in the quest for criteria. After describing each criterion individually, it shows what happens when each of them is violated. From the criteria, it derives assessment tests to compare and improve different worldviews. These include theis‐ought, ought‐act,andis‐actfirst‐order tests; thecriticalanddialecticalsecond‐order tests; themixed‐questionsandfirst‐second‐orderthird‐order tests; and thewe‐I, we‐it,andit‐Itests. The essay then applies these criteria and tests to a concrete example, comparing theFlyingSpaghettiMonster deity withIntelligentDesign. For another application, it draws more general fruitful suggestions for the dialogue between science and religion.
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