General Philosophical Key Terms Flashcards
(24 cards)
A posteriori
Knowledge that can only be acquired from experience of the external world.
A priori
Knowledge that can be acquired without experience of the external world, through thought alone.
Abductive argument
A form of inductive argument which shows something is probably true because it offers the best explanation, for example because its makes fewer assumptions.
Analytic reduction
If X reduces to Y, then the meaning of X is the same as the meaning of Y
Analytic truth
A proposition that is true in virtue of the meaning of the words. For example ‘a bachelor is an unmarried man’.
Apophatic way
The via negativa.
Arete
Used by Aristotle to describe a property or virtue that enables something to achieve its ergon (function). For example, the arete of sharpness enables a knife to achieve its function.
Blik
An unfalsifiable belief that is held in the face of conflicting evidence, but is nevertheless meaningless.
Cognitive statement
Cognitive statements aim to describe the world as either true or false. For example ‘water boils at 100 degrees celsius’ is a cognitive statement as it has the ability to be true or false.
Contingent truth
Something that is true but might not actually be true, for example ‘water boils at 100 degrees celsius’, is a contingent truth as the laws of physics could have been different.
Deductive argument
An argument where the premises indent to guarantee a conclusion, for example the logical problem of evil is supposed to logically guarantee the conclusion ‘God does not exist’.
Eliminative materialism
The view that our common sense understanding of mental states is radically mistaken and that some or even all of these mental states don’t exist and should be eliminated in favour of alternative, accurate neuroscience.
Empiricism
All synthetic truths are acquired a posteriori.
Epiphenomenalism
A form of dualism that says that the mental and physical interact in only one direction, for example getting hit in the physical head causes the mental state of pain.
Eudaimonia
An ancient greek term used by Aristotle to describe the good life for a human being in the broadest sense.
Falsifiable
A belief or proposition that is incompatible with some possible observation. An unfalsifiable proposition is compatible with every observation and is therefore meaningless.
Inductive argument
The premises support the conclusion, but do not logically guarantee it.
Leibniz’s law of Indiscernibility of identicals:
The principle that if A and B are the same thing, then A and B must have all the same properties.
Infallibilism
According to infallibilism, anything that can be doubted is not knowledge. For example, on the infallibilist definition, I can’t know “grass is green” because I might be being deceived by an evil demon.
Ockhams razor
The principle that if two theories have the same explanatory and predictive power, the theory that invokes the fewest entities is usually the better one.
Qualia
The subjective qualities of experience – i.e. what something feels like inside your mind. Qualia are not properties of objects themselves, but properties of our experience of objects.
Spatial order
Examples of organisation/order within the universe.
Synthetic truth
A proposition that is true in virtue of how the world is. For example, “grass is green” or “water boils at 100°c”. Unlike an analytic truth, denying a synthetic truth does not lead to a logical contradiction. For example, even though “grass is green” is true, there is no logical contradiction in the idea of red grass. The idea of red grass makes sense, even if it is not how the world actually is.
Temporal order
Examples of organisation/order of the laws of the universe. For example, the laws of gravity and electromagnetism are examples of temporal order
