Glossary of Key Terms - Oxford University Press



Glossary of Key TermsAd hominem: An argument directed at an opponent in a disagreement, not at the topic under discussion.Aesthetic terms: Judgements requiring the exercise of taste, perceptiveness or sensitivity, discrimination or appreciation. Agent: One who acts and is held responsible for those actions.Analytic judgment: A judgment that unites a subject with a predicate necessarily contained in it. An explication of a concept.Antiscientism: An attitude of hostility or contempt for science.A posteriori: The phrase literally means “posterior to” or “after.” In philosophical contexts it means “based on experience.” A posteriori reasoning is based on propositions known only from experience.A priori: The phrase literally means “prior to” or “beforehand.” In philosophical contexts it often means “not based on experience.” A priori reasoning depends only on self-evident propositions that can be known independent of experience.Argument: A set of statements organized into premises and conclusion. The premises are supposed to support the conclusion.Begging the question: A fallacy in which one assumes the point one is trying to prove.Body: A physical substance that exists in space and time.Buddhism: The Buddha’s teachings focus on the problem of human suffering and the path to attain peace, direct knowledge, and enlightenment.Categorical imperative: Kant’s supreme principle of morality, of which he gives various formulations. It is a command of reason that represents an action as good in itself.Closed concept: One for which necessary and sufficient conditions can be given as a definition.Coercion: The use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance.Conclusion: The claim that an argument is supposed to establish as true or likely true.Confucianism: Confucius focused on the relationships between individuals within community, and how the proper performance of rituals can establish an exemplary life.Contingent: Something is contingent if it is possible for it to have been otherwise.Contractarianism: The view that morality consists of a set of rules that individuals agree to, as if signing a contract.Contradictory beliefs: Two or more beliefs that cannot possibly be true in the same circumstances. For example, the belief that the world is flat and the belief that the world is not flat are contradictory because there can be no single set of circumstances such that the world is both flat and not flat.Cultural relativism: The thesis that there is no such thing as universal truth in morality, only different cultural codes on a par.Daoism: See Taoism.Deductive argument: An argument such that if it is valid, the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion.Determinism: The thesis that the laws of nature and the totality of past circumstances necessitate a single possible way things might happen.Dualism: The view that the mind is distinct from the body. The theory that consciousness requires something nonphysical. (The opposite of physicalism or materialism.)Ethical Egoism: The normative view that people are always justified in doing whatever is in their own interests.Epiphenomenalism: The theory that mental states such as desires have no causal effect on the physical world. Often held by property dualists.Epistemology: The branch of philosophy covering the theory of knowledge.Ethics: The study of how to live. (See also Morality.)Existentialism: The view (associated with, e.g., Sartre) that human beings are condemned to responsibility for their own being. The human situation is one that requires free choice and action, but there are no values able to justify our choices and actions before they are made.Fallacious argument: An argument such that the truth of the premises does not support the truth of the conclusion.Fallacy: A tempting logical mistake in reasoning.Family resemblances: A network of properties more or less shared by the items that fall under a given concept. The idea is that things aptly called “x” do not all share a common property, but we can identify something as an x by its having some (but perhaps not others) of the properties shared by some (but not other) things that are also aptly called “x.” The notion comes from Wittgenstein and is in contrast to a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that give the definition of a concept.God: The traditional (Judeo-Christian-Islamic) conception of God is of an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient creator of the universe.Greatest happiness principle: The basic principle of utilitarianism. It says that an action is right to the extent that it promotes pleasure and wrong to the extent that it produces pain and prevents pleasure.Hollow man: A fallacy in which one makes up an argument, then refutes it, rather than responding to the actual argument that one’s opponent is giving.Hypothesis: A proposed explanation for something that can be tested.Hypothetical imperative: A command of reason that represents an action as good as a means to another end.Identity: Two objects are identical if they are one and the same.Indeterminism: The thesis that at any given moment there is more than one possible way things might proceed in the future.Inductive argument: An argument such that, if it is correct, the truth of the premises shows that the conclusion is probably true.Invalid argument: An argument for which there is at least one case (a counterexample) where the premises are all true and the conclusion is false.Materialism: (1) The view that reality consists only of physical objects and their physical properties. (2) The view that the mind is identical to the body. Also called physicalism.Maxim: In Kant’s moral theory, a maxim is the general principle one expresses in a particular action.Metaphysics: The study of the basic features of existence.Mind: A conscious entity that exists in time, but not space, and to which the person has private access.Morality: The study of right and wrong, especially as applied to actions.Naturalism: The thesis that all that exists is or is reducible to the objects of scientific inquiry.Necessary: To say that something is necessary is to say that it is impossible for it to have been otherwise.Necessary condition: To say that p is a necessary condition on q is to say that one cannot have q without also having p. A necessary condition is like a requirement.Noncognitivism: The view that reason alone is insufficient to arrive at moral judgments.Normative ethics: Branch of ethics that aims to figure out standards for morally right and wrong behavior.Objective: From a third-person or disinterested point of view. Something is said to have objective value if the justification of its worth does not appeal, say, to a particular individual’s desires. Something is said to be objectively justified if its truth can be seen from a perspective that can, at least in principle, be shared by anyone.Ockham’s razor: The principle that if all else is equal, we should prefer the simpler of two competing hypotheses.Omnibenevolent: Motivated to do all and only what is good.Omnipotent: All-powerful.Omniscient: All-knowing.Open concept: One characterized in terms of family resemblances but for which one cannot give necessary and sufficient conditions of application. One can give paradigm cases of things that fall under the concept, but new and novel cases are possible and require a decision whether to extend the concept or not.Personal identity: The problem of personal identity is that of supplying criteria for when person A is one and the same person as person B.Petitio principii (begging the question): An argument that takes for granted what it is supposed to prove.Phenomenon: Something known through the senses. An experience.Physicalism: Another word for materialism.Predicate: A term that refers to a property or relation of a thing or things.Premise: A piece of support for the conclusion of an argument.Prima facie: Literally, “on its face.” To call something prima facie wrong, for example, is to say that it is considered wrong unless there are convincing reasons to the contrary.Primary quality: A power of an object to produce ideas in our minds that resemble actual properties of the object itself. Primary qualities are mind-independent. The five primary qualities are solidity, extension, figure, number, and mobility.Principle of utility: (See greatest happiness principle.)Problem of dirty hands: The problem of dirty hands arises from the assumption that political success sometimes requires doing something that is morally wrong. When one feels guilty about committing the wrong, then one is said to have dirty hands. A morally good, successful politician will have dirty hands.Problem of evil: The problem of reconciling the existence of evil with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly benevolent God.Property dualism: The theory that the mind is not a nonphysical substance, but it has nonphysical properties.Psychological egoism: The view that the only motive from which anyone ever acts is self-interest. Qualia: The subjective quality of what it is like to have a certain experience (for example, what it is like to taste chocolate).Question-begging: An argument is question-begging when one or more of the premises presupposes the truth of the conclusion.Reasonable belief: A belief one can justify by giving a good reason for holding it.Secondary quality: A power of an object to produce ideas in our minds that do not resemble actual properties of the object itself. Secondary qualities are mind-dependent. Examples of secondary qualities are color, temperature, and odor.Sound argument: A valid argument with all true premises.Straw man: A fallacy in which one misrepresents one’s opponent’s view to make it seem weaker than it is, then refutes the weaker view, and claims to have refuted the opponent.Subjective: From a particular individual’s point of view. Something is said to be subjectively valuable if it is judged valuable from the perspective of, say, a particular individual’s desires. Something is said to be subjectively justified if it has support from the beliefs of a particular individual, where some of these beliefs may be false.Substance dualism: The theory that consciousness resides in a nonphysical substance. Also called Cartesian dualism.Sufficient condition: To say that p is a sufficient condition for q is to say that p’s happening is enough to ensure q’s happening. A sufficient condition for something is all it takes to have that thing.Supernatural: Something that is not reducible to the objects of scientific inquiry.Synthetic judgment: A judgment that unites a subject with a predicate not necessarily contained in it. An ampliative judgment.Taoism: The teachings of the Tao Te Ching are ascribed to Lao Zu. The central focus of Taoism is to live in harmony with the natural forces of the universe.Teleology: Explanation of natural phenomena in terms of purpose or design.Theodicy: An explanation of why God would allow the evil in this world to occur.Valid argument: A correct, good deductive argument. An argument such that there is no case where the premises are all true and the conclusion is false. Alternatively, an argument such that the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion.Virtue: A synonym for “virtue” is “excellence.” Virtue ethics: Theories that take character to be a standard for the evaluation of conduct. Right action is what the virtuous person would do.Weak man: A fallacy in which one chooses only the weakest of one’s opponent’s arguments to refute, giving the false impression that the opponent doesn’t have any stronger arguments.Zen Buddhism: Rather than rely on reason or ritual, Zen focuses on the potential of spontaneous enlightenment through the experience of koans. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download