AS PHİLOSOPHY KEY TERMS
Alienation: the process by which individuals are excluded from society and its activities. The term is often used in relation to economic activities by Marxists.
Altruism: the disinterested concern for the welfare of another.
Analogy: comparison
Analytic: refers to a sentence that can be shown to be true by examining the terms involved. They cannot be denied without a contradiction. Analytic truths are also known as tautologies – meaning the predicate is contained in the subject. The subject is what you are talking about, and the predicate is what you say about it.
Anthropic: relating to human beings. The Anthropic principle argues that the universe has been precisely fine tuned to support human life. It could not have been otherwise in order for human beings to exist.
Anthropomorphic: when non-human things are given human qualities.
Anthropomorphise: this is to ascribe human characteristics to non-human beings; for example, to say animals or God are loving.
Á posteriori: truths that can only be know via the senses so are dependent on experience.
Á priori: truths that can be known independently of experience, without the use of the senses to prove them.
Aseity: a theological term that is used to express the claim that God is entirely self-sufficient. He is not dependent upon any other thing either for his existence or for his nature, and it is impossible for him ever to have come to exist or ever to cease to exist. He is entirely necessary.
Augment: to make bigger
Autonomous: having self-rule and self-determination. So a person is the sole author of his or her decisions, a free agent able to choose his/her desires and moral law.
Basic belief: (also referred to as properly basic) to believe in something without any evidence or argument at all.
Belief in: this refers to attitudinal belief. It often involves faith, loyalty, attitudes, etc.
Belief that: this refers to facts, and is closely linked to reason, proof, and evidence.
Classical foundationalism: the basis for knowledge which shows something to be self-evident, incorrigible and infallible.
Cognitively: referring to the process of gaining knowledge and the content of a statement. The question is whether the sentence gives us genuine knowledge.
Coherent: logically connected, consistent
Collective consciousness: the thoughts and beliefs and experiences that underpin, often subconsciously, the thinking of whole groups of people.
Compound: to put together
Conceptual scheme: a framework that helps us make sense of the world.
Contingent: refers to truths that might have been otherwise. The sea is blue, but it might not have been. Similarly, I can imagine a possible world where David Beckham was a ballet dancer not a footballer – the truth that he is a footballer is contingent.
Deduction: refers to a type of reasoning where if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. For example:
Premise 1: All men are mortal
Premise 2: Socrates is a man
Conclusion: Therefore Socrates is mortal.
Deism: the view that God does not intervene in the world, he is entirely separate from it.
Diminish: to make smaller
Doctrine: the principles and beliefs that order a group such as a religious body.
Dogmas: group of beliefs often considered authoritative and unquestionable.
Empirical: an empirical theory is the theory that knowledge is gained primarily from experience rather than purely from reason.
Empiricism: the school of thought that claims that innate ideas do not exist, and that all knowledge is á posteriori (after experience).
Epistemic distance: epistemology is the theory of knowledge. God does not give us clear knowledge of His existence and His plan, in order that we work it out for ourselves.
Epistemological: epistemology is the study of knowledge: what we know and how we come to know it, so an epistemology is a particular account of knowledge. Epistemological questions are usually contrasted with ontological ones.
Eschatology: concerned with the last or final fate of mankind. Eschatology is frequently used to indicate what happens after death.
Eschatological verification: a term coined by John Hick. The idea that there will be verification after death.
Falsify: to be able to prove something wrong. For example, the assertion that “all swans are white” is falsifiable, because it is logically possible that a swan can be found which is not white.
Fideists: the view that religious belief is based solely on faith.
Functionalist account: understanding something in terms of its function or use rather than its intrinsic nature.
Hypothesis: a real claim about the world or a proposed explanation for something.
Idea: a perception of the mind which involves thinking of something instead of actually (first hand) experiencing it.
Idea innatism: also known as concept innatism, is the doctrine that asserts that humans have access to certain inborn ideas.
Imagistic: based on images
Immanence: present within all things.
Immutability: not subject to any kind of change.
Impression: a perception which involves actual hearing, seeing, feeling, etc., rather than just thinking about these things.
Incorporeal: lacking material form or substance, spiritual rather than physical.
Incorrigible: cannot be doubted
Induction: refers to a type of reasoning that is based on the idea that things we have not yet experienced will resemble what we have experienced. We generalise from many instances to make conclusions about instances we have not experienced. Induction is how scientific method works. For example, it is through inductive reasoning that you believe a paracetamol will ease your headache. The more evidence you have the stronger the argument. If you meet one person with blue eyes who steals from you it would be a weak inductive argument to suggest that all blue-eyed people are thieves. But if the sun has risen every morning in the history of the world it is a strong inductive argument to suggest it will do so tomorrow. However, induction can never give certainty, because you can never have an infinite number of examples to support your case.
Infallible: cannot be wrong
Innate: something that cannot be separated from us as human beings – it is intrinsic to us and necessary.
Intrinsic: belonging to the nature or essence of something.
Introspection: a consideration of the contents of our own mind; rearranging of ideas that we already have. For an empiricist, all of the objects of introspection can b derived ultimately from experience.
Knowledge innatism: this doctrine asserts that humans have access to knowledge that is possessed innately. To know something is to have an idea that is true.
Language games: a concept introduced by Wittgenstein. They are practices governed by rules and conventions within a particular group or community.
Logical consistency: correct reasoning. It tests whether a conclusion is correctly deduced from the premise.
Materialist: someone who believes that the ultimate nature of reality is material and all explanations will ultimately be in terms of matter and its motions.
Metaphysics: a branch in philosophy that looks at existence and the theory of knowledge.
Naturalism: the view that reality can be understood using broadly scientific methods. Naturalists reject explanations that rely on entities that cannot be assessed scientifically, e.g. God.
Naturalistic explanations: explanations that can be scientifically proven.
Necessary: refers to truths that are true in all possible worlds, or all possible situations. We cannot imagine it being otherwise. I can imagine a possible world where people have two heads and the sky is green, but not where 2 + 2 = 7.
Negate: reverse
Norms in society: accepted ways of behaving.
Noumenon: this is a Kantian expression for reality as it is ‘in itself’ quite outside of the structuring process of the human intellect which produces empirical experience.
Omnibenevolence: all-goodness
Omnitemporal: present at all and every moment of time.
Omnipotence: all-powerful
Omnipresent: being present everywhere.
Omniscient: knowing everything
Ontological: ontology is the study of being or existence. An ontology is a list of the types of things that exist. The ontology of a particular object would be the type of existence it sustains. Ontological questions are usually contrasted with epistemological ones.
Paradigm shift: causes someone to see the same information in a completely different way. This is something that drastically changes what we thought we knew.
Perception: any content of the mind of which we are conscious.
Perspectival: something may be said to be perspectival if it appears to differ when experienced from different positions or under different conditions.
Phenomenon: this is a Kantian expression for empirical experience which results from the structuring process of the intellect. Kant’s a priori concepts (categories) are central to the nature of phenomena. For example, all phenomena are experienced in terms of cause and effect as causality is an a priori concept.
Phenomenologically: phenomenological (aspect) is the qualitative feel of experience. this point is often appealed to in order to distinguish between physical processes, which do not feel like anything, and conscious/mental ones, which do.
Predicate: that part of a clause that describes something. A predicate normally goes with a ‘subject’. In the statement ‘grass is green’ ‘is green’ is the predicate while ‘grass’ is the subject.
Proletariat: a Marxist term for the working classes.
Psychological construct: something that is primarily the product of the mind and mental processes.
Realism: the claim that there is a true reality, which we can be right or wrong about.
Reconcile: to settle, resolve to make fit.
Reformed epistemology: Alvin Plantinga’s claim that religious belief does not need to go through the normal procedure in order to be known.
Refutation by counter-example: a method of dismissing a general, or universal, proposition by pointing to a single exception to that proposition, e.g. the universal proposition ‘all swans are white’ may be refuted if we can point to the existence of a black swan.
Reification: to reify means to bring something into existence. Reification is thus the process of bringing something into existence which might not have been held to exist otherwise.
Relativism: the view that all kinds of belief systems are equal, such as magic, religion or science.
Sceptical: a questioning attitude towards a theory, a doubting attitude.
Semantics: the relationship between a linguistic symbol and its meaning.
Sense data: these are said to be the empirical mind-dependent ingredients of perception. They are the colours, sounds, smells, tastes and textures out of which all experience is built.
Social construct: something that is primarily the product of the expectations and experiences of society.
Solidarity: a sense of togetherness and shared experience, be it in relation to a socio-economic class, national group or some other body.
Solipsism: the idea that only your own mind exists and that everything else may have been created by your mind. Any knowledge outside of your own mind is unsure.
Status quo: the maintenance of the current social, economic and political balance.
Subjectivism: matters vary according to the individual and the situation.
Synthetic: refers to truths that are not shown to be true by the meanings of the terms. They need to be experienced to be known, so are á posteriori. They are not tautologies, as they add new information, so the predicate adds something to the subject. For example ‘Bachelors are increasingly using dating websites to find partners’ gives me new information that was not contained in the meaning of ‘bachelor’. Synthetic statements can be denied without a contradiction. If I were to say that London is not the capital of England, I am not uttering a contradiction, even if I am wrong.
Synthetic a priori knowledge: knowledge that can be known independently of experience but it is nevertheless not analytically true. ‘Every effect has a cause’ is an example of synthetic a priori knowledge endorsed by Kant. Hume does not accept that synthetic a priori knowledge is possible. According to his Fork, all knowledge that is a priori must be analytic.
Tabula Rasa: (literally means blank slate) and is used to express the view that at birth the human mind is empty of all ideas and knowledge, and can only be filled through experience.
Tautology: using different words to say the same thing. Definitions are tautologies.
Temporal: the state of being ‘in’ time.
Temporal indexed truths: truths that are dependent on the time in which they are asked.
Theodicies: explanations of evil which are consistent with God being omnipotent and onmibenevolent.
Thesis: a proposition that is maintained by an argument
Transcendent: this means that God literally goes beyond the world.
Transpose: to move around
Unmediated: two things are mediated if they are indirectly connected via a third party. Consequently, they are unmediated if they are directly connected to each other. For example, two people who speak different languages could have a conversation through a translator and this would be mediated; if the two people spoke the same language it would be an unmediated conversation.
Veridical: a veridical experience is a non-illusory experience which accurately captures reality. This is contrasted with a non-veridical experience (e.g. those that occur in dreams and illusions) which fails to either accurately resemble reality or has no corresponding object tin reality (e.g. hallucination).
Verify: to check, to prove right.