Glossary

Aesthetics: The branch of philosophy that deals with beauty and art. Central questions in aesthetics include: What is art? What kinds of objects possess aesthetic value? Is aesthetic experience rational or emotional? What is the relationship between an artist, their artwork and the critics? Agnostic: Someone who claims that they do not know or are unable to know whether God exists. Altruism: Altruistic actions are those performed for the sake of others. Altruism is the hypothesis that morality involves acting for the sake of others. Analytic: An analytic truth (e.g. Bachelors are unmarried) is true solely in virtue of the meanings of the words that express it. Analytic truths are to be contrasted with synthetic ones, and exemplify a priori knowledge. A posteriori: The opposite of a priori. A posteriori knowledge can be established only by sensory experience or reasoning from experience. Empirical is a synonym for A posteriori. A priori: A priori knowledge is knowledge which can be established independently of experience or reasoning from experience. Analytic truths are a priori; whether there are other kinds of a priori truths is controversial. Argument: Piece of reasoning from one or more statements (premises) to conclusion. Kinds include inductive and deductive. Atheist: Someone who believes that there is no God. Cartesian: Relating to Rene Descartes or his philosophy. Categorical Imperatives: Ought-judgements which require certain conduct from you irrespective of whether or not it is a means to some end you want to attain. Causality: The connection between cause and effect, or the relationship between two things when the first is perceived as the cause of the second. Ordinarily, the relationship between cause and effect seems inevitable. Circular Argument: Unsound reasoning in which it is argued both that A is the case on the grounds that B is the case and that B is the case on the grounds that A is the case. Conclusion: The part of an argument which states the result which the premises are there to defend. Consequentialism: The doctrine that the right acts are right because they produce good consequences of some kind. Utilitarianism is the best-known example of a consequentialist moral position; and the opposite of consequentialism is DEONTOLOGY. Contingent: Opposite of necessary. Something is contingent if it could have been different. A contingent truth is a proposition which, though true, might have been false. Cosmology: The study of the origin and development of the universe. Deductive Argument: An argument in which the conclusion is supposed to follow from the premises in such a way that it would be self-contradictory to assert the premises and deny the conclusion. Deontology: The doctrine that there are acts whose rightness or wrongness is not wholly dependent on the goodness or badness of their consequences. Deontological theories take duty as

the basis of morality. The phrase, no matter what the consequences, is often the sign of a deontological view. The opposite of Deontology is consequentialism. Determinism: The theory that whatever happens (including human acts) is caused by something else. Dualism: The view that reality is made up of two fundamentally different elements, as opposed to monism, which perceives reality to be made up of only one substance. The dualism of Descartes, perhaps the most famous, advances the view that material substance and the mind's activity (thinking, reflecting, etc.) bear upon each other but are separate, unlike and essentially distinct. Emotivism: Emotivism, or the emotive theory of moral judgements, maintains that moral utterances (is good; is wicked) are to be understood wholly or primarily in terms of emotive meaning. Empirical: See a posteriori. Epistemology: The branch of philosophy that involves the study of knowledge. Ethical Hedonism: The doctrine that acts are right solely insofar as they promote pleasure (or happiness). Ethics: The branch of philosophy that deals with moral issues. Key questions in ethics include: What is it right (or wrong) to do? Do the intentions behind an action determine its goodness or does the actual outcome of the action matter more? Are there any universal ethical rules? Fideism: Holds that religious beliefs are can not be justified by rational means, but only through faith. Free Will: The doctrine that human beings are free to control their own actions, which are not determined by cause and effect, God or fate. It's opposite is determinism. Hedonism: The philosophical doctrine that pleasure is the sole good or at least the chief good. Idealism: The philosophical view that the empirical world does not exist independently of the human mind and hence can only be known according to our conceptions of it. Its opposite is Materialism. Among idealist philosophers are Berkeley, Kant and Hegel. Inductive Argument: An argument in which a general conclusion (i.e. one applying to all instances) is derived from a premise or premises concerning one or many instances (but not all instances). Example: This swan is white, and that one, and that one and , therefore, all swans are white. Libertarianism: The political philosophy that advocates the greatest possible freedom of the individual and the least possible interference by the state in the lives of its citizens. Logic: The branch of philosophy that deals with the formal properties of arguments and the philosophical problems associated with them. Central questions in logic include: What is a good argument? How can we work out if an argument is good or not? What are paradoxes? Can they be resolved? How can we talk meaningfully about objects that dont exist?

Logical Positivism: The view that philosophy should be based on observation and testing and that propositions are only meaningful to the extent that they can be verified empirically. It is opposed to any type of metaphysical speculation. Among the most prominent Logical Positivists are Schlick, Carnap and Ayer. Materialism: The claim that only material (physical) things exist. Metaphysics: The branch of philosophy which studies the underlying structure of reality. Central questions in metaphysics include: Can we act freely? What is it for something to exist? How are causes related to their effects? What is time? What is space? How is change possible? Monism: The view that reality is a unified whole and that all existing things follow from or can be described by a single concept or system. Its opposite is dualism. As regards human beings and the relationship between mind and body, in this view both would be seen as like entities, formed from the same substance. Hegel's philosophy is monistic. Natural Theology: Knowledge of God which is obtained by reason alone, without the aid of revelation. Necessary: Necessity is signified by a must and its cognates. What is necessarily so is what must be so, and a necessary truth is one that must be true - that couldnt not be true. The opposite of necessary is contingent'. Omnipotence: Omnipotence is all-powerfulness. Many religions view God as omnipotent. Descartes discusses the possibility of an omnipotent demon who could manipulate our thoughts and deceive us. Omniscient: Omniscience is the property of knowing everything. Many religions view God as omniscient. Ontology: The branch of metaphysics which studies the nature of existence. Central questions include: What kinds of objects exist? What is it for something to exist?. Pantheism: The doctrine that identifies God or gods with the forces and workings of nature. Philosophy: Literally 'the love of wisdom'. Traditionally, Philosophy was comprised of Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Logic. Modern Philosophy also encompasses political theory, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophies of religion, science and law. Most generally Philosophy might be described as the rigorous, systematic analysis and critical examinations of such topics as reality, nature, causation, free will, reason, moral judgements, and perception, among others. Rationalism: The doctrine that genuine knowledge, or at least the most significant kind of knowledge, is not established by sense-experience, or at least not by sense-experience alone, and so is wholly or at least to a significant extent a priori. Realism: Philosophically, the theory that universals exist independently of the human mind and that the essences of things are objectively given in human nature. Relativism: The theory that there are no objective standards with regard to knowledge, truth and moral principles, which are influenced by cultural or historical context. Scepticism: Scepticism is the claim that knowledge is either impossible or very difficult to obtain. Solipsism: A form of scepticism. Solipsism is the belief that nothing exists except my mind and the creations of my mind.

Synthetic: Best understood as the opposite of analytic. Example: Bachelors are untidy - this is not true solely in virtue of the meanings of the words in question, its negation is not selfcontradictory, and the idea of a bachelor does not include that of being untidy. Tautology: A necessarily true statement. Theism: Most specifically the belief that a single personal God is present in the world as well as transcendent. Theodicy: An argument which tries to explain how a good and all-powerful God could create a world with suffering and evil in it. Transcendental: Something outside the world of sense experience. Neither empiricists, nor pragmatists, nor existentialists believe in anything transcendental, such as God or a separate sphere of moral ideas.

Utilitarianism: The doctrine that acts are right solely in so far as their consequences maximise the general happiness. It is controversial whether the general happiness must be interpreted as the happiness of the majority. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism.