| absent qualia objection | The objection to functionalism based on the belief that a functional state could have all the functional properties of a mental state without having any of its qualitative content.
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| accidental property | A property a thing can lose without ceasing to exist.
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| actual duty | A duty that should be performed in a particular situation.
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| act-utilitarianism | The doctrine that what makes an action right is that it maximizes happiness, everyone considered. Also termed "traditional utilitarianism."
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| agent-causation | Causation that occurs when an agent (self, person) causes an event.
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| analytic proposition | A proposition that is a logical truth or can be turned into a logical truth by substituting synonyms for synonyms.
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| animalism | The doctrine that identical persons are those with identical living human bodies.
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| a posteriori knowledge | Knowledge based on sense experience.
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| apparent memory | A memory of an event that either didn't happen or that was not caused by the event it records.
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| a priori knowledge | Knowledge that can be acquired prior to or independently of sense experience
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| argument | A group of statements consisting of one or more premises and a conclusion that purportedly follows from the premises.
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| behavioral disposition | A tendency to respond to certain stimuli in certain ways.
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| brain theory | The doctrine that identical persons are those who are psychologically continuous with one another and whose psychology is caused by and realized in the same brain.
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| Cartesian dualism | The doctrine that mental states are states of an immaterial substance that interacts with the body.
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| categorical imperative I | The doctrine that what makes an action right is that everyone could act on it, and you would be willing to have everyone act on it.
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| categorical imperative II | The doctrine that what makes an action right is that it treats people as ends in themselves and not merely as means to an end.
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| causal closure of the physical | The principle that everything that happens can be explained in purely physical terms.
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| causal determinism | The doctrine that every event has a cause that makes it happen.
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| causal impossibility | Something is causally impossible if and only if it violates a law of nature.
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| causal indeterminism | The doctrine that some events are not the consequence of past events plus laws of nature.
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| causal theory | The doctrine that knowledge is suitably caused true belief.
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| closest continuer theory | The doctrine that identical persons are those who are the closest continuers of one another.
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| cogent argument | A strong inductive argument that contains only true premises.
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| cognitive cultural relativism | The doctrine that a proposition is made true by a society believing it to be true.
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| cognitive subjectivism | The doctrine that a proposition is made true by one’s believing it to be true.
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| coherence theory of truth | The doctrine that a proposition is made true by its coherence with a system of beliefs.
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| conclusion | The claim that an argument is trying to establish.
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| consequentialist (teleological) ethical theory | An ethical theory that judges the rightness or wrongness of an action in terms of its consequences.
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| contractarianism | The doctrine that what makes an action right is that it is in accord with the principles established by an ideal social contract.
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| correspondence theory of truth | The doctrine that a proposition is made true by its correspondence with reality.
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| cosmological argument | An argument that attempts to derive the existence of God from the existence of the universe.
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| counterexample | An example that runs counter to or conflicts with a theory.
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| criteria of adequacy | The features that distinguish a good theory from a bad one: consistency (lack of contradictions), simplicity (quality of relying on only a small number of assumptions), scope (the amount of diverse phenomena explained), conservatism (quality of fitting well with existing theories), and fruitfulness (the number of new facts predicted or problems solved).
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| cultural relativism | The doctrine that what makes an action right is that it is approved by one's culture.
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| defeasibility theory | The doctrine that knowledge is undefeated justified true belief.
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| direct memory | A memory that a person can consciously recall.
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| direct realism | The doctrine that perception puts us in direct contact with reality.
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| divine command theory | The doctrine that what makes an action right is that God commands it to be done.
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| double aspect theory | The doctrine that the mind and the body are two aspects of a single underlying substance.
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| dualism | The doctrine that reality contains both mental and material things.
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| eliminative materialism | The doctrine that there are no mental states.
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| emergent property | A property that comes into being (emerges) when things that lack that property interact in certain ways.
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| emotivism | The doctrine that moral utterances are expressions of emotion.
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| empiricism | The epistemological theory that the only source of knowledge about the external world is sense experience.
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| empiricism | The doctrine that sense experience is the only source of knowledge of the external world.
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| epiphenomenalism | The doctrine that the mind is an ineffective by-product of physical processes.
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| essential property | A property a thing cannot lose without ceasing to exist.
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| ethical egoism | The doctrine that what makes an action right is that it promotes one's own best interest.
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| event-causation | Causation that occurs when one event causes another.
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| evidentialism | The doctrine that you are justified in believing something if and only if your evidence supports it.
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| explanationist theory | The doctrine that knowledge is justified true belief that provides the best explanation for the justifying evidence.
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| first-order desire | A desire directed on an object or a state of affairs.
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| folk psychology | Our common-sense theory of mind that explains people's behavior in terms of beliefs and desires.
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| formalist (deontological) ethical theory | An ethical theory that judges the rightness or wrongness of an action in terms of its form.
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| foundationalism | The theory of knowledge that maintains (1) that there are basic beliefs and (2) that the justification of all other beliefs depends on the basic beliefs.
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| functionalism | The doctrine that mental states are functional states.
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| hard determinism | The doctrine that there are no free actions.
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| hierarchical compatibilism | The doctrine that free actions are caused by second-order volitions that one decisively identifies with.
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| idealism | The doctrine that all that exists are minds and their contents.
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| identity theory | The doctrine that mental states are brain states.
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| imperfect duty | A duty that does not always have to be performed.
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| incompatibilism | The doctrine that causal determinism is incompatible with the view that we sometimes act freely.
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| indeterminism | The doctrine that free actions are uncaused.
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| indirect memory | A memory that an earlier stage of a person can consciously recall.
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| indiscernibility of identicals | The principle that if two things are identical, then they must both possess the same properties.
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| instrumental (extrinsic) value | Value for the sake of something else.
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| intentionality | The property of mental states that makes them of or about something.
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| intrinsic value | Value for its own sake.
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| inverted spectrum problem | The problem of accounting for the fact that people's color experiences could be very different even though they are functionally equivalent.
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| knowledge by acquaintance | Knowledge of what it is to have a certain experience.
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| law of noncontradiction | The principle that nothing can both have and lack a property at the same time and in the same respect.
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| libertarianism | The doctrine that free actions are caused by selves (agents, persons).
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| logical behaviorism | The doctrine that mental states are behavioral dispositions.
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| logical impossibility | Something is logically impossible if and only if it violates the law of noncontradiction.
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| logical positivism | The philosophical movement based on the assumption that to know what a sentence means is to know what observations would make it true.
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| materialism | The doctrine that all that exists are material objects.
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| memory theory | The doctrine that identical persons are those who share at least one experience memory.
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| mind-body problem | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for a material object to have a mind.
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| minimal correspondence theory | The doctrine that a proposition is true if and only if things are as it says they are.
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| miracle | A violation of natural law by a supernatural being.
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| moral evil | The evil that humans suffer at the hands of other humans.
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| multiple realizability | The view that minds can be realized in things other than brains.
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| natural evil | The evil that humans suffer at the hands of nature.
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| necessary condition | Something X is a necessary condition for something Y if and only if it is impossible for Y to exist without X.
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| negative right | People have a negative right to something if and only if others have a duty not to interfere with their pursuit of that thing.
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| nonbranching theory | The doctrine that identical persons are those who are psychologically continuous with one another and whose causal connection has not branched.
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| numerical identity | Two objects are numerically identical if and only if they are one and the same.
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| occasionalism | The parallelist theory of the mind that claims the correlation between mental and physical events is produced on each occasion by God.
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| only x and y principle | The principle that whether one thing, x, is identical to another thing, y, can only depend on facts about x and y.
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| ontological argument | An argument from the nature of God to the existence of God.
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| parallelism | The doctrine that the mind and the body are two separate things that do not interact with one another.
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| perfect duty | A duty that must always be performed no matter what.
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| performative knowledge | Knowledge of how to perform a certain activity.
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| phenomenalism | The view that all talk of things is reducible to talk of sensations.
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| philosophical skepticism | The doctrine that we have no knowledge of some realms, such as the external world.
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| pluralistic formalism | The doctrine that what makes an action right is that it falls under the highest-ranked duty in a given situation.
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| positive right | People have a positive right to something if and only if others have a duty to provide them with what they need to acquire that thing.
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| pragmatic theory of truth | The doctrine that a proposition is made true by its practical consequences.
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| preestablished harmony | The parallelist theory of mind that claims that the correlation between mental and physical events was established by God at the beginning of the universe.
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| premise | A reason given for accepting the conclusion of an argument.
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| prima facie duty | A duty that should be performed unless it conflicts with other prima facie duties.
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| primary qualities | Qualities possessed by material objects.
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| primitive property | A property that cannot be reduced to or analyzed in terms of any more basic property.
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| principle of justice | The doctrine that equals should be treated equally (and unequals in proportion to their relevant differences).
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| principle of mercy | The doctrine that unnecessary suffering is wrong.
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| problem of evil | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for there to be evil in a world created by an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good being.
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| problem of free will | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for a causally determined action to be free.
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| problem of moral relativism | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for there to be absolute moral standards.
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| problem of other minds | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible to know that there are other minds in the world.
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| problem of personal identity | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for a person to change and yet remain the same person.
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| problem of skepticism | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for there to be knowledge.
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| property dualism | The doctrine that mental states have both physical and nonphysical properties.
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| propositional knowledge | Knowledge of whether a proposition is true or false.
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| psychological connectedness | Two people are psychologically connected if they can directly (consciously) quasi-remember and quasi-desire the same things.
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| psychological continuity | Two people are psychologically continuous with one another if they form part of an overlapping series of persons who are psychologically connected with one another.
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| psychological continuity theory | The doctrine that identical persons are those who are psychologically continuous with one another.
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| psychological hedonism | The doctrine that the only thing individuals can desire is their own happiness.
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| qualitative content | The felt quality of certain mental states.
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| qualitative identity | Two objects are qualitatively identical if and only if they share the same properties (qualities).
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| quasi-desire | An apparent desire that is caused in the right way by an actual desire.
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| quasi-memory | An apparent memory caused in the right way by an actual experience.
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| rationalism | The doctrine that reason is a source of knowledge of the external world.
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| real memory | A memory of an event that was experienced by the person remembering it and that was caused by the event it records.
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| reliability theory | The doctrine that knowledge is reliably produced true belief.
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| representative realism | The doctrine that sensations are caused by external objects and that our sensations represent those objects.
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| reversibility | A principle has reversibility if the person acting on it would be willing to have everyone act on it.
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| rule-utilitarianism | The doctrine that what makes an action right is that it falls under a rule that, if generally followed, would maximize happiness, everyone considered.
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| secondary qualities | Qualities that exist in the mind but not in material objects themselves.
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| second-order volition | A second-order desire on which one wants to act.
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| semantics | What a symbol means.
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| sense data | The objects that are immediately known in sensation.
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| soft determinism | The doctrine that determined actions can nevertheless be free.
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| solipsism | The view that there is only one mind in the universe, namely, one's own.
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| soul theory | The doctrine that identical persons are those with identical souls.
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| sound argument | A valid deductive argument that contains only true premises.
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| strong argument | An inductive argument that would establish its conclusion with a high degree of probability if its premises were true.
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| subjective absolutism | The doctrine that what makes an action right is that one approves of it.
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| subjective relativism | The doctrine that what makes an action right for someone is that it is approved by that person.
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| sufficient condition | Something X is a sufficient condition for something Y if and only if it is impossible for X to exist without Y.
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| syntax | How a symbol can be combined with other symbols to form a sentence.
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| synthetic proposition | A proposition that is not analytic.
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| teleological argument | An argument that attempts to derive the existence of God from the design or purpose of things.
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| test implication | A statement to the effect that if a theory is true, then a certain concept (event) should apply (occur) in a certain situation.
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| theodicy | An attempt to justify belief in God given the existence of evil.
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| thought experiment | An imaginary situation designed to determine whether a claim is necessarily true.
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| traditional compatibilism | The doctrine that free actions are (1) caused by one's will and (2) not externally constrained.
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| universalizability | A principle has universalizability if everyone can act on it.
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| valid argument | A deductive argument in which it's logically impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.
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| verifiability theory of meaning | The doctrine that the meaning of a statement is its method of verification.
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| virtue | An admirable human quality marked by a disposition to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances.
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| virtue ethics | A system of ethics based on the concept of a good person rather than that of a right action.
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| principle of alternative possibilities | One can be held responsible for doing something only if one could have done otherwise.
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| second-order desire | A desire directed on a first-order desire
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| theist | One who believes in a god, especially a personal god who rules the world.
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| agnostic | One who neither believes nor disbelieves in God.
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| atheist | One who disbelieves in God.
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| deist | One who believes that God created the universe and then abandoned it.
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| pantheist | One who believes that the universe is God.
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