| a fortiori | [Latin, "from the stronger (argument)"] with all the more reason
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| a posteriori | [Latin, "from what comes later"] dependent on experience (contrasted with a priori)
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| a priori | [Latin, "from what comes earlier"] independent of experience; deduced from abstract principles (contrasted with a posteriori)
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| accident | a property not essential for a substance to be the kind of thing it is
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| act utilitarianism | see utilitarianism
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| ad hominem | [Latin, "to the person"] directed not against an opponent's contention, but against the opponent himself or herself
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| aesthetics | (also spelled esthetics) the study of the nature of beauty and art and of the experience of beauty and art
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| agnostic | someone who claims that God's existence is unknown, and perhaps unknowable
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| analogy | a comparison based on the similarity between things
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| analytic(al) philosophy | a method of philosophical inquiry that seeks to analyze concepts, statements, theories, and so on, into their constituent elements.
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| analytic statement | a statement in which the predicate is contained in the subject (contrasted with synthetic statement)
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| argument | in logic, a set of statements in which one or more statements (the premises) are used to establish a further statement (the conclusion)
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| begging the question | the fallacy of assuming what one is attempting to prove; also called petitio principii
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| behaviorism | the doctrine that human behavior can be explained and predicted by environment and genetics, without reference to mental states
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| categorical syllogism | a syllogism consisting of three categorical statements (statements that affirm or deny a relation between two classes [categories] of things), in which the premises connect two classes of things by means of a third class
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| cogent argument | an inductive argument that is strong and has all true premises (contrasted with noncogent argument)
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| compatibilism | see determinism
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| conclusion | in logic, the statement in an argument that is intended to be established by the premises
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| consequentialism | the ethical doctrine that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences (contrasted with deontology and virtue ethics)
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| Continental philosophy | philosophical views developed in Continental Europe from about the beginning of the twentieth century, especially phenomenology and existentialism
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| contingent | capable of being otherwise, or of not occurring at all; not necessary
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| cosmological argument | an argument for the existence of God based on some apparently obvious and pervasive feature of the universe (contrasted with ontological argument)
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| cosmology | the study of the origin, nature, and structure of the universe
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| cultural relativism | the doctrine that all moral values derive entirely from individual cultural codes, and there are no objective, independently correct moral values
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| Cynics | a school of ancient Greek philosophy that held the ideal of self-sufficiency through the mastery of one's desires and needs
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| deductive argument | an argument that claims to lead from the premises to the conclusion in a necessary way (contrasted with inductive argument)
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| deontology | the ethical doctrine that the morality of an action is determined by its intrinsic quality (contrasted with consequentialism and virtue ethics)
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| determinism | the doctrine that all vents are determined by preceding causes and that we can never act otherwise than we do (contrasted with indeterminism and with libertarianism). Hard determinism accepts determinism and denies the existence of free will and moral responsibility; soft determinism maintains that, although determinism is true, actions determined by certain kinds of internal causes are free and that we are morally responsible for these actions. (Soft determinism is also called compatibilism because it maintains the compatibility of determinism with free will and moral responsibility.)
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| dialectical method | a process of inquiry in which one person, by asking a series of probing questions on a topic, leads the other person to reflect more deeply on the topic and understand it more fully (also called the Socratic method)
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| disjunction | in logic, a sentence that separates ("disjoins") two statements ("disjuncts") with "or" and states that at least one of the two statements is true
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| disjunctive syllogism | a syllogism whose premises are a disjunctive (either-or) statement and a statement that affirms or denies one part of the disjunctive statement
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| dualism | in the philosophy of human nature, the theory that human beings are composed of two fundamentally different kinds of reality—body and mind (soul, self)
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| efficient cause | the agent that brings something into being or imparts change (contrasted with final cause)
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| emotivism | the doctrine that ethical judgments are not statements that are true or false, but simply expressions of emotions or attempts to arouse emotion in others
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| empiricism | the doctrine that knowledge is attained primarily through sense experience (contrasted with rationalism)
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| Enlightenment | an eighteenth-century philosophical movement that had great confidence in the use of the power of reason to understand the universe and improve the human condition
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| Epicureanism | a school of ancient philosophy that held that pleasure is the only intrinsic good
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| epiphenomenalism | the doctrine that mental events are phenomena caused by bodily events and have no causal power (mental events are called epiphenomena because they are viewed as secondary phenomena caused by and accompanying the primary phenomena of bodily events)
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| epistemic | related to knowledge
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| epistemology | the study of the nature and grounds of knowledge
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| equivocal | having two or more meanings and likely to mislead (contrasted with univocal)
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| equivocation | the use of a word or phrase in different senses, which makes an apparently correct argument actually incorrect
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| essence | the basic nature of a thing, necessary for it to be what it is
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| essentialism | the view that there is a distinction between essential and nonessential properties of a thing
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| esthetics | see aesthetics
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| ethical | egoism the doctrine that to be moral means to pursue one's own self-interest; contrasted with psychological egoism
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| ethical hedonism | the doctrine that all pleasure, and only pleasure, is an intrinsic good, and that all other goods are only instrumental goods, as means to pleasure (contrasted with psychological hedonism)
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| ethics | the branch of philosophy that studies right conduct and character; includes normative ethics and metaethics
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| excluded middle, principle (law) of | the principle that, with regard to a particular statement, either it or its negation must be true; also called tertium non datur (Latin, "a third [possibility] is not given")
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| existentialism | a school of philosophy holding that human beings create their own nature by their free choices
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| fallacy | an argument with an incorrect inference
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| final cause | the end (goal) for the sake of which something exists or is produced or done (contrasted with efficient cause)
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| foundationalism | the doctrine that knowledge consists of basic beliefs known immediately, and of facts inferred from these beliefs
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| functionalism | the doctrine that mental states can be defined by the role they play (their function) in an organism
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| genus | (plural genera) a broad class or kind, composed of species
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| hard determinism | see determinism
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| hedonism | see ethical hedonism and psychological hedonism
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| homunculus | (plural homunculi) miniature human beings postulated to exist inside human beings, as a way to explain psychological processes
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| hypothetical syllogism | a syllogism whose premises are a hypothetical (if-then) statement and a statement that affirms or denies one part of the hypothetical statement
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| idealism | the theory that only mental entities are real (contrasted with materialism)
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| ignoratio elenchi | [Latin, "ignorance of refutation"] the fallacy of trying to establish or refute a claim by proposing an argument that is beside the point
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| indeterminism | the doctrine that some events are not determined by causes (contrasted with determinism)
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| indexical | having a reference dependent on the circumstance in which an expression is uttered
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| induction | the inference of a general conclusion from particular cases
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| inductive argument | an argument that claims to lead from the premises to the conclusion in a probable way (contrasted with deductive argument)
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| inference | the mental process of moving from the premises of an argument to the conclusion
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| instrumental good | something that is desired as a means (an instrument, a tool) to something else (contrasted with intrinsic good)
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| intentionality | the property that a mental state has of pointing to something, of being about something
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| interactionism | the doctrine that the mind and body causally interact intrinsic good something that is good in itself, desired for its own sake (contrasted with instrumental good)
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| intuitionism | in ethics, the doctrine that rightness and wrongness of certain actions can be known immediately, without a reasoning process
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| invalid argument | a deductive argument in which the conclusion does not follow necessarily from the premises (contrasted with valid argument)
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| is-ought problem | the problem of how one can derive statements of value ("ought" statements) from statements of fact ("is" statements)
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| isomorphism | the quality of having the same form or structure
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| libertarianism | the doctrine that human beings have free will and either some human actions are not determined by preceding causes, or some human actions are not determined by any cause except the person as a whole (contrasted with determinism)
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| logic | the branch of philosophy that systematically studies correct and incorrect inferences materialism the theory that only material entities are real (contrasted with idealism)
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| mechanism | the doctrine that living things can be explained completely by physics and chemistry
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| metaethics | the study of the meaning, nature, and justification of ethical terms, concepts, and judgments (contrasted with normative ethics)
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| metaphysics | the branch of philosophy that studies the nature and kinds of reality; also called ontology
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| middle term | in logic, that which connects two elements and allows one to make an inference about the relation of those elements
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| mind-body problem | the problem of explaining how the mind (soul, self) and body are related and can interact, if they are two apparently fundamentally different kinds of reality
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| modern philosophy | the period of Western philosophy from approximately the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries
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| monism | in metaphysics, the doctrine that there is only one kind of ultimate reality (contrasted with pluralism)
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| moral argument | in the philosophy of religion, an argument that the nature or experience of morality proves that God exists
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| natural law | a set of moral directives claimed to be derived from the nature of the universe in general, or from human nature in particular
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| natural theology | the study of truths about God that can be known by reflecting on nature (contrasted with revealed theology)
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| naturalism | the view that nature is all that exists, and that nothing supernatural exists
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| naturalistic fallacy | the alleged mistake of identifying ethical goodness with a "natural" object
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| neopositivism | a revised, twentieth-century version of positivism
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| nominalism | the doctrine that only individual entities are real, and that no realities correspond to general concepts or terms
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| non sequitur | [Latin, "it does not follow"] an inference that does not follow from its premise(s)
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| noncogent argument | an inductive argument that is weak and/or has one or more false premises (contrasted with cogent argument)
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| noncontradiction, principle (law) of | the principle that a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect
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| normative ethics | the study of the norms (standards, criteria) for right conduct and character (contrasted with metaethics)
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| noumenon | (plural noumena) a thing as it exists in itself, independently of any mind apprehending it (contrasted with phenomenon)
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| occasionalism | the doctrine that mental and bodily events do not causally affect each other, but that on the occasion of a mental event God produces a corresponding bodily effect, and vice versa
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| Ockham's razor | (Occam's razor) the principle that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity
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| ontological argument | the argument that the very concept or definition of God implies that God exists (contrasted with cosmological argument)
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| ontology | synonym for metaphysics
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| underdetermined | able to be accounted for by two or more distinct principles or theories (contrasted with overdetermined)
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| performative | related to an expression that, by its utterance, brings about what it says
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| petitio principii | [Latin, "assuming a principle"] the fallacy of assuming what one is attempting to prove; also called begging the question
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| phenomenal | involving experienced phenomena
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| phenomenology | the study of how thing appear to and are experienced by a knowing subject
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| phenomenon | (plural phenomena) the appearance or manifestation of a thing to a knowing subject (contrasted with noumenon)
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| philosophy | the search for wisdom regarding fundamental questions about the universe and about human existence
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| physicalism | the doctrine that all mental states are ultimately physical in nature
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| pluralism | in metaphysics, the doctrine that there are two or more kinds of ultimate reality (contrasted with monism)
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| positivism | the doctrine that the only source of genuine knowledge is empirical science
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| post hoc ergo propter hoc | [Latin, "after this, therefore because of this"] the fallacy of assuming that one thing is caused by another because it occurs after it
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| postmodernism | a set of reactions against the suppositions of modern philosophy, especially the supposition that objective, certain knowledge is possible
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| pragmatism | the doctrine that the function of thought is to guide action and that the meaning of concepts and the truth of ideas lie in their practical usefulness
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| preestablished harmony | the doctrine that things in the universe affect each other not directly but only indirectly, in the sense that God took the action of each thing into account when constructing the universe
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| premise | in logic, a statement in an argument used to establish a conclusion
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| prima facie | [Latin, "at first glance"] on first appearance; a prima facie right or prima facie obligation is a right or obligation that holds unless overridden by another, stronger right or obligation
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| primary qualities | physical qualities inherent in objects, such as three-dimensionality, shape, size, and motion (contrasted with secondary qualities)
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| problem of evil | in the philosophy of religion, the problem of how an all-good and all-powerful God can allow evil to exist in the world
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| psychological egoism | the doctrine that every human action is motivated ultimately by self-interest (contrasted with ethical egoism)
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| psychological hedonism | the doctrine that every human action is motivated ultimately by the desire for pleasure, and that things other than pleasure are desired simply as means to pleasure (contrasted with ethical hedonism)
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| psychophysical parallelism | the theory that every event in the mind occurs simultaneously with an event in the body, and vice versa, but that there is no causal interaction between mind and body
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| quale | (plural qualia) [Latin, "something of such a kind"] a qualitative property of conscious experience, such as the experience of red
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| quietism | the attitude of being passive, of not getting involved
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| rationalism | the doctrine that knowledge is attained primarily through the mind (innate ideas, intuition, relations among ideas, logical inference, and so on) (contrasted with empiricism)
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| real definition | a definition that states the essential properties of a thing
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| realism | in metaphysics, the doctrine that objects of perception or knowledge exist independently of the mind
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| reductio ad absurdum | [Latin, "a leading back to the absurd"] the refutation of a statement by showing that it logically leads to an absurd conclusion
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| reductionism | the doctrine that one kind of thing can be "reduced to" (explained fully in terms of) another kind of thing—for example, that the mind can be explained fully in terms of the brain
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| relativism | the doctrine that truth and knowledge in a particular area are relative to (conditioned by) the knower. One form of relativism is cultural relativism.
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| revealed theology | the study of truths about God made known through divine revelation (contrasted with natural theology)
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| rule utilitarianism | see utilitarianism
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| scholasticism | a medieval approach to philosophy that emphasized commentaries on classic texts
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| secondary qualities | powers by which physical objects can produce in us, under certain conditions, sensory experiences such as color, taste, and smell (contrasted with primary qualities)
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| semantics | the study of the meaning of symbols, especially the meaning of words
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| skepticism | the doctrine that we cannot attain certainty in knowledge
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| slippery slope | in logic, an argument claiming that if a particular event occurs, another and less desirable event will occur, followed by a third and even less desirable event, and so on, culminating in a thoroughly undesirable state of affairs
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| social contract | a hypothetical or actual voluntary agreement that people make to form a political society
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| Socratic method | see dialectical method
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| soft determinism | see determinism
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| sophism | a plausible but incorrect argument intended to deceive
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| Sophists | itinerant teachers in ancient Greece who emphasized rhetoric as a means to succeed in practical affairs
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| sound argument | a deductive argument that is valid and has only true premises (contrasted with unsound argument)
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| species | (plural species) a class or kind that is a part of a genus
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| state of nature | the condition of human life before the formation of political society
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| Stoicism | a school of ancient philosophy holding that inner tranquility is achieved by living in accordance with nature
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| straw man | a position that is unfairly interpreted so it can be easily refuted
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| strong argument | an inductive argument in which the conclusion follows probably from the premises, whether or not the premises are true (contrasted with weak argument)
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| substance | something that can exist by itself and possesses accidents
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| supererogation | doing more than is required by duty or obligation
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| supervenient property | a property that occurs as a result of some other property (or properties) but cannot be reduced to it (or them).
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| syllogism | a deductive argument consisting of two premises and a conclusion
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| synthetic statement | a statement in which the predicate adds something to the subject (contrasted with analytic statement)
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| tautology | a statement that is necessarily true because of the meaning of the words
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| teleological argument | an argument that God must exist because things in nature act for a goal, or because the universe as a whole shows design
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| teleology | the study of the goals or purposes of things; the doctrine that things can be explained in terms of their goals or purposes
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| telos | end, goal
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| tertium non datur | [Latin, "a third (possibility) is not given"] the principle that, with regard to a particular statement, either it or its negation must be true; also called the principle (law) of the excluded middle
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| theodicy | a defense of God as all-good and all-powerful, despite the existence of evil in the world
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| token | a member of a category; an instance of a type
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| underdetermined | able to be accounted for by a principle or theory other than the one proposed (contrasted with overdetermined)
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| universal | a reality corresponding to a general concept or term
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| univocal | having only one meaning (contrasted with equivocal)
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| unsound argument | a deductive argument that is invalid and/or has one or more false premises (contrasted with sound argument)
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| utilitarianism | the ethical doctrine that one should always act in a way that maximizes "utility," which is understood as the greatest good for the greatest number. According to act utilitarianism, one should perform the act that maximizes utility in a particular situation; according to rule utilitarianism, one should follow the rule that, when generally followed, maximizes utility—even if following the rule in a particular situation does not maximize utility. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism since it specifies utility as the consequence that determines the morality of an action.
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| valid argument | a deductive argument in which the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, whether or not the premises are true (contrasted with invalid argument)
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| virtue ethics | the ethical doctrine that the virtue of the agent is the primary factor in morality (contrasted with consequentialism and deontology)
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| vitalism | the doctrine that living things possess a nonmaterial life-force
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| voluntarism | the doctrine that reason is subordinate to the will
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| weak argument | an inductive argument in which the conclusion does not follow probably from the premises (contrasted with strong argument)
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