SACE Stage 2 Philosophy key terms

The branch of philosophy that investigates the most general features of reality, including what exists, what kinds of things exist, and how those things relate to one another.

The study of being and existence, concerned with cataloguing what there is and sorting entities into fundamental categories such as particulars, properties, and abstract objects.

The branch of philosophy examining the nature, sources, scope, and limits of knowledge and justified belief, including questions about perception, reason, and testimony.

The traditional analysis holding that a person knows a proposition when the proposition is true, the person believes it, and the person has adequate justification for believing it.

A challenge to the traditional analysis of knowledge, presented through cases where a person has a justified true belief that nevertheless seems not to count as knowledge.

The feature of a belief being true through factors outside the believer's control or justification, such as coincidence or fortunate circumstance, which undermines claims to knowledge.

A theory of justification holding that a belief is justified when it is produced by a cognitive process that generally yields true beliefs, such as perception or sound memory.

The philosophical position that knowledge, or at least knowledge of a particular domain, may be impossible, often supported by arguments showing that our evidence cannot rule out alternative explanations.

A method of systematic doubt that rejects any belief that could possibly be false, in order to discover whether any belief is absolutely certain and indubitable.

The claim that the very act of thinking guarantees the thinker's existence, expressed as 'I think, therefore I am', used as a foundational certainty against radical doubt.

The view that reason is the primary source of knowledge, and that some significant truths about reality can be grasped independently of sensory experience.

The view that sensory experience is the primary or sole source of knowledge, and that ideas not traceable to experience are suspect or empty.

Describing knowledge or justification that is independent of experience, such as mathematical truths or logical principles grasped through reasoning alone.

Describing knowledge or justification that depends on experience, such as empirical findings about the world obtained through observation or experiment.

In metaphysics, that which exists in its own right and bears properties, as opposed to properties or events that depend on something else for their existence.

The question of what makes a person the same individual over time, typically answered by reference to bodily continuity, psychological continuity, or some combination of both.

An imagined scenario constructed to test a philosophical theory by isolating relevant features and drawing out implications that ordinary observation cannot easily supply.

The capacity of agents to choose and act in ways that are genuinely their own, raising questions about whether such capacity is compatible with causal determinism.

The thesis that every event, including human choices, is fully caused by prior conditions, so that given the past and the laws of nature only one future is possible.

The position that free will and determinism can both be true, because freedom consists in acting according to one's own desires without external constraint rather than in being uncaused.

The metaethical view that there are objective moral facts or truths that hold independently of what any person or culture happens to believe or feel.

The metaethical view that moral truths depend on the standards of a particular culture or individual, so that no universal moral standard exists across all societies.

The part of ethics concerned with formulating and defending principles that specify how people ought to act, such as theories of duty, consequence, and character.

A family of ethical theories holding that the rightness of an action depends solely on its outcomes, with the best action producing the greatest overall good.

A consequentialist theory holding that the right action is the one that maximises overall welfare, counting each affected person's interests equally.

An ethical approach holding that certain actions are right or wrong in themselves, regardless of consequences, because they respect duties, rules, or persons.

A supreme moral principle requiring that one act only on maxims that could consistently be willed as universal laws, and that persons be treated as ends in themselves.

An ethical approach centred on character, asking what traits a flourishing person would possess and how cultivating those traits leads to good action.

Often translated as flourishing or living well, this term names the fulfilled condition that virtue ethics treats as the proper goal of human life.

A set of statements in which premises are offered as support for a conclusion, aiming to show that accepting the premises gives reason to accept the conclusion.

A statement offered in an argument as a reason or piece of evidence intended to support the argument's conclusion.

The statement an argument aims to establish, which the premises are intended to support or make probable.

A property of deductive arguments whereby it is impossible for the premises to be true while the conclusion is false, given the argument's logical form.

A property of deductive arguments that are both valid and have all their premises actually true, so the conclusion must also be true.

A property of arguments whose premises make the conclusion probable without guaranteeing it, so that true premises provide good but not conclusive support.

A common pattern of reasoning that appears persuasive but fails to provide genuine logical support for its conclusion, such as attacking a person instead of their argument.

A specific case showing that a general claim or proposed definition is false, by presenting an instance where the claim fails.

The underlying structure of an argument or statement, abstracted from its specific subject matter, which determines whether the reasoning is valid.