TASC Philosophy Level 3 flashcards

33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Arche

Pre-Socratic term for the fundamental principle or substance underlying all things, such as Thales' water or Anaximenes' air.

Theory of Forms

Plato's view that sensible objects are imperfect copies participating in eternal, non-physical Forms, with the Form of the Good as ultimate ground.

Four causes

Aristotle's explanation of change: material (what it is made of), efficient (what produces it), formal (its structure), and final (its purpose).

Cogito ergo sum

Descartes' foundational claim that thinking proves the thinker exists, surviving even the most radical method of doubt.

Hume's fork

Hume's division of knowledge into relations of ideas (analytic, certain) and matters of fact (empirical, probabilistic), excluding metaphysical necessity.

Kant's Copernican turn

Kant's claim that objects conform to our cognitive conditions: space, time, and categories structure experience rather than describe things in themselves.

Ontological categories

Fundamental kinds of entity studied in metaphysics, including substances, properties, relations, events, and abstract objects like numbers.

Nominalism

The metaphysical view denying that universals exist independently; only particular things exist, and general terms are names or concepts.

Identity of indiscernibles

Leibniz's principle that things sharing all properties are identical, so distinct entities must differ in some property.

Possible worlds

A modal device: a complete way things could have been; necessity holds in all worlds, possibility in at least one.

Compatibilism

The position that free will and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism, since freedom concerns acting on one's own desires without coercion.

Personal identity

The question of what makes a person the same over time; candidate criteria include bodily continuity, psychological continuity, and sameness of soul.

JTB analysis

The traditional account that knowledge is justified true belief; Gettier cases show these three conditions may not be sufficient.

Foundationalism

The epistemological view that knowledge rests on basic, non-inferentially justified beliefs, with other beliefs supported by them.

Coherentism

The view that beliefs are justified by their coherence within a mutually supporting system rather than by foundational beliefs.

Reliabilism

An externalist theory holding that a belief is justified when produced by a reliable cognitive process, regardless of the subject's access.

A priori knowledge

Knowledge independent of sensory experience, such as mathematics and analytic truths, contrasted with a posteriori empirical knowledge.

Categorical imperative

Kant's unconditional moral law: act only on maxims you could will as universal law, and treat persons as ends, never merely means.

Utilitarianism

A consequentialist theory holding that right actions maximize aggregate welfare or happiness, associated with Bentham and Mill.

Virtue ethics

An approach centering character traits and human flourishing, holding that virtuous action is what a practically wise person would do.

Is-ought gap

Hume's observation that descriptive premises about what is cannot by themselves entail prescriptive conclusions about what ought to be.

Rawls' veil of ignorance

A hypothetical device hiding one's social position and talents to ensure chosen principles of justice are fair and impartial.

Validity

A property of arguments: if the premises are true, the conclusion cannot be false; validity concerns form, not actual truth.

Modus tollens

A valid argument form: if P then Q; not Q; therefore not P. It denies the consequent to infer the negation of the antecedent.

Affirming the consequent

An invalid inference: if P then Q; Q; therefore P. The consequent may hold for reasons other than P.

Necessary condition

A condition without which something cannot occur; for B to obtain, A must obtain, though A alone may not suffice.

Harm principle

Mill's doctrine that interference with liberty is justified only to prevent harm to others, not to enforce morality or prevent offense.

Social contract

A theory grounding political authority in consent, imagining individuals agreeing to govern themselves from a pre-political state of nature.

Difference principle

Rawls' rule that social and economic inequalities are just only if they benefit the least advantaged members of society.

Institutional theory of art

Dickie's view that something is art when the artworld, its institutions and agents, collectively confers that status upon it.

Aesthetic judgment

Kant's account of taste: a judgment of beauty is subjective in basis yet claims universal agreement, without resting on determinate concepts.

Ontological argument

An argument inferring God's existence from the concept of a greatest conceivable being, holding that existence is a perfection.

Problem of evil

The challenge that suffering seems incompatible with an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God, motivating defenses and theodicies.