WACE Philosophy Ethics ATAR flashcards

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

Validity

A property of deductive arguments where, if all premises were true, the conclusion could not possibly be false; validity concerns form, not actual truth of premises.

Soundness

An argument is sound when it is deductively valid and all of its premises are actually true; soundness guarantees the truth of the conclusion.

Modus tollens

A valid argument form: if P then Q; not Q; therefore not P. Denying the consequent disproves the antecedent and is a reliable deductive inference pattern.

Begging the question

A circular fallacy in which the conclusion is assumed among the premises, so the argument offers no independent support for what it sets out to prove.

Act utilitarianism

The consequentialist view that each individual action is right if and only if it produces at least as much total welfare as any available alternative action.

Categorical imperative

Kant's unconditional moral law binding on all rational agents; its formulations require universalisable maxims and treating humanity never merely as a means.

Doctrine of the mean

Aristotle's claim that moral virtue lies between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency, its precise location determined by practical wisdom in context.

Is-ought gap

Hume's observation that purely descriptive premises about what is cannot logically entail prescriptive conclusions about what ought to be, without an added normative premise.

Reflective equilibrium

A method of moral reasoning that repeatedly adjusts general principles and particular considered judgments until they form a coherent, mutually supporting set.

Informed consent

Authorisation of a medical intervention by a competent patient who understands relevant information and decides voluntarily, expressing respect for patient autonomy.

Doctrine of double effect

A principle allowing an action with a foreseen harmful side effect when the act is good, the harm unintended and not a means, and proportionality holds.

Biocentrism

An environmental ethic holding that all living organisms have moral standing for their own sake, not merely because of their usefulness to humans.

Precautionary principle

The rule that serious or irreversible potential harm justifies preventive action even when causal evidence is incomplete, shifting the burden of proof onto proponents of risk.

Gettier problem

Cases where a person has justified true belief that is true only through luck, showing that justified true belief is insufficient for knowledge.

Coherentism

An epistemological theory claiming beliefs are justified by their mutual support within a consistent system rather than by resting on indubitable foundational beliefs.

Compatibilism

The view that free will and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism, reinterpreting freedom as acting from one's own desires without external coercion.

Hard problem of consciousness

Chalmers's question of why physical processes are accompanied by subjective experience, which objective functional explanation seems unable to address.

Ontological argument

Anselm's a priori argument that a being than which nothing greater can be conceived must exist in reality, since real existence is greater than existence in thought alone.

Euthyphro dilemma

Plato's question whether actions are good because God commands them or commanded because they are good; each option appears to threaten divine command theory.

Free will defence

A response to the problem of evil claiming that significant freedom, which God grants, requires the possibility of moral evil, so evil does not disprove omnipotent goodness.

Fideism

The position that religious belief rests on faith rather than reason or evidence, and that attempts to justify faith rationally misunderstand its nature.

Soul-making theodicy

Hick's claim that God permits suffering because it provides the conditions for moral and spiritual development toward a higher good unavailable in a painless world.

Veil of ignorance

Rawls's device in the original position where parties choose principles of justice without knowing their talents, social position or conception of the good.

Difference principle

Rawls's principle that social and economic inequalities are just only if they benefit the least advantaged members of society, combined with fair equality of opportunity.

Harm principle

Mill's rule that interference with a person's liberty is justified only to prevent harm to others, not for the person's own good or others' offence.

Negative liberty

Freedom understood as the absence of interference or coercion by others, in contrast with positive liberty as the capacity for self-mastery and effective agency.

Entitlement theory

Nozick's account that a distribution is just if it arises through just acquisition and just transfer, regardless of resulting inequality, plus rectification of past injustice.

Eudaimonia

Aristotle's term for human flourishing or living well, the highest good achieved through exercising rational virtue over a complete life rather than a feeling of pleasure.

Allegory of the cave

Plato's image of prisoners mistaking shadows for reality, illustrating the ascent from appearance to genuine knowledge and the philosopher's obligation to return.

Cogito ergo sum

Descartes's foundational claim that the very act of doubting proves the doubter exists, providing an indubitable starting point after radical methodological doubt.

Cartesian dualism

Descartes's view that mind and body are distinct substances, mind essentially thinking and unextended, body essentially extended, interacting through the pineal gland.

Bad faith

Sartre's term for self-deception in which a person denies their radical freedom and responsibility by treating themselves as fixed by role, nature or circumstance.

Master-slave morality

Nietzsche's contrast between aristocratic values of strength and nobility and slave values of humility and resentment that invert and condemn the former.