Worldview Studies flashcards

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

Worldview

A fundamental orientation of the heart expressed as a story or set of presuppositions about reality, knowledge, ethics, and human purpose, which may be true or false.

Presupposition

A belief treated as methodologically basic and used to support other beliefs, rather than being derived from them; examples include the general reliability of sense perception.

Ninian Smart's dimensions

Seven aspects for describing a tradition: doctrinal, mythological, ethical, ritual, experiential, institutional, and material, preventing reduction of religion to belief alone.

Emic versus etic

Emic uses insider categories and self-description; etic applies external analytic categories. Mixing them without notice produces category mistakes in comparative study.

Tawhid

The Islamic doctrine of God's absolute oneness and unity, excluding any partners, divisions, or incarnation; central to the shahada and to Islamic critique of Christian trinity.

Five Pillars

Islamic obligatory practices: shahada (witness), salat (prayer), zakat (almsgiving), sawm (fasting in Ramadan), and hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca).

Anatta

The Buddhist teaching of no permanent, unchanging self; what we call the self is a stream of conditioned aggregates, and clinging to selfhood fuels suffering.

Four Noble Truths

Buddhist core teaching: suffering exists, it has a cause in craving, it can cease, and the Eightfold Path is the way to that cessation.

Moksha

In Hindu traditions, liberation from samsara, the cycle of rebirth, achieved through knowledge, devotion, or disciplined action depending on the school.

Wu wei

Daoist principle of non-coercive action: acting in accord with the natural pattern of things rather than forcing outcomes through effort and contrivance.

Imago Dei

Latin for image of God; the Christian claim that humans uniquely reflect God, grounding human dignity, moral responsibility, and relational personhood.

Ik Onkar

The opening affirmation of Sikh scripture meaning one God; it grounds Sikh monotheism, equality of all people, and rejection of caste hierarchy.

Classical theism

The view that God is omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, personal, and the creator of all else, possessing aseity and often divine simplicity.

Deism

The view that a creator God designed the universe but does not intervene through miracles or special revelation; natural reason replaces revealed religion.

Panentheism

The view that the world exists within God while God also transcends it, distinguishing it from pantheism, where God and the cosmos are simply identical.

Methodological naturalism

A working rule that scientific explanations invoke only natural causes; it is a claim about method and does not by itself entail ontological naturalism.

Problem of evil

The challenge that evil counts against an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God; logical versions claim contradiction, evidential versions claim reduced probability.

Kalam argument

Cosmological argument: whatever begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause, identified with God.

Categorical imperative

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

Utilitarianism

A consequentialist theory holding that the right action maximizes aggregate welfare; act and rule versions differ over whether acts or rules are evaluated.

Virtue ethics

An approach evaluating character rather than isolated acts; Aristotle grounds virtues in habituation and the mean between excess and deficiency, aiming at eudaimonia.

Euthyphro dilemma

The question whether actions are good because God commands them or God commands them because they are good; each horn raises difficulties for divine command theory.

Natural law theory

The view that moral norms derive from human nature and its basic goods and are knowable by reason; associated with Aquinas and Catholic moral theology.

Nishkama karma

The Bhagavad Gita's teaching of action without attachment to results: one performs one's duty for its own sake rather than for anticipated reward.

Is-ought gap

Hume's point that purely descriptive premises cannot logically entail normative conclusions without an added bridging premise connecting fact to value.

Reliabilism

An epistemological view that a belief is justified when produced by a truth-conducive process such as perception or memory, regardless of internal access.

Gettier problem

Cases where a person has justified true belief that is true only by luck, suggesting justification, truth, and belief are not jointly sufficient for knowledge.

Falsifiability

Popper's criterion that a scientific claim must forbid some observable outcome; claims compatible with every possible observation lack empirical content.

Kuhn's paradigm shift

A revolution in science where accumulated anomalies overturn a dominant paradigm, and rival frameworks differ enough in standards that comparison is partly incommensurable.

Underdetermination

The situation where available evidence is compatible with more than one theory, so theory choice also depends on simplicity, scope, and predictive fruitfulness.

Steel-manning

Restating an opposing position in its strongest, most charitable form and confirming that restatement before criticizing, avoiding straw-man refutations.

Genetic fallacy

Rejecting or accepting a claim based on its causal origins rather than its evidential merits; origins may explain a belief without settling its truth.