IB Philosophy HL flashcards

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

Bad faith (Sartre)

Self-deception in which a person denies their own freedom, treating themselves as a fixed thing with determined properties rather than as a free consciousness that must choose.

Substance dualism

The view that mind and body are two distinct kinds of substance: mind is essentially thinking and non-extended, while body is extended and non-thinking.

Hard determinism

The position that every event, including human choices, is causally determined, and that this is incompatible with genuine free will, so free will does not exist.

Compatibilism

The view that freedom is compatible with determinism: an action is free when it flows from the agent's own desires without external coercion or constraint.

Problem of other minds

We can observe our own mental states but only others' behaviour; the puzzle is how we can justify believing other people have minds at all.

Aesthetic realism

The view that aesthetic properties such as beauty are objective features of objects, existing independently of the responses or preferences of observers.

Disinterested judgment (Kant)

Kant's claim that a judgment of taste is not based on personal interest or desire for the object, and therefore makes a universal claim on others' agreement.

Intentional fallacy

Wimsatt and Beardsley's claim that an artwork's meaning is not determined by the artist's intentions, so criticism should focus on the work itself.

Institutional theory of art

Dickie's view that something counts as art when it is presented as a candidate for appreciation by the artworld, making art status relational rather than intrinsic.

Paradox of fiction

We feel genuine emotions for fictional characters we believe do not exist, which seems inconsistent with the idea that emotion requires belief in existence.

Gettier problem

Cases in which a belief is true and justified but the justification is only accidentally connected to the truth, showing justified true belief may not suffice for knowledge.

Foundationalism

The view that knowledge rests on basic beliefs that are justified without depending on other beliefs, providing a stopping point for chains of justification.

Problem of induction

Hume's point that past regularities do not deductively guarantee future ones, and any attempt to justify induction by its past success is circular.

Falsifiability

Popper's criterion that a hypothesis is scientific only if it forbids certain observable outcomes, making it possible in principle to refute it.

Reliabilism

An externalist theory holding that a belief is justified if it is produced by a cognitive process that reliably generates true beliefs, whether or not the subject knows this.

Categorical imperative

Kant's unconditional moral law: act only on maxims you could will as universal law, and treat humanity always as an end, never merely as a means.

Doctrine of the mean

Aristotle's view that each virtue lies between two vices of excess and deficiency, and is identified by practical wisdom in particular circumstances.

Act vs rule utilitarianism

Act utilitarianism evaluates each individual action by its consequences; rule utilitarianism evaluates general rules by the consequences of their being widely followed.

Naturalistic fallacy

Moore's claim that the good cannot be identified with any natural property, since for any such property one can meaningfully ask whether it is actually good.

Harm principle

Mill's principle that the only justified reason to restrict someone's liberty against their will is to prevent harm to others.

Veil of ignorance

Rawls' device for fair choice: principles of justice are chosen by parties who do not know their own talents, social position, or conception of the good.

Difference principle

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

Negative and positive liberty

Berlin's distinction: negative liberty is freedom from interference by others; positive liberty is the capacity to be one's own master and pursue one's goals.

Entitlement theory (Nozick)

Nozick's historical account of justice in holdings based on just acquisition, just transfer, and rectification of past injustice, rejecting patterned redistribution.

Ontological argument

Anselm's argument that God, being that than which nothing greater can be conceived, must exist in reality, since existing in reality is greater than existing only in thought.

Euthyphro dilemma

The question whether actions are good because God commands them, which threatens arbitrariness, or God commands them because they are good, which limits divine authority.

Problem of evil

The apparent inconsistency between an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God and the existence of suffering; free-will and soul-making theodicies are standard responses.

Fideism

The position that religious truths are grasped through faith rather than reason, and that rational argument is inappropriate or unnecessary for religious belief.

Paradigm shift (Kuhn)

A revolution in science in which accumulated anomalies lead a community to abandon one paradigm and adopt another, with the two not fully translatable.

Duhem-Quine thesis

The claim that a failed prediction refutes only a whole web of beliefs, since auxiliary assumptions can always be revised instead of the central hypothesis.

Underdetermination of theory

The situation in which available evidence is compatible with more than one theory, so theory choice must also appeal to simplicity, scope, or fruitfulness.

Scientific realism

The view that successful scientific theories are approximately true and that their terms genuinely refer to unobservable entities such as electrons and fields.