BSEH SS Philosophy cheat sheet

Philosophy derives from Greek philosophia, 'love of wisdom'; it pursues fundamental questions through reasoned argument rather than custom, revelation, or mere assertion.

Core methods include Socratic elenchus, dialectic, conceptual analysis, thought experiments, phenomenological description, hermeneutics, and formal argument reconstruction.

A deductive argument is valid if premises cannot be true with a false conclusion; it is sound if valid and all premises are true.

Inductive arguments make conclusions probable; abductive arguments infer the best explanation; neither guarantees truth in the way a sound deduction does.

Descriptive claims state what is; normative claims state what ought to be; meta-level claims analyze the meaning or status of first-order claims.

Analytic statements are true by meaning or logic; synthetic statements depend on how the world is; a priori knowledge is independent of experience, a posteriori depends on it.

Common fallacies include ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, begging the question, equivocation, and appeal to authority without relevant expertise.

Conceptual analysis tests proposed definitions by necessary and sufficient conditions and seeks counterexamples; it is central to analytic philosophy.

Philosophy overlaps with science, religion, and art but is distinguished by its explicit concern with argument, conceptual clarity, and normative justification.

Metaphysics studies being, existence, substance, causation, modality, universals, mind, and free will, often through a priori conceptual argument.

Epistemology studies knowledge, belief, justification, and truth, asking what can be known, how knowledge is acquired, and when belief is rationally justified.

Logic specifies valid inference; propositional and predicate logic formalize arguments, while informal logic analyzes fallacies and ordinary reasoning.

Ethics divides into metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics; major normative theories include consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics.

Aesthetics concerns beauty, art, taste, aesthetic experience, the definition of art, and the ontology and evaluation of artworks.

Political philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and philosophy of religion are recognized branches or subfields, often drawing on the core branches.

Ontology asks what entities exist; epistemology asks how existence claims can be known; conflating the two produces category mistakes.

Metaethics analyzes moral language and truth; normative ethics proposes principles of right action; applied ethics treats concrete cases.

Logic is normative: it specifies when premises support a conclusion, not merely how people happen to reason.

Indian philosophy includes āstika schools that accept Vedic authority-Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṃsā, Vedānta-and nāstika schools such as Buddhism, Jainism, and Cārvāka.

Upaniṣadic thought links Brahman, ultimate reality, with Ātman, the self; mahāvākyas such as 'tat tvam asi' express their identity in Advaita.

Nyāya develops logic and pramāṇa theory; Vaiśeṣika classifies reality into categories including dravya, guṇa, karma, sāmānya, viśeṣa, and samavāya.

Sāṃkhya posits dualism of puruṣa and prakṛti and analyzes prakṛti through sattva, rajas, and tamas; Yoga adds an eight-limbed discipline culminating in samādhi.

Advaita Vedānta (Śaṅkara) holds nondualism and explains plurality through māyā; Viśiṣṭādvaita (Rāmānuja) affirms qualified nondualism; Dvaita (Madhva) affirms real distinction.

Buddhism teaches the Four Noble Truths, anātman, pratītyasamutpāda, and momentariness; Jainism emphasizes anekāntavāda, syādvāda, and ahimsa.

Mīmāṃsā focuses on Vedic ritual, dharma, and hermeneutics; Cārvāka is materialist, rejecting afterlife and appealing to perception as the primary pramāṇa.

Pramāṇa debates concern which means yield valid knowledge; perception, inference, comparison, and testimony are widely discussed, with schools differing over presumption and non-apprehension.

Indian schools share debates over ātman, karma, rebirth, liberation, and the authority of scripture, but they do not form a single doctrine.

Pre-Socratics proposed naturalistic explanations: Thales water, Heraclitus flux, Parmenides unchanging being, and Democritus atoms and void.

Plato distinguishes Forms from sensible things, uses the cave allegory to contrast opinion and knowledge, and divides the soul into rational, spirited, and appetitive parts.

Aristotle offers four causes-material, efficient, formal, final-and treats virtue as a stable disposition aimed at eudaimonia, with logic as organon.

Medieval philosophy integrates faith and reason: Augustine's inwardness and grace, Aquinas's natural law and Five Ways, and scholastic disputation.

Descartes's cogito and mind-body dualism exemplify rationalism; Locke's tabula rasa, Berkeley's idealism, and Hume's analysis of causation exemplify empiricism.

Kant's Copernican turn makes experience depend on categories and forms of intuition; phenomena are appearances, noumena are things in themselves.

Hegel's dialectic, Marx's historical materialism and alienation, and Nietzsche's revaluation of values and will to power reshape nineteenth-century thought.

Twentieth-century analytic philosophy includes Frege on sense and reference, Russell on descriptions, Wittgenstein on language games, and logical positivism's verificationism.

Existentialism (Sartre: existence precedes essence), phenomenology (Husserl), pragmatism (Peirce, James, Dewey), and contemporary political philosophy (Rawls, Nozick) extend the Western canon.

Metaethics asks whether moral claims are truth-apt and objective; positions include realism, anti-realism, cognitivism, noncognitivism, emotivism, and error theory.

Consequentialism evaluates acts by outcomes; utilitarianism's greatest-happiness principle is classically associated with Bentham and Mill.

Kantian deontology grounds morality in the categorical imperative and duty, rejecting merely instrumental treatment of persons.

Virtue ethics centers on character and eudaimonia; Aristotle's phronesis is practical wisdom that guides virtuous action in particular situations.

Ross proposes prima facie duties such as fidelity, reparation, gratitude, and non-maleficence; actual duty is determined by weighing them in context.

The doctrine of double effect permits a foreseen but unintended harmful side effect under conditions of proportionality, necessity, and non-use as means.

Rawls's veil of ignorance and difference principle justify inequalities only if they benefit the least advantaged; Nozick defends entitlement and minimal state.

Hume's is-ought gap warns that normative conclusions do not follow solely from descriptive premises; Moore's naturalistic fallacy makes a related claim about defining good.

Applied ethics examines abortion, euthanasia, animal welfare, environmental policy, and technology, using normative theory to clarify cases and intuitions.

Natural theology argues for God from reason: ontological (Anselm, Descartes), cosmological (Aquinas, kalām), teleological (Paley), and moral arguments.

The logical problem of evil claims omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence are incompatible with evil; the evidential problem cites the amount and distribution of suffering.

Defenses include free will, soul-making, and skeptical theism; a theodicy additionally claims to justify God's permission of evil.

Divine attributes generate puzzles: omnipotence and the stone paradox, omniscience and foreknowledge versus free will, and omnibenevolence versus hell and suffering.

Faith and reason positions include fideism, natural theology, and reformed epistemology; Wittgensteinian approaches treat religious language as a distinct language game.

Hume's argument against miracles challenges testimony based on uniform experience; religious experience is debated as evidence or as interpretation-laden.

Atheism denies God's existence; agnosticism suspends judgment; nontheism rejects the personal-creator concept without necessarily denying transcendence.

Religious pluralism, exclusivism, and inclusivism differ over whether one religion is uniquely salvific or whether truth and salvation are available across traditions.

The verification and falsification challenges ask whether religious claims are empirically testable; analogy, symbol, and myth are proposed alternatives to literal description.

Hobbes describes a state of nature as a war of all against all, justifying a sovereign; Locke grounds government in natural rights and consent; Rousseau emphasizes the general will.

Social contract theory explains political obligation as arising from consent, mutual advantage, or a hypothetical agreement rather than divine right.

Negative liberty is non-interference; positive liberty is self-mastery or collective self-rule; Berlin warns that positive liberty can justify coercion.

Mill's harm principle limits interference to preventing harm to others; paternalism and legal moralism are rival justifications for coercion.

Rawls's justice as fairness uses the original position, veil of ignorance, and two principles: equal basic liberties and fair equality of opportunity with the difference principle.

Nozick's entitlement theory defends holdings acquired by justice in acquisition, transfer, and rectification, and rejects patterned redistribution.

Marx analyzes class conflict, ideology, alienation, and exploitation; feminism and postcolonial theory extend critique to gender and colonial power.

Civil disobedience is deliberate, public, nonviolent lawbreaking aimed at injustice, often justified by appeal to conscience and democratic legitimacy.

Cosmopolitanism holds that all persons have equal moral standing beyond borders; nationalism and communitarianism stress particular political and cultural attachments.

Vivekananda's practical Vedānta interprets Advaita as a call to strength, service, and universal humanism, and he presented Hinduism at the 1893 Parliament of Religions.

Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga seeks transformation of consciousness and life, culminating in the supermind; his thought combines evolution, spirituality, and Indian nationalism.

Gandhi's satyagraha combines truth, ahimsa, and self-suffering; his constructive program includes swadeshi, village self-rule, and trusteeship.

Tagore emphasizes humanism, creative freedom, and education through nature and the arts; his cosmopolitanism criticizes narrow nationalism.

Ambedkar combines constitutionalism, social justice, and critique of caste; he eventually embraced Buddhism and emphasized liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Radhakrishnan's idealistic philosophy treats religion as experience and reason, and he defended comparative religious understanding and university education.

Krishnamurti stresses choiceless awareness, freedom from conditioning, and the danger of authority and psychological dependence.

Applied Indian philosophical issues include environmental ethics, animal welfare, bioethics, human rights, technology and AI ethics, and the ethics of caste and affirmative action.

Contemporary Indian thinkers often apply classical concepts such as ahimsa, dharma, and swaraj to democracy, development, ecology, and interreligious relations.