Maharashtra HSC Philosophy flashcards

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

Philosophy (etymology)

From Greek philein (to love) and sophia (wisdom), meaning the love of wisdom; it names the disciplined pursuit of fundamental truths by reasoned argument rather than mere opinion.

Socratic elenchus

Socrates' method of cross-examination: an interlocutor's definition is tested by drawing out implications until a contradiction appears (aporia), prompting a revised, better definition.

Phenomenological epoché

Husserl's bracketing of the natural attitude, suspending assumptions about the independent existence of the world in order to describe experience exactly as it presents itself to consciousness.

Ontology

The branch of metaphysics concerned with being as such: what entities exist, what categories are most basic, and what it means for something to be real.

Hume on causation

Experience shows only constant conjunction and temporal priority, never a necessary connexion; the idea of causal power arises from custom or habit of the mind.

Aristotle's four causes

Material (what it is made of), efficient (what produces it), formal (its defining structure), and final (its purpose or end); together they explain why a thing is what it is.

Nominalism

The metaphysical view that only particular things exist and universal terms are mere names or conveniences; there is no independently existing property of redness, only red things.

Gettier problem

Cases in which a person has a justified true belief that nevertheless counts as knowledge only by luck, showing that justification, truth and belief are jointly insufficient.

Hume's fork

The division of all knowledge into relations of ideas (a priori, analytic, certain) and matters of fact (a posteriori, synthetic, probable); metaphysical claims often fail both tests.

Correspondence theory of truth

A proposition is true when it corresponds to or accurately represents an independent reality; truth is a relation between a belief and the facts it is about.

Fallibilism

The epistemological view that knowledge does not require absolute certainty; beliefs can count as knowledge even though they remain in principle open to revision by further evidence.

Validity

A property of deductive arguments in which the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises: if the premises were true, the conclusion could not be false.

Modus tollens

A valid argument form: if p then q; not q; therefore not p. Denying the consequent forces denial of the antecedent.

Begging the question

The informal fallacy of assuming the very conclusion that is to be proved, so the argument's premise already presupposes what it claims to establish.

Square of opposition

A diagram relating categorical propositions A, E, I and O by contradiction (A–O, E–I), contrariety (A–E), subcontrariety (I–O) and subalternation.

Categorical imperative

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

Aristotelian golden mean

Virtue lies between excess and deficiency, chosen by practical wisdom; courage, for example, sits between rashness and cowardice in the relevant circumstances.

Utilitarianism

The consequentialist theory that the right action maximises overall welfare; Bentham measured pleasure quantitatively, while Mill distinguished higher and lower pleasures.

Naturalistic fallacy

Moore's charge that defining 'good' in terms of natural properties such as pleasure commits an error, since good remains an open question for any proposed definition.

Kant's judgement of taste

An aesthetic judgement is disinterested, singular, universal in demanding everyone's agreement, and necessary, yet grounded in feeling rather than determinate concepts.

Catharsis

Aristotle's term in the Poetics for the purgation or clarification of pity and fear produced in spectators by tragic drama, contributing to the value of tragedy.

Significant form

Clive Bell's formalist criterion of art: certain combinations of lines and colours provoke aesthetic emotion, and that emotionally significant form is what makes something art.

Ontological argument

Anselm's a priori proof: God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, and existence is greater than non-existence, so God must exist; Kant denies existence is a predicate.

Problem of evil

The difficulty that an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God seems incompatible with the existence of evil and suffering; free-will and soul-making theodicies respond.

Fideism

The position that religious faith rests on commitment and revelation rather than on rational proof; Tertullian and Kierkegaard are associated with variants of this view.

Pascal's wager

A prudential argument for belief in God: given infinite possible gain and finite cost, betting on God is the rational strategy even without decisive evidence.

Veil of ignorance

Rawls' device for choosing principles of justice while ignorant of one's own talents, wealth and social position, ensuring impartiality in the choice.

Negative liberty

Isaiah Berlin's term for freedom as the absence of interference or coercion by others; it concerns the area within which one is left undisturbed to act.

General will

Rousseau's concept of the collective will aimed at the common good, distinct from the sum of private wills; obedience to it is presented as obedience to oneself.

Mill's harm principle

The state may restrict individual liberty only to prevent harm to others; self-regarding conduct, even if unwise, falls outside the legitimate scope of coercion.

Pramāṇa

In Indian epistemology, a valid means or source of knowledge; Nyāya recognises perception, inference, comparison and testimony as the principal pramāṇas.

Anekāntavāda

The Jain doctrine of many-sidedness: reality is complex and every judgement is true only from a particular standpoint, so claims must be qualified rather than treated as absolute.