PSEB SS Philosophy key terms

The disciplined activity of asking and answering the most general questions about reality, knowledge, value, and meaning, using reasoned argument rather than appeals to custom, authority, or mere feeling.

The branch of philosophy that investigates what ultimately exists and what it is like: questions about substance, change, causation, universals, the self, and God, rather than about particular empirical facts.

The part of metaphysics concerned with what kinds of things there are and how they are related: whether numbers, minds, and properties exist, and which entities are fundamental and which are derivative.

The study of knowledge and justified belief: what knowledge is, where it comes from, what its limits are, and how claims to know can be defended against sceptical challenge.

The general theory of value, covering both ethics (what is morally good or right) and aesthetics (what is beautiful), and asking how values exist and how they can be justified.

The study of the forms of valid reasoning: which patterns of premises guarantee their conclusions, and how to tell good arguments from persuasive but defective ones.

A method of inquiry through structured question and answer, associated with Socrates and Plato, in which opposing positions are examined so that contradictions surface and a more adequate view can emerge.

Socrates' practice of questioning people about their definitions of key terms until inconsistencies appear, thereby exposing ignorance and prompting the search for genuine understanding instead of confident opinion.

A set of statements in which some, the premises, are offered as support for another, the conclusion; it aims to give reasons for accepting a claim rather than merely asserting it.

A statement in an argument offered as a reason for accepting the conclusion. Premises may be true or false, and an argument's strength depends partly on whether they are actually true.

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. Validity concerns form, not actual truth.

A property of deductive arguments that are both valid and have all their premises actually true. A sound argument therefore guarantees the truth of its conclusion.

A deductive argument form with two premises and a conclusion, typically built from categorical statements linking terms, as in Aristotle's system of formal reasoning.

The mental move from one or more statements to another that they are taken to support. Inference may be deductive, where the conclusion follows necessarily, or inductive, where it follows only with probability.

Reasoning in which the conclusion is claimed to follow necessarily from the premises, so that accepting the premises commits one to the conclusion if the argument is valid.

Reasoning that generalises from observed cases to wider conclusions, or predicts future cases from past ones. Its conclusions are probable rather than certain, a point Hume pressed hard.

Traditionally, justified true belief: a claim one believes, which is true, and for which one has adequate justification. Each of the three conditions has been disputed in later analysis.

The reasons or evidence that make a belief reasonable to hold. Whether justification must rest on foundations, cohere with other beliefs, or serve practical needs is a central epistemological dispute.

The view that knowledge, or knowledge of some broad kind, is impossible or not yet established, often supported by arguments that our evidence cannot rule out alternative explanations.

The position that reason, independently of sense experience, can yield substantive knowledge, especially of necessary truths such as those of mathematics and metaphysics. Associated with Descartes and Plato.

The position that all substantive knowledge derives from sense experience, so that ideas not traceable to experience are empty. Associated with Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.

Ideas held to be present in the mind from birth or by its natural constitution, rather than acquired through experience. Rationalists invoked them; empiricists denied them.

The relation by which one event or state brings about another. Hume argued that experience shows only constant conjunction and succession, not any necessary connection between cause and effect.

That which exists in its own right and supports properties or attributes, rather than existing merely as a feature of something else. Theories of substance differ over whether there is one, many, or none.

Properties or kinds that many particular things share, such as redness or humanity. The dispute is whether universals exist independently of particulars, exist only in them, or are merely names.

The metaphysical view that reality ultimately consists of one kind of thing or one basic principle, as in Advaita Vedanta's claim that only Brahman is real and plurality is appearance.

The view that reality contains two fundamentally different kinds of thing, classically mind and body, or matter and spirit, neither reducible to the other.

The metaphysical view that reality comprises many irreducibly different kinds of thing or principle, rejecting the attempt to explain everything by one or two basic categories.

Philosophical and scientific inquiry into the origin, structure, and order of the universe as a whole, including arguments about whether its existence requires an explanation beyond itself.

Explanation of things by the purposes or ends they serve, rather than solely by prior causes. Aristotle's four causes include a final cause of this kind.

An argument that God's existence follows from the very concept of God as the greatest conceivable being, since a being that exists in reality is greater than one that exists only in thought.

An argument that the existence of the universe, or of the series of causes and changes within it, requires a first cause or necessary being, identified with God.

The argument from apparent design, order, or purpose in the world to the existence of an intelligent designer. Hume and Darwinian biology are its best-known critics.

An attempt to reconcile belief in a good and all-powerful God with the reality of evil and suffering, for example by arguing that evil is necessary for greater goods such as free will.

The branch of philosophy that examines moral concepts such as right, wrong, duty, virtue, and good, and seeks reasoned standards for judging conduct and character.

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

A stable excellence of character, such as courage or honesty, understood as a mean between excess and deficiency and developed through habit and practice.

Aristotle's term for human flourishing or living well, the highest good and proper aim of a human life, achieved through the exercise of virtue over a complete life.

Aristotle's idea that moral virtue lies between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency, so that courage sits between recklessness and cowardice, and the right amount depends on circumstance.

The branch of philosophy concerned with beauty, taste, and the nature of art, asking what makes something beautiful and whether judgements of beauty can claim universal agreement.