MATSEC IM Philosophy key terms

A way of doing philosophy through persistent questioning that exposes contradictions in a person's beliefs, rather than through lecturing. Socrates used it to show that seeming knowledge often rests on unexamined assumptions.

The cross-examination technique Socrates uses in Plato's early dialogues: a claim is proposed, counterexamples are drawn out, and the claim is shown to conflict with other beliefs the speaker accepts.

A state of puzzlement reached when an inquiry has undermined every proposed answer without producing a replacement. In Plato's early dialogues it is often the honest result of honest questioning.

Philosophical reasoning carried on through question and answer between interlocutors. In Plato it aims at grasping Forms; in Hegel it names the movement from a position through its negation to a richer result.

Plato's view that sensible things are imperfect copies of changeless, non-material realities known by reason. A particular circle approximates the Form of the Circle but never perfectly instantiates it.

Plato's relation between sensible objects and Forms: a beautiful thing is beautiful because it partakes of Beauty itself. The exact sense of 'partakes' is notoriously unclear and was criticised by Aristotle.

Aristotle's regress objection to separate Forms: if a man and the Form of Man are both men, a further Form is needed to explain what they share, and so on without end.

Plato's image of prisoners who mistake shadows on a wall for reality. It illustrates education as turning the soul from appearances toward intelligible truth, and the cost of returning to enlighten others.

Plato's comparison of the Form of the Good to the sun: as the sun makes things visible and nourishes them, the Good makes Forms knowable and gives being to what is known.

Aristotle's four ways of answering 'why?': the material (what it is made of), efficient (what produced it), formal (what it is, its structure) and final (what it is for).

Aristotle's account of substances as composites of matter and form. Matter is what a thing is made of; form is the structure that makes it the kind of thing it is.

Aristotle's pair for explaining change without denying it: an acorn is potentially an oak, and becoming an oak is the actualisation of that capacity. Change is the move from potential to actual.

Explaining something by the end or purpose it serves. Aristotle holds that natural things have intrinsic ends; modern biology usually restricts purposive language to function talk or to design by selection.

In Aristotle, the primary bearer of properties: an individual thing such as this person or this horse, which exists in its own right rather than as a feature of something else.

An essence is what a thing is in itself, without which it would not be that thing. An accident is a property it happens to have, such as being pale, which it could lose and remain itself.

A property or kind that can be present in many things at once, such as redness or being human. Realists treat universals as mind-independent; nominalists deny this.

The view that only particular things exist and that general terms are names or mental classifications rather than extra entities. It rejects independently existing universals.

The principle that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity: prefer the simpler explanation that posits fewer kinds of thing, unless the extra posits do real explanatory work.

Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am'. Even if a deceiver undermines everything else, the act of doubting shows that a thinking thing exists while it thinks.

Descartes' strategy of withholding assent from anything that could conceivably be false, in order to find beliefs that are indubitable and rebuild knowledge on them.

Descartes' hypothetical deceiver powerful and cunning enough to make even arithmetic and geometry seem certain when they are not. It motivates the search for an undoubtable foundation.

Descartes' criterion of truth: an idea is clear when present and vivid to an attentive mind, and distinct when sharply separated from everything else. He treats clarity and distinctness as a guarantee of truth, given God's non-deception.

The apparent circularity in Descartes: he proves God exists using clear and distinct ideas, then relies on God's veracity to guarantee that clear and distinct ideas are true.

The view that mind and body are two distinct kinds of substance: mind is essentially thinking and unextended, body is essentially extended and non-thinking. Their causal interaction becomes the central problem.

The question of how mental states such as pains and intentions relate to physical states of the brain and body, especially how they can cause one another.

The occasionalist response to mind-body interaction: created things do not really cause changes in one another; God produces the effect on each occasion that the apparent cause occurs.

The thesis that all substantive knowledge of the world derives from sense experience and reflection on it, so that innate ideas or purely rational insight into reality are rejected.

The view that reason, independent of sense experience, can grasp important truths about reality, and that some ideas or principles are innate or structurally prior to experience.

The image of the mind as a blank slate at birth, so that its contents come from experience. Associated with Locke's attack on innate ideas.

Hume's distinction between lively, forceful perceptions given in experience (impressions) and fainter copies of them in thought and memory (ideas). Every legitimate idea traces back to some impression.

Hume's division of meaningful statements into relations of ideas, true by reasoning alone, and matters of fact, established by experience. Statements fitting neither category are to be committed to the flames.

The relation by which one event brings about another. Hume argues we never perceive a necessary connection, only constant conjunction and a habitual expectation in the mind.

The difficulty that past regularities do not deductively guarantee future ones, and any attempt to justify induction by its past success already assumes induction works.

Popper's criterion that a scientific hypothesis must forbid some observable outcome, so that it is genuinely testable. Confirmations count only if they result from risky predictions.

In Kuhn, a shared set of exemplary problems, methods and assumptions that defines normal science for a community until accumulating anomalies provoke a crisis and a scientific revolution.

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

A command that applies only if you have the relevant end, as in 'if you want to be healthy, exercise'. Its force depends on a contingent desire, unlike the categorical imperative.

In Kant, the capacity of a rational will to give itself the moral law rather than be determined by inclination or external authority. It grounds the dignity of persons.

An action done from duty has moral worth when it is performed because it is right, not merely because it is useful or agreeable. Kant contrasts this with acting in conformity with duty from self-interest.

The consequentialist theory that the right action is the one producing the greatest overall well-being, counting each person's interests equally. Bentham and Mill develop competing versions.

Any moral theory that evaluates actions solely by their outcomes rather than by the kind of act they are or the motive behind them.

A moral theory holding that some acts are right or wrong in themselves, independent of consequences, and that duties or rules constrain what we may do for good ends.

Bentham's proposed method for measuring pleasure and pain by intensity, duration, certainty, nearness, fecundity, purity and the number of people affected.

Rawls' device for choosing principles of justice: parties know general facts but not their own talents, wealth or social position, so chosen principles must be fair to all.

The idea that political authority is justified by an actual or hypothetical agreement among people to live under common rules, rather than by divine right or mere force.

A thought-experiment describing human life without political authority. Hobbes depicts it as a war of all against all; Locke sees natural rights and law already present.

A property of arguments: the conclusion cannot be false if the premises are true, because the form guarantees truth-preservation. Validity says nothing about whether premises are actually true.

An argument is sound when it is valid and all its premises are true. Soundness therefore transfers truth to the conclusion in a way validity alone does not.

The valid inference form: if P then Q; P; therefore Q. Affirming the antecedent. It is one of the most basic patterns of deductive reasoning.

The valid inference form: if P then Q; not Q; therefore not P. Denying the consequent. Confusing it with denying the antecedent produces a fallacy.

A pattern of reasoning that tends to persuade without giving proper support to the conclusion, such as begging the question, straw man or false dilemma.

An analytic statement is true or false by meaning alone, as in 'all bachelors are unmarried'. A synthetic statement adds information and depends on how the world is.

Knowledge is a priori when it can be justified without reliance on experience, as with simple arithmetic; a posteriori when it depends on observation or testimony.

The view that everything that exists is physical, or supervenes on the physical, so that mental states must be accounted for in terms of brain and bodily processes.

A family of views stressing that humans exist first and define themselves through choices in a world without given meaning, so that freedom brings responsibility and anxiety.

Sartre's term for self-deception in which a person denies their freedom by treating themselves as fixed by role, nature or circumstance, as in 'that is just how I am'.

Living in honest acknowledgement of one's freedom and responsibility, refusing to hide behind social roles or excuses, and owning the values one commits to.

Hegel's account of development through contradiction: a position generates its own negation, and the conflict is resolved at a higher level that preserves and transforms both.