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| The refusal to believe either that God exists or that He does not exist, usually on the grounds that there can be no sufficient evidence for either belief. |
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| The ascribing of human attributes to God. |
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| An argument that undertakes to "prove" that God exists on the basis of the idea that there must have been a first cause or an ultimate reason for the existence of the universe. |
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| An argument that tries to "prove" the existence of God from the very concept of "God". For example, "God", by defintion, is that being with all possible perfection; existence is a perfection; therefore God exists. |
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| In Kierkegaard, the "truth" of strong feelings and commitment. |
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| An argument that attempts to "prove" that God exists because of the intricacy and "design" of nature. It is sometimes called the argument from design because the basis of the argument is that because the universe is evidently designed, it must have a designer. The analogy most often used is our inference from finding a complex mechanism on the beach(for example, a watch) that some intelligent being must have created it. |
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| The thesis that there is but one correct view of reality. Opposed to relativism. |
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The movement in twentieth-century philosophy, particularly in the United States and Britain, that focuses its primary attention on language and linguistic analysis. Also called “linguistic philosophy.” |
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| “After experience” or empirical. |
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| “Before experience” or, more accurately, independent of experience. |
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| A central idea of empiricist philosophy, according to which all knowledge is composed of separate ideas that are connected by their resemblance to one another, by their contiguity in space and time, and by their causality. |
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| Kant’s word (borrowed from Aristotle) for those most basic and a priori concepts of human knowledge, for example, “causality” and “substance.” |
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| The relation of cause and effect, one event’s bringing about another according to natural law. |
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| Derived from and to be defended by appeal to experience. |
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| The study of human knowledge, its nature, its sources, its justification. |
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| The discipline of interpretation of texts. Broadly conceived (as by Heidegger, Gadamer ) it is the “uncovering” of meanings in everyday life, the attempt to understand the signs and symbols of one’s culture and tradition in juxtaposition with other cultures and traditions. |
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| A philosophy that localizes truth and different views of reality to particular times, places, and peoples in history. It is generally linked to a very strong relativist thesis as well, that there is no truth apart from these various historical commitments. |
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That basic rule of logic that demands that a sentence and its denial cannot both be true. “Not (P and not P).” This law is used by many philosophers (Kant, Leibniz, and Hume, for example) as criterion for analyticity or analytic truth. |
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| A statement or a belief that is true if and only if it “works,” that is, if it allows us to predict certain results and to function effectively in everyday life, and if it encourages further inquiry and helps us lead better lives. |
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| THE PRINCIPLE OF INDUCTION |
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| The belief that the laws of nature will continue to hold in the future as they have in the past. |
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| PRINCIPLE OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION |
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| The belief that every event has its cause (or causes). In scientific circles, it is usually added, “its sufficient natural cause,” in order to eliminate the possibility of miracles and divine intervention. |
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| In accordance with the rules of effective thought: coherence, consistency, practicability, simplicity, comprehensiveness, looking at the evidence and weighing it carefully, not jumping to conclusions, etc… |
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| A philosophical belief that knowledge is not possible, that doubt will not be overcome by any valid arguments. |
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| The view that only ideas and mind exist and that there are no substances, matter, or material objects. In particular, the philosophy of Bishop Berkeley. |
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| The thesis that one ought to act for the sake of the interests of others. |
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| In Kant’s philosophy, a moral law, a command that is unqualified and not dependent on any conditions or qualifications. In particular, that rule that tells us to act in such a way that we would want everyone else to act. |
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| The descriptive anthropological thesis that different societies have different moralities. It is important to stress that these moralities must be fundamentally different, not only different in details. |
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| The thesis that people act for their own interests. |
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| The thesis that there is one and only one correct morality. |
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| The thesis that different moralities should be considered equally correct even if they directly contradict each other. A morality is “correct,” by this thesis, merely if it is correct according to the particular society that accepts it. |
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| Aristotle’s word for “happiness” or, more literally, “living well.” |
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| In Bentham, the principle that one ought to do what gives the greatest pleasure to the greatest number of people. |
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| The moral philosophy that says that we should act in such ways as to make the greatest number of people as happy as possible. |
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| Moral excellence. In Aristotle’s philosophy, a state of character according to which we enjoy doing what is right. |
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| In Marx, the unnatural separation of a person from the products he or she makes, from other people, or from oneself. |
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| The ideal of everyone receiving his or her fair share. |
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| The view that all people are equal in rights and respect. |
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| Those rights that are considered to be universal, “unalienable,” and common to every person regardless of where or when he or she lives. |
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| Those circumstances, states of affairs, or events that regularly precede and can be said to cause an event. |
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| That which brings something about. |
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| The thesis that both determinism (on some interpretations) and free action can be true. Determinism does not rule out free action, and the possibility of free action does not require that determinism be false. |
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The view that every event in the universe is dependent upon other events, which are its causes. On this view, all human actions and decisions, even those that we would normally describe as “free” and “undetermined,” are totally dependent on prior events that cause them. |
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The thesis that certain events (or perhaps all events) are going to happen inevitably, regardless of what efforts we take to prevent them. |
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| Among philosophers, a somewhat antiquated expression that means that a person is capable of making decisions that are not determined by antecedent conditions. |
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| HEISENBERG UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE |
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| An important principle of recent physics that demonstrates that we cannot know both the position and the momentum of certain subatomic particles because in our attempts to know one, we make it impossible to know the other. This principle has been used to attack the very idea of “determinism” in its classical formulations because determinism requires just the “certainty” of possible prediction that the Heisenberg principle rejects. |
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| The thesis that at least some events in the universe are not determined, are not caused by antecedent conditions, and may not be predictable. |
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The thesis (usually in a theological context) that every event is destined to happen (as in fatalism), whatever efforts we make to prevent it. The usual version is that God knows and perhaps causes all things to happen, and therefore everything must happen precisely as He knows (and possibly causes) it to happen. |
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To say, on the basis of certain present evidence, what must have happened in the past. |
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| A thesis that accepts determinism but claims that certain kinds of causes, namely a person’s character, still allow us to call his or her actions “free.” |
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Capable of bringing something about by itself. |
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