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Definition
| Distinction in logic between types of reasoning, arguments, or inferences. In a deductive argument, the truth of the premises is supposed to guarantee the truth of the conclusion; in an inductive argument, the truth of the premises merely makes it probable that the conclusion is true. |
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| Distinction between assertions about how things really are (fact) and how things ought to be (value). Drawn by Hume, but also defended by Stevenson, Hare, and other ethical noncognitivists, the distinction is usually taken to entail that claims about moral obligation can never be validly inferred from the truth of factual premises alone. It follows that people who agree completely on the simple description of a state of affairs may nevertheless differ with respect to the appropriate action to take in response to it. |
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| Distinction between the events involved in a causal relationship, where the occurrence of one (the cause) is supposed to bring about or produce an occurrence of the other (the effect). Although the correct analysis of causation is a matter of great dispute, Hume offered a significant criticism of our inclination to infer a necessary connection from mere regularity, and Mill proposed a set of methods for recognizing the presence of causal relationships. Contemporary philosophers often suppose that a causal relationship is best expressed in the counterfactual statement that if the cause had not occured, then the effect would not have occured either. |
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| The relationship that holds between the premises and the conclusion of a logical argument, or the process of drawing a conclusion from premises that support it deductively or inductively. |
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| Probable reasoning whose conclusion goes beyond what is formally contained in its premises; see deduction / induction. |
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Term
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Definition
the act or process of deducting; subtraction.
2.
something that is or may be deducted: She took deductions for a home office and other business expenses from her taxes.
3.
the act or process of deducing.
4.
something that is deduced: His astute deduction was worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
5.
Logic.
a.
a process of reasoning in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the premises presented, so that the conclusion cannot be false if the premises are true.
b.
a conclusion reached by this process. Compare induction ( def 4 ) . |
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Term
| categorical / hypothetical imperative |
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| In the moral philosophy of Kant, a distinction between ways in which the will may be obliged. A hypothetical imperative (of the form, "If you want X, then do A.") is always conditioned on something else, but a categorical imperative (of the form "Do A.") is absolute and universal. Moral action for Kant always follows from the categorical imperative, "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." |
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| What we ought to do; an action that people are required to perform; the practical content of a moral obligation. |
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| Belief that human judgments are always conditioned by the specific social environment of a particular person, time, or place. Cognitive relativists hold that there can be no universal knowledge of the world, but only diverse interpretations of it. Moral relativists hold that there are no universal standards of moral value, but only the cultural norms of particular societies. |
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| The solitary, uniquely unconditioned, utterly independent, and ultimately all-encompassing spiritual being that comprises all of reality according to such Romantic idealists as Schelling, and Hegel. British philosopher F.H. Bradley emphasized that the Absolute must transcend all of the contradictory appearances of ordinary experience, while American Josiah Royce took the Absolute to be a spiritual entity whose self-consciousness is reflected (though only imperfectly) in the totality of human thought. |
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| In general, the view that there are no exceptions to a rule. In moral philosophy, such a position maintains that actions of a specific sort are always right (or wrong) independently of any further considerations, thus rejecting the consequentialist effort to evaluate them by their outcomes. In political theory, absolutism is the view that a legitimate sovereign is unrestrained by the rule of law. |
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| A (mostly) twentieth-century approach that emphasizes the primacy of individual existence over any presumed natural essence for human beings. Although they differ on many details, existentialists generally suppose that the fact of my existence as a human being entails both my unqualified freedom to make of myself whatever I will and the awesome responsibility of employing that freedom appropriately, without being driven by anxiety toward escaping into the inauthenticity or self-deception of any conventional set of rules for behavior, even though the entire project may turn out to be absurd. Prominent existentialists include Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Beauvoir, Sartre, and Camus. |
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| German word for the anxiety or anguish produced by an acute awareness of the implications of human freedom. An important notion for existentialist philosophers, including especially Kierkegaard and Heidegger. |
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| Self-conscious appropriation of the conditions of one's own existence and identity. According to Heidegger, such deliberate reflection about the goals and values of life is the only successful response to the experience of Angst without falling into self-deception. |
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