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| From Greek roots meaning the love of wisdom. |
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| Branch of philosophy that studies the nature and possibility of knowledge. Beginning with Descartes, western philosophy has been dominated by epistemological issues. The theory of knowledge, concerned with the origins, quality, nature, and reliabilty of knowledge. |
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| Branch of philosophy concerned with the good life and with moral value and moral reasoning. |
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| Branch of philosophy concerned with what is real. |
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| Social and Political Philosophy |
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Social Philosophy a branch of philosophy concerned with social institutions and relations.
Political Philosophy a branch converned with the state and issues of sovereignty. |
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| Belief that knowledge is determined by specific qualities of the observer, including age, ethnicity, gender, cultural conditioning. |
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| Fundemental understanding of reality as it relates to living a good life; reasonable and practical, focusing on the true circumstances and character of each individual; good judgement about complex situations involving reflection, insight and a plausible conception of the human condition. |
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| The accurate compilation and assessment of factual and systematic relationships. |
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| The skills needed to do things like play the piano, use a band saw, remove a tumor, or bake a cake. |
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| Sage or wise man; term applied to the first philosophers, from the Greek word wise. |
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| (c. 624-545 B.C.E.), traditionally said to be the first Western Philosopher, absorbed in speculative study. |
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| Greek word for "nature". (Physics derives from this word.) |
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| "world order" that the early philosophers concentrated their studies. This and Physis or "nature". |
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| One of the richest and most complex terms in ancient philosophy, associated meanings include "intelligence" "speech" "discourse" "thought" "reason" "word" "meaning", the root of "log"(record), "logo", "logic" and the ology suffix. According to Heraclitus, the rule according to which all things are accomplished and the law found in all things. |
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| The interplay of carefully argued ideas; the use of reason to order, clarify, and identify reality and truth according to agreed-upon standards of verification. |
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| Presocratic philosopher, said that ignorance is bound to result when we try to understand the cosmos when we do not even comprehend the basic structure of the human psyche and its relationship to the Logos. |
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| Forcefully defended the idea that change in the form of motion is impossible. These intriguing paradoxes present one of the earliest examples of a particular method of proof known as a reductio ad absurdum, showing an opponent's position as abssurd or unacceptable. |
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| From the Greek atomos, meaning indivisible. |
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| Early Greek philosophy developed by Leucippus and Democritus and later refined by Epicurus and Lucretius; materialistic view that the universe consists entirely of empty spaceand ultimately to simple entities that combine to form objects. |
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| In fifth century B.C.E. teachers of rhetoric (who were paid) relativists who taught that might makes right, truth is a matter of appearance and convention, and power is ultimate value. |
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| The teachings and practices of the originial Sophists; modern usage refers to subtle, plausible, but fallacious reasoning used to pursuade rather than discover truth. |
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| Pragmatic social philosophy unfettered by moral considerations, expressed in the formula, "might makes right". |
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| Established as a philosophical retreat isolated from the turmoil of Athenian politics, safe from the fate of Socrates. Its chief purpose was to educate people who would be fit to rule the just state. |
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| Independently existing, non spacial, non temporal 'somethings" known only through thought and that cannot be known through the senses, independently existing objects of thought, that which makes a particular thing uniquely and essentially what it is. |
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| The Greek root for form sometimes translated as "idea" "archetype" or "essence". |
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| Spirit, reason, and appetite. |
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| Excellence of function for the whole; in a just society, each individual performs his or her natural function according to class; in a just individual reason rules the spirit and appetites. |
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| Belief that reality consists of the natural world, denial of the existence of a separate supernatural order of reality, belief that nature follows natural discoverable laws. |
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| From the Greek hyle, the common material stuff found in a variety of things, it has no distinct characteristics until some form is imparted to it or until the form inherent in a thing becomes actualized. |
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| From the Greek word for essence (ousia), that which is in matter and makes a thing what it is, can be abstracted from the matter but cannot exist independently of matter. |
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Material- sunstance from which a thing comes and in which change occurs.
Formal- the shape or form into which matter is changed.
Effcient- the triggering cause that intiates activity, close to the contemporary meaning of cause.
Final Cause- that for which a activity or process takes place. The reason for its existence. |
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| According to Aristotle, the inner urge that drives all things to blossom into their unique selves, inner order or design that governs all natural processes. |
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| Way of explaining things in terms of their ultimate goals; understanding things functionally in terms of the relationship of the parts to the whole. |
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| Often translated as happiness, term Aristotle used to refer to fully realized existence; state of being fully aware, vital, alert. |
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| Refers to the sum total of a person's traits, including behavior, habits, likes and dislikes, capacities, potentials, and so on, a key element to Aristotlelian ethics and psychology. |
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| From the Latin medius, the mid point between two other points, for Aristotle, moral virtue was characterized as a mean between too little and too much. |
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| An epistemological position in which reason is said to be the primary source of all knowledge, superior to sense evidence. Argue that only reason can distinguish reality from illusion andgive meaning to experience. |
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| Cartesian strategy of delibertly doubting everythinbg it is possible to doubt in the least degree so that what remains will be known with absolute certainty. Descartes (evil genius) |
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| Or innate ideas; truths that are not derived from observation or experiment; characterized as being certain, deductive, universally true, and independent of all experience. |
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| Derived from reason without reference to sense experience. Examples include "All triangles contain 180 degrees" and "Every event has a cause". |
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| I think therefore I am. That it is possible to be decieved about almost anything, from this "evil genuis", the only thing one can know for certain is that I am, I exist each time I pronounce it, or that I mentally concieve of it. |
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| Belief that everything is composed of matter (and energy) and can be explained by physical laws, that all human activity can be understood as the natural behavior of matter according to mechanical laws, and that thinking is merely a complex form of behaving, the is a fleshy machine. |
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| General name for the belief that everything consists of only one, ultimate, unique substance such as matter or spirit. |
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| Any philosophical position that divides existence into two completely distinct, independent, unique substances. |
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| The belief that there exist many realities or substances. |
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| A person who demands clear, observable, undoubtable evidence before accepting any knowledge claim is true. |
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| Belief that all knowledge is ultimately derived from the senses (experience) and that all ideas can be traced back to sense data. |
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| Correspondence Theory of Truth |
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| Truth test that holds that an idea (or belief or thought) is true if whatever it refers to actually exists (corresponds to fact). |
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| a priori knowledge; truths that are not derived from observation or experiement. Certain, deductive, universally true, and independent of all experience. |
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| John Locke; Latin expression for "clean slate". Used to challenge the possibility of innate ideas by characterizing the mind at birth as a blank tablet or clean slate. |
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| According to Locke, objective sensible qualities that exist independently of any perciever; shape, size, location, and motion are examples of primary qualities. |
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| According to Locke, subjective qualities whose existence depends on a perciever, color, sound, touch, taste and texture are all examples of secondary qualitites. |
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| The view that knowing consists of the knower and the known. Creates the egocentric predicament a self limited world view or limited mental constructs. |
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| Problem generated by epistemological dualism; if all knowledge comes from the form of my own ideas, how can I verify the existence of anything external to them? |
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| Humean theory that there is no fixed self,but that the self is a bundle of perceptions, a self is a habitual way of discussing certain perceptions. |
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| Reasoning pattern that proceeds from the particular to the general or from "some" to "all" and results in generalized rules or principles established with degrees of probability. |
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| From the Latin moralis, meaning "custom", "manner", or "conduct", refers to what people consider good or bad, right or wrong, used descriptively as a constant to ammoral nonmoral and prescriptively as a contrast to immoral. |
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| Not pertaining to moral, a value-neutral descriptive claim or classification. |
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| Morally bad, wrong or not right; a moral judgement or prescriptive claim. |
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| Neither reason or sensation by itself can give us knowledge of the external world. Knowledge and experience are shaped, structured, or formed by special regulative ideas called catogories. This is known as Kantian Formalism, Idealism or transcendental idealism. |
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| Kant's term for his effort to assess the nature and limit's of "pure reason", unadulterated by experience, in order to identify the actual relationship of the mind to knowledge. |
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| Kant's term for the world as we experience it. (Ch 11. p. 324) |
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| Kant's term for reality as it is, independant of our perceptionsm what is commonly called "objective reality". |
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| According to Kant, a function of reason confined to the emperical, phenomenal world. |
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| According to Kant, moral function of reason that produces religous feeings and intuitions based on knowledge of moral conduct. |
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| propositions that tell us what to do under specific, variable conditions. |
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| According to Kant, a command that is universally binding on all rational creatures, the ultimate foundation of all moral law. "Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become a universal law of nature." |
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| (Principle of Dignity) Kant's formulation of the catagorial imperative based on the concept of dignity; "Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, never simply as a means but always at the same time an end." |
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| John Rawl's mechanism for imaginitivly entering into the original position by avoiding all personal considerations in the process of determining principles of justice; the viel of ignorance is a problem solving device that prevents us from knowing our social status, what property we own. what we like and dislike, how intelligent we are, what our talents and strengths are, and so on. |
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| All those who do not produce anything, yet who own and control the means of production. |
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| All those who labor produces goods and services, yet who do not own the means of production. |
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| Dialectical Processs (Hegelian) |
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Internally governed evolutionary cycle in which progress occurs as the result of a struggle between opposite conditions.
Thesis, Anti-thesis, Synthesis. |
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| Form of social determinism based on a reciprocal relationship between individuals and their enviornment, distinguished from strict materialism and hard determinism. |
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| In Philosophical Marxism, the complete array of social relationships and arrangements that constitute a particular social order. |
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| In philosphical marxism, the material substructure or base of society determines the nature of all social relationships, as well as religion, art, philosophies, literature, science, and government. |
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| Superstructure of Society |
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| According to philospohical Marxism, the superstructure of a culture consists of the ideas and institutions ( religious belief, educational systems, philosophies, the arts, and such) compatible with and produced by the material substructure. |
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| In philosphical Marxism, the means of production include natural resources, such as water, coal, land and so forth, a part of the substructure of a society. |
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| In philosophical Marxism, the forces of production are factories, equipment, technology, knowledge, and skill; a part of the substructure of society. |
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| Relationship of Productions |
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| In philosophical Marxism, relationships of production consist of who does what, who owns what, and how this affects memebers of both groups, a part of the substructure of society. |
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| Economic system in which the means of production and distribution are all (or mostly) privately owned and operated for profit under fully competitve conditions, tends to be accompanied by concentration of wealth and growth of great corporations. |
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| Term Marx used to refer to the capital accumulated by owners; the result of keeping prices higher than the costs of production at the expense of the worker. |
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| In Marxian social analysis, co-option occurs when workers identify with the economic system that oppreses them by confusing the remote possibility of accumulating wealth with their active living and working conditions; being co-opted also refers to anyone who is somehow convinced to further interests that are to her or his ultimate disadvantage. |
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| According to Marx, condition of workers seperated from the products of their labor, primary an objective state, but can also refer to not feeling "at one" with the product of labor. |
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| Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis |
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| The gap between the ideal you and the reality of the moment. |
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| 19th-20th century nation-states and a corresponding set of cultural conditions and beliefs dominated by Enlightenment ideals, including faith inscience, objective truth, and rationality; expectations of inevidible progress, political democracy, capitalism, urbanization, mass literacy, mass media, mass culture, anti-tradionalism, large scale industrial enterprise, individualism, and secularization. |
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| Schopenhauer's theory that life is disappointing and the for every satisfied desire, new desires emerge, our only hope is detachment and withdrawal. |
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| Neitzsche's term for what he thought is a universal desire to control others and impose our values on them. |
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| According to Neitzshe, the sense of joy amd vitality that accompanies the superior individual's clear-sighted imposition of his own freely chosen values on a meaningless world. |
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| The contention that every view is only one among many possible interpretations, including, especially Nietzchean Perspectivism, which itself is just one interpretation among many interpretations. |
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| From latin for "nothing", belief that the universe lacks meaning and purpose. |
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| Nietzshe's "higher type" a more-than-human being that will emerge only by overcoming the flase idols of conventional morality and religion; announced in Thus Spake Zarathrustra. |
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| Nietzche's term for the type of person who cannot face being alone in a godless universe, an inferior individual seeking safety and identity in a group or from another, characterized by resentment and hypocrisy. |
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| In Nietzschean Philosophy, a distortion of the will to power in which the characteristics of the inferior type are prasied as virtues, and the characteristics of the superior type (Overman) are condemned as arrogance and cold heartedness, a morality of inhibitions, equality, restricitve duties, and "bad consciousness". |
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| Method of philosophical analysis first developed by Hursserl that uses purely descriptive statements to provide a "descriptive analysis" of consciousness in all its forms; focuses on concrete "experienced facts" rather than abstractions on order to reveal the "essence" of human consciousness. |
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| Heidegger's name for being-with-another, an inauthentic way of avoiding anxiety by allowing an "aggragate average" to determine how we live and think, enemy of authenticity. |
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| Heidegger's name for superficial "they talk", includes chatter, gossip, and merely verbal understanding, contrasted with conversation or dialog. |
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| From the Greek for "Deed", belief that ideas have a meaning or truth value to the extent that theu produce pratical results and effectively furthur our aims; empirically based philospohy that defines knowledge and truth in terms of practical consequences. |
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| Belief that everthing that happens must happen exactly the way it does because all matter is governed by cause and effect and follows laws of nature. |
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