Archetypes of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy 8th ed. by Douglas J. Soccio
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| 730530135 | A Posteriori Knowledge | Empirical knowledge derived from sense experience and not regarded as universal because the conditions under which it is acquired change, perceivers vary, and factual relationships change. | 1 | |
| 730530136 | A Priori Ideas (Innate Ideas) | Truths that are not derived from observation or experiment, characterized as being certain, deductive, universally true, and independent of all experience. | 2 | |
| 730530137 | A Priori Knowledge | Derived from reason without reference to sense experience. Examples include "All triangles contain 180°" and "Every event has a cause." | 3 | |
| 730530138 | "Cogito, Ergo Sum" | Latin for "I think, therefore I am." | 4 | |
| 730530139 | Coherence Theory of Truth | Truth test in which new or unclear ideas are evaluated in terms of rational or logical consistency and in relation to already established truths. | 5 | |
| 730530140 | Dualism | Any philosophical position that divides existence into two completely distinct, independent, unique substances. | 6 | |
| 730530141 | Materialism (also known as Behaviorism, Mechanism, or Reductionism) | 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 body is a fleshy machine. | 7 | |
| 730530142 | Methodic Doubt | Cartesian strategy of deliberately doubting everything it is possible to doubt in the least degree so that what remains will be known with absolute certainty. | 8 | |
| 730530143 | Monism | General name for the belief that everything consists of only one, ultimate, unique substance such as matter or spirit. | 9 | |
| 730530144 | Ontological Argument | An attempt to prove the existence of God either by referring to the meaning of the word God when it is understood a certain way or by referring to the purportedly unique quality of the concept of God. | 10 | |
| 730530145 | Pluralism | The belief that more than one reality or substance exists. | 11 | |
| 730530146 | Rationalism | An epistemological position in which reason is said to be the primary source of all knowledge, superior to sense evidence. Rationalists argue that only reason can distinguish reality from illusion and give meaning to experience. | 12 | |
| 730530147 | Bundle Theory of the Self | Human theory that there is no fixed self, but that the self is merely a "bundle of perceptions"; a "self" is merely a habitual way of discussing certain perceptions. | 13 | |
| 730530148 | Correspondence Theory of Truth (also known as Copy or Representation) | Truth test that holds that an idea (or belief or thought) is true if whatever it refers to actually exists (corresponds to a fact). | 14 | |
| 730530149 | Egocentric Predicament | Problem generated by epistemological dualism: If all knowledge comes in the form of my own ideas, how can I verify the existence of anything external to them? | 15 | |
| 730530150 | Empirical Criterion of Meaning | Meaningful ideas are those that can be traced back to sense experience (impressions); beliefs that cannot be reduced to sense experience are not "ideas" at all, but meaningless utterances. | 16 | |
| 730530151 | Empiricism | Belief that all knowledge is ultimately derived from the senses (experience) and that all ideas can be traced to sense data. | 17 | |
| 730530152 | Epistemological Dualism | The view that knowing consists of two distinct aspects: the knower and the known. | 18 | |
| 730530153 | Epistemology | Branch of philosophy that studies the nature and possibility of knowledge. | 19 | |
| 730530154 | Esse Est Percipi | Latin for Berkeley's belief that "to be is to be perceived." | 20 | |
| 730530155 | Idealism (Immaterialism) | Belief that only ideas (mental states) exist; the material world is a fiction—it does not exist. | 21 | |
| 730530156 | Inductive Reasoning | 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. | 22 | |
| 730530157 | Innate Ideas (or A Priori Ideas) | Truths that are not derived from observation or experiment; characterized as being certain, deductive, universally true, and independent of all experience. | 23 | |
| 730530158 | Primary Qualities | According to Locke, objective sensible qualities that exist independently of any perceiver; shape, size, location, and motion are examples of primary qualities. | 24 | |
| 730530159 | Secondary Qualities | According to Locke, subjective qualities whose existence depends on a perceiver; color, sound, taste, and texture are examples of secondary qualities. | 25 | |
| 730530160 | Skeptic | From the Greek skeptesthai, "to consider or examine"; a person who demands clear, observable, undoubtable evidence before accepting any knowledge claim as true. | 26 | |
| 730530161 | Tabula Rasa | Latin expression for a "clean slate," used by John Locke to challenge the possibility of innate ideas by characterizing the mind at birth as a blank tablet or clean slate. | 27 | |
| 730530162 | Categorical Imperative | 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." | 28 | |
| 730530163 | Critical Philosophy | Kant's term for his effort to assess the nature and limits of "pure reason," unadulterated by experience, in order to identify the actual relationship of the mind to knowledge. | 29 | |
| 730530164 | Hypothetical Imperatives | Propositions that tell us what to do under specific, variable conditions. | 30 | |
| 730530165 | Immoral | Morally wrong, bad, or not right; a moral value judgment or prescriptive claim. | 31 | |
| 730530166 | Kantian Formalism | Theory that knowledge is the result of the interaction between the mind and sensation and is structured by regulative ideas called categories; also known as Kantian idealism and transcendental idealism. | 32 | |
| 730530167 | Moral | From the Latin moralis meaning "custom," "manner," or "conduct"; refers to what people consider good or bad, right or wrong; used descriptively as a contrast to amoral or nonmoral and prescriptively as a contrast to immoral. | 33 | |
| 730530168 | Nonmoral (Amoral) | Not pertaining to moral; a value-neutral descriptive claim or classification. | 34 | |
| 730530169 | Noumenal Reality | Kant's term for reality as it is, independent of our perceptions; what is commonly called "objective reality." | 35 | |
| 730530170 | Original Position | John Rawls's imaginary setting in which we can identify the fundamental principles of justice from an objective, impartial perspective, as rational agents, rather than as "interested parties": similar to the "state of nature" in the social contract theories of Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke. | 36 | |
| 730530171 | Phenomenal Reality | Kant's term for the world as we experience it. | 37 | |
| 730530172 | Practical Imperative (also known as the Principle of Dignity) | Kant's formulation of the categorical 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 as an end." | 38 | |
| 730530173 | Practical Reason | According to Kant, moral function of reason that produces religious feelings and intuitions based on knowledge of moral conduct. | 39 | |
| 730530174 | Theoretical Reason | According to Kant, a function of reason confined to the empirical, phenomenal world. | 40 | |
| 730530175 | Thought Experiment | A way of using our imaginations to test a hypothesis; we think rather than field-test a hypothesis, using reasoned imagination to provide the necessary conditions for the experiment, and carefully reasoning out the most likely consequences according to our hypothesis. | 41 | |
| 730530176 | Veil of Ignorance | John Rawls's mechanism for imaginatively entering into the original position by avoiding all personal considerations in the process of determining principles of justice; the veil of ignorance is a problem-solving device that prevents us from knowing our social status, what property we own, what we like and don't like, how intelligent we are, what our talents and strengths are, and so on. | 42 |
