Chapter 4-8 Concepts Flashcards
the branch of philosophy that investigates questions like: ‘what
makes an explanation scientific?’, ‘how can we justify scientific theories?’, and ‘what is a
law of nature?’.
Philosophy of science
the branch of philosophy that investigates questions like: ‘what do moral
judgments mean?’, ‘how can we tell what is right?’, and ‘when, if ever, is it right to kill
someone?’.
Ethics
the branch of ethics that investigates questions about the nature, structure,
and status of first-order moral views.
Metaethics
the branch of metaethics that investigates questions about moral
justification and knowledge.
Moral epistemology
the formal study of how decisions are made in scenarios involving rational
self-interested agents.
Game theory
the branch of philosophy that investigates questions like: ‘what is a
state?’, ‘do governments have a right to be obeyed?’, and ‘what is justice?’.
Political philosophy
the branch of philosophy that investigates questions like: ‘what is a
law?’, ‘when should we obey the law?’, and ‘when is punishment morally justified?’.
Philosophy of law
the branch of philosophy that investigates foundational questions
about nature, identity, essence, causation, possibility, existence, and truth.
Metaphysics/Ontology
a view of the nature of scientific theories associated with
empiricism and logical positivism. According to the view, theories are made up of (i)
theoretical postulates, which describe the relations between the entities and properties the
theory postulates, and (ii) correspondence rules, which connect the entities postulated by
the theory with things we are able to observe.
Received view of theories
a theory of scientific explanation
developed by Carl Hempel according to which an explanation is correct if and only if you
can deduce a description of what’s to be explained from the general laws of the theory
and a description of the antecedent conditions in which the phenomenon to be explained
occurs.
Deductive-nomological (DN) model of explanation
a view of the nature of scientific theories associated with pragmatism
according to which theories are just instruments that allow use to predict phenomena we
want to explain.
Instrumentalism
a view that some phenomenon is real, that it exists. One can be a realist about
X, but an irrealist about Y. Scientific realists emphasize that the reason scientific theories
are predictive is that they are true; hence, successful theories are not mere instruments,
according to the scientific realist.
Realism
the view that scientific laws are supported or confirmed by their instances and hence justified by enumerative induction
Inductivism
Karl Popper’s view that what demarcates scientific theories is that they
are falsifiable.
Falsificationism
a theory that tells you what counts as confirmation, or good
evidence, that some scientific hypothesis or theory is correct.
Confirmation theory
the thesis that every event that ever occurs is completely caused by prior
events.
Determinism
the view that moral questions are to be decided by reason
Moral rationalism
the view that some moral claims are true, i.e. that there are moral facts
and moral knowledge.
moral realism
the view that moral claims primarily express feelings, preferences, or desires.
Emotivism
the view that moral judgment are beliefs
Cognitivism
the view that moral judgments are not beliefs. Since knowledge
requires belief, non-cognitivism implies that there is no moral knowledge.
Non-cognitivism
the view that people have a faculty of intuition that allows us to directly
perceive moral qualities (goodness and badness)
Intuitionism
the view that moral truths hold absolutely and universally.
Absolutism
the view that moral claims can only be said to be true or false relative to the
standards of some person, group, culture, convention, etc.
Relativism
the metaethical view associated with R.M. Hare that moral terms
prescribe rather than describe so are never equivalent to anything that can be stated in
purely descriptive or factual terms.
Prescriptivism
a type of ethical theory associated with Immanuel Kant that
holds that morality consists of duties to act in various ways that are absolute and thus
hold no matter what the consequences of those actions are likely to be.
Deontological ethical theory
a type of ethical theory associated with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart
Mill that holds that actions are right or morally good to the extent that they bring about
the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Classical utilitarianism is a conjunction of
a hedonist theory of well-being and a consequentialist account of right action.
Utilitarianism
the view that what is good or morally valuable is what is pleasurable or what
makes people happy.
Hedonism
the view that an action is right or wrong depending on how good or
bad the consequences it is likely to bring about are.
Consequentialism
the view that no state ever has legitimate authority to use force or coercion
on its members.
Anarchism
the view that for a government to be legitimate it must be able
to successfully enforce rules that makes the lives of citizens better off than they would be
in the state of nature. Hobbes thought that it could also be shown on considerations of
self-interest alone, that it would be rational for citizens to accept even tyrannical rules of
a monarch.
Hobbes’ theory of justice
the view that for a society to be just it must be the case that each
person has an equal right to the most extensive system of equal basic liberties compatible
with a similar system of liberty for all and that inequalities in income or liberties can be
allowed to emerge only if doing so somehow helps out the worst off in society and any
more desirable position is open to all qualified citizens.
Rawl’s theory of justice
Nozick’s theory of justice, which consists of a principles governing
the acquisition and transfer of property along with a principle of rectification in holdings
and a meta-principle that says that no one is entitled to property any other way.
Entitlement theory
the view that citizens have obligations to accept limits on their
freedoms to make what they like of their lives because it is thought that human lives can
only flourish and be successful within a community.
Communitarianism
the view that there are moral constraints on whether a rule enforced
by government is a law.
Natural law theory
the view that any rule of a legitimate government backed by a threat of
force is a law, even if it is an unjust or immoral rule.
Legal positivism
the view that a punishment is justified only to the
extent that it successfully deters or discourages crime.
Deterrence theory of punishment
the view that a punishment is justified to the extent that it fits the crime.
Offenses should be punished because the offenders deserve to be.
Retributivism
the view that abstract entities like numbers exist essentially and necessarily.
Platonism
the view that abstract entities like numbers do not really exist, but rather
exist only in name.
Nominalism
having to do with the development of something through time
diachronic
having to do that state of something at a time
synchronic
a diachronic approach to the philosophy of science that looks at how scientific results were actually discovered
context of discovery
a synchronic approach to the philosophy of science that looks at how we organize the evidence to decide whether some observations support or undermine some theory
Context of justification
one of Gregor Mendel’s proposed genetic laws, which states that each gamete bears onle one of the two alleles of the parent organism
Law of segregation of characteristics
one of Gregor Mendel’s proposed genetic laws, which states that when two different genes separate to form gametes and join together again to form the new genotype, they do so independently.
Law of the independent assortment of genes
an experiment that plays a decisive role in showing where one theory
breaks down and must be replaced by another.
Crucial experiment
the idea that what we experience and observe is affected by our
background beliefs, habits, and learning.
Theory-laden
the idea that the contents of our empirical beliefs are not fully
determined by the evidence we have for them.
Underdetermination
the sort of inductive reasoning in which one concludes some
generalization, ‘all As are Bs’, from repeated observations of As that are Bs.
enumerative induction
a principle that says one has good reason to accept a
theory if one can derive the relevant phenomena to be explained from it and this
derivation is best available explanation of the phenomena. Pragmatic constraints on
‘good’ explanations are strength and simplicity.
Inference to the best explanation
a pragmatic principle of simplicity that states that one should not
multiply entities beyond necessity.
Ockham’s razor
true, non-accidental, generalizations about the relations that hold
between the different types of things that exist.
Laws of nature
the class of possible worlds where the natural laws hold in addition to logical and conceptual constraints on consistency.
Nomically possible worlds
the class of possible worlds where just logical and conceptual constraints on consistency hold.
Nomically impossible words
a type of conditional statement that says what would have happened if
something that didn’t happen had happened.
Counterfactual
generalizations that happen to be true but do not support
counterfactuals in the ways laws do.
Accidental generalization
the idea that everything that happens can be given a
sufficient explanation.
Principle of sufficient reason
commands or ‘ought’-statements that are action-guiding and
absolute. According to Kant, the principle of universalizability was the one and only
categorical imperative (from which all moral imperatives could be rationally derived).
Categorical imperative
commands or ‘ought’-statements that depend on some
hypothesis about the end to be achieved.
Hypothetical imperative
the categorical imperative of morality, according to Kant,
“You ought to act only on maxims that you can at the same time will should become
universal laws of nature”.
Principle of universalizability
the As supervene on the Bs if and only if it is necessary that if everything
is the same with respect to the Bs, then everything will also be the same with respect to
the As.
Supervenience
a unit of measurement appealed to by utilitarians (and game theorists) to quantify
happiness or pleasure.
Utility
the capacity for self-rule or self-generated control.
Autonomy
rights one is morally entitled to and which others have an obligation to
help acquire.
Positive rights
rights to be morally free to do things which others have an obligation to
avoid hindering.
Negative rights
the hypothetical condition of human beings living without any kind of
government. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Nozick, and Rawls all appealed to this idea in
developing accounts of what a just society should look like.
State of nature
a society organized in the form of state.
Civil society
the assumption that participants in Rawl’s original position thought
experiment will not know what their own or anyone else’s position in society will be.
Veil of ignorance
a two-player game in which anything one player wins the other player
looses.
Zero-sum game
principles that say that past circumstances or actions of people
create differential entitlements and differential deserts.
Historical principles
principles that say a society is just if it fits a certain pattern,
independently of how it came about.
End-result principles
happiness or flourishing, the ethical aim of human life according to Aristotle.
Eudemonia
the deliberate breaking of laws one thinks are wrong, but are
generally obeyed, in order to get them changed.
Civil disobedience
being committed to the existence of something or other.
Ontological commitment
knowledge obtained by direct experience.
Knowledge by acquaintance
indirect knowledge obtained by associating terms or concepts
with individuating descriptions.
Knowledge by description
an attempt to resolve the problem of evil while maintaining that God is both
all-powerful and good.
Theodicy
the task of distinguishing between what’s scientific from what’s
merely pseudo-science.
Demarcation problem
Wilfred Sellars’ argument that the idea that experience or observation
can give us a kind of theory-independent knowledge is a myth.
Myth of the given
David Hume’s argument that any inductive inference relies on
some principle of the uniformity of nature that says that the future will resemble the past.
But that principle itself cannot be justified a priori or deductively; and to attempt to
justify it a posteriori or inductively would be beg the question by requiring viciously
circular reasoning. Hence, induction, according to Hume, must be based on a kind of
reliable but non-rational habit, rather than on reason alone.
The problem of induction
Nelson Goodman’s paradox involving the invented
predicate ‘grue’, where something is grue if and only if it is examined before 2100 and
green or not examined before 2100 and blue. The problem is that we have just the same
inductive evidence that all emeralds are grue as we do that all emeralds are green, but
obviously no emerald observed after 2100 can be both grue and green.
The new riddle of induction
a problem for any account of verification/confirmation or
falsification in the philosophy of science. Since observation underdetermines theory,
finding a counterexample to one generalization always relies on other generalizations.
Duhem-Quine problem
the fallacious attempt to derive a statement about what ought to be
from a descriptive or factual statement about what is.
Naturalistic fallacy
an a priori argument that attempts to establish the existence of
God by appeal to a conception of God as a necessary being.
Ontological argument
an a posteriori argument that attempts to establish the existence
of God by appeal to the idea that every effect has a cause and so God must be the original
or first cause.
Cosmological argument
an a posteriori argument that attempts
to establish the existence of God by appeal to the harmony or order of nature and the idea
that only a creative intelligence could explain why we see so much harmony and order.
Teleological argument/the argument from design
the problem of reconciling the existence of an all-powerful, allknowing,
and all-good being with the existence of evil.
The problem of evil
