Chapter 4-8 Concepts

Question 1

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?’.

Answer 1

Philosophy of science

Question 2

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?’.

Answer 2

Ethics

Question 3

the branch of ethics that investigates questions about the nature, structure,
and status of first-order moral views.

Answer 3

Metaethics

Question 4

the branch of metaethics that investigates questions about moral
justification and knowledge.

Answer 4

Moral epistemology

Question 5

the formal study of how decisions are made in scenarios involving rational
self-interested agents.

Answer 5

Game theory

Question 6

the branch of philosophy that investigates questions like: ‘what is a
state?’, ‘do governments have a right to be obeyed?’, and ‘what is justice?’.

Answer 6

Political philosophy

Question 7

the branch of philosophy that investigates questions like: ‘what is a
law?’, ‘when should we obey the law?’, and ‘when is punishment morally justified?’.

Answer 7

Philosophy of law

Question 8

the branch of philosophy that investigates foundational questions
about nature, identity, essence, causation, possibility, existence, and truth.

Answer 8

Metaphysics/Ontology

Question 9

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.

Answer 9

Received view of theories

Question 10

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.

Answer 10

Deductive-nomological (DN) model of explanation

Question 11

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.

Answer 11

Instrumentalism

Question 12

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.

Answer 12

Realism

Question 13

the view that scientific laws are supported or confirmed by their instances and hence justified by enumerative induction

Answer 13

Inductivism

Question 14

Karl Popper’s view that what demarcates scientific theories is that they
are falsifiable.

Answer 14

Falsificationism

Question 15

a theory that tells you what counts as confirmation, or good

evidence, that some scientific hypothesis or theory is correct.

Answer 15

Confirmation theory

Question 16

the thesis that every event that ever occurs is completely caused by prior
events.

Answer 16

Determinism

Question 17

the view that moral questions are to be decided by reason

Answer 17

Moral rationalism

Question 18

the view that some moral claims are true, i.e. that there are moral facts
and moral knowledge.

Answer 18

moral realism

Question 19

the view that moral claims primarily express feelings, preferences, or desires.

Answer 19

Emotivism

Question 20

the view that moral judgment are beliefs

Answer 20

Cognitivism

Question 21

the view that moral judgments are not beliefs. Since knowledge
requires belief, non-cognitivism implies that there is no moral knowledge.

Answer 21

Non-cognitivism

Question 22

the view that people have a faculty of intuition that allows us to directly
perceive moral qualities (goodness and badness)

Answer 22

Intuitionism

Question 23

the view that moral truths hold absolutely and universally.

Answer 23

Absolutism

Question 24

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.

Answer 24

Relativism

Question 25

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.

Answer 25

Prescriptivism

Question 26

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.

Answer 26

Deontological ethical theory

Question 27

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.

Answer 27

Utilitarianism

Question 28

the view that what is good or morally valuable is what is pleasurable or what
makes people happy.

Answer 28

Hedonism

Question 29

the view that an action is right or wrong depending on how good or
bad the consequences it is likely to bring about are.

Answer 29

Consequentialism

Question 30

the view that no state ever has legitimate authority to use force or coercion
on its members.

Answer 30

Anarchism

Question 31

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.

Answer 31

Hobbes’ theory of justice

Question 32

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.

Answer 32

Rawl’s theory of justice

Question 33

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.

Answer 33

Entitlement theory

Question 34

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.

Answer 34

Communitarianism

Question 35

the view that there are moral constraints on whether a rule enforced
by government is a law.

Answer 35

Natural law theory

Question 36

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.

Answer 36

Legal positivism

Question 37

the view that a punishment is justified only to the

extent that it successfully deters or discourages crime.

Answer 37

Deterrence theory of punishment

Question 38

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.

Answer 38

Retributivism

Question 39

the view that abstract entities like numbers exist essentially and necessarily.

Answer 39

Platonism

Question 40

the view that abstract entities like numbers do not really exist, but rather
exist only in name.

Answer 40

Nominalism

Question 41

having to do with the development of something through time

Answer 41

diachronic

Question 42

having to do that state of something at a time

Answer 42

synchronic

Question 43

a diachronic approach to the philosophy of science that looks at how scientific results were actually discovered

Answer 43

context of discovery

Question 44

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

Answer 44

Context of justification

Question 45

one of Gregor Mendel’s proposed genetic laws, which states that each gamete bears onle one of the two alleles of the parent organism

Answer 45

Law of segregation of characteristics

Question 46

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.

Answer 46

Law of the independent assortment of genes

Question 47

an experiment that plays a decisive role in showing where one theory
breaks down and must be replaced by another.

Answer 47

Crucial experiment

Question 48

the idea that what we experience and observe is affected by our
background beliefs, habits, and learning.

Answer 48

Theory-laden

Question 49

the idea that the contents of our empirical beliefs are not fully
determined by the evidence we have for them.

Answer 49

Underdetermination

Question 50

the sort of inductive reasoning in which one concludes some

generalization, ‘all As are Bs’, from repeated observations of As that are Bs.

Answer 50

enumerative induction

Question 51

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.

Answer 51

Inference to the best explanation

Question 52

a pragmatic principle of simplicity that states that one should not
multiply entities beyond necessity.

Answer 52

Ockham’s razor

Question 53

true, non-accidental, generalizations about the relations that hold
between the different types of things that exist.

Answer 53

Laws of nature

Question 54

the class of possible worlds where the natural laws hold in
addition to logical and conceptual constraints on consistency.

Answer 54

Nomically possible worlds

Question 55

the class of possible worlds where just logical and
conceptual constraints on consistency hold.

Answer 55

Nomically impossible words

Question 56

a type of conditional statement that says what would have happened if
something that didn’t happen had happened.

Answer 56

Counterfactual

Question 57

generalizations that happen to be true but do not support

counterfactuals in the ways laws do.

Answer 57

Accidental generalization

Question 58

the idea that everything that happens can be given a

sufficient explanation.

Answer 58

Principle of sufficient reason

Question 59

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).

Answer 59

Categorical imperative

Question 60

commands or ‘ought’-statements that depend on some

hypothesis about the end to be achieved.

Answer 60

Hypothetical imperative

Question 61

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”.

Answer 61

Principle of universalizability

Question 62

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.

Answer 62

Supervenience

Question 63

a unit of measurement appealed to by utilitarians (and game theorists) to quantify
happiness or pleasure.

Answer 63

Utility

Question 64

the capacity for self-rule or self-generated control.

Answer 64

Autonomy

Question 65

rights one is morally entitled to and which others have an obligation to
help acquire.

Answer 65

Positive rights

Question 66

rights to be morally free to do things which others have an obligation to
avoid hindering.

Answer 66

Negative rights

Question 67

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.

Answer 67

State of nature

Question 68

a society organized in the form of state.

Answer 68

Civil society

Question 69

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.

Answer 69

Veil of ignorance

Question 70

a two-player game in which anything one player wins the other player
looses.

Answer 70

Zero-sum game

Question 71

principles that say that past circumstances or actions of people
create differential entitlements and differential deserts.

Answer 71

Historical principles

Question 72

principles that say a society is just if it fits a certain pattern,
independently of how it came about.

Answer 72

End-result principles

Question 73

happiness or flourishing, the ethical aim of human life according to Aristotle.

Answer 73

Eudemonia

Question 74

the deliberate breaking of laws one thinks are wrong, but are
generally obeyed, in order to get them changed.

Answer 74

Civil disobedience

Question 75

being committed to the existence of something or other.

Answer 75

Ontological commitment

Question 76

knowledge obtained by direct experience.

Answer 76

Knowledge by acquaintance

Question 77

indirect knowledge obtained by associating terms or concepts

with individuating descriptions.

Answer 77

Knowledge by description

Question 78

an attempt to resolve the problem of evil while maintaining that God is both
all-powerful and good.

Answer 78

Theodicy

Question 79

the task of distinguishing between what’s scientific from what’s
merely pseudo-science.

Answer 79

Demarcation problem

Question 80

Wilfred Sellars’ argument that the idea that experience or observation
can give us a kind of theory-independent knowledge is a myth.

Answer 80

Myth of the given

Question 81

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.

Answer 81

The problem of induction

Question 82

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.

Answer 82

The new riddle of induction

Question 83

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.

Answer 83

Duhem-Quine problem

Question 84

the fallacious attempt to derive a statement about what ought to be
from a descriptive or factual statement about what is.

Answer 84

Naturalistic fallacy

Question 85

an a priori argument that attempts to establish the existence of
God by appeal to a conception of God as a necessary being.

Answer 85

Ontological argument

Question 86

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.

Answer 86

Cosmological argument

Question 87

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.

Answer 87

Teleological argument/the argument from design

Question 88

the problem of reconciling the existence of an all-powerful, allknowing,
and all-good being with the existence of evil.

Answer 88

The problem of evil