Definitions

Question 1

Justice

Answer 1

Is the ethical concept by which we make decisions on the distribution of decision making rights and on the exercise of power

Question 2

Distributive Justice

Answer 2

The distribution of benefits and burdens.

Question 3

Commutative Justice

Answer 3

The justice that applies to contracts and exchange.

Question 4

Causation

Answer 4

The relation between two events that holds when, given that one occurs, it produces the second.

Question 5

Determined

Answer 5

The doctrine that every event has a cause.

Question 6

Power (social)

Answer 6

The ability to achieve something, whether by right or by control or influence. Power is the ability to mobilize economic, social, or political forces in order to achieve a result.

Question 7

Power (metaphysical)

Answer 7

A capacity or ability to bring about an effect or undergo a modification. Eg water had the power to dissolve salt; salt has the capacity to dissolve in water.

Question 8

Love

Answer 8

A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

Question 9

Rationality

Answer 9

To accept something as making sense, as appropriate, or required, or in accordance with some acknowledged goal, such as aiming at truth or aiming at good.

Question 10

Irrational

Answer 10

Without means of reason; deprived of reason.

Question 11

Personal Identity

Answer 11

The concept you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life.

Question 12

Society

Answer 12

A group of persons unified by a distinctive and systematic set of normative relations, whereby actions of one are perceived as meriting characteristic responses by others. To be part of the same society is to be subject to these norms of interaction.

Question 13

Imagination

Answer 13

The faculty of reviving or especially creating images in the mind’s eye. The ability to create and rehearse possible situations to combine knowledge in unusual ways, or to invent experiments.

Question 14

Dialectic

Answer 14

The process of reasoning to obtain truth and knowledge on any topic.

Question 15

Dichotomy

Answer 15

A division into two.

Question 16

Anthropomorphism

Answer 16

The attribution of human characteristics to something that is not human; for instance to God or to the weather.

Question 17

A posteriori

Answer 17

Something that can be considered valid only by means of experience.

Question 18

A priori

Answer 18

Something known to be valid without need of experience.

Question 19

Argument

Answer 19

A process of reasoning in logic that purports to show its conclusion to be true.

Question 20

Contingent

Answer 20

May or may not be case; things could be either way. The opposite is necessary.

Question 21

Deduction

Answer 21

Reasoning from the general to the particular. It is universally agreed that deduction is valid.

Question 22

Induction

Answer 22

Reasoning from the particular to the general. Induction does not necessarily yield results that are true, so whether it is genuinely a logical process is disputed.

Question 23

Dualism

Answer 23

A view of something as made up of two irreducible parts, such as the idea of human beings as consisting of bodies and minds, the two being radically unlike.

Question 24

Essence

Answer 24

The essence of a thing is that which is distinctive about it and makes it what it is. For instance, the essence of a unicorn is that it is a horse with a single horn on its head.

Question 25

Ethics

Answer 25

A branch of philosophy that is concerned with questions about how we should live, and therefore about the nature of right and wrong, good and bad.

Question 26

Fallacy

Answer 26

A seriously wrong argument, or false conclusion based on such an argument.

Question 27

Falsifiability

Answer 27

A statement, or set of statements, is falsifiable if t can be proved wrong by empirical testing. According to Karl Popper, falsifiability is what distinguishes science from non-science.

Question 28

Humanism

Answer 28

A philosophical approach based on the assumption that mankind is the most important thing that exists, and that there can be no knowledge of a supernatural world, is any such world exists.

Question 29

Intuition

Answer 29

Direct knowing, whether by sensory perception or by insight; a form of knowledge that makes no use of reasoning.

Question 30

Irreducible

Answer 30

An irreducible thing is one that cannot be brought to a simpler or reduced form.

Question 31

Logic

Answer 31

The branch of philosophy that makes a study of rational argument itself - its terms, concepts, rules, and methods.

Question 32

Materialism

Answer 32

The doctrine that all real existence is ultimately of something material.

Question 33

Necessary

Answer 33

Must be the case. The opposite is contingent. Hume believed that necessary connections existed only in logic, not in the real world, a view that has been upheld by many philosophers since.

Question 34

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

Answer 34

For X to be a husband it is a necessary condition for X to be married. However, this is not a sufficient condition - for what if X is female? A sufficient condition for X to be a husband is that X is both a man and married. One of the commonest forms of error in thinking is to mistake necessary conditions for sufficient conditions.

Question 35

Ontology

Answer 35

A branch of philosophy that asks what actually exists, as distinct from the nature of our knowledge of it, which is covered by the branch of epistemology. Ontology and epistemology taken together constitute the central tradition of philosophy.

Question 36

Phenomenon

Answer 36

An experience that is immediately present. If i look at an object, the object as experienced by me is a phenomenon. Immanuel Kant distinguished this from the object as it in itself, independently of being experienced: this he called the noumenon.

Question 37

Philosophy

Answer 37

Literally, “the love of wisdom.” The word is widely used for any sustained rational reflection about general principles that has the aim of achieving a deeper understanding.

Question 38

Premise

Answer 38

The starting point of an argument. Any argument has to start from at least one premise, and therefore does not prove its own premise.

Question 39

Proposition

Answer 39

The content of a statement that confirms or denies whether something is the case, and s capable of being true or false.

Question 40

Rationalism

Answer 40

The view that we gain knowledge of the world through use of reason, without relying on sense - perception, which is regarded by rationalists as unreliable.

Question 41

Synthesis

Answer 41

Seeking a deeper understanding of something by putting the pieces together.

Question 42

Transcendental

Answer 42

Outside the world of sense experience. Someone who believes that ethics are transcendental believes that ethics have their source outside the empirical world.

Question 43

Universal

Answer 43

A concept of general application, like “red” or “woman”.

Question 44

Utilitarianism

Answer 44

A theory of politics and ethics that judges the morality of actions by their consequences, that regards the most desirable consequence of any action as the greatest good of the greatest number, and that defines “good” in terms of pleasure and the absence of pain.

Question 45

Validity

Answer 45

An argument is valid if its conclusion follows from it premises. This does not necessarily mean that the conclusion is true.

Question 46

Description

Answer 46

Typically gives one or more items of information about a particular topic. E.g. Wedge tailed eagles are the largest bird of prey in Australia. They have been known to eat kangaroos, goats and sheep, but mostly they eat rabbits and other small prey, dead or alive.

Question 47

Narrative

Answer 47

The standard form for novels, films and television dramas. They describe or portray actions in time and contain chronology.

Question 48

Explanation

Answer 48

We already accept the truth of a statement and we try to say how it is that it came about. E.g. My car won’t start, because the battery is flat.

Question 49

Summary

Answer 49

Identifies the main positions adopted by each participant.

Question 50

Clarification

Answer 50

Outlines the core concepts employed by each participant.

Question 51

Evaluation

Answer 51

Evaluated the acceptability of the major premises used by each participants. Evaluates the strength of inferential moves made by each participant.