defintions Flashcards
attacking straw man
distorting or misinterpreting your opponents argument and then criticising that distorted argument
e.g paleys argues that god designed the universe and watches but god didn’t design watches so this is an unconvincing argument..”
epistemology
branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods and limits of human knowledge
IFF
if and only if
abductive reasoning
an inference to the best explanation - choosing a theory that best explains the data, even though it is not guaranteed to be true
propositional knowledge
factual knowledge: knowledge that is something in the case e.g knowing paris is the capital city of france
fallacy
this refers to an argument which has gone wrong, either because a mistake has been made, rendering the argument invalid; or because the argument has a form, or structure which is always invalid
deductive argument
if the argument is valid, then if the premises are true then the conclusion is guaranteed to be true
abductive argument
if the premise are true the conclusion is supposedly the best explanation of them
inductive argument
if the premise are true the conclusion is likely to be true
ad hominem
a weak way of arguing which involves criticising the speaker rather than criticising their argument
a priori
something that can only be known through reason (intuition or deduction) e.g 2+2=4
acquired independently from experience
a posteriori
something that can only be known through experience e.g the grass is green
lemma
a subsidiary belief or proposition used to justify or prove another belief/proposition
infallibism
theory of knowledge which claims that we should only count as knowledge those beliefs that it is impossible to doubt
gettier problem
an example in which an agent has a JTB which is not knowledge; this demonstrates that the supposedly sufficient conditions for knowledge are not really sufficient.
