Exam #1 (Metaphysics) Flashcards
Systematic use of critical reasoning to try to find answers to fundamental questions about reality, morality, and knowledge.
Philosophical Method
Ideas upon which other ideas and beliefs depend.
Fundamental Ideas
Intellectual foundation to improve our lives by improving our philosophy
Practical benefit
Understanding for its own sake
Theoretical benefit
Philosophical inquiry gives us
Freedom
Regarding the nature of ultimate reality, God’s existence, the meaning of life
Metaphysics
Regarding the nature of knowledge, justification and truth
Epistemology
The study of individual and social morality
Ethics
The study of arguments
Logic
Major Areas of Philosophy:
Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, and Logic
Intended to give logically conclusive support to their conclusions so that if the premises are true, the conclusion absolutely must be true. (a.k.a. a priori knowledge)
Deductive Arguments
Give probable support to their conclusions but are not designed to support their conclusions decisively; if their premises are true, their conclusions are probably true. (a.k.a. a posteriori knowledge)
Inductive Arguments
These arguments reason from the existence of the universe to the conclusion that God exists as its necessary creator (a posteriori).
Cosmological
These arguments reason from apparent signs of design or purpose in the natural world to the existence of a supreme designer as its creator (a posteriori).
Teleological
These arguments present deductive logical appeals for God’s existence from the
concept of God itself (a priori).
Ontological
These arguments arise from people who claim to have had personal experiences or encounters with God.
Religious Experience
These arguments assert that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God would not allow evil to exist; because evil does exist, then God does not therefore exist.
Argument from Evil
These are theistic counterarguments against the argument from evil; the most
popular and effective of these is the free-will defense, which says evil exists because God gave humans free will.
Theodicies
One who believes in God.
Thiest
Belief in a creator God who is uninvolved (and possibly unconcerned) with the events of
the physical universe.
Deism
God and the universe are indentical; the universe is a part of God
Pantheism, Panthenism
Which appeal to the evidence of
experience about the world
A posteriori
Which are based on logic and reason derived from the concept of God.
A priori
Reasons to Believe
Epistemic justification
Faith has practical benefits
Pragmatic justification
A decision between two hypotheses.
Option
One in which both hypotheses are real and possible.
Living Option
An option in which there is no possibility of not choosing.
Forced Option
“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient
evidence.”
W.K. Clifford’s Evidentialism
Comes from human choices and actions, and the bad things that arise from them.
Mortal Evil
Results from the workings of nature.
Natural Evil
It is a great good that humans have a certain sort of free and responsible choices that also creates the neutral possibility of moral evil.
The Free Will Defense
“Antitheistic writers…assume that the purpose of a loving God must be to create a hedonistic paradise…the model of a
human being building a cage for a pet animal to dwell in.” - John Hick
The Soul-Making Defense
