Key Terms Flashcards
Qualia
Intentionality
Moral Cognitivism
Claims that ethical language expresses ethical beliefs about how the world is, that can be true or false.
We can use reasoning or evidence to discover whether an ethical claim is true or false.
Mind to world, Must change my mind to reflect the true facts of ethics that exist out there in the world.
Moral Non-Cognitivism
Claims that ethical language does not try to describe the world and cannot be true or false.
Does not express beliefs abut how the world is, they describe feelings or attitudes.
World to Mind, We can change how the world is to reflect the desires/opinions we have in our mind.
Moral Realism
Realist think moral terms actually exist independently of the mind, out there in the world.
Likely to be a cognitivist.
Moral Anti-Realism
Anti-realist believe moral terms do not exist in the world, the term refers to something else.
Likely to also be non-cognitivist, cannot be verified as true or false is they don’t exist.
Ethical Naturalism
A cognitivist realist position.
Defines moral language in terms of natural properties, morality can be deduced from natural facts within the world and concluded through observation and analysis.
Reductive theory - reduces moral term to natural properties, such as physiological processes. E.g Mill’s proof.
Analytic
True in virtue of its definition.
Cannot be denied without logical contradiction.
Synthetic
True in virtue of how the world is.
Does not lead to logical contradiction when denied.
Contingent
What is the case in our world.
Could have been otherwise.
Necessary
Must be the case.
True in every possible world.
Logical contradiction to deny it.
A priori
Claims that’s rely on a logical deduction not on sense experience. They are ‘prior to’ sense experience.
For example, a triangle has three sides follows from the definition of the term, not from knowledge things in the world.
Rationalism
We can acquire at least some knowledge purely through intuition and deduction. E.g knowledge can be acquired purely through thinking rather than perceptual experience.
Innatism
We are already born with some knowledge.
This doesn’t come from perceptual knowledge.
Intuition
Ability to know something is true just be thinking about it.
E.g Descartes’ cogito argument.
