| knowledge gained through experience. | A posteriori knowledge |
| knowledge that can be gained prior to or independent of experience. | A priori knowledge |
| having to do with abduction/abductive reasoning. Abduction is probabilistic form of inference in which an explanation is offered to justify and explain evidence. | Abductive |
| the intentional ending of a pregnancy. | Abortion |
| a utilitarian approach that proposes that people should apply the greatest happiness principle on a case-by-case basis | act utilitarianism |
| a form of euthanasia in which a patient’s life is terminated using medical interventions (e.g., administering a lethal dose of medication). | Active euthanasia |
| in Aristotelian thought, the level to which a being has realized its purpose. | Actuality |
| fallacy of relevance that argues against someone’s idea or suggestion by attacking the individual personally, rather than pointing out problems with the idea or suggestion. | Ad hominin attack |
| one of the highest virtues of classical Indian religions. It is the practice of refraining from harming other living things. | Ahimsa |
| a foundational principle in Indian philosophy to refrain from harming oneself or others. | Ahimsa |
| in Marxism, the estrangement of workers from their work and from themselves due to capitalist exploitation. | Alienation |
| the biological process whereby the body prepares itself for anticipated needs. | Allostasis |
| the selfless care for others’ well-being. | Altruism |
| a state of no governance or political oversight. | Anarchism |
| a Buddhist concept of the self as no-self (as not retaining identity through time). | Anatman |
| the tendency to make estimates based on an earlier initial value. | Anchoring bias |
| human-centered. | Anthropocentric |
| changes in Earth’s climate caused or influenced by human activity. | Anthropogenic climate change |
| the philosophical position that argues that morality is subjective, not objective. | Anti-realism |
| a fallacy of weak induction that relies on the lack of knowledge or evidence for a thing (our ignorance of it) to draw a definite conclusion about that thing. | Appeal to ignorance |
| a branch of ethics that focuses on the application of moral norms to determine the permissibility of specific actions | applied ethics |
| an area of ethics that focuses on the application of moral norms and principles to controversial issues to determine the rightness of specific actions. | Applied ethics |
| a set of sentences, where some of those sentences (called premises) provide support for another sentence, called the conclusion. | Argument |
| a set of reasons offered in support of a conclusion. | Argument |
| a class of people considered to be elite members of society. | Aristocracy |
| the ancient Greek word for virtue. It can also be translated as “excellence.” | Arête |
| the goal of Epicurus’s hedonism: tranquility, or freedom from mental, emotional, and physical pain. | Ataraxia |
| the tendency to evaluate new information based on the most recent or most easily recalled examples. | Availability heuristic |
| the fallacy that we ought to do something or believe something because many other people do or believe the same thing. | Bandwagon fallacy |
| a fallacy of unwarranted assumption that either assumes the truth of a conclusion in the course of trying to prove it or assumes the truth of a contentious claim. | Begging the question |
| a fallacy of weak induction that draws a conclusion using evidence that is biased in some way. | Biased sample |
| a field that studies ethical issues that emerge with advances in biology, technology, and medicine. | Bioethics |
| money and commodities. | Capital |
| an approach to ethics that emphasizes the importance of subjective factors, specifics of concrete situations, and the relationships of individuals | care ethics |
| Kant’s concept of moral reasoning and action. “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law” (Kant [1785] 1998, 31). This means you know an action is moral if can be universal for everyone. | Categorical imperative |
| a moral law that individuals have a duty to follow and that is rationally devised through Kant’s four formulations | categorical imperative |
| trials designed to test new medical interventions and establish a drug’s dosage, determine possible side effects, and demonstrate efficacy. | Clinical trials |
| singular codex; Maya books that transmitted the collective mathematical, scientific, historical, religious, and metaphysical knowledge of the Maya. | Codices |
| a systematic pattern of reasoning that deviates from a rationally optimal or logical judgment based on available facts and probabilities. | Cognitive bias |
| the study of the brain and the mechanisms underlying thought, perception, memory, emotion, and other functions of the brain. | Cognitive science |
| the philosophical position that values are cognitive and express statements about properties of things or states of events. | Cognitivism |
| a situation in which it is possible for a set of beliefs or statements to be true at the same time. | Coherence |
| the theory that a belief is justified if it is part of a coherent system of interconnected beliefs. | Coherentism |
| knowledge primarily derived from perception that seems clearly or obviously true. | Common sense |
| a term coined by Jürgen Habermas to refer to open discussion within a public forum, with the potential to change political systems and societies. | Communicative action |
| the ability to care or share in others’ suffering. | Compassion |
| the view that a lack of freedom for the human moral agent is compatible with moral culpability for that same agent. | Compatibilism |
| the process of taking apart and making sense of sentences or claims by examining their component parts. | Conceptual analysis |
| the result of an argument. A conclusion is that which is meant to be proved by the reasoning and premises used in an argument. | Conclusion |
| a logical statement that expresses a necessary and a sufficient condition. Conditionals are usually formulated as if–then statements. | Conditional |
| the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information that confirms or supports established beliefs. | Confirmation bias |
| a normative moral theory developed in ancient China during the Warring States period that proposes that the development of individual character is key to the achievement of an ethical and harmonious society. | Confucianism |
| a normative moral theory that arose in ancient China during the Warring States period that proposes the development of individual character is key to the achievement of an ethical and harmonious society | Confucianism |
| an individual’s inner sense of right and wrong. | Conscience |
| a moral theory that looks at an action’s outcome or consequences to determine whether it is morally right | consequentialism |
| the view that the truth of knowledge attributions depends on the context. | Contextualism |
| an approach to the philosophy that interprets the ideas of philosophers in terms of the historical and cultural contexts in which they wrote. | Contextualist approach |
| a statement that is always false. A contradiction is the conjunction of any statement and its negation. | Contradiction |
| a type of argument for the existence of God based upon consideration of cosmic causality. | Cosmological argument |
| an example that proves that either a statement is false or an argument is invalid. | Counterexample |
| the application of the insights of critical theory to pedagogy; the belief that all education should be in service of disrupting oppressive systems of power in all their forms. | Critical pedagogy |
| approaches the concept of race as a social construct and examines how race has been defined by the power structure. | Critical race theory |
| any method of assessing and challenging the power structures of societies; also refers to the various theoretical approaches to assessing and challenging power structures associated with the Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt School). | Critical theory |
| in Confucianism, ethical principles or a path by which to live; in Daoism, the natural way of the universe and all things. | Dao |
| in Confucianism, ethical principles or path by which to live life; in Daoism, the natural way of the universe and all things | dao |
| a belief system developed in ancient China that encourages the practice of living in accordance with the dao, the natural way of the universe and all things. | Daoism |
| a belief system developed in ancient China that encourages the practice of living in accordance with the dao, the natural way of the universe and all things | Daoism |
| a way of beholding the sacred or manifestations of the divine in Hindu thought. | Darshana |
| a method of connecting the meaning of a text to the social forces at play in its creation; a strategy for analyzing the ways in which humans create objects and essential ideas where they don’t naturally exist. | Deconstruction |
| having to do with deduction/deductive reasoning. Deduction is a form of inference that can guarantee the truth of its conclusions, given the truth of the premises. | Deductive |
| an approach to environmental ethics that assumes all living things are valuable in their own right and not only because of their usefulness. | Deep ecology |
| a method of conceptual analysis that substitutes a descriptive phrase that uniquely identifies the object or thing named for an object term or proper name. | Definite description |
| government either by elected representatives of the people or directly by the people themselves. | Democracy |
| someone who believes that ethical actions follow universal moral laws. | Deontologist |
| a moral theory that focuses on duties or rules to determine the rightness of an action | deontology |
| statements that describe matters of fact or how the world is. | Descriptive claims |
| the belief that human actions are governed by the laws of nature. | Determinism |
| a method of discovering truth that comes from dialogue and uses the exchange of different points of view to arrive at a position that is more likely to be true. | Dialectic |
| Hegel’s understanding of history as a movement created by the interaction between a thesis (an original state) and a force countering that original state (antithesis), resulting in a new and higher state (synthesis). | Dialectic method |
| a revision of Hegel’s dialectic method proposed by Karl Marx, which identities the contradictions within material, real-world phenomena as the driving force of historical change. | Dialectical materialism |
| the process of making meaning out of texts and dialogues. | Discourse |
| the philosophical position that uses God as the principle for morality. What is good is determined by God’s commands. | Divine command theory |
| a doctrine of political authority in which the legitimacy of the monarch or ruler is derived from the will of the divine. | Divine rule |
| a view that posits two types of being in order to account fully for the nature of the thing under scrutiny. | Dualism |
| the cognitive bias in which people with little expertise in a specific task rate their knowledge too highly relative to others with more knowledge. | Dunning-Kruger effect |
| the notion that all individuals enjoy equal status and moral worth and that any legitimate system of government should reflect this in its policies and procedures. | Egalitarianism |
| fallacy of relevance that appeals to feelings (whether positive or negative) rather than discussing the merits of an idea or proposal. | Emotional appeal |
| a branch of non-cognitivism that argues that value judgments only express emotion. | Emotivism |
| the ability to share others’ feelings. | Empathy |
| a belief that all knowledge is derived inductively from sense experience. | Empiricism |
| the point in time when a developing life is believed to possess a soul. | Ensoulment |
| the listing of the component parts of a concept, notion, or thing. | Enumeration |
| an area of applied ethics that attempts to rethink our relationship to the natural world and identify right conduct in our dealings with the nonhuman world. | Environmental ethics |
| a stance in philosophical and scientific investigation that recognizes the limits of one’s own ability to know truth and reality in a direct or complete way. | Epistemic humility |
| injustice that arises from or is related to epistemological issues. | Epistemic injustice |
| a person who is in an equal epistemic position as you relative to some domain. | Epistemic peer |
| the study of knowledge, involving questions such as how humans know what they know, what is the nature of true knowledge, and what are the limits to what humans can know. | Epistemology |
| the field within philosophy that focuses on questions pertaining to the nature and extent of human knowledge. | Epistemology |
| a view that a set of characteristics makes something what it is | essentialism |
| the philosophical position that argues that moral values are based on natural facts about the world, not individuals’ subjective feelings or beliefs. | Ethical naturalism |
| the field of philosophy that investigates morality | ethics |
| the study of the philosophies of Indigenous peoples. | Ethnophilosophy |
| the ancient Greek term for “happiness” or “human flourishing.” It literally means “good” (eu) “spirit” (daimon). | Eudaimonia |
| the flourishing life, which ancient Greek philosophers (e.g., Aristotle, the Stoics, and Epicurus) set as the aim of life | eudaimonia |
| means “good death” and refers to the ending of a human life to avoid suffering. | Euthanasia |
| a challenge to theistic ethical systems. It asks whether something is good because God commands it or if God commands it because it is good. | Euthyphro problem |
| statements that express a judgment about something’s value or how the world ought to be. | Evaluative claims |
| an approach to aesthetic theory that focuses on aesthetically meaningful experiences in people’s ordinary day-to-day lives. | Everyday aesthetics |
| a thought experiment in which the possibility is raised that a person might lead a pleasurable life by being plugged into a machine stimulating pleasurable experiences in their brain. | Experience machine |
| philosophy that uses methods from experimental science to test claims made in philosophy. | Experimental philosophy |
| aspects of an explanation that generally make it strong; four such virtues are that a good hypothesis should be explanatory, simple, and conservative, and have depth. | Explanatory virtues |
| any epistemological theory that does not solely use a subjects’ mental states to determine justification. | Externalism |
| the quality of being valued for the sake of something else. | Extrinsic value |
| the distinction between what is the case (facts) and what people think ought to be the case (values) based on beliefs about what is good, beautiful, important, etc. | Fact-value distinction |
| beliefs that are not or cannot be proven. | Faith |
| a poor form of reasoning. | Fallacy |
| an error in logical reasoning—for example, jumping to a conclusion without proper evidence. | Fallacy |
| a general category of informal fallacies in which an arguer presents evidence that functions to divert the attention of the audience from the current subject of argument. | Fallacy of diversion |
| a general category of informal fallacies in which an arguer relies on reasons that are not relevant for establishing a conclusion. | Fallacy of relevance |
| a general category of informal fallacies in which an arguer implicitly or explicitly relies on reasons that require further justification. | Fallacy of unwarranted assumption |
| a general category of informal fallacies in which an arguer’s evidence or reasons are too weak to firmly establish their conclusion. | Fallacy of weak induction |
| fallacy of weak induction in which a causal relation is assumed to exist between two events or things that are not causally connected; “correlation does not equal causation”. | False cause |
| a fallacy of unwarranted assumption in which a limited number of possibilities are assumed to be the only available options. | False dichotomy |
| a social construct that categorizes specific traits as female and establishes society’s expectation of women | femininity |
| a political and philosophical movement that aims to end sexism and promote social justice for women | feminism |
| an ethical theory that proposes that morality is based on caring for others and that caring for others arises out of women’s experiences as caregivers. | Feminist care ethics |
| the ethical obligation of children to their parents. | Filial piety |
| the means by which an invisible, unchanging creator gives rise to the material world that we live in. | Forms |
| a principle, concept, or assumption on which a philosophical position is founded. | Foundation |
| the belief that all truth is either self-evident or derivable from some truth that is self-evident. | Foundationalism |
| another name for the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt; also refers to an amalgam of thinkers affiliated with the Institute for Social Research. | Frankfurt School |
| the issue of foundations, the philosophical inquiry into the basis for an idea or system of ideas. | Fundamentality |
| the reasoning that holds that if a chance event has happened less frequently in the recent past, it is more likely to happen in the near future (or vice versa). | Gambler’s fallacy |
| the view that each person can be categorized by one of two genders (male or female) | gender binarism |
| inheritable genetic modification. | Germ-line interventions |
| a case, usually presented as a hypothetical scenario, that acts as a counterexample to the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief. | Gettier case |
| someone who rejects the possibility of knowledge in general. | Global skeptic |
| the capacity to be a good person | good will |
| a principle that holds that actions are right when they produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people | greatest happiness principle |
| fallacy of weak induction that draws a conclusion using too little evidence to support the conclusion. | Hasty generalization |
| a philosophical approach to moral theory based on the idea that pleasure dictates what is good and pain dictates what is bad. | Hedonism |
| an approach to philosophy that takes the historical context of the original text seriously but also recognizes the influence of contemporary issues and perspectives. | Hermeneutic approach |
| a type of epistemic injustice that occurs when a society’s language and concepts cannot adequately capture the experience of people, thereby limiting understanding of their experiences. | Hermeneutical injustice |
| the study and theory of interpretation of texts, including not only a linguistic analysis but also a background investigation into how the context that gives birth to a text affects how it can and should be interpreted. | Hermeneutics |
| mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that provide a method of problem-solving that is not necessarily optimal but is efficient. | Heuristics |
| pleasures associated with the exercise of a person’s higher faculties (e.g., the use of higher cognitive faculties and/or participation in social/cultural life) | higher pleasures |
| an epistemological theory that proposes that processes that reliably produce true beliefs confer justification on those beliefs. | Historical reliabilism |
| the process of verification of the events said to be historical. | Historicity |
| the biological process whereby the body regulates itself to maintain a state of equilibrium. | Homeostasis |
| refers to attempts to enhance or increase human capabilities through technological, biomedical, or other interventions. | Human augmentation |
| a rational method of devising moral laws that specifies that each person be treated as an end, never merely as a means | humanity formulation |
| the idea that being is composed of matter and form that causes the being to actualize its potential. | Hylomorphism |
| a proposed explanation for an observed process or phenomenon. | Hypothesis |
| a rule that needs to be followed in order to achieve some (proposed) end | hypothetical imperative |
| reason for being; what makes life meaningful in an intuitive way. | Ikigai |
| casual relationships that are based on utility or pleasure | incidental friendship |
| when there is no standard of evaluation between two or more goods or values. | Incommensurability |
| the ideas of Indigenous peoples pertaining to the nature of the world, human existence, ethics, ideal social and political structures, and other topics also considered by traditional academic philosophy. | Indigenous philosophy |
| having to do with induction/inductive reasoning. Induction is a probabilistic form of inference in which observation or experience is used to draw conclusions about the world. | Inductive |
| the mental process that leads from one set of information (premises, data, or information) to another (a conclusion, construction, or projection). | Inference |
| a reasoning process that moves from one idea to another, resulting in conclusions. | Inference |
| committees tasked with reviewing and vetting parameters of trials to protect participants and identify potential issues. | Institutional review boards (IRBs) |
| possessing value as a means to something else or for the sake of something else. | Instrumental value |
| the faulty argument that the intention of the artist determines the meaning of the work of art. | Intentional fallacy |
| any epistemological theory that focuses solely on subjects’ mental states to determine justification. | Internalism |
| different aspects of identity (e.g., gender, race, sexuality, and class) that intersect in a person’s identity and define or influence their lived experience | intersectionality |
| the quality of being valued for its own sake. | Intrinsic value |
| possessing value in itself or for its own sake. | Intrinsic value |
| certain and evident cognition; the kind of knowledge that is so clear that it seems impossible for it to be false. | Intuition |
| cognition that seems completely self-evident and impossible to deny. | Intuition |
| a property of bad deductive inferences. An invalid inference/argument is one in which the truth of the premises does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. | Invalidity |
| problem that asserts the challenge of moving from statements of fact (something is) to statements of value (something ought to be). | Is-ought problem |
| in Confucianism, a person who is an exemplary ethical figure and lives according to the dao. | Junzi |
| in Confucianism, a person who is an exemplary ethical figure and lives according to the dao | junzi |
| Kant’s hypothetical, ideal society in which every individual is treated as an end and no one is treated as a means to an end. It is an idea that can be used to judge the morality of an action. | Kingdom of ends |
| knowledge gained from direct contact with something and not mediated by inference. | Knowledge by acquaintance |
| a logical law that states that contradictory statements/propositions can never be true in the same sense at the same time. | Law of noncontradiction |
| a logical law that states that for any statement, either that statement or its negation is true. | Law of the excluded middle |
| in governance, acceptance of one’s right to rule by the people being ruled. | Legitimacy |
| rituals and practice that develop a person’s ethical character as they interact with others. | Li |
| ritual and practice that develop a person’s ethical character as they interact with others | Li |
| within the problem of freedom, the view that human actions are freely chosen and outside of the causality that governs natural objects. | Libertarianism |
| a term used to signify a movement beginning in the early 20th century focusing on the philosophical value of verifiable, logically consistent statements as providing objective information about the universe; associated with analytic philosophy. | Linguistic turn |
| someone who question the possibility of knowledge only in particular areas of study. | Local skeptic |
| the formalization of reasoning. | Logic |
| the process of determining whether the logical inferences made in an argument are good. A logical analysis determines whether the premises in an argument logically support the conclusion. | Logical analysis |
| a way of thinking that rationally analyzes abstract concepts and phenomena independent of accepted belief systems. | Logos |
| the thoughts of God, which according to Philo of Alexandria serve as the means by which God creates the physical world. | Logos |
| pleasures associated with the exercise of a person’s lower faculties (e.g., basic sensory pleasures) | lower pleasures |
| work that is at the same time understood as an end and a possessor of moral status. | Meaningful work |
| the process of thinking about thinking. Metacognition engages self-awareness and higher-order thinking skills so that an individual can regulate, monitor, and critically analyze their own thought processes. | Metacognition |
| branch of philosophy that focuses on moral reasoning and foundational questions that explore the assumptions related to moral beliefs and practice. | Metaethics |
| a branch of ethics that focuses on foundational questions and moral reasoning | metaethics |
| the field of philosophy concerned with identifying that which is real. | Metaphysics |
| a school of early philosophers from Miletus; followers of Thales. They were known for examining the underlying causes of natural phenomena. | Milesians |
| a type of consequentialism established in ancient China by Mozi during the Warring States period. | Mohism |
| a type of consequentialism established in ancient China by Mozi (ca. 430 BCE) during the Warring States period | Mohism |
| the philosophy of the Chinese philosopher Mozi or the teachings of the Mozi, a book thought to be a collection of writings by followers of Mozi’s teachings. | Mohism |
| a system of rule by one individual, who usually inherits their position. | Monarchy |
| the belief that the universe is made up of one substance. | Monism |
| the view that reality is comprised of one fundamental type of being. | Monism |
| theory that argues that there is only one fundamental intrinsic value that forms the foundation for all other values. | Monism |
| the philosophical position that morality is objective, not subjective. | Moral realism |
| the philosophical position that there are multiple moral frameworks that are equally valid because values are relative to individuals, communities, and cultures. | Moral relativism |
| the philosophical position that morality is not objective. | Moral skepticism |
| a way of thinking that relies on the folk knowledge and narratives that often form part of the spiritual beliefs of a people. | Mythos |
| moral law naturally intuited by humankind, according to the rationality given to them by God. | Natural law |
| an ethical position that asserts that morals are objective and derived from nature. | Natural law theory |
| the fields of study that eventually gave rise to science. | Natural philosophy |
| the rejection of any non-natural or appeal to supernatural explanatory concepts within philosophy. | Naturalism |
| a belief that ethical claims can be derived from nonethical ones | naturalism |
| an error in reasoning that assumes one can derive values (what people ought to do) from facts about the world (what is the case). | Naturalistic fallacy |
| X is a necessary condition for Y if and only if X must be true given the truth of Y. If X is necessary for Y, then X is guaranteed by Y—without the truth of X, Y cannot be true. | Necessary condition |
| a state in which one is neither constrained to act nor obligated to refrain from acting in a specific way. | Negative liberty |
| the philosophical position that values are not cognitive because they do not necessarily make statements about properties of things or states of events and have more to do with a psychological state of mind. | Non-cognitivism |
| a branch of ethics that focuses on establishing norms and standards of moral conduct | normative ethics |
| an argument for the existence of God built upon a consideration of the attribute of God’s existence. | Ontological argument |
| a field within metaphysics dedicated to the study of being. | Ontology |
| the study of the being of values. | Ontology of value |
| G. E. Moore’s argument against the naturalistic fallacy, which he sees as trying to derive non-natural properties from natural properties. For Moore, arguing that something is “good” (a non-natural property) based on natural properties is circular and leaves an open question. | Open-question argument |
| the cost incurred by not pursuing other options. | Opportunity cost |
| when discussing being, the instance of a specific being. | Particular |
| a form of euthanasia in which treatment is withheld or withdrawn with the expectation that a patient will die sooner than they would with continued medical intervention. | Passive euthanasia |
| relationships that foster individual virtue as they are based on love and the wish that another flourishes rather than the expectation of personal gain | perfect friendship |
| an approach to ethics that bases morality on the highest attainable good for an individual, human nature, or society. | Perfectionism |
| the capacity humans possess that distinguish them as beings capable of morality. | Personhood |
| the first-person study of how the “phenomena” of the world impact the consciousness, in contrast and response to philosophical schools of thought that start philosophical reflection with the realm of ideas. | Phenomenology |
| the “love of wisdom.” An academic discipline that attempts to grasp the broadest possible understanding of things. It is characterized by rational explanation and a willingness to question assumptions. | Philosophy |
| the notion that being is material or physical. | Physicalism |
| (PAS) a practice in which a physician provides the means (e.g., a prescription for a lethal dose of medication) and/or information to assist a patient in ending their own life. | Physician-assisted suicide |
| asserts that fundamental reality consists of many types of being. | Pluralism |
| theory that argues that there are multiple fundamental intrinsic values rather than one. | Pluralism |
| an approach to normative ethical theory that suggests a more complex, complete account of morality that provides for conflicting rules | pluralism |
| the belief that the universe is made up of more than one substance. | Plurism |
| the branch of philosophy that investigates concepts of justice and legitimacy as well as the relationships among political systems, governments, and the people. | Political philosophy |
| the third stage for the development of societies proposed by August Comte, in which people reject religion and focus only on things that can be proven. | Positivism |
| views supporting the idea that the world cannot be interpreted through preexisting structures because there are no such existing structures; the idea that the universe is a confluence of forces that are given different meanings by human and nonhuman agents over time. | Post-structuralism |
| the philosophical perspective that there is no absolute truth to the universe, leaving no grand objective narratives to categorize and structure the world (as in modernism) but everything to individual interpretation; the idea that truth is perspective. | Postmodernism |
| in Aristotelian thought, the level to which a being’s purpose might reach. | Potentiality |
| in Hindu thought, matter; one of two elements that make up the universe. | Prakriti |
| the portion of a sentence that provides the description or characterization of an object or name. (A philosophical predicate is different from the predicate of grammar, and their definitions should not be confused.) | Predicate |
| evidence or a reason offered in support of a conclusion. | Premise |
| an approach to philosophy that examines philosophical texts for the arguments they contain and judges how and whether they remain relevant today. | Presentist approach |
| duties that are obligatory, other things being equal, or so long as other factors and circumstances remain the same | prima facie duties |
| principle that states that patients have a right to exercise agency or self-determination when it comes to making decisions about their own health care in clinical settings. | Principle of autonomy |
| principle that states that we should act in ways that benefit others or that are for the good of others. | Principle of beneficence |
| the interpretative principle that says a reader ought to interpret the author’s statements in the most rational and best possible way. | Principle of charity |
| principle that states that randomized trials should be conducted in a way that balances the interests of participants and aims of science. | Principle of clinical equipoise |
| principle that states that the distribution and practice of health care should be equitable or fair. | Principle of justice |
| principle that states that we should act in ways that do not cause harm to others. | Principle of nonmaleficence |
| a principle that holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote pleasure and diminish pain | principle of utility |
| knowledge of how to successfully complete a task. | Procedural knowledge |
| knowledge of facts that can be expressed as statements. | Propositional knowledge |
| the attempt to cure mental illnesses by uncovering the unconscious elements that are said to be the foundation of human behavior. | Psychoanalysis |
| in Hindu thought, pure, absolute consciousness; one of two elements that make up the universe. | Purusha |
| the philosophical position that asserts that ethical values have some basis in reality and that reasoning about ethical matters requires an objective framework or foundation. | Realism |
| a methodical way of thinking that uses evidence and logic to draw conclusions, or the capacity to think this way. | Reason |
| fallacy of diversion that ignores the opponent’s position and simply changes the subject. | Red herring |
| a process of reviewing a theoretical position by going back and forth between the theory and its practical applications. This process seeks coherence between theory and practice. | Reflective equilibrium |
| a central concept in Confucianism that refers either to specific virtues or to someone with complete virtue. | Ren |
| a central concept in Confucianism that is used to mean either someone with complete virtue or to refer to specific virtues | ren |
| an information-bearing unit of thought. Representations are the objects that minds consider when they think. | Representation |
| a utilitarian approach that proposes that people should use the greatest happiness principle to test possible moral rules to determine whether a given rule would produce greater happiness if it were followed | rule utilitarianism |
| a wise person. Many ancient cultures designated important wise figures as “sages.” | Sage |
| a dualist approach in Hindu metaphysics that views the universe as composed of pure consciousness and matter, which undergoes an evolutionary process. | Samkhya |
| the core or absolute set of moral and religious duties ordained for all people of ancient India, regardless of class or caste, and that predate the term Hinduism. | Sanatana dharma |
| a philosophical position that defines well-being as satisfying desires. | Satisfactionism |
| term for a method of public self-analysis proposed by Mao Tse-Tung as a means to achieve personal and societal improvement. | Self-criticism |
| an analysis of how meaning is created through symbols, both linguistic and nonlinguistic. | Semiotics |
| individuals who own a share of a corporation. | Shareholders |
| a philosophical position that claims people do not know things they ordinarily think they know. | Skepticism |
| the view that some or all knowledge is impossible. | Skepticism |
| a philosophical position that claims people do not know things they ordinarily think they know | skepticism |
| an agreement among members of society to cooperate and allow some limits of their natural rights in exchange for protection and mutual benefits provided by government. | Social contract |
| a method of questioning used by Socrates (and named after him later) to help people understand what they were thinking and to arrive at some truth. | Socratic method |
| genetic interventions in which genetic changes cannot be inherited or passed to a patient’s offspring. | Somatic cell interventions |
| any individual who has a stake in a business’s operations. | Stakeholders |
| study of the relationship between an individual’s social status and their epistemic position. | Standpoint epistemology |
| a sentence with a truth value—a sentence that must be either true or false. | Statement |
| A declarative sentence that has a truth value, meaning that it must be either true or false. | Statement |
| a strategy for making opposing arguments as strong as possible so that it is difficult to knock them down. | Steelmanning |
| fallacy of diversion that utilizes a weaker version of the position being argued against in order to make the position easier to defeat. | Strawman |
| machines that perform multiple cognitive tasks like humans but at a very rapid pace (machine speed). | Strong artificial intelligence |
| the belief that the universe has a certain objective structure to it and that language indicates this structure; the belief that in order to understand individual parts of the universe, one must understand their place in the overarching structure of things. | Structuralism |
| the most enduring and underlying reality of a thing; from the Latin substantiaI or that which supports a thing. | Substance |
| X is a sufficient condition for Y if and only if the truth of X guarantees the truth of Y. If X is sufficient for Y, then the truth of X is enough to prove the truth of Y. | Sufficient condition |
| the fallacy of attaching a greater value to something than is warranted because a person has already invested time, resources, and emotion in that thing (or person). | Sunk-cost fallacy |
| an argument for the existence of God based upon the presence of ends (goals or purpose) as observed within nature. | Teleological argument |
| the purpose, end, or goal of something. | Telos |
| a type of epistemic injustice that occurs when the opinions of individuals or groups are unfairly ignored or treated as untrustworthy. | Testimonial injustice |
| a metaphysical doctrine that holds that every particular thing that exists in our changing, material world participates in an immaterial form or essence, which is unchanging, invisible, and perfect and which gives this thing its identity. | Theory of the forms |
| an imaginative scenario that tests some philosophical theory or concept by considering how it might apply in the imagined situation. | Thought experiment |
| a system of government that exercises complete control over its people in terms of both their personal and their public lives. | Totalitarianism |
| an understanding of social identity as spiraling both outward and inward through expanding and retracting influences over a certain area of land. | Transformative model of identity |
| the tendency for human beings to align their beliefs and attitudes with groups of people who have similar attitudes, practices, or beliefs. | Tribalism |
| classic thought experiments that use difficult ethical dilemmas to examine moral reasoning and deliberation | trolley problems |
| the process of determining whether statements made in an argument are either true or false. | Truth analysis |
| when discussing being, a reality or concept that accounts for the shared whatness of a specific type of being. | Universal |
| statements that take two groups of things and claim all members of the first group are also members of the second groups. | Universal affirmative statement |
| a rational method of devising moral laws that proposes that a moral law must be applied universally to the whole of society | universal law formulation |
| Hindu texts that contain the philosophical core of Hinduism. | Upanishads |
| an ethical theory that bases morality on maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. | Utilitarianism |
| a type of consequentialism introduced by Jeremy Bentham and developed by John Stuart Mill | utilitarianism |
| a property of deductive arguments where the structure of an argument is such that if the premises are true, then the conclusion is guaranteed to be true. A valid inference is a logically good inference. | Validity |
| the philosophical investigation of values. In its narrow sense, it refers to metaethical concerns. In its broader sense, it addresses a variety of values (ethical, social, political, religious, aesthetic, etc.) | Value theory |
| beliefs and evaluations about morality, politics, aesthetics, and social issues. They often express a judgment about what people think ought to be the case. | Values |
| the four oldest books within Hinduism, consisting of the Rigveda, the Samaveda, the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda. | Vedas |
| an imagined scenario in which a person deliberately remains unaware of any personal traits and does not know what social, political, or economic group they are in. | Veil of ignorance |
| an approach to normative ethics that focuses on character. | Virtue ethics |
| a philosophical approach to ethics based on the examination of different virtues. | Virtue ethics |
| an approach to normative ethics that focuses on character | virtue ethics |
| a period of widespread conflict, suffering, and social unrest in Chinese history that gave rise to highly influential philosophical approaches, including Mohism, Confucianism, and Daoism | Warring States period |
| machines that perform primarily one task, such as Apple’s Siri or social media bots. | Weak artificial intelligence |
| concept referring to what is good for a person, not simply what is good in an abstract sense. | Well being |
| a natural way of acting—also called nonaction—that is spontaneous or immediate, one in which a person’s actions are in harmony with the flow of nature or existence | wu wei |
| a natural way of acting that is spontaneous or immediate, in which a person’s actions are in harmony with the flow of nature or existence. | Wuwei |
| an explanation of natural phenomena through two fundamental forces, the male yin and the female yang. | Yin and yang |
| paradoxes proposed by Zeno that attempt to prove that change and motion are illusory. | Zeno’s paradoxes |