- Infinite Regress - A casual relationship transmitted through an indefinite number of terms in a series, with no term that begins the casual chain (a concept that comes up when we ask if there is a first cause).
- Empiricism - The doctrine that all knowledge of matters of fact derives from experience and that the mind is not furnished with a set of concepts in advance of experience. The sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge. (__British Empiricism__ - what sort of information about the world we can depend on).
- Argument from Analogy - Perceived similarities are used as a basis to infer some further similarity that has yet to be observed.
- Metaphysics - A branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world. (What is there? What is it like?)
- Teleology - A doctrine that ends (goals) are immanent in nature.
- Essentialism - The view that for any specific entity, there is a set of incidental attributes all of which are necessary to its identity and function. ("Essential properties are those without which a thing wouldn't be what it is, and accidental properties are those that determine how a thing is, but not what it is.)
- Rationalism - Any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification.
- Principle of Sufficient Reason - Anything that happens does so for a reason.
- Relativism - The concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration.
- Determinism - For everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen.
- Process Philosophy - God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, but is changed by events as they unfold.
- Principle of Parsimony - (__Occam's Razor__) A principle urging one to select from among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions.
- Law of Noncontradiction - Contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense.
aug 1 2012 ∞
apr 12 2013 +