Logic and Science
Fallacies
"Isms"
Mind and Free Will
Epistemology
100
An argument where the conclusion is claimed to follow necessarily from the premises.
What is deductive?
100
Attacking the arguer's character.
What is the ad hominem fallacy?
100
A philosophical system which asserts that there are two kinds of something.
What is dualism?
100
The belief that all events are causally determined by previous events.
What is (hard) determinism?
100
The one thing that René Descartes knew for sure.
What is "I think, therefore I exist"?
200
An argument where the conclusion is claimed to follow from the premises with some probability.
What is inductive?
200
Asking a question which gets the other person into trouble however he answers.
What is a complex question?
200
The belief that everything consists only of matter and energy.
What is materialism?
200
The belief that some events are not caused by previous events.
What is libertarianism (or indeterminism)?
200
What John Locke thought our minds were like at birth.
What is a blank slate (tabula rasa)?
300
A proposed solution to a scientific problem.
What is a hypothesis?
300
Assuming what you are trying to prove.
What is begging the question?
300
The belief that everything consists only of minds and ideas.
What is idealism?
300
The belief that all events can have causes without ruling out the possibility of free action.
What is soft determinism (or compatibilism)?
300
What David Hume thought was the basis of our belief in causation.
What is custom (or habit)?
400
Proving that a hypothesis is wrong.
What is falsification?
400
Claiming that there are only two options, when in fact there may be more.
What is the "black and white" fallacy (or "false dichotomy")?
400
The belief that we can reach some knowledge by reason alone, without sense perception.
What is rationalism?
400
Gilbert Ryle's term for the dualist view of the human person.
What is "the ghost in the machine" (or the "official doctrine")?
400
The criterion of meaning which says that ideas are meaningful only if they are based on sense experience.
What is the empirical criterion of meaning?
500
The belief that one kind of phenomenon can be explained fully in terms of another kind of phenomenon.
What is reductionism?
500
Claiming that something is true because a movie star says it's so.
What is appeal to unqualified/unsuitable authority?
500
The belief that all our knowledge is based on sense-experience.
What is empiricism?
500
A name that has been given to David Hume's theory of the person.
What is the "bundle theory"?
500
The theory of truth which says that statements are true if and only if they agree with the facts.
What is the correspondence theory?
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