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Name of the ancient Greek school founded
by Plato considered to be the first university.
Academy
The branch of philosophy that examines the
nature of beauty and judgments about it.
Aesthetics
The belief that reality is composed of both
materialism and idealism, body and mind.
Cartesian
dualism
Working from a general rule to identify
particular examples and applications to that
rule.
Deductive
reasoning
The philosophy that maintains that sensory
experiences, such as seeing, hearing, and
touching, are the ultimate sources of all
human knowledge. Empiricists believe that
we experience the external world by
sensory perception; then, through
reflection, we conceptualize ideas that help
us interpret the world.
Empiricism
Epistemology
The branch of philosophy that examines the
nature of knowledge and learning.
Ethics
The branch of philosophy that examines
questions of right and wrong, good and
bad.
Ethnocentrism
The tendency to view one's own culture as
superior to others, or to fail to consider other
cultures in a fair manner.
Golden Mean
The doctrine put forth by Aristotle asserting
that virtue lies in the middle ground
between two extremes.
Idealism
A doctrine holding that knowledge is
derived from ideas and emphasizing moral
and spiritual reality as a preeminent source
of explanation.
Drawing generalizations based on the
observation of specific examples.
Inductive
reasoning
The branch of philosophy that deals with
reasoning. Logic defines the rules of
reasoning, focuses on how to move from one
set of assumptions to valid conclusions, and
examines the rules of inference that enable
us to frame our propositions and
arguments.
Logic
A philosophy focused on scientific
observation and the belief that existence is
experienced only in the physical realm.
Materialism
The area of philosophy that examines the
nature of reality.
Metaphysics
The love of or search for wisdom; the quest
to understand the meaning of life.
Philosophy
Political
philosophy
An approach to analyzing how past and
present societies are arranged and governed
and how better societies may be created in the
future.
Pragmatism
A philosophical belief that asserts truth is what
works and rejects other views of reality.
Rationalism
The philosophy that emphasizes the power of
reason and the principles of logic to derive
statements about the world. Rationalists
encourage schools to emphasize teaching
mathematics, because mathematics involves
reason and logic.
Social
Darwinism
A belief similar to Darwin's notion of "survival of
the fittest," that contends that society is a
natural sorting system which rewards the
talented and places the less deserving at the
bottom of the social and economic pecking
order.
Socratic
method
An educational strategy attributed to Socrates
in which a teacher encourages a student's
discovery of truth by questions.