agnostic:A person who neither believes in the existence of God (defined as the Greatest Conceivable Being), nor believes that God does not exist.
a priori:Knowledge that can be attained without the aid of empir-ical inquiry. An example is the Pythagorean theorem: We know this to be true without having to do experiments or surveys. Hume’s characters in the Dialogues differ over whether God’s existence can be proven by a priori means.
a posteriori:Knowledge that can be attained only with the aid of empirical investigation. Most of physical, life, and social science is aimed at the attainment of a posteriori knowledge.
argument:A line of reasoning purporting to establish a conclusion.
An argument comprises one or more premises; possibly, but not nec-essarily, intermediate steps; and a conclusion.
atheist:A person who believes that God (defined as the Greatest Conceivable Being) does not exist.
compatibilism:The doctrine that freedom of action and universal determinism are compatible with one another.
conclusion:The statement that an argument is attempting to establish.
defense:A line of reasoning purporting to show that the existence of some evil, either moral or physical, is compatible with the exis-tence of a GCB.
dependent being:An entity that has the cause of its existence in something other than itself. (Everyday objects, such as tables, rocks, and clouds are dependent beings.)
dualism:The doctrine that the world consists of two kinds of sub-stance, neither reducible to the other.Typically, dualists hold that mind and matter constitute the distinct kinds of substance in question.
epistemology:The philosophical study of the nature and scope of knowledge.
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ethical egoism:The doctrine that what makes an act right is its being the one that either is, or is most likely to, produce the overall greatest amount of happiness for me.
fallacy: An unpersuasive argument. Some arguments are fallacies because they are invalid. Others, such as arguments that beg the ques-tion, are unpersuasive because they give us no reason to accept the conclusion.
functionalism:A doctrine concerning the nature of mental states, holding that what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal constitution, but instead on the role it plays, in conjunction with other mental states, in the system of which it is a part.
God:The being who has all possible perfections.This means that for any characteristic C, if C is a perfection, then God has characteristic C. (This definition does not assume that such a being exists.) We refer to God so defined as the GCB (Greatest Conceivable Being).
Hard determinism:A form of incompatibilism holding that uni-versal determinism implies that no actions are free.
Hume’s principle:Once you’ve explained the features of each ele-ment in a totality, you have explained the features of the totality as well.
identity of indiscernibles:If a and b have all the same properties, then they are identical. (This thesis is not used by Descartes in his argument for the distinctness of mind and body.)
incompatibilism:The doctrine that freedom of action and univer-sal determinism are not compatible with one another.
independent being:An entity that has the cause of its existence in itself. (Many philosophers, such as Samuel Clarke, have taken God to be an independent being.)
indiscernibility of identicals:If entities a and b are identical, then they have all the same properties.
infinite causal regression:A series of causes stretching back in time infinitely, so that for each element enin the series there is some prior event en–1 that caused en.
invalid argument:An argument is invalid just in case it is not valid.
libertarianism:A form of incompatibilism holding that the existence of free will proves that universal determinism is not true. Libertarians sometimes hold that free will can be established just by introspection.
materialism:A form of monism holding that all existing things are either made of or are reducible to matter.
monism:The doctrine that the universe consists of just one kind of stuff.This view may take the form either of materialism (all that there is is made of or is reducible to matter), or idealism (all that there is is made of or reducible to mind).
moral evil:The production of a harm or suffering by a free agent who acts while aware of the harmful consequences of his/her act.The existence of moral evil has traditionally raised doubts for some about God’s alleged omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and omniscience.
natural religion:The attempt to establish the existence of God by means of theoretical rationality. Hume in his Dialogues is concerned primarily with natural religion, though his character Demea is doubt-ful that such an attempt can succeed.
ontology:The study of what there is. Consequently, the ontological argument is an attempt to prove the existence of God.
physical evil:The production of a harm or suffering by something other than a free, knowing agent. An innocent infant’s death by SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) is an example of physical evil, since it is a harm that is not brought about by any free agent’s action. The existence of physical evil has traditionally raised doubts for some about God’s alleged omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and omniscience.
possible world: A state of affairs that might have been. Strictly speaking, the actual world, the actual state of affairs, is also a possible world.
practical rationality:An act is practically rational just in case it is most likely to best serve one’s interests, given the relative ranking of those interests and the likely outcomes of the actions available. (A spe-cial case of such acts is the formation of a belief.)
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premise: A statement used as a starting point in an argument.
Normally, premises should be uncontroversial theses that most people would assent to. However, sometimes one may criticize an argument by challenging one or more of its premises.
principle of sufficient reason:The doctrine that every fact or state of affairs has a reason that explains its truth or existence.The princi-ple of sufficient reason has broader scope than the doctrine of uni-versal determinism.
quotidian moral relativism:An empirical claim, familiar from cul-tural anthropology, that we find a considerable variety of opinions on questions of right and wrong throughout space and time.
reductio ad absurdum:A line of reasoning showing that a certain proposition is false. It does this by showing that assuming (for the sake of argument) that this proposition is true implies something that we know to be false.We can, for instance, “reduce to absurdity” the sup-position that there is a largest integer.
revealed religion:An approach to religion that takes God’s exis-tence for granted and attempts a union with God or to come to understand God’s attributes.
robust moral relativism:There is no perspective-independent fact of the matter as to what is right or wrong; rather the only facts about morality that exist are relative to a point of view. (This point of view might be constituted by a society, a culture, an ethnicity, or even an individual, and different forms of robust relativism will flow from dif-ferent ways of understanding what sorts of entities moral facts are rel-ative to.)
theist:Someone who believes in the existence of God (defined as the Greatest Conceivable Being).
theodicy:A line of reasoning purporting to show that the amount of moral and physical evil that actually exists in the world is compat-ible with God’s being the GCB. A theodicy goes beyond a defense.
theoretical rationality:A belief is theoretically rational just in case it is reasonable to hold it given all the evidence available.
Turing test:A criterion proposed by Alan Turing for determining whether it is possible for a machine to think.The test consists of put-ting a computer in a closed room and interrogaput-ting it with typed questions.Turing proposes that if, on the basis of this examination, the interrogator cannot determine whether what is in the room is a machine or a person, then it follows that the machine can think.
universal determinism:Every material event has a prior sufficient material condition.
utilitarianism:An ethical doctrine telling us to perform that act, from those available, most likely to produce the greatest overall amount of happiness.
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Adams, Robert, 59–61 Anselm, Saint, 44
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 38–9 argument, 13–17
fallacy, 17–22; sound, 16; valid, 14 Armstrong, David, 111–12
Mackie, John, 74