General philosophy

General philosophy

Terms that relate to philosophy, yet do not fit other specific categories.

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General philosophy

A posteriori

Philosophy; General philosophy

A sentence, proposition, thought, or judgement is a posteriori (literally "after") if its truth depends on how our actual experience (experiment and observation) turns out. Many thing that truths ...

Analytic

Philosophy; General philosophy

A sentence, proposition, thought, or judgement is analytic if "it is true in virtue of our determination to use (consistently) a particular symbolism or language. " True, it is sometimes said, ...

Having, or presupposing, a use of terms that is wholly determined by what falls under them (in this actual world). The meaning of a term in the extensional sense is given just by listing, or somehow ...

Essence

Philosophy; General philosophy

Those features of an object that make it the kind of object it is, as opposed to its accidents (e.g. A person's ability to reason is an essential human feature, while hair colour would be an ...

Epistemology

Philosophy; General philosophy

Traditionally, the theory of knowledge. Answering the question: what kinds of knowledge can we have of the external world of objects, of minds other than our own, of mathematical objects, and so on.

Empiricist

Philosophy; General philosophy

Specifically, a British philosopher of the 17th and 18th century such as Hobbes, tended to believe that knowledge derives from our sensory experience and its ramifications. Berkeley and Hume, in ...

Cartesian doubt

Philosophy; General philosophy

In his Meditations, Descartes (1596-1650) proposed discarding any kind of belief that could be doubted, that might be false. Initially, he was inclined to doubt all the evidences of his senses ...