General Glossary – Philosophical terms © Susan Fleck

a posteriori	Relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge that proceeds from observations or experiences to the deduction of probable causes; Derived by or designating the process of reasoning from facts or particulars to general principles or from effects to causes; inductive reasoning; empirical reasoning.
a priori	a priori knowledge is knowledge known without having to investigate it; Relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge that proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience; In a way based on theoretical deduction rather than empirical observation.
abstraction	The process of taking away or removing characteristics from something in order to reduce it to a set of essential characteristics; considered apart from concrete existence: an abstract concept
aesthetics	The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, expression, and judgment of Art.
altruism	Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.
anarchy	Absence of any form of political authority; chaos; civil disorder
antecedent	Existing or coming before in logical sequence or in time
asceticism	The principles and practices of an ascetic; extreme self-denial and austerity; the doctrine that the ascetic life releases the soul from bondage to the body and permits union with the divine.
axiomatic concept	Rand: The identification of a primary fact of reality which cannot be analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts. It is implicit in all facts and in all knowledge; it is directly perceived or experienced, which requires no proof or explanation, but on which all proofs and explanations rest.
benevolence	A kindly act; A gift given out of generosity; An inclination to perform kind, charitable acts.
causality	The principle of or relationship between cause and effect.
cognition	The mental process or faculty of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.
communism	A theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members; A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people; The Marxist-Leninist version of Communist doctrine that advocates the overthrow of capitalism by the revolution of the proletariat (poorest class of working people); Bolsheviks were the left-wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party that adopted Lenin’s theses on party organization in 1903.
conception	The ability to form or understand mental concepts and abstractions.
concrete	Of or relating to an actual, specific thing or instance; Existing in reality or in real experience; perceptible by the senses; real; Of or relating to a material thing or group of things as opposed to an abstraction; Formed by the coalescence of separate particles or parts into one mass; solid.
consciousness	The faculty of perceiving that which exists (the condition of being aware of).
contingent (facts)	Liable to occur but not with certainty; possible; dependent on conditions or occurrences not yet established; conditional; Logic-- True only under certain conditions; not necessarily or universally true: a contingent proposition.
corollary	A proposition that follows with little or no proof required derived from one already proven; A deduction or an inference (based on principle(s) at its root).
deduction	(logic) The process of reasoning in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the stated premises; inference by reasoning from the general to the specific.
democracy (full)	Government by the people, exercised directly; majority rule
deontology	The theory or study of moral necessity, duty, or obligation (Duty ethics)
dichotomy	Division into two usually contradictory parts or opinions; e.g., the mind-body dichotomy; an idea or classification split in two. When you point out a dichotomy, you draw a clear distinction between two things.
efficacy	Power or capacity to produce a desired effect from one’s actions; effectiveness; capable; competence
empiricism	The view that experience, especially of the senses, is the only source of knowledge; Employment of empirical methods, as in science; An empirical conclusion.
entity	Something that exists as a particular and discrete unit. E.g., Persons and corporations are equivalent entities under the law; The fact of existence, being (including mental things that exist).
epistemology	The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity.
ethics	The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy; a set of principles of right conduct; A theory or a system of moral values to guide man’s choices and actions.
existence	A collective noun; it is the sum of existents (things that exist, including mental states).
existent	Real; being or occurring in fact or actuality; true and actual—not imaginary, alleged, or ideal; Existing objectively in the world regardless of subjectivity or conventions of thought or language.
existential	Of, relating to, or dealing with existence (not to be confused with philosophy of Existentialism).
explicit	Fully and clearly expressed; leaving nothing implied; unambiguous
extrospection	The act or faculty of observing (of looking outward as opposed to inward); the consideration and observation of things external to the self.
fascism	A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
hedonism	The ethical doctrine holding that only what is pleasurable, or has pleasant consequences, is intrinsically good; pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses.
Hellenism	The civilization and culture of ancient Greece; the cultural and philosophical perspective which spread from Greece through most of the ancient world from the year 333 BCE (the time of Alexander the Great) through 63 BCE (when Rome came to dominate). Even Rome continued to spread aspects of Hellenism because Rome itself was so heavily influenced by Greece.
idealism	The theory that the object of external perception, in itself or as perceived, consists of ideas.
identity	The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known.
implicit	Implied or understood, though not directly expressed; inferred; tacit; unspoken
induction	(logic) The process of deriving general principles from particular facts or instances (observations; experiments); a conclusion reached by this process
inference	The act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true; the act of reasoning from factual knowledge or evidence.
intrinsic	Of or relating to the essential nature of a thing; inherent—existing as an essential constituent or characteristic.
introspection	Contemplation of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and sensations; self-examination.
laissez faire	An economic doctrine that opposes governmental regulation of or interference in commerce beyond the minimum necessary for a free-enterprise system to operate according to its own economic laws.
logic	A system of reasoning (Aristotle’s logic); Rand: Logic is the art of noncontradictory identification.
materialism	The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
metaphysics	The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter.
mind	The human consciousness that originates in the brain and is manifested especially in thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination; The collective conscious and unconscious processes in a sentient organism that direct and influence mental and physical behavior; The faculty of thinking, reasoning, and applying knowledge. For Rand, the ego, or self, or soul, is the mind.
monism	The view in metaphysics that reality is a unified whole and that all existing things can be ascribed to or described by a single concept or system; The doctrine that mind and matter are formed, or reducible to, the same ultimate substance or principle of being (e.g., The God Particle).
mysticism	Rand: The acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one’s senses and one’s reason; The claim to some non-sensory means of knowledge, such as revelation, instinct, intuition; The claim to the perception of some supernatural realm.
Neoplatonism	A philosophical system developed at Alexandria in the third century A.D. by Plotinus and his successors. It is based on Platonism with elements of mysticism and some Judaic and Christian concepts and posits a single source from which all existence emanates and with which an individual soul can be mystically united; A revival of Neo-Platonism or a system derived from it, as in the Middle Ages.
normative	Relating to, or prescribing a norm or standard. (Ethics and Politics are both descriptive and normative branches of philosophy.)
noumenon	(pl. noumena) An object that can be intuited only by the intellect and not perceived by the senses; an object independent of intellectual intuition of it or of sensuous perception of it; also called thing-in-itself; In the philosophy of Kant, an object cannot be known through perception (other than its phenomena), although its existence can be demonstrated.
ontology	The branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being.
percept	The object of perception; a mental impression of something perceived by the senses, viewed as the basic component in the formation of concepts; a sense datum.
phenomenalism	The doctrine, set forth by David Hume and his successors, that percepts and concepts actually present in the mind constitute the sole object of knowledge, with the objects of perception themselves, their origin outside the mind, or the nature of the mind itself remaining forever beyond inquiry.
phenomenon	An occurrence, a circumstance, or a fact that is perceptible by the senses.
politics	The science of government or governing, especially the governing of a political entity, such as a nation.
pragmatism	A movement consisting of varying but associated theories, originally developed by Charles S. Peirce and William James and distinguished by the doctrine that the meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences.
predestination	The act of God foreordaining (predetermining) all things gone before and to come; fate; destiny
presuppose	To require or involve necessarily as an antecedent (one that precedes another) condition; imply; presume
principle	A general truth upon which other truths depend; The collectivity of moral or ethical standards or judgments; a fixed policy or mode of action; a rule or law concerning the functioning of natural phenomena or mechanical processes.
proof	The derivation of a conclusion from antecedent knowledge.
proposition	Logic: a statement that affirms or denies something.
psycho-epistemology	Rand: Designates the study of man’s cognitive processes from the aspect of the interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic functions of the subconscious. In essence, it is the way the subconscious automatizes certain things in the brain.
rationalism	The theory that the exercise of reason (deductive reasoning), rather than the acceptance of empiricism, authority, or spiritual revelation, provides the only valid basis for action or belief, and that deductive reasoning is the prime source of knowledge and of spiritual truth.
realism	(Platonic realism) Universals (concepts) exist independently of their being thought; concepts refer to other-worldly universals, independent of consciousness.
reason	Rand: The faculty which perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. Reason integrates man’s perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions, thus raising man’s knowledge from the perceptual level to the conceptual level. The method which reason employs in this process is logic.
republic	A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them.
sense-of-life	Rand: one’s emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of the nature of man and of existence; it represents an individual’s unidentified philosophy—the sum of one’s philosophical judgments whether tacit or explicitly defined.
Siren	[Greek Mythology] One of a group of sea nymphs who, by their sweet singing, lured mariners to destruction on the rocks surrounding their island.
skepticism	The doctrine that absolute knowledge is impossible and that inquiry must be a process of doubting in order to acquire approximate or relative certainty.
socialism	[Dictionary:] any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. [Rand:] The doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.
subjectivism	The doctrine that all knowledge is restricted to the conscious self and its sensory states; there is no external, metaphysical basis for classifications and concepts; A theory or doctrine that emphasizes the subjective elements in experience.
supernatural	Of or relating to existence outside the natural world; attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces; of or relating to a deity or to the miraculous.
tabula rasa	(blank slate) The mind before it receives the sensations and impressions gained from experience; a need to start from the beginning.
tautology	Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; Logic: an empty statement composed of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it logically true whether the simpler statements are factually true or not (e.g., Either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow).
teleology	The study of design or purpose in natural phenomena; the use of ultimate purpose or design as a means of explaining natural phenomena; Purposeful development, as in nature or history, toward a final end. [Greek teleos, perfect, complete—from telos end, result]
theology	The study of the nature of God and religious truth; rational inquiry into religious questions.
transcendental	Concerned with the a priori or intuitive basis of knowledge as independent of experience; asserting a fundamental irrationality or supernatural element in experience; beyond common thought or experience—mystical or supernatural.
value	A principle, standard, thing, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable; Rand: that which one acts to gain and/or keep.
virtue	Moral excellence and righteousness; goodness; an example or kind of moral excellence; a particularly efficacious, good, or beneficial quality. Rand: the act by which one gains and/or keeps a value.
volition	The power or faculty of choosing; the will; the act or an instance of making a conscious choice or decision
whim-worship	Whim: Arbitrary thought or impulse; wishful thinking. Rand [whim-worship]: a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to introspect, to discover its cause: he simply wants it because he wants it.

allegory	(literary) device-characters/events stand for abstract ideas, principles, forces—so that the literal sense has or suggests a parallel, deeper symbolic meaning; symbolic representation.
bromide	A commonplace remark or notion; a platitude (a trite or banal remark or statement).
inalienable	That which cannot be transferred to another or others; inalienable rights.
philosophy	Greek: philosophos; Latin: philosophia—lover of wisdom
qua	In the capacity or character of; as: The President qua head of the party mediated the dispute.
spiritual	Rand’s usage:
tacit	Not spoken; implied by or inferred from actions or statements.