Glossary
| analytic and synthetic—an analytic statement is true in virtue of the meanings of the words in it, e.g. ‘Bachelors are unmarried males’. A synthetic statement is true not in virtue of the meanings of the words used, e.g. ‘Some bachelors are rich’. |
| a posteriori—based on experience. |
| a priori—not based on experience. |
| *cause, efficient—a translation of causa efficient, a term which was used by medieval philosophers. The term goes back to Aristotle, who stated that an ‘efficient’ cause is a source of change or of coming to rest (Physics, II, 3). So, for example, a man who gives advice is an efficient cause, and a father is the efficient cause of his child. |
| *cause, final—a term that renders the Latin causa finalis. ‘Final’ does not mean here last or ultimate, as when one speaks of a ‘final curtain’. Rather, a final cause is that for the sake of which something is done. The term goes back to Aristotle, who said that a final cause is an end: e.g. health is the final cause of taking a walk (Physics, II, 3). |
| coherence theory of truth—the view that a true statement is that which coheres, or is most consistent, with the system of accepted statements. deduction—a form of argument in which if the premisses are true then the conclusion must also be true. |
| definition per genus et differentiam—a form of definition in which a word is defined by locating the thing to which it refers in a class of things (genus) sharing some common features, and then by indicating those features which distinguish the thing from others in that class. |
| *determinism—a term covering a wide variety of views, which have in common the thesis that every event or every state of affairs belonging to a certain class is determined by certain factors, in the sense that given these factors the event must occur or the state of affairs must hold. In the past philosophers readily accepted the idea that determinism held in the natural world; but many of them were reluctant to believe that it also held in the sphere of human actions. They believed that (whatever might be the case in the natural world) the will was free, in the sense that, whenever a human agent chooses to do something, that agent could always have chosen to do otherwise. |
| empiricism—the theory that all knowledge is based on experience. |
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