Epistemology

analytic truths

• A proposition that is true or false due to the meaning of the words. For example, 'a bachelor is a single man'.
• A proposition that is true or false depending on how the world is.
• A reasoned inference from one set of claims - the premises - to another claim, the conclusion.
• Knowledge of propositions that can only be known to be true or false through experience.

contingent truth

• When one's perceptions of events misrepresents represent reality.
• a proposition that could be either true or false depending on how the world actually is.
• An argument whose conclusion is logically entailed by its premises, i.e. if the premises are true, the conclusion cannot be false. i.e. the inference is necessary.

a priori

• coming to accept a proposition as true on the basis of reasoning from other propositions taken to be true.
• Knowledge of propositions that can only be known to be true or false through experience.
• When one's perceptions of events misrepresents represent reality.
• Knowledge of propositions that do not require sense experience to be known to be true or false.

Hume's fork: relations of ideas

• knowledge established from concepts (established by experience) by pure thought or reason
• truths that are known a posteriori, that are analytic and synthetic

inference to the best explanation

• An argument whose conclusion is logically entailed by its premises, i.e. if the premises are true, the conclusion cannot be false. i.e. the inference is necessary.
• Practical form of knowledge that involves knowing how to perform certain tasks.
• an abductive or inductive argument where the conclusion presents the 'best explanation' for why the premises are true.

phenomenal principle

• characteristics that exist whether or not we perceive them; they do not change (size, shape, etc.)
• when we perceive something as F, then there is something that is F. This is important for the indirect realist argument that we perceive sense-data not an object directly.

causal princple (part of Descarte's trademark argument)

• impressions cause ideas.
• The cause of anything must have at least as much reality as its effect / be as perfect as the effect

sense data

• All that exists are minds and ideas
• Mind-dependent objects in the world
• Mental images of what is perceived

Locke's simple ideas

• Ideas that cannot be broken down any further.
• ideas 'present and accessible to the attentive mind'

Locke's secondary qualities

• qualities that we impose on an object: colour, smell, texture, and so on
• characteristics that exist whether or not we perceive them; they do not change (size, shape, etc.)