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Best of all possible worlds

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s (1646-1716) view that this world is the best of the possible worlds God could have created. The claim was advanced as the argument of Leibniz’s theodicy, his…
Philosophy Student
December 4, 2023
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Belief

A psychological state usually characterized as a disposition to assent to a certain proposition (the intentional object of the belief) or otherwise act as though that proposition were true. In…
Philosophy Student
December 4, 2023
B

Being

Plato’s realm of reality, contrasted with the realms of appearance and becoming, is being, the realm of eternal and immutable Forms. More generally, the term “being” is used by philosophers…
Philosophy Student
December 4, 2023
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Behaviorism

A theory of mind in which features of an individual’s mental states are inferred from what is publicly observable. https://youtube.com/shorts/I1cNTvIgLkM?feature=share
Philosophy Student
December 4, 2023
B

Begging the question

An informal fallacy, begging the question occurs when the arguer assumes the very claim they intend to prove. For instance: “God exists because the Bible, which comes from God, says…
Philosophy Student
December 4, 2023
B

Becoming

In Plato, the world of appearance is the world of becoming—coming to be and passing away —that characterizes our daily experience. https://youtube.com/shorts/d12xAotPn9Y?feature=share
Philosophy Student
December 4, 2023
B

Bayes’s Theorem

Named after Thomas Bayes (1701?-1761), Bayes’s Theorem describes how to update belief in the likelihood of an event, given the occurrence of evidence relevant to that event. While Bayes’s Theorem…
Philosophy Student
December 4, 2023
B

Bad faith

The refusal to accept responsibility for one’s freedom and, therefore, also for one’s choices. The term comes from the twentieth-century existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. https://youtube.com/shorts/U0965UIQpjU?feature=share
Philosophy Student
December 4, 2023
A

Axiom

A proposition (or claim) that is accepted as true about some domain and used to establish other truths about that domain; a principle, generally accepted at the outset as an…
Philosophy Student
December 4, 2023
A

Axiology

The branch of philosophy concerned with the study of value, both aesthetic value and moral value. https://youtube.com/shorts/WBUqJDiQYrM?feature=share
Philosophy Student
December 4, 2023