Key words

• A priori - knowledge that is not based on experience or observation, but is based on logic or reason
• Rationalism - basing opinions and knowledge on reason
• Flux/transience - change
• Eternal - lasting forever
• Deductive Reasoning - reasoning that starts with a general statement and then makes a conclusion based on the general statement - inference
• False Dichotomy - The idea that there are only two possible choices, when in reality there are many
• Dualism - the idea that the mind and body are separate entities.
• Empiricism - the idea that knowledge is based on experience and observation
• A posteriori - based on experience, observation, or experimentation and practice
• Reductive thinking
• Material Cause - the substance and physical thing (material = matter)
• Formal cause - the shape of the object that allows it to be identifiable e.g. a table has four legs
• Efficient cause - the person or thing that causes the change to happen - the designer e.g. carpenter
• Final Cause - gives something its purpose e.g. eating food
• Transcendent - God is beyond human understanding and is beyond the physical world
• Telos - the end or purpose of an action, a goal or aim
• Infinite regress - things keep going back and back forever
• Prime mover - The force that causes the motion of the universe without changing
• Dualism - the mind is separate from the body and can exist without it
• Charioteer analogy - the human soul is split into three: reason (charioteer) and emotion and appetite (2 horses). Reason controls the other two
• Animating principle - the body and soul are the same, and are inseparable: the soul is what the body does and what gives it life, like chopping is what the axe does and what makes it an axe
• Materialism - the body and the soul are inseparable and the same
• Plato tripartite view of the soul - logical, spirited and appetitive

  Aristotle tripartite view of the soul - vegetative, appetitive and intellectual
• Wax example - our senses trick us into thinking that hot and cold wax are different substances
• Descartes "I think therefore I am" "Cognito ergo sum"
• Rationalist - reason is the chief source and test of knowledge
• Hyperbolic doubt - extreme doubting e.g. Descartes always doubts his senses
• Leibniz's law - if two statements cannot be used interchangeably then they cannot be the same e.g. Jacks body is great, and Jack is great
• Fallacy - A mistake or conclusion that is based on a false premise.
• Masked man fallacy - Descartes assumes that because you can know things about the mind but not the body then they cannot be the same. This is like saying the masked man and your friend cannot be the same as you dont know the masked man, however the MM could be your friend
• GUT - Gran unifying theory - we will understand everything in the future
• Interactionalism - matter and mind are two distinct and independent substances that exert causal effects on one another
• Qualia - first person experience
• Occam's razor - the simplest answer is usually the correct one.
• The ghost in the machine (Ryle) - Dualism makes a category mistake e.g. oxford university is being shown to students, the library, dorms etc and one asks where is the university? they have missed the point that the uni is apart of and contained within what they have already shown
• Emergent materialism - the mind has emerged from the body and is not sperate, but is not the same
• cosmological - looking at the start of the universe to prove God
• contingent - depends on something else for its existence
• necessary - not dependant on something else for its existence
• teleological - looking at things now to prove God