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Saturday, October 20, 2018
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I believe that many of the disagreements in philosophy are caused by a divergence on the meaning of a word. To make things more difficult, if you look up the definition of a word in multiple dictionaries, you often won't find a clear consensus. For this reason, I believe that defining words is an important endeavor in philosophy.
The most famous example of this is the debate over the meaning of 'science', which is known as the 'demarcation problem'. Defining 'science' is particularly important because the word 'science' carries weight and significance. Many people regard science as the best method for establishing knowledge about reality. But if you ask the average person, 'What is the definition of science?' they probably won't provide a clear and satisfactory answer. For this reason, many philosophers have attempted to establish a clear meaning of 'science'.
The rest of this post is a ranking of what I believe are the 32 most important words to define in philosophy and I have provided my definition for each word. A longer list of definitions can be found at this link.
1. Philosophy: study of fundamental nature
2. Reality: actual state of affairs
3. Science: 1. method of establishing knowledge through controlled experiments; 2. study of any subject related to physics, chemistry or biology
4. God: conscious being who created reality
5. Knowledge: correctly justified true belief
6. True: attribute of being an accurate representation of reality
7. Phenomenology: study of immediate perception
8. Experience: totality of past and present sense data
9. Truth: 1. accurate representation of reality; 2. actual state of affairs
10. Religion: belief in or worship toward a divine supernatural power
11. Understanding: 1. condition of knowing the explanation of something; 2. condition of having competent knowledge in something
12. Consciousness: faculty that enables a being to be aware of experience
13. Reason: 1. process of forming conclusions using explicit reasons or premises; 2. something intended to support the accuracy of a proposition; 3. something that explains something else
14. Language: written or spoken symbols
15. Fact: 1. something known with absolute certainty; 2. something known with absolute certainty with the exception of hallucinations and extreme coincidences
16. Belief: something accepted to be true
17. Mind: faculty that enables a being to have beliefs, sense replications, emotions and a subconscious
18. Mathematics: study of numbers, lines and shapes
19. Art: expression of imagination and/or ability
20. Physics: study of matter, motion, force, space and time
21. Intuition: process of forming beliefs based on unclear reasons
22. Logic: process of forming conclusions using objective reasons or premises
23. Being: 1. essential self; 2. way something is
24. Concept: mental general representation
25. Sense: faculty that retrieves data
26. Thought: conscious belief, memory retrieval, sense replication or emotion
27. Meaning: 1. underlying representation; 2. underlying significance
28. Ontology: study of the way something is
29. Explanation: 1. description of why something happened or happens; 2. description that makes something clear
30. Soul: conscious transcendental being
31. Description: linguistic representation
32. Analysis: detailed examination of something with the purpose of drawing conclusions
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