Philosophical Thinking and Humanities I - Midterm Review Guide

Vocabulary flashcards based on the Philosophical Thinking and Humanities I midterm review guide, covering essential core concepts, distinctions, and definitions.

Metacognition

Thinking about your own thinking: noticing how you reached an idea, judging whether the process worked, and adjusting it when needed.

Metacognitive regulation

The deliberate adjustment of a learning or thinking strategy after recognizing that the current one is not working well.

Intellectual autonomy

Using your own reasoning to evaluate an idea instead of accepting or rejecting it because of who said it.

Premise

A reason or statement offered in support of another claim.

Conclusion

The claim that an argument is trying to support.

Inference

The reasoning link that connects the supporting reasons to the conclusion.

Philosophical argument

A position supported by reasons that others can inspect, challenge, and evaluate.

Humanistic perspective

A way of approaching people that recognizes their dignity and value beyond usefulness, productivity, or performance.

Problematization

Turning something that seems normal or obvious into a question by examining its assumptions, meaning, foundations, or consequences.

Self-correction

Revising a position after better reasons or evidence show that it can be improved.

Community of inquiry

A group that builds understanding through questioning, reasons, listening, and revision of ideas.

Wonder

A break in familiarity that makes an ordinary or surprising experience appear worthy of deeper questioning.

Doubt

Questioning that begins when a certainty becomes unstable, insufficient, or contradictory.

Limit situation

A difficult existential experience that confronts a person with fragility, finitude, uncertainty, or meaning.

Empirical question

A question answered by observing, counting, measuring, checking a record, or consulting specific data.

Scientific question

A question that seeks a systematic explanation of why or how a phenomenon occurs, often through causal relationships.

Philosophical question

A question about concepts, foundations, meanings, values, legitimacy, or what ought to be the case.

Universality

The capacity of a philosophical question to matter beyond one isolated case.

Radicality

The effort to examine the root, basic conditions, or foundations of an issue.

Openness

The quality of allowing more than one defensible answer, provided each answer is supported by reasons.

Critical thinking

Examining the reasons, assumptions, evidence, and justification behind a claim.

Creative thinking

Generating possibilities, alternatives, and new ways of approaching a problem.

Caring thinking

Trying to understand another person’s experience and perspective before judging it from the outside.

Questioning vs. dogmatism

Good questioning keeps beliefs open to review without implying that every answer is equally good.

Philosophical problem

A fundamental problem involving concepts, meanings, or foundations that remains open to reasoned argument.

Categorizing

Grouping things according to selected similarities or criteria.

Conceptualizing

Constructing or refining a general idea so that its meaning, scope, and criteria become clearer.

Context-dependent categories

The same object or phenomenon can fit different categories when different criteria are chosen.

Hyperreality

A condition in which a representation or simulation acquires more force or authority than the original referent.

Reality and representation

The philosophical problem of distinguishing what is real from what is constructed, represented, simulated, or perceived.

Heraclitean view of becoming

Reality is characterized by flow, transformation, and continuing change.

Parmenidean view of being

True being is associated with permanence, while change is treated with suspicion as appearance or instability.

Identity through change

The problem of explaining how a person or thing can undergo transformation while still preserving some continuity.

Aristotelian time

Time is connected with movement and ordered through a before and an after.

Chronological vs. lived time

Measured duration and experienced duration can differ.

Perception and reality

What we directly perceive may not exhaust everything that can count as real.

Concepts and experience

Concepts organize experience, but new experiences can also force us to refine the concepts we use.