IB Philosophy 1.5 Human Nature Key Definitions

Empiricism is the epistemological position that all substantive knowledge originates in sensory experience, denying that the mind possesses innate ideas or can arrive at factual truths through reason alone. Championed by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, the tradition grounds scientific method in observation while facing the challenge of explaining knowledge of abstract truths such as mathematics and logic.

Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused by environmental factors rather than alterations to the DNA sequence itself, demonstrating that nature and nurture interact at the molecular level.

In Aristotle's ethics, eudaimonia refers to human flourishing understood as the active exercise of distinctively human capacities in accordance with virtue over a complete life. Often translated as "happiness," it more precisely means living and faring well through the full realisation of what a human being is capable of becoming.

Human nature refers to the set of characteristics, capacities, and dispositions thought to be shared by all human beings, independent of culture, upbringing, or historical context, and that define what it fundamentally means to be human.

Nature versus nurture debate concerns whether human characteristics, behaviours, and capacities are primarily determined by innate biological factors or by environmental influences such as upbringing, culture, and experience.

Rationalism in the philosophy of human nature holds that reason is the highest and most distinctive human capacity, and that the good life consists in the governance of emotion and desire by rational thought.

In Hume's philosophy, sentimentalism is the view that emotions and feelings are the primary drivers of moral judgement and action, with reason serving only an instrumental role.

The state of nature is the hypothetical condition of human life without government or political authority, used by social-contract theorists as a thought experiment to justify the existence of the state.

Tabula rasa (Latin for "blank slate") is the philosophical thesis, associated with John Locke, that the human mind at birth contains no innate ideas or principles, and that all knowledge and character are acquired through experience.