IB Philosophy 10. Prescribed Philosophical Texts Key Definitions

A posteriori knowledge is knowledge that is justified through sensory experience and empirical observation rather than through pure reasoning alone. The concept, contrasted with a priori knowledge, is central to the analytic/synthetic distinction: while analytic truths hold by definition, synthetic a posteriori truths, such as "water boils at 100 degrees Celsius," require investigation of the world to be confirmed or refuted.

A priori knowledge is knowledge that is justified independently of sensory experience, derived through reason alone. Classic examples include mathematical truths such as "2 + 3 = 5" and logical principles.

In de Beauvoir's existentialism, active transcendence is the purposeful engagement with the world through which human beings create meaning, pursue projects, and assert their freedom against the forces of immanence and oppression.

Adaptive preferences are desires and values that have been shaped, consciously or unconsciously, by unjust conditions of deprivation or oppression. For example, a person denied education from birth may not desire it, but this absence of desire does not show the deprivation is acceptable.

Aesthetic emotivism extends emotivist analysis to judgments about beauty, art, and taste. On this view, statements like 'This painting is beautiful' express the speaker's aesthetic response rather than describing an objective property of the artwork.

in Nussbaum's capabilities approach, one of the ten central human capabilities, encompassing both the ability to live with and toward others and the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation. Without affiliation, Nussbaum argues, other capabilities lose much of their value because human flourishing is irreducibly relational.

Agency is the capacity of an individual to act intentionally and make choices, exercising control over actions and their consequences.

a condition in which a person is estranged from the products of their own activity and from their own human capacities. In Fanon's application, alienation names the psychic and social condition of the colonized person who is estranged from their own body, culture, and selfhood by the imposed meanings of the colonial racial order, a condition that can only be overcome through the transformation of the social structures that produced it.

The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's famous image in Book VII of the Republic, depicting prisoners chained in a cave who mistake shadows for reality, illustrating the ascent of the soul from ignorance to knowledge of the Forms.

In de Beauvoir's existentialism, ambiguity refers to the fundamental condition of human existence in which consciousness is simultaneously free and situated, capable of transcendence yet always embedded in a concrete social and bodily reality.

The analytic/synthetic distinction divides meaningful propositions into analytic statements, which are true by virtue of meaning alone (e.g. 'all bachelors are unmarried'), and synthetic statements, which are true or false by virtue of how the world is (e.g. 'the cat is on the mat'). Quine challenged and Kripke complicated this division.

Nietzsche's term for the systematic valuation of self-denial, suffering, and the renunciation of earthly life, expressed in religious, philosophical, and moral traditions that treat the body and its drives as obstacles to higher truth or goodness. He argues in the Third Essay of the Genealogy that the ascetic ideal paradoxically represents the will to power in disguise: the ascetic still imposes meaning on suffering and exercises control over existence, but does so by denying life rather than affirming it.

In de Beauvoir's existentialism, authentic freedom is the condition achieved when an individual recognises the full reality of her situation, including the structures of oppression that constrain her, and actively works to transcend those constraints through purposeful projects and solidarity with others.

Authenticity is the quality of living in accordance with one’s own genuine self, values, and commitments rather than conforming to external pressures, social conventions, or the expectations of others. In existentialist philosophy (Heidegger, Sartre, Kierkegaard), authenticity involves confronting the anxiety of radical freedom and taking full responsibility for one’s choices and identity.

the moral ideal, articulated by Charles Taylor in The Ethics of Authenticity (1991), that each person has an original way of being human and a moral obligation to discover and live according to that inner voice, rather than conforming to external models imposed by society, convention, or authority.

Nietzsche's term for the condition that arises when human beings' natural aggressive instincts, blocked from outward expression by the demands of social life, are turned inward against the self, producing a painful inner world of self-punishment, guilt, and moral self-scrutiny. Nietzsche regards bad conscience as a psychological illness but also as the origin of human creativity, imagination, and depth of soul.

Biological determinism is the view that women's social position and subordinate status are determined by biological facts such as reproductive capacity and physical strength. De Beauvoir argues that while biological differences between the sexes are real, they do not in themselves prescribe any particular social role or hierarchy.

Biomedical ethics is the branch of applied ethics that examines moral questions arising from advances in medicine and the biological sciences, including issues of life, death, patient autonomy, and the responsible use of biotechnology.

Associated with Hume, bundle theory holds that the self is not a distinct, unified substance but merely a bundle of perceptions in constant flux. On this account, introspection never reveals a persistent "I" behind our thoughts and experiences, because the self is nothing over and above the succession of mental states themselves.

Developed by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, the capabilities approach evaluates human well-being and social justice by measuring what people are actually able to do and to be, rather than what resources they formally possess. It holds that a just society must guarantee every person a sufficient threshold of real, effective opportunities across central areas of human life, including bodily health, education, political participation, and emotional expression.

The Cartesian Circle is the charge, first raised by Arnauld, that Descartes' reasoning is viciously circular. He uses clear and distinct perception to prove God's existence, then relies on God's existence to guarantee that clear and distinct perceptions are reliable.

Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative is the supreme principle of morality, commanding unconditionally. Its first formulation requires acting only on maxims that could be willed as universal laws, and its second formulation requires treating persons always as ends in themselves, never merely as means.

the sphere of voluntary associations, institutions, and organisations that operate independently of the state, including religious groups, trade unions, the press, charities, and community organisations. Political philosophers from Hegel to Habermas have debated whether civil society is a necessary complement to state power or a site of class conflict.

The civilizing mission was the colonial ideology claiming that European powers had a duty to bring reason, progress, and culture to non-European peoples, framing conquest as a benevolent moral project. The discourse deployed humanist language as ideological cover for economic exploitation, functioning as Fanon's key example of false universalism justifying colonial violence.