- abandonment
- absence paradox
- absolute
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- abstractionism
- act utilitarianism
- activism
- agnosticism
- altruism
- analytic/synthetic
- animism
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- anthropomorphism
- anthroposophy
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- anti-realism
- apriorism
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- British empiricists
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- Buridan's ass
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- category mistake
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- causal theory of names
- chain of being
- charity, principle of
- classical theory of probability
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- continental rationalists
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- creative evolution
- critical realism
- cynicism
- de facto and de jure theories of meaning
- deduction theorem
- deductivism
- degrees of truth
- deism
- denotation and connotation
- deontology
- descriptions, theory of
- descriptive theory of names
- descriptivism
- determinism
- dialectic
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- double effect doctrine
- double negation principle
- dualism
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- effluxes, theory of
- egocentric predicament
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- emotivism
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- essentialism
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- five ways
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- haecceitism
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- Hempel's paradox
- hermeneutics
- historicism
- holism
- holistic explanation
- human nature
- humanity, principle of
- Hume's law
- hylomorphism
- hylozoism
- hypothetico-deductive method
- ideal utilitarianism
- idealism
- ideational theories of meaning
- identity, law of
- identity of indiscernibles
- identity theory of mind
- identity theory of predication
- identity theory of truth
- ideology
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- improbabilism
- indeterminacy of reference and translation
- indeterminism
- indifference, principle of
- indiscernibility of identicals
- individuation principle
- induction
- inductivism
- infinite divisibility
- innate ideas
- inscriptionism
- instrumentalism
- interactionism
- internal relations, doctrine of
- internalism
- intuitionism
- isolationism
- Jourdain's paradox
- justice
- language of thought
- lawyer paradox
- legal positivism
- legitimacy
- Leibniz's law
- libertarianism
- limited independent variety, principle of
- linguistic phenomenology
- linguistic philosophy
- local sign theory
- logical atomism
- logical empiricism
- logical positivism
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- logicism
- Manicheism
- materialism
- mean, doctrine of the
- meaning, theories of
- mechanism
- Meinong's jungle
- meliorism
- mereology
- metalanguage
- methodological theories
- modal realism
- monism
- moral sense theories
- mysticism
- naive realism
- naming theories of meaning
- nativism
- naturalism
- naturalized epistemology
- necessitarianism
- negation, performative theory of
- negative utilitarianism
- neo-Platonism
- neo-Pythagoreanism
- neutral monism
- new riddle of induction
- Nicod's criterion
- nihilism
- no-ownership theory of the mind
- nominalism
- non-cognitivism
- objective idealism
- objectivism
- objectivism (2)
- occasionalism
- Ockham's Razor
- one over many principle
- ontology
- operationalism
- organic unities, principle of
- organicism
- origins of life
- Orphism
- panpsychism
- pantheism
- paraconsistency
- paradigmatism
- parsimony, principle of
- particularism
- Pascal's wager
- perfection, principle of
- performative, theory of truth
- personalism
- perspective realism
- perspectivism
- phenomenalism
- phenomenology
- physicalism
- picture theory of meaning
- Plato's theory of forms
- Platonism
- plenitude, principle of
- plurality of causes
- positivism
- pragmatic theory of truth
- pragmatism
- pre-established harmony, doctrine of
- preference utilitarianism
- prescriptivism
- private language argument
- probabilism
- process philosophy
- propensity theory of probability
- psychologism
- psychophysical parallelism
- Pyrrhonism
- Pythagoreanism
- radical empiricism
- radical interpretation
- range theories of probability
- rationalism
- real self
- realism
- reducibility, axiom of
- reductionism (1)
- reductionism (2)
- redundancy theory of truth
- regularity theory of causation
- relativism
- relevance logics
- relevant alternatives, theory of
- reliabilism
- representationalism
- resemblance theories of universals
- retributivism
- rule utilitarianism
- semantic atomism
- semantics
- semantics, truth-conditional
- sensationalism
- sense and reference
- situationism
- skepticism
- solipsism
- speciation, theory of
- species essentialism
- species, theory of
- speciesism
- specious present
- speech act theory
- stimulus-response model
- Stoicism
- subjective idealism
- subjectivism
- subjectivist theories of probability
- sufficient reason, principle of
- tacit knowledge
- teleology
- theism
- third man argument
- three laws of thought
- trace theory of memory
- transcendental idealism
- trialism
- Tristram Shandy paradox
- tropisms, theory of
- truth theory
- truth-conditional semantics
- types, ramified theory of
- types, simple theory of
- uniformity of nature, principle of the
- universalism
- universalizability
- use theories of meaning
- utilitarianism
- utilitarianism, Bentham's theory of
- utopianism
- verifiability principle
- vicious circle principle
- Vienna Circle
- vitalism
- voluntarism
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Buridan's ass
(14th century)
A theoretical illustration of the dilemma posed by the need to make a decision between two equally attractive proposals.
The concept itself dates from much earlier times, being discussed first by Aristotle (384-322 BC).
In Buridan's example, an ass faces starvation when it is unable to choose between two equally appetizing piles of hay.
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