| argument | A group of statements consisting of one or more premises and a conclusion that purportedly follows from the premises.
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| causal impossibility | Something is causally impossible if and only if it violates a law of nature.
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| cogent argument | A strong inductive argument that contains only true premises.
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| coherently imaginable | A situation is coherently imaginable when its details can be filled in and its implications drawn out without running into a contradiction.
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| conclusion | The claim that an argument is trying to establish.
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| counterexample | An example that runs counter to or conflicts with a theory.
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| criteria of adequacy | The features that distinguish a good theory from a bad one: consistency (lack of contradictions), simplicity (quality of relying on only a small number of assumptions), scope (the amount of diverse phenomena explained), conservatism (quality of fitting well with existing theories), and fruitfulness (the number of new facts predicted or problems solved).
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| enthymeme | An argument with an unstated premise or conclusion.
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| law of noncontradiction | The principle that nothing can both have and lack a property at the same time and in the same respect.
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| logical impossibility | Something is logically impossible if and only if it violates the law of noncontradiction.
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| mind-body problem | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for a material object to have a mind.
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| necessary condition | Something X is a necessary condition for something Y if and only if it is impossible for Y to exist without X.
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| premise | A reason given for accepting the conclusion of an argument.
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| principle of charity | Choose that interpretation of an argument which makes the most sense from a logical point of view.
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| problem of evil | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for there to be evil in a world created by an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good being.
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| problem of free will | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for a causally determined action to be free.
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| problem of moral relativism | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for there to be absolute moral standards.
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| problem of personal identity | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for a person to change and yet remain the same person.
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| problem of skepticism | The philosophical problem of explaining how it is possible for there to be knowledge.
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| sound argument | A valid deductive argument that contains only true premises.
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| strong argument | An inductive argument that would establish its conclusion with a high degree of probability if its premises were true.
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| sufficient condition | Something X is a sufficient condition for something Y if and only if it is impossible for X to exist without Y.
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| test implication | A conditional or if-then statement indicating what should be the case if the theory is true.
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| thought experiment | The description of a possible situation in which a concept should apply or a condition should be met if the theory in question is true.
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| valid argument | A deductive argument in which it's logically impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.
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