Philosophy - is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence,

knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such
problems by its critical, generally systematic approach, and its reliance on rational argument. The word
"philosophy" comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia), which literally means "love of wisdom."

Six Branches of Philosophy - Epistemology, Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, Aesthetics, Political

Philosophy. These branches originate from basic questions. What do I know? How do I know it? Where do we
come from? What is good? What is beautiful? How do we act?

Epistemology - the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (including limitations) of
knowledge. It addresses four main questions. 1) What is knowledge? 2) How is knowledge acquired? 3) What
do people know? 4) How do we know what we know?

Logic – is the study of reasoning. Logic is often divided into two parts, inductive reasoning and deductive
reasoning. The first is drawing general conclusions from specific examples, the second is drawing logical
conclusions from definitions and axioms.

Metaphysics – is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world. Cosmology and
ontology are the two traditional branches of metaphysics. Cosmology seeks to understand the origin, evolution,
structure, and ultimate fate of the universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order. Ontology is
the investigation into what types of things there are in the world and what relations these things bear to one
another. Ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such
entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and
differences. Before the development of modern science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of
metaphysics known as "natural philosophy." The scientific method, however, made natural philosophy an
empirical and experimental activity unlike the rest of philosophy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had
begun to be called "science" in order to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics became the
philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.

Ethics – also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about
morality; that is, about concepts like good and bad, right and wrong, justice, virtue, etc.

Aesthetics – is the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, taste, and the creation and
appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values,
sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.

Political Philosophy – is the study of concepts such as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the
enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what makes a
government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should take and why,
what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be
legitimately overthrown, if ever. Three central concerns of political philosophy have been the political economy
by which property rights are defined and access to capital is regulated, the demands of justice in distribution and
punishment, and the rules of truth and evidence that determine judgments in the law.

Main -isms, -ologies, and definitions

A priori - knowledge or justification independent of experience. For example, “All bachelors are unmarried.”
By contrast, a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence. For
example, “Some bachelors are very happy.”

Deontological Ethics - is the ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on the action's
adherence to a rule or rules. It is sometimes described as "duty" or "obligation" or "rule" based ethics, because
rules bind you to your duty. Deontological ethics is commonly contrasted with consequentialist ethical theories,
according to which the rightness of an action is determined by its consequences. Deontological ethics is also
contrasted from pragmatic ethics.

Determinism - is a philosophy stating that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given
them, nothing else could happen. Determinism is often taken to mean simply causal determinism: an idea
known in physics as cause-and-effect. Determinism is also often contrasted with free will.

Empiricism - is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory
experience. Empiricism emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part
of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world
rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.

Existentialism - is a school of 20th-century philosophers who shared the belief that philosophical thinking
begins with the human subject - not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living, human
individual. In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the
existential attitude," or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or
absurd world. A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the
actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called his or her "essence" instead of there being a
predetermined essence that defines what it is to be a human. Thus, the human beings - through their own
consciousness - create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.

Idealism – is the family of views that asserts reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental,
mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Idealism maintains that the ultimate nature of reality is based on
the mind or ideas. Epistemological idealists might insist the only things that can be directly known for certain
are ideas.

Is-Ought Problem - as articulated by Scottish philosopher David Hume, is that many writers make claims about
what ought to be on the basis of statements about what is. However, Hume found that there seems to be a
significant difference between descriptive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative statements
(about what ought to be), and it is not obvious how we can get from making descriptive statements to
prescriptive.

Materialism - the theory that the only thing that exists is matter or energy; that all things are composed of
material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words,
matter is the only substance, and reality is identical with the actually occurring states of energy and matter. To
many philosophers, materialism is synonymous with physicalism. However, materialists have historically held
that everything is made of matter, but physics has shown that gravity, for example, is not made of matter in the
traditional sense so physicalism is used to emphasize a connection to physics and the physical sciences.
Moral Relativism - describes the way things are, without suggesting a way they ought to be. It seeks only to
point out that people frequently disagree over what is the most moral course of action. Moral Relativism holds
the position that the truth or falsity of moral judgments is not objective. Justifications for moral judgments are
not universal, but are instead relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of an individual or a group of
people. The moral relativist might say, "It's moral to me, because I believe it is." Moral Relativism holds that
because there is no universal moral standard by which to judge others, we ought to tolerate the behavior of
others, even when it runs counter to our personal or cultural moral standards.

Naturalism - the philosophical viewpoint that natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate
in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond this natural universe, or, if it does, it does not affect the natural
universe that we know. Followers of naturalism assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure
and behavior of the universe, that the universe is a product of these laws, and that the goal of science is to
discover and publish them systematically. Further, this sense of naturalism holds that spirits, deities, and ghosts
are not real and that there is no "purpose" in nature.

Nihilism - is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of
life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without
objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.

Positivism - is a philosophy of science based on the view that in the social as well as natural sciences, data
derived from sensory experience, and logical and mathematical treatments of such data, are together the
exclusive source of all authentic knowledge. Obtaining and verifying data that can be received from the senses
is known as empirical evidence. Society operates according to laws like the physical world. Introspective and
intuitional attempts to gain knowledge are rejected.

Postmodern Philosophy - is a philosophical direction that is critical of the foundational assumptions and
structures of philosophy. Postmodern philosophy is skeptical or nihilistic toward many of the values and
assumptions of philosophy that derive from modernity, such as humanity having an essence that distinguishes
humans from animals, or the assumption that one form of government is demonstrably better than another. It is
usually associated with the following philosophical trends: nihilism and relativism, neo-marxism, neo-
pragmatism, and neo-existentialism.

Pragmatism – is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process
where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent
practice. Pragmatism is based on the premise that the human capability to theorize is necessary for intelligent
practice. Theory and practice are not separate spheres; rather, theories and distinctions are tools or maps for
finding our way in the world. Pragmatism holds that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily,
that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that
unpractical ideas are to be rejected.

Rationalism - is any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification. In more technical
terms, it is a method or a theory in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and
deductive. Different degrees of emphasis on this method or theory lead to a range of rationalist standpoints,
from the moderate position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge, to the more
extreme position that reason is the unique path to knowledge.

Realism - is the belief that reality is independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs,
etc. Philosophers who profess realism state that truth consists in the mind's correspondence to reality. Realists
tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality and that every new observation
brings us closer to understanding reality.

Skepticism - Philosophical skepticism is an approach that denies the possibility of certainty in knowledge,
whereas methodological skepticism is an approach that subjects all knowledge claims to scrutiny with the goal
of sorting out true from false claims. Skeptics critically examine meaning systems. Skeptical examination often
results in a position of ambiguity or doubt.

Stoicism - taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of moral
and intellectual perfection, would not suffer such emotions. Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life,
and they thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how they
behaved.

Tautology - is an unnecessary repetition of meaning, using dissimilar words that effectively say the same
thing. A rhetorical tautology can also be defined as a series of statements that comprise an argument, whereby
the statements are constructed in such a way that the truth of the proposition is guaranteed, or that the truth of
the proposition cannot be disputed, by defining a dissimilar or synonymous term in terms of another self-
referentially. Tautologies play a role in analytic discussions of logic and what it is possible to know.

Teleology - any philosophical account that states final causes (purposes, aims, goals) exist in nature, meaning
that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature.

Utilitarianism - is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the
overall happiness. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is
determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can only weigh the morality of an action after knowing
all its consequences.

Current philosophical camps

Analytic Philosophy - In the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, and New
Zealand, the overwhelming majority of university philosophy departments identify themselves as "analytic"
departments. Analytic philosophy is often understood as being defined in opposition to continental
philosophy. The term "analytic philosophy" can refer to a tradition of doing philosophy characterized by an
emphasis on clarity and argument, often achieved via modern formal logic and analysis of language, and a
respect for the natural sciences. In this sense, analytic philosophy makes specific philosophical commitments: 1)
The positivist view that there are no specifically philosophical truths and that the object of philosophy is the
logical clarification of thoughts. This may be contrasted with the traditional foundation that views philosophy as
a special sort of science, the highest one, which investigates the fundamental reasons and principles of
everything. As a result, many analytic philosophers have considered their inquiries as continuous with, or
subordinate to, those of the natural sciences. 2) The view that the logical clarification of thoughts can only be
achieved by analysis of the logical form of philosophical propositions. The logical form of a proposition is a
way of representing it (often using the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical system) to display its
similarity with all other propositions of the same type. However, analytic philosophers disagree widely about
the correct logical form of ordinary language. 3) The rejection of sweeping philosophical systems in favor of
close attention to detail, common sense, and ordinary language.
Continental Philosophy – This refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland
Europe. Continental philosophy includes the following movements: German idealism, phenomenology,
existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, French feminism, the critical theory of the
Frankfurt School, and some other branches of Western Marxism. Continental philosophers generally reject
scientism, the view that the natural sciences are the best or most accurate way of understanding all
phenomena. Continental philosophers often argue that science depends upon a "pre-theoretical substrate of
experience, and that scientific methods are inadequate to understand such conditions of intelligibility."
Continental philosophy usually considers the conditions of possible experience as variable: determined at least
partly by factors such as context, space and time, language, culture, or history. Continental philosophy typically
holds that conscious human agency can change the conditions of possible experience: "if human experience is a
contingent creation, then it can be recreated in other ways." Thus continental philosophers tend to take a strong
interest in the unity of theory and practice, and tend to see their philosophical inquiries as closely related to
personal, moral, or political transformation. This tendency is very clear in the Marxist tradition ("philosophers
have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it"), but is also central in
existentialism and post-structuralism. Continental philosophy has an emphasis on metaphilosophy. In the wake
of the development and success of the natural sciences, continental philosophers have often sought to redefine
the method and nature of philosophy. In some cases, such as German idealism or phenomenology, this
manifests as a renovation of the traditional view that philosophy is the first, foundational, a priori science. In
other cases, such as hermeneutics, critical theory, or structuralism, it is held that philosophy investigates a
domain that is irreducibly cultural or practical. And some continental philosophers, such as Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, or Derrida, doubt whether any conception of philosophy can be truly coherent.

Constructivism - a theory of knowledge (epistemology) that argues that humans generate knowledge and
meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas. It has influenced a number of
disciplines, including psychology, sociology, education and the history of science. During infancy, it was an
interaction between human experiences and their reflexes or behavior-patterns. Jean Piaget called these systems
of knowledge schemata. Constructivism is not a specific pedagogy, although it is often confused with
constructionism, an educational theory developed by Seymour Papert, inspired by constructivist and
experiential learning ideas of Piaget.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_%28philosophy_of_education%29

Constructionism - A theory inspired by the constructivist theory that individual learners construct mental
models to understand the world around them. Constructionism advocates student-centered, discovery learning
where students use information they previously know to acquire more knowledge. This is done through
participation in project-based learning where students are able to make connections between different ideas and
areas of knowledge that the teacher helps them to form: “In the constructionist paradigm, the teacher’s role is
not to lecture or provide structured activities that guide students, step by step...Instead, teachers in a
constructionist classroom are called to function as facilitators who coach learners as they blaze their own paths
toward personally meaningful goals.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionism_%28learning_theory%29

Dialectical Materialism - a philosophy of science and nature, based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, and developed largely in Russia and the Soviet Union. It was inspired by dialectic and materialist
philosophical traditions. The main idea of dialectical materialism lies in the concept of the evolution of the
natural world and the emergence of new qualities of being at new stages of evolution. As Z. A. Jordan notes,
"Engels made constant use of the metaphysical insight that the higher level of existence emerges from and has
its roots in the lower; that the higher level constitutes a new order of being with its irreducible laws; and that
this process of evolutionary advance is governed by laws of development which reflect basic properties of
'matter in motion as a whole'."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism

Dualism - In philosophy of mind, dualism is a view about the relationship between mind and matter which
claims that mind and matter are two ontologically separate categories. Mind-body dualism claims that neither
the mind nor matter can be reduced to each other in any way. Western dualist philosophical traditions (as
exemplified by Descartes) equate mind with the conscious self and theorize on consciousness on the basis of
mind/body dualism. In philosophy of science, dualism often refers to the dichotomy between the "subject" (the
observer) and the "object" (the observed).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism

Essentialism - A belief that things have a set of characteristics that make them what they are, and that the task
of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression. It is the view that, for any specific entity (such as
an animal, a group of people, a physical object, a concept), there is a set of attributes which are necessary to its
identity and function.In Western thought the concept is found in the work of Plato and Aristotle. Platonic
idealism is the earliest known theory of how all known things and concepts have an essential reality behind
them (an "Idea" or "Form"), an essence that makes those things and concepts what they are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism

Evolutionary Epistemology (growth of knowledge) - a theory that applies the concepts of biological evolution
to the growth of human knowledge, and argues that units of knowledge themselves, particularly scientific
theories, evolve according to selection. In this case, a theory—like the germ theory of disease—becomes more
or less credible according to changes in the body of knowledge surrounding it. One of the hallmarks of
evolutionary epistemology is the notion that empirical testing does not justify the truth of scientific theories, but
rather that social and methodological processes select those theories with the closest "fit" to a given problem.
The mere fact that a theory has survived the most rigorous empirical tests available does not, in the calculus of
probability, predict its ability to survive future testing. All theories are true only provisionally, regardless of the
degree of empirical testing they have survived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_epistemology

Fallibilism - the philosophical principle that human beings could be wrong about their beliefs, expectations, or
their understanding of the world, and yet still be justified in holding their incorrect beliefs. The recognition that
there are no authoritative sources of knowledge, nor any reliable means of justifying knowledge as true. Some
fallibilists argue that absolute certainty about knowledge is impossible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism

Falsificationism- A scientific philosophy based on the requirement that hypotheses must be falsifiable in order
to be scientific; if a claim is not able to be refuted it is not a scientific claim. Falsifiability or refutability of a
statement, hypothesis, or theory is an inherent possibility to prove it to be false. A statement is called falsifiable
if it is possible to conceive an observation or an argument which proves the statement in question to be false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Falsificationism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Formal Logic - The use and study of valid reasoning. The study of logic features most prominently in the
subjects of philosophy, mathematics, and computer science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic
The Frankfurt School - A school of social theory and philosophy associated in part with the Institute for Social
Research at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Founded during the interwar period, the School consisted of
dissidents who felt at home in none of the existent capitalist, fascist, or communist systems of the time. Many of
these theorists believed that traditional theory could not adequately explain the turbulent and unexpected
development of capitalist societies in the twentieth century. Critical of both capitalism and Soviet socialism,
their writings pointed to the possibility of an alternative path to social development.

Although sometimes only loosely affiliated, Frankfurt School theorists spoke with a common paradigm in mind;
they shared the Marxist Hegelian premises and were preoccupied with similar questions. To fill in the perceived
omissions of classical Marxism, they sought to draw answers from other schools of thought, hence using the
insights of anti-positivist sociology, psychoanalysis, existential philosophy, and other disciplines. The school's
main figures sought to learn from and synthesize the works of such varied thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud,
Weber, Simmel, and Lukács.

Following Marx, they were concerned with the conditions that allow for social change and the establishment of
rational institutions. Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their
attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism, and determinism by returning to Kant's critical
philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis on
dialectic and contradiction as inherent properties of human reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School

Informal logic - An attempt to develop a logic that can assess and analyze the arguments that occur in natural
language (“everyday,” “ordinary language”) discourse.A branch of logic whose task is to develop non-formal
standards, criteria, procedures for the analysis, interpretation, evaluation, criticism and construction of
argumentation. Informal logic is associated with critical thinking and the interdisciplinary inquiry known as
argumentation theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_logic
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-informal/

Logical Positivism - A 20th century philosophical movement holding that all meaningful statements are either
analytic or conclusively verifiable or at least confirmable by observation and experiment and that metaphysical
theories are therefore strictly meaningless —called also logical empiricism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

Marxism - A philosophical worldview and method of societal analysis that focuses on class relations and
societal conflict, that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, and a dialectical view of social
transformation. Marxist methodology uses economic and sociopolitical inquiry and applies that to the critique
and analysis of the development of capitalism and the role of class struggle in systemic economic change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

Memetics - A theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution. Proponents describe
memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. The meme, analogous to a
gene, was conceived as a "unit of culture" (an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour, etc.) which is "hosted" in the
minds of one or more individuals, and which can reproduce itself, thereby jumping from mind to mind. Thus
what would otherwise be regarded as one individual influencing another to adopt a belief is seen as an idea-
replicator reproducing itself in a new host. As with genetics, a meme's success may be due to its contribution to
the effectiveness of its host.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
Nominalism - A metaphysical view in philosophy according to which general or abstract terms and predicates
exist, while universals or abstract objects, which are sometimes thought to correspond to these terms, do not
exist. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universals –
things that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things (e.g., strength, humanity). The other
version specifically denies the existence of abstract objects – objects that do not exist in space and time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism

Objectivism - One of several doctrines holding that all reality is objective and external to the mind and that
knowledge is reliably based on observed objects and events. An emphasis on objects rather than feelings or
thoughts in literature or art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_%28philosophy%29

Philosophy of language - A branch of philosophy concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning,
language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language and reality. For continental
philosophers, however, the philosophy of language tends to be dealt with, not as a separate topic, but as a part of
logic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_language

Philosophy of science - a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of
science. The central questions concern what counts as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the
purpose of science. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology and epistemology, for example, when it
explores the relationship between science and truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

Postmodernism - A broad movement that developed in the mid- to late 20th century across philosophy, the
arts, architecture and criticism which marked a departure from modernism. While encompassing a broad range
of ideas, postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony or distrust toward grand
narratives, ideologies and various tenets of universalism, including objective notions of reason, human nature,
social progress, moral universalism, absolute truth, and objective reality. Instead, it asserts to varying degrees
that claims to knowledge and truth are products of social, historical or political discourses or interpretations, and
are therefore contextual or socially constructed. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by
tendencies to epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, irreverence and self-referentiality.

The term postmodernism has been applied both to the era following modernity and to a host of movements
within that era (mainly in art, music, and literature) that reacted against tendencies in modernism.
Postmodernism includes skeptical critical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history,
linguistics, economics, architecture, fiction, feminist theory, and literary criticism. Postmodernism is often
associated with schools of thought such as deconstruction and post-structuralism, as well as philosophers such
as Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida, Frederic Jameson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism

Relativism - (1) The concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative,
subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration. (2) The doctrine that knowledge,
truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute. (3) The
philosophical position that all points of view are equally valid, and that all truth is relative to the individual.
This means that all moral positions, all religious systems, all art forms, all political movements, etc., are truths
that are relative to the individual. (4) Relativism is sometimes identified (usually by its critics) as the thesis that
all points of view are equally valid. In ethics, this amounts to saying that all moralities are equally good; in
epistemology it implies that all beliefs, or belief systems, are equally true. Critics of relativism typically dismiss
such views as incoherent since they imply the validity even of the view that relativism is false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism
http://www.iep.utm.edu/relativi/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/

Semiotics - The study of meaning-making, the philosophical theory of signs and symbols. This includes the
study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism,
signification, and communication. Semiotics often is divided into three branches: (1) Semantics: relation
between signs and the things to which they refer; their meaning (2) Syntactics: relations among signs in formal
structures, and (3) Pragmatics: relation between signs and sign-using agents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

Subjectivism - The philosophical tenet that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our
experience". In other words, subjectivism is the doctrine that knowledge is merely subjective and that there is
no external or objective truth. The success of this position is historically attributed to Descartes and his
methodic doubt. Subjectivism accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law.
In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on
someone's subjective awareness of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivism

Universal Darwinism - A term that refers to a variety of approaches that extend the theory of Darwinism
beyond its original domain of biological evolution on Earth. Universal Darwinism aims to formulate a
generalized version of the mechanisms of variation, selection and heredity proposed by Charles Darwin, so that
they can apply to explain evolution in a wide variety of other domains, including psychology, economics,
culture, medicine, computer science and physics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Darwinism

Verificationism - The doctrine that a proposition is only cognitively meaningful if it can be definitively and
conclusively determined to be either true or false (i.e. verifiable or falsifiable). It is also know as the
Verifiability Criterion of Meaning or the Verification Principle. See also Logical Positivism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verificationism