- Aquinas
- Thomas Aquinas was a medieval Italian priest and philosopher (1225-1274) who became one of the most influential thinkers in Western history. He attempted to show that Christian faith and human reason are compatible, arguing that we can use logic and observation to understand God and the natural world. His ideas deeply shaped Catholic theology and continue to influence how religious and secular institutions think about ethics, knowledge, and the relationship between science and belief.
- Perfection-transfer principle(the main principle being analyzed in this statement)
- The idea that when something causes another thing to exist, it must pass along all of its good qualities or 'perfections' to what it creates.
- Scholastic(describes the philosophical tradition being discussed)
- A style of philosophy developed in medieval Europe that tried to combine Christian theology with the logical methods of ancient Greek philosophers.
- Univocal relationship(describes how the perfection-transfer principle assumes causes and effects are related)
- A connection between two things where a word means exactly the same thing in both cases—like how 'dog' means the same thing whether you're talking about a poodle or a golden retriever.
- analogical predication(Aquinas's theory for how positive terms like 'good' can be truly applied to God despite divine transcendence.)
- A mode of predication in which a term applied to God has a sense that is neither univocal with nor purely equivocal to its creaturely use; instead, the creaturely property preexists in God in a higher mode.
- cause and effect(Hume's three defining rules from Treatise of Human Nature 1.3.15.3–5)
- A relation requiring: contiguity in space and time, temporal priority of the cause over the effect, and constant union between cause and effect
- entailment(Conceptualist framework)
- Understood in terms of truth at a world
- knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.)
- Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.