Empathy: The capacity to appreciate the states of mind of others by imagining oneself in their place.
Empiricism: The philosophical view that all knowledge is based on sense experience.
Epistemology: The philosophical study of the nature of knowledge.
Ethics: The philosophical study of the basis of right and wrong.
Evidence: Information gathered by careful observation, especially through scientific experiments.
Evidence-based philosophy: Philosophical investigation tied to the observational, experimental, and theoretical results of science rather than to faith or a priori reasoning.
Explanation: Specification of how a state or process results from an underlying causal mechanism.
Faith: A belief in, trust in, and devotion to gods, leaders, or texts, independent of evidence.
FMRI: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. A brain-scanning technique that uses the flow of blood in the brain to measure activity in brain areas.
Free will: The ability to make choices that are uncaused by physical processes.
Functionalism: The philosophical view that mental states are defined by their functional (input-output) relations to each other, not by any particular kind of physical realization.
Goal: Emotionally valued neural representation of imagined states of the world and self.
Happiness: Emotion characterized by positive experience with intensity ranging from contentment to intense joy.
Hebbian learning: Process in neural networks that strengthens the association between two neurons that are simultaneously active.
Hippocampus: Brain region involved in the acquisition of memories.
Hope: Brain process that produces a positive feeling about future goal satisfaction.
Hypothesis: A conjecture about what factors might explain why something happens.
Idealism: The philosophical view that reality is inherently mental.
Identity theory: The hypothesis that mental states and processes are states and processes of the brain.
Inference to the best explanation: The acceptance of a hypothesis on the grounds that it provides a better explanation of the available evidence than do alternative hypotheses.
Inference to the best plan: Decision making by choosing an action on the grounds that it is part of the best means for accomplishing goals.
Intuition: Apparently immediate conscious judgment arising from unconscious brain processes.
Materialism: The metaphysical view that nothing exists except matter and energy.
Mechanism: A system of connected parts whose interactions produce regular changes.
Metaphysics: The philosophical study of the fundamental nature of what exists.
Mirror neurons: Neurons that fire both when an animal acts and when it perceives the same action in another animal.
Motivated inference: The tendency to use memory and evidence selectively in order to arrive at beliefs that facilitate our goals.
Multimodal representation: Brain structure that may involve different kinds of sensory and emotional as well as verbal information.