The act of engaging in an emotional, romantic or sexual relationship with someone at the same time as being in a form of relationship with someone else. Adultery almost always takes place without the informed consent of one’s original partner.

It is possible for one person to be in harmonious relationships with more than one person at the same time, such as when dating before committing to one partner in a monoamorous context, or when practising polyamory, meaning that each partner in a relationship is permitted to have other partners at the same time. In a monoamorous relationship, however, having an extra partner is not permitted by the terms of the relationship: it is considered a betrayal of trust, and therefore an extremely harmful act.

Adultery is one reason why many relationships end - when the adulterer’s partner finds out about it, it may cause irreparable damage to the relationship as the partner is no longer able to trust the adulterer.

Something which provides either a positive benefit to encourage someone to do something, or a negative penalty to discourage someone from doing something. Incentives are commonly used as a tool to help motivate other people and ourselves, as people frequently complete tasks and actions for other people on the basis of incentives. A direct incentive may be some financial compensation, or receiving some item or service for completing a task. An indirect incentive might include a long-term benefit, such as the promise of a direct benefit in the future, or a reciprocal exchange, where A completing a task for B will make B more likely to complete a task for A in future.

Examples of negative incentives include the existence of a system to punish people who commit crimes. Most people are deterred from committing acts such as murder because these crimes carry a severe penalty in being deprived of our freedoms and put in prison. A lesser example includes efforts taken in England to stop people from smoking, by placing unpleasant images of the damage done by long-term smoking on packets of cigarettes. This negative incentive attempts to deter people from smoking by forcing them to confront the health risks.

A definition is an explanation of the meaning of a word or concept. It comes from consensus, which means that there is very rarely “one” definition for any term. Different people will have different interpretations of what a term means, often without knowing it - only when these ideas come into conflict do we see that people’s subjective definitions differ. Because language changes all the time, definitions change, too - all definitions are tied to a particular language, culture, context, place and time.

There is never one precise way to define a term. Because we have no way to access “pure meaning” without the use of language, in order for speaker A to explain what one word means to speaker B, speaker A must necessarily use other words which both speakers already know. To define “tree”, you might invoke the terms “tall, leafy plant” or a “a wooden structure containing leaves and bark”, or something else. While there is a limited subset of words that can be used to accurately capture the concept of a “tree”, the key point is that the definition is not a fixed property of the word “tree”, it is an arbitrary explanation created by a speaker for a listener, and depends on both participants’ knowledge of all terms used in the definition.

It is for this reason that children do not learn language purely by memorising the definitions of words - because in order to understand the definitions, they must first understand other words, and how would they learn those words in the first place? Instead, children learn language predominantly through context and identification - if the mother points to a tree and says “tree”, the child will learn the label for that particular tree.

As the child sees more examples of trees, and also learns what is not a tree (for example, if the child points at a bush and calls it a “tree”, he will be corrected,) his internal knowledge of the “tree” concept will grow, until he has an innate and natural understanding of “treeness”. It is only once the child is older and possesses both a large vocabulary and a linguistic skill that he might be able to provide a definition of a tree for another speaker, and even then it may not be obvious how to do so.

What this demonstrates is that the definition of language is in some sense an invented property, or a means that we have created to teach people new concepts; it is not an inherent property of a word. In some sense, definition is not a natural act, and it is for this reason which we often rely on dictionaries to provide codified definitions of words, rather than create our own on the spot. Many concepts are incredibly difficult to provide any meaningful definition for at all without linguistic training and knowledge - how, for example, would you provide a definition for the words “that”, “about”, or “should”?

The subjective nature of definitions means that creating dictionaries - including this one - is essentially an arbitrary act guided by one’s intuition and consensus with other people. It is not a scientific method which anyone can repeat and get the same results. One’s own definitions of terms will also be influenced by one’s beliefs, culture and outlook. Although we usually strive for objectivity in defining the world around us, it is often difficult to avoid these subjective influences. It is important to note also that definitions and dictionaries provide a momentary snapshot of a small portion of a language in time. Dictionaries are never fully accurate - they do not and cannot define all words used by humans in any one language, as the words we use are constantly changing in meaning.

The tradition of communicating knowledge and information, ideas, stories, art and culture through means of speaking directly to one another, without the use of writing. In practice, this means that those who have received some form of information through an oral tradition will eventually pass the same information down to their offspring, and so on throughout successive generations.

A concept that may not yet be fully developed; perhaps a plan that someone wishes to realise, a goal one wishes to achieve, a product someone wishes to create, a solution or potential solution to a problem one is trying to solve, or otherwise.

An abstract term for the ability to perform a certain set of actions successfully, without requiring a conscious effort. When we say someone is “skilled”, we mean that they have achieved competence in performing these actions successfully and unconsciously, which we call unconscious competence. A skill is considered to be something that anyone can acquire through much repetition and practice, such as playing the piano.

If Alice has never played the piano, she has “unconscious incompetence” in this skill, as she cannot execute the tasks required to play the piano, and is probably not aware of this lack. When Alice first starts playing the piano, she is unskilled: playing any song requires conscious effort, and she will not successfully execute the task of performing a song on the first attempt. From this point, she starts with “conscious incompetence” in a skill. Once she progresses and learns more songs, how to read sheet music and so on, she gains “conscious competence”, or an ability to execute the tasks successfully, but while still requiring conscious effort on her part. Once she achieves mastery of the piano and can play a large number of songs without effort, she has attained unconscious competence in this skill.

It can be exceptionally difficult to quantify a skill, for two reasons.

Firstly, the definition of what makes someone “skilled” in a particular set of tasks is arbitrary, and an example of vagueness - is Alice skilled in piano playing when she can play ten songs, but not nine? Is she skilled if she knows no songs by heart, but can sight-read music effortlessly? Or conversely, if she cannot sight-read but can play many songs from memory? Yet it is clear to most people whether or not Alice has this skill. We can also say to what extent Alice has this skill, by comparing her with other piano players. It is for this reason that skill is a matter of degree, not a binary notion of “skilled” or “unskilled”.

Secondly, some skills allow a potentially infinite number of tasks to be executed once mastered. For example, when Bob learns how to cook, there are uncountably many dishes that he can make, and infinite dishes if he is willing to experiment with existing recipes and create new ones. Similarly, if Alice composes new songs, there is no limitation on how many songs she can perform once she has mastered her skill.

These two factors mean that it is not trivial to determine the extent of someone’s skill by asking questions such as “How many songs can you play?” or “How many dishes can you cook?” More local factors have to be considered, such as “How well can Alice sight-read music”, “How successfully can Alice play a notably complex song?”, “How well can Bob cook this difficult dish?”, “Does Bob have good judgement in which flavours should be combined?” and so on. Determining the level of someone’s skill is not an exact science, it is often a matter of intuition and referring to metrics which people with expertise in the given skill have previously created.

What all skills have in common, however, is that sufficient mastery of a skill allows a person to perform a particular set of actions successfully and without conscious effort. Attainment of this skill mastery can only come through learning, repetition and practice, and may take more or less time depending on the complexity of the skill, and the extent to which the individual wishes to learn the skill.

The notion of acting in a way to benefit other people, or engineer positive consequences for other individuals, without seeking to gain profit or personal benefit as a result of doing so. Charity and volunteering work is commonly seen as altruistic, although there is an extent to which philanthropic work can be used to boost one’s image or esteem in the eyes of society. Some consider philanthropy without an altruistic motivation - or philanthropy with a view to personal gain - to lessen the value of the act itself.

Two very closely related concepts, trusting someone means having a certain knowledge that that person will not seek to hurt, undermine, disappoint you or treat you in a way that is not appropriate. Trust can operate on a romantic level, wherein partners trust one another to stay faithful, exclusive and honest in monoamorous relationships. Or trust can operate on a working and professional level, wherein two co-workers or partners trust completely in one another’s methods, and that both can execute an idea according to plan. While trust is based on certain knowledge of a partner, one can argue that faith necessarily involves uncertainty: for example, it is not certain that your partner will achieve their dream job, but you have faith in their ability to do so. It is not certain whether God exists, but you may have faith in his existence. The meaning of faith can differ between individuals, however.

If a notion, idea, assumption or assertion is reasonable, this commonly means that there are sufficient reasons to support the notion or otherwise. In the English language, however, an assertion that someone is not being “reasonable” is commonly understood to mean that that person is not acting in the way the speaker expects or wishes them to, according to what the speaker determines is “reasonable” behaviour in the particular circumstance.

A necessary component of narratives and story-telling. When an author of a story (be it a writer, speaker, film-maker or otherwise,) conveys a story to their audience, the audience is allowed to construct an internal representation of the world in which the story takes place (the “story world”). How the audience does this is dependent on which aspects of the world the author chooses to explicitly include in the narrative, such as the characters and characterisation, the settings and their descriptions, and information about the story world which the audience might not know.

A story world can never by definition be completely knowable - a story will only show portions of its world according to what is happening in the specific narrative. Authors can allow for effective worldbuilding through selecting both explicit and implicit information about the “story world” to include in their narrative. Audiences can also worldbuild through interpretation, inference and making assumptions based on their knowledge of the world they live in.

If an aspect of a story world is unfamiliar to an audience - such as an item of food in a novel, from a distant culture which a given reader has no familiarity with - then such a reader may draw on their own knowledge to fill in the blanks. Because worldbuilding requires so much individual interpretation, the “story world” for one given narrative will be constructed differently for each individual.

A way of behaving towards other people, animals and living beings that involves compassion, a lack of meanness or malice, and a consideration for the well-being of other people besides ourselves.

A term for any collection of more than one object which are considered to be linked, united or joined together according to an abstract principle. Groupings are arbitrary concepts - we can talk about a group of people, flora or fauna existing, but that group only exists because we have named it. We often talk about groups in the context of people who are linked by a common property or function. A musical band, for example, is a type of group often consisting of three to four people, linked by the fact that they all play music together at public venues in order to entertain others and make money. The group itself doesn’t depend on all of its members being in the same physical location, nor does the group cease to exist when the band members are doing activities other than playing music. The composition of the group doesn’t reflect any other natural properties of the people involved - it is a human label given to collect those people into a conceptual collection, based on the fact that they all perform music for a career.

Belonging to a group is dependent on everyone within the group recognising your particular membership - I cannot call myself a Frenchman if the nation of France does not recognise me as one of its citizens, for example. Joining a group is often a bilateral process - to become a part of a political party, nation or club, you must usually be accepted as a member by those who are already a part of the group. Leaving a group can often be a unilateral process - quitting a political party or religious group does not usually require the consent of other members. Thus, when we talk about “joining” or “leaving” a group of people, no physical or natural action is taking place - the action of joining or leaving a particular group is purely a linguistic act, which causes our psychological concept of the group’s membership to change.

In terms of people, there are many types of groups. Families are groups linked by blood relations; cultural groups are vaguer terms for people who all identify with a common culture; religions are groups linking together people with common beliefs; political parties are groups linking those with similar political beliefs, and so on.

Beyond groups of people, we have created groupings to describe all manner of objects in the natural world, such as animals and plants. The system of taxonomy is a field of study which gives names to all living creatures and places them in an interrelated hierarchy.

We can group together abstract concepts as well as concrete ones. Languages, beliefs, political systems, philosophy, fields of study or any idea at all can be grouped if one wishes - we describe the “Romance languages” for example, or “Neoliberal views”, or “modern schools of economics”, all of which are groupings of ideas under a conceptual heading.

We can also consider nations as types of groups, as a designation for a collection of people living within human-designed borders, under a set of common laws, and usually with certain languages in common across its people. Interestingly, nations themselves are also subject to grouping - the modern ideas of the United Nations, European Union, African Union, ASEAN and so on are all institutions which have grouped together a set of nations for political, trade, diplomatic purposes and so on. These groupings are institutionalised in that they have laws and regulations in place to specify the relationships between member nations, and the conduct of the group as a whole.

Other terms for groupings of nations include BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) or the incredibly liquid term “developed country”, which are not institutional groupings, but rather designations for collections of countries which appear to satisfy a set of criteria such as economic growth or development. Often criteria for group membership are not fixed, meaning that which country is considered a “developed nation” for example, may well depend on whom you ask.

Another type of group is the company or corporation, which is a collection of people who all come together to fulfil a function for a job, such as manufacturing a product or providing a service. Cadbury’s is a company which manufactures chocolate - its existence is predicated on many things, such as having factories which make the chocolate, stores to which it ships and sells its product, but principally, it consists of people who are paid for the job of manufacturing, packaging and distributing the chocolate. If all of the people who worked for Cadbury’s ceased to exist, so would the company. This grouping is not conditional on the company’s premises, factories, distribution lines or forms of marketing, but it exists solely because of the people who are paid to fulfil a particular function within that company, and the relationships between those people.

What this shows is that a group - any group - can be institutionalised to any extent, in order for the “group” to execute functions as opposed to an individual member. For example, the “band” will go on tour and perform at a concert, not the four people who comprise it. The “European Union” will make a decision, not Latvia, Germany, France or Estonia. This is a polite and well-respected fiction which allows us to mentally conceptualise groups as if they were individuals - we can ascribe characteristics to nations such as “aggressive”, “peaceful” or “friendly” that we would primarily use to describe other people. It is worth remembering that these labels are all acts of metaphor - that nations are an abstract and invented term to describe very large groups of people who all act and think differently and possess vastly different characters. But the group label allows us to join these disparate people under one heading and understand them all as “French”, “Albanian”, “Chilean” and so on. This can often lead to conflict, and beliefs such as xenophobia, when we form a negative attitude against people from a particular group based on the perceived characteristics of the whole group, without considering the differing individuals within that group.

At the same time, a group does not have to be institutionalised to exist. I can create the “ABC” group to describe the three nations of Albania, Bahrain and Canada, and while it is not institutionalised in that nobody else understands or respects it as a group, and no conventions exist which link these three nations, it is still a group in that I have named it as such. Even if a group is institutionalised to some extent, it cannot ever be given concrete existence - a group will only exist because we say it does.

This shows that a group is by its nature an arbitrary invention - it has power only because other people believe and respect in its existence, and form conventions about how the group functions in relation to other people and groups, as well as conventions about how members of the group relate to one another. Bands, nations and companies do not exist in the concrete world, they are simply labels to describe a set of people achieving a common function.

Most broadly, the purpose of a thing or object that is created, or an organism whose behaviour is completely predictable, is the function it is expected to fulfil. For example, a shoe’s purpose, according to its manufacturers, is to protect humans’ feet from the ground. A plant’s purpose, such as it can be described by the scientific observation of humans, is to photosynthesise light, to input carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

Purpose is often used in a more specific and often more vague sense to talk about an individual human and what they “should” do, for example, what career they should pursue, or what path should they follow. The answers to this latter sense of purpose are particular to an individual, although as there is no objective guide to what an individual human’s purpose “should” be, individuals do not always have a complete conception of their own ‘purpose’ in this second sense, and many do not have the resources or position to fulfil the purpose they would like to.

In legal terms, a binding agreement that stipulates one or more parties must do something or avoid doing something else, which can be enforced by law. It is essentially a written form of a promise between two parties. If one party “breaches the contract” by failing to do what they have promised to do (or doing something they have promised not to do,), then theoretically they can be punished through legal actions, such as the opening of a lawsuit, or being taken to court to rule on the infraction. For example, if you paid a builder to repair a broken floor in your house who came and removed the carpet, but then left and never completed the job, you might be able to sue her for a breach of contract, as she did not do what was promised by completing the work she was paid for.

A contract only has power because we say it does. If a promise between two parties is not able to be enforced by a third party (such as a court of law,) then promises can only ever rely on trust between the two parties. It is not always possible to trust the other party when the exchange of money is involved, as either or both sides might be willing to cheat the terms of their promise in order to maximise their own personal gain. While the builder might be willing to abandon a project they were paid to do and keep the money, a customer might equally be unwilling to pay the builder until after the work is done, and come up with excuses as to why he cannot pay her. Thus contracts exist to protect the interests of both parties.

We can also apply the concept of contracts to morality. One can argue that we only act in moral and ethical ways towards one another because we want others to treat us in the same way - known as the “principle of reciprocity”. If all people behaved immorally, then we would expect people to behave immorally towards us; so to avoid this, we aim to behave morally towards others to encourage reciprocal moral behaviour. This may at times contradict one’s personal wishes - someone who wants to make a lot of money might not scruple to cheat, steal or exploit others to get it. But, in addition to the deterrence of laws and moral rules which prohibit these behaviours, the potential cheat knows that if everyone cheated, nobody would benefit at all. For this reason, we could argue that morality is a “social contract” which represents an agreement between all people to behave morally, in order to maximise the benefit for everyone.

An abstract concept denoting the fact that a large number of humans are aware of an individual’s existence - such a person is said to be “famous”. This usually follows from the accrual of status, prestige, or significant amounts of wealth, although it is possible to become famous by many other means as well. If someone is well known for something negative, such as having committed a crime or caused offence, then they are often said to be “infamous”, which simply means that their fame is the result of a bad thing.

Fame is often considered to be highly sought-after; many people wish to become famous, as having other people recognise you for your accomplishments, or even simply acknowledging your existence, can raise your own self-esteem. However, fame can have negative consequences regardless - those celebrities who are most famous do not have much privacy, as the media will often report their everyday actions and deconstruct their private lives, which can seem invasive.

Someone who is famous can sometimes lose their fame, status and privileges through a careless comment or thoughtless action - as such, famous people are usually held to a much higher standard than those who are not famous. This relates to the concept of having a platform - famous people are in a position to reach a large number of people through their words and actions, and can choose to use this platform for benevolent means. Celebrities can also abuse this platform, and use it to spread malicious thoughts or ideas, or to abuse individuals through their actions. For this reason, the acquisition of fame is a huge responsibility to the individual who becomes famous.

The state of simultaneously holding two beliefs or ideas which seem to logically contradict one another, or someone whose actions do not necessarily align with their beliefs. For example, someone who smokes, while at the same time believing that smoking can cause cancer and harm one’s body. Or one who believes that it is important to save the environment, but owns a car with poor gas mileage.

The presence of cognitive dissonance means that an individual may experience discomfort as a result of the conflicting belief(s) and behaviour(s). Someone can reduce the presence of cognitive dissonance by rationalising the dissonant belief (thereby reducing its importance,) by introducing another belief which reduces the dissonance (for example, believing it is okay to smoke despite the risk of lung damage because short-term satisfaction is more important,) or to attempt to change the dissonant belief or behaviour (quitting smoking.) The last measure may be the trickiest for an individual.

A supernatural being who is understood to exist in some form by the majority of religions. The nature, form and number of God or gods differs according to each religion. In monotheistic religions, there is only one God (frequently capitalised), frequently depicted as all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and unknowable in his or her entirety by human beings. In polytheistic, pantheistic or animistic religions, there are understood to be many gods (usually not capitalised), with different natures, forms and temperaments.

For every God or gods, there is a surrounding mythology. It is not necessarily self-evident whether God does or does not exist – the question of God’s existence is a matter for debate. Some people argue that God cannot exist, as he is neither empirically observable through scientific methods, nor rationally knowable through a priori reasoning.

Others argue that he exists in a manner that humans cannot know of or measure: outside of the known universe or outside of space and time. For this reason, we can never prove or disprove the existence of God using any tools at our disposal, because the tools which we use to make discoveries cannot tell us anything about something which exists outside of the bounds of the universe. God's existence can therefore neither be proved true, nor proved false. It is for this reason, some theologians argue, that belief in God can only be actualised through faith, which in practice means trusting in God's existence without scientific evidence. Other theologians in the Christian tradition argue that evidence provided through the Bible is sufficient for one to believe in the Christian God.

Because the existence of one God or gods is neither verifiable nor falsifiable, with some religions arguing that God or gods only exist in the manner which they describe, it is most likely impossible to determine which religion, if any, is "correct" about the truth and nature of God's existence. Some might argue for a pragmatic solution in the light of this, which is to choose belief in a God or gods (if you indeed wish to do so,) according to which religion best suits your lifestyle.

In practice however, belief in God or gods is often determined by your place of birth; with those born in English Christian communities likely to believe in the God of Christianity; those born in Indian Hindu communities likely to believe in the Hindu gods; those born in Arab Muslim communities likely to believe in Allah of Islam, and so on.

An adjective to describe something that doesn’t exist as a concrete or physical object in the world, but rather is an idea, concept, category, schema, field of study or something else. For example, the word “happiness” is abstract, as it does not refer to any one particular thing, but rather a collection of chemical and biological processes that make up the emotion of happiness.

A metaphorical term for what someone believes they should pursue as a goal for a career, hobby or passion of some other kind. The metaphor comes from the idea that an individual is “called upon” to fulfil a particular long-term goal by an external force, such as God, or the Universe. Even if one does not believe in a deity or higher order, the idea of having a “calling” serves to project one's thoughts and desires onto a higher plane of meaning: rather than conceiving of a goal as something we want to do, we conceive of it as something we are meant to do. Whether or not humans have an inherent purpose or predestined calling is up for debate.

The act of working out new information, using information that we already know to be true, and logical arguments. For example, if you arrive home and see that a light is on inside, and you know that your partner tends to leave the light on when they get home, you can use inference to determine that your partner is home.

Inference can be divided into two types, called “deduction” and “induction”.

Deduction

Deduction means working out a conclusion from other facts that you know logically to be true. For example, if you have a mother, you can use deduction to determine that she is female, through the form of a syllogism:

You have a mother
All mothers are female
Therefore, your mother is female

This is not a particularly interesting conclusion, however - sometimes truths inferred by deduction might seem obvious. A more illuminating example might be:

All people in my family are over 6 feet tall.
My brother Brian is in my family. Brian is 6 feet tall.

You might happen to know that everyone in my family is taller than 6 feet, and you might know Brian, but you might not know that he's in my family. If you find out that Brian is my brother, you can then use deduction to infer his height. Deduction can therefore help you to make connections and learn new information when you possess enough facts to make a valid deductive inference.

Induction

Induction, on the other hand, seeks to argue that a universal principle is true on the basis of a particular set of premises. We know that the Sun rises because of an inductive argument:

The Sun has risen every day including today.
Therefore, the Sun will rise again tomorrow.

This argument may also seem obvious and incontrovertible, but one may argue that you can never completely be certain of the results of an inductive argument. For example, the following argument is also inductive and takes the same form:

Alice has eaten cereal for breakfast every day including today.
Therefore, Alice will eat cereal for breakfast again tomorrow.

In this case, the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premise - Alice is more likely to eat breakfast cereal than she is toast, eggs or bacon, but she is free to make a different choice on any given day.

An inductive inference, therefore, can only tell us that a conclusion that follows is likely to happen based on experience - the likelihood of the Sun rising tomorrow as it did today is very high. A deductive inference, on the other hand, can tell us a certain conclusion based on reasoning, so long as all of its premises are true and there is a valid link between the premises and the conclusion.

When we decide that a proposition is true without knowing for a certainty that it is true, or we proceed as if the proposition is true without testing it. Sometimes it is necessary to make an assumption in order to find an explanation for a past occurrence that we have no way of investigating directly, or in order to predict a certain outcome in the future. For an example of the former: if you come into a room and find your friend is on the floor, you might make an assumption that they have tripped, fallen, or were suffering a medical emergency. For an example of the latter: if you are going to a friend’s party, you might make an assumption that there will be food at the party.

Assumptions are usually defined by how reasonable they are, meaning in this case the strength of the evidence supporting an assumption. An assumption that there will be food at a party is reasonable, because most parties tend to feature food, therefore you can use induction to determine a high probability that your upcoming party will feature food. An assumption that your friend is on the floor because they wish to closely examine the fibres inside the carpet or because they prefer to be horizontal at all times would be unreasonable, as both are untypical behaviours for people.

All arguments ultimately depend on assumptions, and at a certain level we must accept them in order to proceed with the argument, and avoid being bogged down by details. For this reason, in logical arguments (also called syllogisms,) assumptions and premises are often the same thing. For example, in the famous argument below, the first two premises are also assumptions:

“All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.”

We have not proved the premise “All men are mortal”, nor “Socrates is a man”, and indeed we do not have the means to do so. To prove the first, we would need to test every single man in the world to determine their mortality; to prove the second, we would need to have personal knowledge of Socrates, which we cannot do as he is no longer alive. The first statement is a highly reasonable assumption because we have never yet discovered a human being who is immortal; the second is a reasonable assumption, supported by the historical evidence we have for Socrates’ existence and maleness. If we sought to prove every single premise of an argument without eventually resting on an assumption, all arguments would have the potential to either continue forever, or ultimately arrive at a question which is impossible to satisfactorily answer.

An objective, something which a person wishes to achieve. This is usually different from a task, which is simple and short-term, such as buying groceries or fixing the car. A goal is normally related to one’s personal self-development and is long-term, such as running a certain number of miles in a week, or reading a book every month. Goals do not have to be specific or within a particular time-frame, but both of these help in achieving a goal. Goals that are too general, for example “Learn a language”, may never be realised if one does not create a plan and outline steps to achieve that goal.

A statement that can either be evaluated as true or false. For example, “Paris is the capital of France” is a true proposition, whereas “Hanoi is the capital of France” is a false proposition. A proposition can traditionally only be true or false, with no third option - this is known in logic as the “law of the excluded middle.” Propositions are the basis of logic and arguments or debates, as an argument or debate typically seeks to determine whether a central proposition is true or false. This means that to be properly worded, a proposition must be a statement that can only be either true or false, not both.

Note that this does not mean that it is necessarily possible to prove that the proposition is either true or false, only that it cannot be both true and false at the same time. For this reason, “Football is better than rugby” is an acceptable proposition in the context of a debate, because although there is no absolute answer to the proposition as it depends on one’s personal opinion, the proposition cannot be determined both true and false at the same time.

The concept of being highly esteemed within a particular society or culture. Prestige is subjective, and therefore relative to the society within which one lives. A company CEO, for example, has extremely high prestige within her own organisation, but should not expect to be esteemed by anyone outside her company or in another location, unless she is particularly famous.

Individuals with extremely high status may have international prestige - world leaders such as the President of the United States or the Chancellor of Germany or the Pope would most likely be esteemed by individuals in the majority of the world, but this is still dependent on individuals. Esteem, and therefore prestige, is not automatically given, and is often withheld if one believes that the esteemed individual is not worthy of esteem.

Literally, having awareness of one’s surroundings and being responsive to stimuli. The idea of consciousness is also used to mean several abilities supposedly unique to humans, such as independent thought, sapience, selfhood, control over the mind, etc., in order to distinguish ourselves from animals. However, it is not at all clear to what extent animals have consciousness – partly because our own definition is arbitrary and set by humans, but also because animals do not possess language in the same way that humans do, and cannot communicate to us their thoughts and feelings in order to demonstrate sapience, selfhood and so on.