Criterion
Criterion
Broadly speaking, any ground, basis, or means of judging anything as to its quality. Since validity, truth, goodness, justice, virtue, and beauty are some of the most fundamental qualities for philosophic enquiry, criteria for these are embodied in almost all philosophies and are either assumed or derived. In logic, consistency is a generally recognized criterion; in epistemology, evidence of the senses, comparison, or reason may be regarded as criteria; in metaphysical speculation have been suggested. as criteria for truth, among others, correspondence, representation, practicability, and coherence; in religion, evidences of faith, revelation or miracle; in ethics, pleasure, desirability, utility, self-determination of the will, duty, conscience, happiness, are among common criteria, while in aesthetics there have been cited interest, satisfaction, enjoyment, utility, harmony. — K.F.L.