AQA Philosophy revision checklist

AQA Philosophy

This revision checklist contains everything you could be tested on in the specification. Filling it out in your own words will provide everything you need for the 3, 5 and 12 mark questions and also a lot of what you need for the 25 mark essay questions.

Epistemology

What is knowledge?

  • The distinction between acquaintance knowledge, ability knowledge and propositional knowledge.
  • The nature of definition (including Linda Zagzebski).
  • How propositional knowledge may be analysed/defined

The tripartite view

  • The tripartite view
  • The issue that the conditions are not individually necessary: knowledge without justification
  • The issue that the conditions are not individually necessary: knowledge without truth
  • The issue that the conditions are not individually necessary: knowledge without belief
  • The issue that the conditions are not sufficient – Gettier’s original two counter examples
  • Infallibilism
  • No false lemmas
  • Reliabilism
  • Virtue epistemology

Perception as a source of knowledge 

Direct realism

  • Direct realism

Issues:

  • The argument from illusion
  • Response to the argument from illusion
  • The argument from perceptual variation
  • Response to the argument from perceptual variation
  • The argument from hallucination
  • Response to the argument from hallucination
  • The time-lag argument
  • Response to the time-lag argument

Indirect realism

  • Indirect realism
  • Locke’s primary/secondary quality distinction

Issues:

  • The issue that indirect realism leads to scepticism about the existence of mind-independent objects
  • Locke’s argument from the involuntary nature of our experience
  • The argument from the coherence of various kinds of experience (Locke & Cockburn)
  • Russell’s ‘best hypothesis’ response
  • The argument from Berkeley that we cannot know the nature of mind-independent objects because mind-dependent ideas cannot be like mind-independent objects

Berkeley’s Idealism

  • Berkeley’s Idealism
  • Argument for idealism: Berkeley’s attack on the primary/secondary quality distinction
  • Argument for idealism: Berkeley’s ‘Master’ argument

Issues:

  • The issue for Idealism of the argument from illusion
  • Response to the issue of illusion
  • The issue for Idealism of the argument from hallucination
  • Response to the issue of hallucination
  • The issue that idealism leads to solipsism
  • Response to the issue of solipsism
  • The issue for Idealism of problems with the role played by God in Berkeley’s Idealism, including regarding our ideas existing within God’s mind given that God cannot feel pain or have sensations.
  • Response to the issue of problems with the role played by God

Reason as a source of knowledge

Innatism

  • Plato’s innatism, including the ‘slave boy’ argument.
  • Empiricist response to Plato’s innatism
  • Locke’s arguments against innatism
  • Leibniz’ argument for innatism based on necessary truths (including as an issue/counter for Locke’s arguments)
  • Empiricist response to Leibniz
  • The mind as a ‘tabula rasa’ – impressions & simple/complex ideas
  • An issue with the empiricist ‘tabula rasa’ argument

The intuition and deduction thesis 

  • The meaning of & distinction between ‘intuition’ and ‘deduction’
  • Descartes’ notion of ‘clear and distinct ideas’
  • Descartes’ cogito as an a priori intuition
  • Empiricist response to Descartes’ cogito
  • An issue with the empiricist response to Descartes’ cogito
  • Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God as an a priori deduction
  • Empiricist response to Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God (inc. Hume’s fork)
  • An issue with the empiricist response to Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God
  • Descartes’ proof of the external world as an a priori deduction
  • Empiricist response to Descartes’ proof of the external world (inc. Hume’s fork)
  • An issue with the empiricist response to Descartes’ proof of the external world

The limits of knowledge

  • Particular nature of philosophical scepticism and the distinction between philosophical scepticism and normal incredulity
  • The role/function of philosophical scepticism within epistemology
  • The distinction between local and global scepticism and the (possible) global application of philosophical scepticism.
  • Descartes’ sceptical arguments (three ‘waves of doubt’)
  • Descartes’ own response to scepticism (intuition & deduction thesis)
  • Locke’s empiricist response to scepticism
  • Berkeley’s empiricist response to scepticism
  • Russell’s empiricist response to scepticism
  • Reliabilism as a response to scepticism

Moral Philosophy

Utilitarianism 

  • Outline of Utilitarianism
  • What is meant by ‘utility’ and ‘maximising utility’
  • Bentham’s quantitative hedonistic utilitarianism
  • Bentham’s utility calculus
  • Mill’s qualitative hedonistic utilitarianism (higher/lower pleasures)
  • Mill’s ‘proof’ of the greatest happiness principle
  • Non-hedonistic utilitarianism (inc. preference utilitarianism)
  • Act utilitarianism
  • Rule utilitarianism
  • The meaning of ‘good, bad, right and wrong’ within utilitarianism

Issues:

  • Whether pleasure is the only good (Nozick’s experience machine)
  • Fairness and individual liberty/rights (inc. ‘tyranny of the majority’)
  • Problems with calculation (inc. which beings to include)
  • Issues around partiality
  • Whether utilitarianism ignores both the moral integrity and the intentions of the individual

Kantian deontological ethics

  • Outline of Kantian deontological ethics
  • Kant on the ‘good will’
  • The distinction between acting in accordance with duty and acting out of duty
  • The distinction between hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives
  • The first formulation of the categorical imperative (inc. contradiction in conception vs in will)
  • The second formulation of the categorical imperative

issues: 

  • Clashing duties
  • Not all universalisable maxims are distinctly moral; not all non-universalisable maxims are immoral
  • The view that consequences determine an action’s moral value
  • Kant ignores the value of certain motives, e.g. love, friendship & kindness
  • Morality is a system of hypothetical, rather than categorical, imperatives (Philippa Foot)

Aristotelian virtue ethics

  • Outline of Aristotelian virtue ethics
  • ‘The good’ for human beings: Eudaimonia as the ‘final end’
  • The relationship between Eudaimonia and pleasure.
  • The function argument
  • The relationship between virtues and function
  • Aristotle’s account of virtues and vices: virtues as character traits/dispositions
  • Aristotle’s account of virtues and vices: the role of education/habituation in the development of a moral character
  • Aristotle’s account of virtues and vices: the skill analogy
  • Aristotle’s account of virtues and vices: the importance of feelings
  • Aristotle’s account of virtues and vices: the doctrine of the mean and its application to particular virtues
  • Moral responsibility: voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary actions
  • The relationship between virtues, actions and reasons and the role of practical reasoning/practical wisdom.

issues:

  • Whether aristotelian virtue ethics can give sufficiently clear guidance about how to act
  • Clashing/competing virtues
  • The possibility of circularity involved in defining virtuous acts and virtuous persons in terms of each other
  • Whether a trait must contribute to Eudaimonia in order to be a virtue; the relationship between the good for the individual and moral good

Applied ethics

  • Application of Utilitarianism to the issue of stealing
  • Application of Utilitarianism to the issue of simulated killing
  • Application of Utilitarianism to the issue of eating animals
  • Application of Utilitarianism to the issue of telling lies
  • Application of Kantian deontology to the issue of stealing
  • Application of Kantian deontology to the issue of simulated killing
  • Application of Kantian deontology to the issue of eating animals
  • Application of Kantian deontology to the issue of telling lies
  • Application of Aristotelian virtue ethics to the issue of stealing
  • Application of Aristotelian virtue ethics to the issue of simulated killing
  • Application of Aristotelian virtue ethics to the issue of eating animals
  • Application of Aristotelian virtue ethics to the issue of telling lies
  • Application of Meta-ethical theories to the issue of stealing
  • Application of Meta-ethical theories to the issue of simulated killing
  • Application of Meta-ethical theories to the issue of eating animals
  • Application of Meta-ethical theories to the issue of telling lies

Meta-ethics

Moral realism

  • Bentham’s moral naturalism (inc. reason as the origin of moral principles)
  • Virtue ethics as a form of moral naturalism 
  • Moore’s Intuitionism (non-naturalism) (inc. reason as the origin of moral principles)
  • Moore’s ‘open question argument’
  • Moore’s Naturalistic Fallacy

Issues:

  • Hume’s fork 
  • Ayer’s verification principle
  • Hume’s motivation argument that moral judgements are not beliefs
  • Hume’s is-ought gap
  • Mackie’s argument from relativity
  • Mackie’s arguments from queerness

Moral anti-realism

  • Error theory (inc. society as the source of moral principles)
  • Emotivism (inc. emotions as the source of moral principles)
  • Prescriptivism (inc. attitudes as the source of moral principles)

Issues:

  • Whether anti-realism can account for how we use moral language (reasoning, disagreeing, etc)
  • The problem of accounting for moral progress
  • Whether anti-realism becomes moral nihilism

Metaphysics of God

The concept and nature of God

  • God as omniscient
  • God as omnipotent
  • God as supremely good (omnibenevolent)
  • God as timeless (eternal)
  • God as within time (everlasting)
  • The paradox of the stone
  • The Euthyphro dilemma
  • The issue of whether omniscience is compatible with free will

Ontological arguments

  • St Anselm’s ontological argument
  • Descartes’ ontological argument
  • Malcolm’s ontological argument

Issues:

  • Gaunilo’s ‘perfect island’ objection
  • Empiricist objections to a priori arguments for existence
  • Kant’s objection based on existence not being a predicate

Teleological/design arguments

  • The design argument from analogy (as presented by Hume)
  • William Paley’s design argument from spatial order/purpose
  • Swinburne’s design argument from temporal order/regularity

Issues:

  • Hume’s objections to the design argument from analogy
  • The problem of spatial disorder (as posed by Hume and Paley
  • Hume’s unique case criticism
  • Whether God is the best or only explanation

Cosmological arguments

  • The Kalam argument (temporal causation)
  • Aquinas’ 1st way (motion)
  • Aquinas’ 2nd way (atemporal causation)
  • Aquinas’ 3rd way (contingency)
  • Descartes’ cosmological argument
  • Leibniz’ principle of sufficient reason (contingency)

Issues:

  • The possibility of an infinite series
  • Hume’s objection to the causal principle
  • The fallacy of composition
  • The impossibility of a necessary being

The problem of evil

  • The nature of moral evil and natural evil
  • The logical problem of evil
  • The evidential problem of evil
  • The free will defence (Plantinga)
  • Issue with the free will defence
  • Soul-making (Hick)
  • Issue with soul-making

Religious language

  • The distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism about religious language
  • Empiricist/logical positive challenges to metaphysical language: the verification principle
  • Hick’s eschatological verification response to Ayer
  • An issue with Hick’s response
  • The university debate: Flew on falsificationism (Wisdom’s Gardener)
  • An issue with Flew’s approach
  • Mitchell’s response to Flew (the Partisan)
  • An issue with Mitchell’s response
  • Hare’s response to Flew (bliks and lunatic)
  • An issue with Hare’s response

Metaphysics of Mind

What do we mean by ‘mind’?

  • Phenomenal properties
  • The view that the term ‘qualia’ describes phenomenal properties
  • Intentional properties

Dualist theories

Substance dualism

  • Descartes’ indivisibility argument
  • The response to the indivisibility argument that the mental is divisible in some sense
  • The response to the indivisibility argument that not everything thought of as physical is divisible
  • Descartes’ conceivability argument 
  • The response to the conceivability argument that mind without body is not conceivable
  • The response to the conceivability argument that what is conceivable may not be metaphysically possible
  • The response to the conceivability argument that what is metaphysically possible tells us nothing about the actual world

Property dualism

  • Property dualism

Chalmers’ ‘zombies’ argument

  • Chalmers’ ‘philosophical zombies’ argument for property dualism

Issues:

  • A ‘philosophical zombie/a zombie world is not conceivable
  • What is conceivable may not be metaphysically possible
  • What is metaphysically possible tells us nothing about the actual world

Jackson’s ‘knowledge’ argument

  • The ‘knowledge/Mary’ argument for property dualism

Issues:

  • Mary gains new ability knowledge, not propositional knowledge
  • Mary gains new acquaintance knowledge, not propositional knowledge
  • The ‘New knowledge/Old fact response’

Issues facing dualism

  • The problem of other minds
  • The argument from analogy response
  • The existence of other minds is the best hypothesis response
  • Dualism makes a ‘category mistake’ (Ryle)

Issues facing interactionist dualism:

  • The conceptual interaction problem (as articulated by Elizabeth, Princess of Bohemia).
  • The empirical interaction problem
  • Epiphenomenalism

Issues facing epiphenomenalist dualism:

  • The challenge posed by introspective self-knowledge
  • The challenge posed by the phenomenology of our mental life
  • The challenge posed by natural selection/evolution

Physicalist theories

  • Physicalism

Philosophical behaviourism

  • Hard behaviourism (inc. Hempel)
  • Soft behaviourism (inc Ryle)

Issues: 

  • dualist arguments applied to philosophical behaviourism
  • The distinctness of mental states from behaviour (inc. ‘Super-Spartans’ and perfect actors)
  • Issues defining mental states due to multiple realisability
  • Issues defining mental states due to circularity
  • The asymmetry between self-knowledge and knowledge of other people’s mental states

Mind-brain type identity theory

  • Mind-brain type identity theory

Issues:

  • dualist arguments applied to mind-brain type identity theory
  • issues with providing the type identities – the multiple realisability issue

Eliminative materialism

  • Eliminative materialism

Issues:

  • our certainty about the existence of our mental states takes priority over other considerations
  • Folk-psychology has good predictive and explanatory power (and so is the best hypothesis)
  • The articulation of eliminative materialism as a theory is self-refuting

Functionalism

  • Functionalism

Issues:

  • The possibility of a functional duplicate with different qualia (inverted qualia)
  • The possibility of a functional duplicate with no mentality/qualia (Block’s ‘Chinese mind’ thought experiment)
  • The ‘knowledge/Mary’ argument applied to functional facts