Philosophy A Level

Philosophy A Level

This course has been designed to enable students to gain a thorough grounding in key philosophical concepts, themes, texts and techniques. Students will develop a range of transferable skills which can be applied far beyond the study of Philosophy.

At AS level, the course concentrates on a number of key philosophical themes, intended to provide students with a broad introduction to Philosophy.

At A2, students will specialise further, selecting two themes to study in depth and focusing on philosophical problems through the study of a key text.

This course allows you to study at your own pace, and is suitable to be studied by all students irrespective of age, creed, religion or gender.

Read on to find out more about our A Level Philosophy distance learning course and how you can learn with our amazing materials and online support.

Course Content

An outline of what is offered in our A Level Philosophy course:

AS Level
PHIL1
Epistemology: Reason and Experience

Topics include:

• Mind as a tabula rasa
• The limits of a posteriori knowledge
• Ideas without experience
• The extent of a priori knowledge
• Conceptual schemes

In this unit you will learn…

The strengths and weaknesses of empiricism, the view that all our ideas derive from experience

How much knowledge about the world can be grounded in or justified through experience

The strengths and weaknesses of rationalism, the theory that all significant knowledge can be derived from reason alone.

The doctrine of innate ideas and its philosophical significance.

The view that experience is only intelligible as it is, because it presents sensation through a particular conceptual scheme or framework.

The difference between deductive and inductive arguments, necessary and contingent truths, and analytic and synthetic truths.

Mind and Metaphysics: Persons

Topics include:

• Persons introduced
• The concept “person”
• The limits of personhoo
• Personal identity
• Personal survival

In this unit you will learn…

The characteristics associated with personhood and the distinction between humans and persons

The nature of the concept “person” and degrees of personhood; potential persons, ex-persons and diminished persons

The limits of personhood; whether non human animals or complex machines possess any of the characteristics of persons, and to what extent

Whether physical or psychological continuity are necessary or sufficient conditions for personal identity through time

An alternative way of talking about a person’s existence through time; personal survival, and the strengths and weaknesses of this approach

Politics and Religion: why should I be governed?

Topics include:

• The state of nature
• From state of nature to governmental state
• Political obligation and consent
• Power, legitimacy and dissent
• Civil disobedience

In this unit you will learn…

Two different views on what mankind’s condition would be like in a ‘state of nature’, in the absence of a central government

Why it might be rational to submit to a central authority; the distinction between individual and collective rationality, and between positive and negative liberty

The view that political obligation comes from consent, and the concepts of hypothetical and tacit consent

The concepts of power, authority and legitimacy, and whether popular approval is a requirement for a legitimate state

Whether a guaranteed right to dissent is necessary for us to be politically obligated

The aims and requirements of civil disobedience and direct action, and under what circumstances they are justified

PHIL2

Epistemology: Knowledge of the External World

Topics include:

• Perception and the external world
• Representative realism
• Introducing idealism
• Should we be idealists?
• Realism revisited

In this unit you will learn…

The common sense view of how the world is experienced, and sceptical arguments against it

The distinction between primary and secondary qualities

The strengths and weaknesses of the secondary quality thesis and sense data theory

The strength and weaknesses of idealism, the theory that there is no world outside our perception of it

A philosophical reworking of the common sense view, and whether it can overcome the sceptic

Mind and Metaphysics: Free Will and Determinism

• Introducing determinism
• Humans and determinism
• What is free will?
• Could free will and determinism be compatible?
• Implications of determinism

In this unit you will learn…

Arguments in favour of the view that the world is determined by existing sets of conditions and the laws of nature.

How determinism fits with human action, the view that actions are pre-determined by environment and inheritance, and the view that free will is an illusion

The strengths and weaknesses of the view that free will requires indeterminism, and that human consciousness exists outside the natural causal chain

The strengths and weaknesses of the view that free will is compatible with determinism through causally determined voluntary actions

The moral implications of determinism, whether responsibility, praise and blame could make sense in a deterministic world, libertarian and compatibility responses

The difference between reasons and causes; action and bodily movement; actions and events

Politics and Religion: God and the World

Topics include:

• Arguments for design
• Arguments from design
• The problem of evil
• Responses to the problem
• The religious point of view

In this unit you will learn…

The view that the natural world shows evidence of intelligent design in its apparent order and purpose

Arguments in favour of the view that the apparent design of the natural world implies an omnipotent designer; arguments from analogy, probability, cause and effect, and inference to the best explanation

The problem of evil; the view that the presence of evil in the world is inconsistent with the idea of an all powerful, benevolent creator; the distinction between moral and natural evil

Several attempts to deal with the problem of evil, on the basis of; free will, the afterlife, the best of all possible worlds

The idea that the world can accommodate multiple different perspectives, and the religious point of view is just one of them

Whether the religious ‘hypothesis’ can be properly described as such; scientific belief distinguished from religious belief

PHIL 3
Key Themes in Philosophy: Political Philosophy

• Human nature
• Competing views of the state
• What is liberty?
• Why is liberty valuable?
• What are rights?
• Problems of rights
• What is justice?
• Justice and redistribution
• Nation states

In this unit you will learn…

What a number of different philosophers think about human nature, and the implications of these views on political philosophy

Several different accounts of what the state is for, and arguments for dissolution of the state as we know it

How freedom can be defined both positively and negatively, and how it can be interpreted by competing political ideologies

What makes freedom valuable, ways in which it might be promoted and defended, and the relationship between liberty and the law

How we can be said to have rights, the notions of natural and positive rights, and how human rights can be grounded

Problems with the extent and application of rights, ways in which conflicts between rights and social utility might be resolved, and the relationship between rights, liberty, morality and the law

What constitutes various types of justice, including social, economic and distributive justice

Different accounts of the just distribution of goods in a society, in terms of desert, need and equality, how redistribution might be justified, and the relationship between distributive justice, liberty and rights

How distribution concepts might be applied to nation states, and the relationships between states, and whether distributive justice applies on a global scale

How liberty relates to nationalism and national sentiment, and whether cross-border movement is just

Whether rights apply to groups and nations as a whole, for example, the right to self determination

Key Themes in Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind

• Introducing dualism
• Problems with dualism
• Dualist solutions, and further problems
• Reductive accounts of mind
• Identity theory
• Functionalism
• Can consciousness be eliminated
• Hard problems of consciousness
• Non-reductive materialism
• Dualism returns

In this unit you will learn…

Arguments for and against the Cartesian account of mind and body; substance dualism

The philosophical problems that this theory gives rise to; the problem of other minds and the problem of mind-body interaction

Proposed solutions to these problems, and Wittgenstein’s critique of the Cartesian approach

Four different attempts to reduce consciousness to the physical world; the view that mental statements can be reduced to statements about behaviour; the view that the mind can be ontologically reduced to physical states of the brain; attempts to account for the mind in terms of its functions; attempts to eliminate the mind and ‘folk psychology’ from the intellectual discourse

General arguments in favour of reductionism, including dissolution of the other minds and mind-body problems, and the non-mysteriousness of the mental

General arguments against reductionism, appealing to qualia and intentionality

The ‘hard problem of consciousness’, the possibility of philosophical zombie and the intelligence of artificial intelligence

Non-reductive forms of materialism and John Searle’s biological naturalism

The strengths and weaknesses of property dualism and the difficulty of accounting for psycho-physical causation

PHIL4

• Introducing the Meditations
• The method of doubt and its purpose
• Inducing doubt
• The Cogito
• Clear and distinct ideas
• The first proof of God
• The Cartesian circle
• Essential natures
• Removing scepticism
• Mind and body
• Dualistic problems

In this unit you will learn…

The best way to approach the Meditations, how to read it and its historical background

Several arguments to induce exaggerated doubt about one’s beliefs, and the purpose of the sceptical method

The outcome of the arguments from doubt; total deception and absolute certainty; the Cogito and the implications of this conclusion

The doctrine of clear and distinct ideas and their importance for the Cartesian project

Several proofs of God’s existence, and objections to these proofs; the ontological argument and the Cartesian circle

The doctrine of essential properties, and how it underpins the ontological argument and Cartesian dualism

Descartes’ distinction between intellect and imagination, the proof of material things and how scepticism is ultimately overcome

How Descartes argues for the view that mind and body are distinct substances and objections to these arguments

The question of mind-body interdependence and the ‘intermingling’ thesis

Summary of Assessments

Unit 1: PHIL1 – An Introduction to Philosophy 1

• 50% of AS Level
• 25% of A Level
• Written paper: 1 hour 30 minutes
• 90 marks
• Students must answer the compulsory question on reason and experience and one other question.

Unit 2:PHIL2 – An Introduction to Philosophy 2

• 50% of AS Level
• 25% of A Level
• Written paper: 1 hour 30 minutes
• 90 marks
• Students must answer two questions

Unit 3: PHIL3 – Key Themes in Philosophy

• 30% of A Level
• Written paper: 2 hours
• 100 marks
• Students  must answer two questions from two different sections (i.e. on two themes).

Unit 4: PHIL4 – Philosophical Problems

• 20 % of A Level
• Written paper: 1 hour 30 minutes
• 60 marks
• Students must choose one section and answer the compulsory question and one essay question.