AS Philosophy 2008

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Reason and experience
Introductory ideas
Do all ideas derive from sense experience?
Are all claims about what exists ultimately grounded in and justified by sense experience?
Conceptual schemes
Is certainty confined to introspection and the tautological?

Chapter 2: Why should I be governed?
The state of nature
Political obligation and consent
Disobedience and dissent

Chapter 3: Why should I be moral?
Morality as a social contract
Morality as constitutive of self-interest
Morality as overcoming self-interest

Chapter 4: The idea of God
The divine attributes
The ontological argument
The origins of ‘God’

Chapter 5: Persons
What are the characteristics of personhood?
What is a person?
What secures our personal identity through time

Chapter 6: Knowledge of the external world
Realism
Representative realism
Idealism

Chapter 7: Tolerance
The tolerant society
The tolerant individual
Tensions and applications

Chapter 8: The value of art
We value art because it informs us
We value art because of its expressive quality
We value art because of its particular ‘artistic’ quality

Chapter 9: God and the world
The argument from design
The problem of evil
The religious point of view

Chapter 10: The debate about free will and determinism
What is determinism?
What is free will?
The implications of determinism

Chapter 11: Preparing for the exam

Glossary

Index by syllabus content

Index