This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Substance Dualism” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: Minds exist and are not identical to bodies or to parts of bodies. The indivisibility argument for substance dualism (Descartes). Responses, including: the mental is divisible in some sense not everything thought of as physical is divisible. The conceivability argument for substance dualism (expressed without reference to God) (Descartes). Responses including: mind without body is not conceivable what is conceivable may not be metaphysically possible what is metaphysically possible tells us nothing about the actual world.

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Religious Language” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: The distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism about religious language. The empiricist/logical positivist challenges to the status of metaphysical (here, religious) language: the verification principle and verification/falsification (Ayer). Hick’s response to Ayer (eschatological verification) and issues arising from that response. Further responses: the ‘University Debate’ Anthony Flew on falsification (Wisdom’s ‘Gardener’) Basil Mitchell’s response to Flew (the Partisan) Hare’s response to Flew (bliks and the lunatic)

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “The Problem of Evil” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: Whether God’s attributes can be reconciled with the existence of evil. The nature of moral evil and natural evil. The logical and evidential forms of the problem of evil. Responses to these issues and issues arising from these responses, including: the Free Will Defence (including Alvin Plantinga) soul-making (including John Hick).

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Design Arguments” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: The design argument from analogy (as presented by Hume). William Paley’s design argument: argument from spatial order/purpose. Richard Swinburne’s design argument: argument from temporal order/regularity. Issues that may arise for the arguments above, including: Hume’s objections to the design argument from analogy the problem of spatial disorder (as posed by Hume and Paley) the design argument fails as it is an argument from a unique case (Hume) whether God is the best or only explanation.

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Ontological Arguments” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: St Anselm’s ontological argument. Descartes’ ontological argument. Norman Malcolm’s ontological argument. Issues that may arise for the arguments above, including: Gaunilo’s ‘perfect island’ objection Empiricist objections to a priori arguments for existence Kant’s objection based on existence not being a predicate.

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “The Concept & Nature of God” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: God’s attributes: God as omniscient, omnipotent, supremely good (omnibenevolent), and the meaning(s) of these divine attributes competing views on such a being’s relationship to time, including God being timeless (eternal) and God being within time (everlasting). arguments for the incoherence of the concept of God including: the paradox of the stone the Euthyphro dilemma the compatibility, or otherwise, of the existence of an omniscient God and free human beings.

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Moral Anti-Realism” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: There are no mind-independent moral properties/facts. Error Theory (cognitivist) - Mackie Emotivism (non-cognitivist) – Ayer Prescriptivism (non-cognitivist) – Richard Hare Issues that may arise for the theories above, including: whether anti-realism can account for how we use moral language, including moral reasoning, persuading, disagreeing etc. the problem of accounting for moral progress whether anti-realism becomes moral nihilism.

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Moral Realism” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: There are mind-independent moral properties/facts. Moral naturalism (cognitivist) – including naturalist forms of utilitarianism (including Bentham) and of virtue ethics. Moral non-naturalism (cognitivist) – including intuitionism and Moore’s ‘open question argument’ against all reductive metaethical theories and the Naturalistic Fallacy. Issues that may arise for the theories above, including: Hume’s Fork and A J Ayer’s verification principle Hume’s argument that moral judgements are not beliefs since beliefs alone could not motivate us Hume’s is-ought gap John Mackie’s argument from relativity and his arguments from queerness.

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Aristotelian Virtue Ethics” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: ‘The good’ for human beings: the meaning of Eudaimonia as the ‘final end’ and the relationship between Eudaimonia and pleasure. The function argument and the relationship between virtues and function. Aristotle’s account of virtues and vices: virtues as character traits/dispositions; the role of education/habituation in the development of a moral character; the skill analogy; the importance of feelings; 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 including: 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.

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Kantian Deontological Ethics” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: Immanuel Kant’s account of what is meant by a ‘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 (including the distinction between a contradiction in conception and a contradiction in will). The second formulation of the categorical imperative. Issues, including: clashing/competing duties not all universalisable maxims are distinctly moral; not all non-universalisable maxims are immoral the view that consequences of actions determine their moral value Kant ignores the value of certain motives, eg love, friendship, kindness morality is a system of hypothetical, rather than categorical, imperatives (Philippa Foot).

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “The Limits of Knowledge” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: 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 Descartes’ sceptical arguments (the three ‘waves of doubt’) Responses to scepticism: the application of the following as responses to the challenge of scepticism: Descartes’ own response empiricist responses (Locke, Berkeley and Russell) reliabilism.

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Utilitarianism” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: The question of what is meant by ‘utility’ and ‘maximising utility’, including: Jeremy Bentham’s quantitative hedonistic utilitarianism (his utility calculus) John Stuart Mill’s qualitative hedonistic utilitarianism (higher and lower pleasures) and his ‘proof’ of the greatest happiness principle non-hedonistic utilitarianism (including preference utilitarianism) act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Issues, including: whether pleasure is the only good (Nozick’s experience machine) fairness and individual liberty/rights (including the risk of the ‘tyranny of the majority’) problems with calculation (including which beings to include) issues around partiality whether utilitarianism ignores both the moral integrity and the intentions of the individual.

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Berkley’s Idealism” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: The immediate objects of perception (ie ordinary objects such as tables, chairs, etc) are mind-dependent objects. Arguments for idealism including Berkeley’s attack on the primary/secondary quality distinction and his ‘Master’ argument. Issues including: arguments from illusion and hallucination idealism leads to solipsism problems with the role played by God in Berkeley’s Idealism (including how can Berkeley claim that our ideas exist within God’s mind given that he believes that God cannot feel pain or have sensations?)

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Innatism” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: Arguments from Plato (ie the ‘slave boy’ argument) and Gottfried Leibniz (ie his argument based on necessary truths). Empiricist responses including: Locke’s arguments against innatism the mind as a ‘tabula rasa’ (the nature of impressions and ideas, simple and complex concepts)

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Indirect Realism” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: The immediate objects of perception are mind-dependent objects (sense-data) that are caused by and represent mind-independent objects. John Locke’s primary/secondary quality distinction. Issues including: the argument that it leads to scepticism about the existence of mind-independent objects. Responses including: Locke’s argument from the involuntary nature of our experience the argument from the coherence of various kinds of experience, as developed by Locke and Catharine Trotter Cockburn (attrib) Bertrand Russell’s response that the external world is the ‘best hypothesis’ the argument from George Berkeley that we cannot know the nature of mind-independent objects because mind-dependent ideas cannot be like mind-independent objects.

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “What is knowledge?” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: The distinction between acquaintance knowledge, ability knowledge and propositional knowledge. The tripartite view Propositional knowledge is defined as justified true belief: S knows that p if and only if: S is justified in believing that p, p is true and S believes that p (individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions) Issues with the tripartite view including: the conditions are not individually necessary the conditions are not sufficient – cases of lucky true beliefs (including Edmund Gettier’s original two counter examples): responses: alternative post-Gettier analyses/definitions of knowledge including: strengthen the justification condition (ie infallibilism) add a ‘no false lemmas’ condition (J+T+B+N) replace ‘justified’ with ‘reliably formed’ (R+T+B) (ie reliabilism) replace ‘justified’ with an account of epistemic virtue (V+T+B).

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Direct Realism” area of the AQA A-Level Philosophy specification. It contains the following information: The immediate objects of perception are mind-independent objects and their properties Issues including: the argument from illusion the argument from perceptual variation the argument from hallucination the time-lag argument

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Capacity Defences” section of the AQA A-Level Law specification. It contains a comprehensive overview of the following defences: Insanity Automatism Intoxication

This resource contains everything students and teachers alike need to learn or teach the “Fatal Offences Against the Person” section of the AQA A-Level Law specification. It contains a comprehensive overview of the following crimes and defences: Murder Loss of control Diminished responsibility Unlawful act manslaughter Gross negligence manslaughter