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