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 “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