A Level Philosophy

This course prepares candidates for the AQA Philosophy A Level syllabus (2170), for examinations in June 2012 and later years.

In the first level of the A Level Philosophy course you will concentrate on an introduction to the subject.

• Reason and experience: You will look at how you encounter the world through your senses and how your mind reacts.
• Why should I be governed? You will examine how originally free individuals come to be obligated or bound to obey the laws and commands of the state. This will include looking at the benefits of political organisation, the nature of power, and disobedience and dissent.
• Why should I be moral? You will look at the nature of moral motivation and consider morality as a social contract, a constituent of self-interest, or as overcoming self-interest.
• The idea of God: You will learn about the divine attributes of a supreme being and look at the argument that if the idea of God's existence is conceivable then God must exist. You will also look at the origins of the idea of God.
• Persons: You will study the characteristics and concept of personhood, and examine the notion that not all humans are persons and some non-humans may be persons. You will also look at the implications of cloning, brain damage and body alternations.
• Knowledge of the external world: You will look in greater detail at the nature and extent of human experience, at whether physical objects have the properties we perceive in them and at the issues of realism, representative realism, and idealism.
• Tolerance: You will learn the three components of tolerance: objection, acceptance and rejection - and question them. You will examine the tolerant society, arguments for tolerance, and the characteristics possessed by tolerant people. Different concepts of tolerance will be studied, and you will study issues raised by religious and social diversity and difference.
• The value of art: The question is asked: is art valuable for what it does or what it is? You will look at a range of topics including the function of art, 'truth' in art, its expressive quality, and the notion of 'form' in art.
• God and the world: You will be asked: do facts about this world make God's existence more or less plausible? You will be introduced to two arguments: one for the existence of God and one against the existence.
• Free will and determinism: You will learn about determinism - that a determinate set of conditions can only produce one possible outcome - and about free will, which requires indeterminism and a gap in universal causality. You will also consider free will as compatible with determinism and look at the implications of determinism as undermining morality and rationality.

During the second level you will look at key themes in philosophy and at philosophical problems.

• Philosophy of mind: This unit will ask what the mind is and about its place in nature. You will look at the relationship between mentality and physicality and inquire how mental states are identified, experienced and known.
• Political philosophy: You will look at philosophical questions concerning how human wellbeing can be advanced or hindered by the organisation of society and political structures.
• Epistemology and metaphysics: Under this topic you will study scepticism, knowledge, belief and justification, as well as looking at universals and particulars and at the possibility of objective knowledge.
• Moral philosophy: You will look at whether there are moral truths and, if so, what their nature is, considering a range of possibilities. You will consider whether moral decisions should be made in terms of consequences alone or whether moral rights, duties and principles are paramount.
• Philosophy of religion: You will look at how we should understand religious belief and whether religious claims are distinct from other arguments. You will study different arguments for the existence of God and inquire to what extent different religions compete with or undermine each other.
• Problems of philosophy: You will study a series of problems raised by philosophers in classic texts: Hume's 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding', Plato's 'The Republic', Mill's 'On Liberty', Descartes' 'Meditations', and Nietzsches' 'Beyond Good and Evil'.