§-Philosophy Q&A
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Philosophy Q&A by dot point
A short Q&A bank for every SA Philosophy syllabus dot point. Each question and answer is drawn directly from our worked dot-point page, so you can scan key concepts before opening the long-form answer.
Epistemology
Analyse the justified true belief account of knowledge and evaluate the Gettier objection
Compare direct realism, indirect realism and idealism as theories of perception and evaluate the problem of the external world
Contrast rationalism and empiricism and evaluate responses to sceptical doubt
Explain Hume's problem of induction and evaluate proposed responses including Popper's falsificationism and pragmatic vindication
Compare correspondence, coherence and pragmatic theories of truth and evaluate their strengths and difficulties
Ethics
Apply normative ethical theories to contested applied issues in bioethics and animal ethics, and evaluate the arguments on each side
Examine metaethical positions on the status of moral claims and evaluate moral relativism
Compare and evaluate consequentialist, deontological and virtue-based theories of normative ethics
Explain Hume's is-ought gap and Moore's naturalistic fallacy and assess whether moral facts can be reduced to natural facts
Metaphysics
Explain and evaluate the cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments for the existence of God
Evaluate the debate between determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism about free will
Compare bodily, psychological and further-fact theories of personal identity and evaluate them against puzzle cases
Compare dualist and physicalist theories of mind and evaluate the hard problem of consciousness
Distinguish the logical and evidential problems of evil and evaluate theodicies offered in response
Explain Humean and necessitarian accounts of causation and evaluate compatibilism about free will and determinism
Philosophy of Mind
Political Philosophy
Compare Rawls's justice as fairness with Nozick's entitlement theory and evaluate patterned versus historical principles of distribution
Evaluate social contract theories and competing conceptions of distributive justice
Explain Mill's harm principle and the distinction between negative and positive liberty and evaluate limits on individual freedom
Evaluate theories of political legitimacy and political obligation including consent, fairness and the challenge of philosophical anarchism