SA · SACE BoardQ&A
PhilosophyQ&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 objection0Q&A pairs
- Compare direct realism, indirect realism and idealism as theories of perception and evaluate the problem of the external world0Q&A pairs
- Contrast rationalism and empiricism and evaluate responses to sceptical doubt0Q&A pairs
- Explain Hume's problem of induction and evaluate proposed responses including Popper's falsificationism and pragmatic vindication0Q&A pairs
- Compare correspondence, coherence and pragmatic theories of truth and evaluate their strengths and difficulties1Q&A pairs
Ethics
- Apply normative ethical theories to contested applied issues in bioethics and animal ethics, and evaluate the arguments on each side0Q&A pairs
- Examine metaethical positions on the status of moral claims and evaluate moral relativism0Q&A pairs
- Compare and evaluate consequentialist, deontological and virtue-based theories of normative ethics0Q&A pairs
- Explain Hume's is-ought gap and Moore's naturalistic fallacy and assess whether moral facts can be reduced to natural facts0Q&A pairs
Metaphysics
- Explain and evaluate the cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments for the existence of God0Q&A pairs
- Evaluate the debate between determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism about free will0Q&A pairs
- Compare bodily, psychological and further-fact theories of personal identity and evaluate them against puzzle cases0Q&A pairs
- Compare dualist and physicalist theories of mind and evaluate the hard problem of consciousness0Q&A pairs
- Distinguish the logical and evidential problems of evil and evaluate theodicies offered in response0Q&A pairs
- Explain Humean and necessitarian accounts of causation and evaluate compatibilism about free will and determinism0Q&A pairs
Philosophy of Mind
Political Philosophy
- Compare Rawls's justice as fairness with Nozick's entitlement theory and evaluate patterned versus historical principles of distribution0Q&A pairs
- Evaluate social contract theories and competing conceptions of distributive justice0Q&A pairs
- Explain Mill's harm principle and the distinction between negative and positive liberty and evaluate limits on individual freedom0Q&A pairs
- Evaluate theories of political legitimacy and political obligation including consent, fairness and the challenge of philosophical anarchism0Q&A pairs
Reasoning and Argument Analysis
- Analyse arguments for validity and soundness and identify common informal fallacies1Q&A pairs
- Distinguish deductive validity from inductive strength and evaluate the main forms of inductive inference0Q&A pairs
- Use categorical syllogisms and propositional truth tables to test arguments for formal validity0Q&A pairs