A level Philosophy AQA

A level Philosophy AQA

Easter Revision Course Dates 2025

• Week 1: Monday 31 March – Friday 4 April
• Week 2: Monday 7 April – Friday 11 April
• Week 3: Monday 14 April – Friday 18 April

(Good Friday is 18 April; Easter Monday is 21 April 2025)

Boards

AQA 7172

Length of Course

5 full-day sessions

This course is board-specific for the AQA A level Philosophy specification (7172) and is for A Level Year 13 students only.

The course will cover:

Epistemology

• What is knowledge? The distinction between acquaintance knowledge, ability knowledge and
  propositional knowledge; the nature of definition (including Linda Zagzebski) and how propositional
  knowledge may be analysed/defined; the tripartite view, issues and responses.
• Perception as a source of knowledge: Direct realism, indirect realism and Berkeley’s idealism.
• Reason as a source of knowledge: Innatism; The intuition and deduction thesis. Empiricist responses
  to these theories.
• The limits of knowledge: Particular nature of philosophical scepticism; the role/function of
  philosophical scepticism within epistemology; the distinction between local and global skepticism;
  Descartes’ sceptical arguments and issues/responses; reliabilism.

Moral philosophy

• Normative ethical theories: The meaning of good, bad, right, wrong within each of the three
  approaches: Utilitarianism, Kantian deontological ethics, Aristotelian virtue ethics.
• Meta-ethics: The origins of moral principles: reason, emotion/attitudes, or society; the distinction
  between cognitivism and non-cognitivism about ethical language; moral realism, including naturalism
  and non-naturalism; moral anti-realism, including error theory, emotivism and prescriptivism.
• Applied ethics: Applying the content of normative ethical theories and metaethics to the following
  issues: stealing; simulated killing (within computer games, plays, films etc); eating animals, telling lies.

Metaphysics of God

• The concept and nature of ‘God’ God’s attributes: God as omniscient, omnipotent, supremely good
  (omnibenevolent), and the meaning(s) of these divine attributes. Competing views on such a being’s
  relationship to time, arguments for the incoherence of the concept of God.
• Arguments relating to the existence of God: Ontological arguments, teleological/design arguments,
  cosmological arguments and the Problem of Evil.
• Religious language: The distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism about religious language,
  verification/falsification (Ayer) and responses including eschatological verification and the ‘University
  Debate’.

Metaphysics of mind

• What do we mean by ‘mind’? Features of mental states: • All or at least some mental states have
  phenomenal properties • Some, but not all, philosophers use the term ‘qualia’ to refer to these
  properties, where ‘qualia’ are defined as ‘intrinsic and non-intentional phenomenal properties that are
  introspectively accessible’ • All or at least some mental states have intentional properties (ie
  intentionality).
• Dualist theories: Substance dualism (Descartes). The ‘philosophical zombies’ argument for property
  dualism (David Chalmers). The ‘knowledge/Mary’ argument for property dualism (Frank Jackson).
• Physicalist theories: Behaviourism, Mind-brain type identity theory, Eliminative materialism and
  Functionalism. Issues and responses to these theories.