My Revision Notes: AQA A-level Philosophy Paper 2 Metaphysics of God and Metaphysics of mind
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Contents
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Language
English
ISBN
9781510452022
Cover
Title Page
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Section 1 The Metaphysics of God
The concept and nature of God
God’s attributes
God as omniscient
God as omnipotent
God as supremely good (omnibenevolent)
Competing views on God’s relationship with time
God being timeless (eternal) – the traditional view
God being within time (everlasting)
God as eternal – a modern view
Arguments for the incoherence of God
The paradox of the stone – a problem with omnipotence
The Euthyphro dilemma – a problem with omnibenevolence
The compatibility of God and free human beings – a problem with omniscience
Arguments relating to the existence of God
The logical form of arguments and the strength of the conclusions
The nature of God assumed or defended by the argument
Ontological arguments
St Anselm’s ontological argument
Descartes’ ontological argument
Norman Malcolm’s ontological argument
Issues with ontological arguments
Gaunilo’s ‘perfect island’ objection
Empiricist objections to a priori arguments for existence
Kant’s objection based on existence not being a predicate
Teleological arguments
The design argument from analogy, presented by Hume
William Paley’s design argument from spatial order/purpose
Richard Swinburne’s design argument from temporal order/regularity
Issues with teleological/design arguments
Hume’s objections to the design argument from analogy
The problem of spatial disorder (Hume and Paley)
The design argument fails as it is an argument from a unique case (Hume)
Whether God is the best or only explanation
Cosmological arguments
The Kala–m argument (from temporal causation)
Aquinas’ three ways
Descartes’ cosmological argument based on his continuing existence (from causation)
Leibniz’s argument from the Principle of Sufficient Reason (from contingency)
Issues with cosmological arguments
The possibility of an infinite series
Hume’s objection to the causal principle
Fallacy of composition (Russell)
The impossibility of a necessary being (Hume and Russell)
The problem of evil
The nature of moral evil and natural evil
The logical and evidential forms of the problem of evil
Issues arising and responses to these issues
The free will defence (including Alvin Plantinga)
The soul-making theodicy (including John Hick)
Religious language
The distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism about religious language
The empiricist/logical positivist challenges to the status of religious language
The verification principle and verification/falsification (Ayer)
Ayer and the elimination of metaphysics
John Hick’s response to Ayer (eschatological verification)
The ‘University debate’
Antony Flew on falsification
Basil Mitchell’s response to Flew
Hare’s response to Flew
Section 2 The Metaphysics of mind
What do we mean by ‘mind’?
Features of mental states
The theories of mind
Dualist theories
Substance dualism
Minds exist and are not the same as bodies
Responses
The mental is divisible
Not everything physical is divisible
The conceivability argument
What is conceivable may not be metaphysically possible
What is metaphysically possible tells us nothing about the actual world
Mind without body is not conceivable
Arguments against substance dualism
Property dualism
Outline of property dualism
The philopophical zombies argument for property dualism
Responses
A zombie world is not conceivable
What is conceivable need not be metaphysically possible
What is metaphysically possible tells us nothing about the actual world
Responses
The acquaintance knowledge response
The ability knowledge response
The new knowledge/old fact response
Issues facing dualism
Responses
The argument from analogy
The existence of other minds is the best hypothesis
Issues facing interactionist dualism
The conceptual interaction problem
The empirical interaction problem
Issues facing epiphenomenalist dualism
The challenge posed by introspective self-knowledge
The challenge posed by the phenomenology of our mental life
The challenge posed by natural selection/evolution
Physicalist theories
Physicalism
Hard behaviourism
Soft behaviourism
Issues
How to define mental states
Dualist arguments
Asymmetry
Mental states cause behaviour
The distinctness of mental states from behaviour
The mind–brain type identity theory
Issues
Dualist arguments
The spatial location problem
The multiple realisability of mental states
Eliminative materialism
Issues
Our certainty about the existence of our mental states
Folk psychology has good predictive and explanatory power
Eliminative materialism is self-refuting
Functionalist accounts
Functionalism
Issues
The possibility of a functional duplicate with inverted qualia
The knowledge/Mary argument can be applied to functional facts
The possibility of a functional duplicate with no mentality/qualia
Glossary
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