My Revision Notes: AQA A-level Philosophy Paper 1 Epistemology and Moral Philosophy
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Language
English
ISBN
9781510451995
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Title Page
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Section 1 Epistemology
What is knowledge?
Types of knowledge
Propositional knowledge and language
The tripartite view: knowledge as justified, true belief
Issues with the tripartite view
Issue: are the JTB conditions individually necessary?
Issue: are the JTB conditions jointly sufficient?
Responses to the issues with the tripartite view
Infallibilism
No false lemmas: J + T + B + N
Reliabilism: R + T + B
Virtue epistemology: V + T + B
Perception as a source of knowledge
Direct realism (naïve realism)
What is direct realism?
Support for direct realism
Issues with direct realism
Issue: argument from illusion
Issue: perceptual variation
Issue: argument from hallucination
Issue: the time-lag argument
Indirect realism
Support for indirect realism
Locke’s primary/secondary quality distinction
Issues with indirect realism
Issue: scepticism about the existence of mind-independent objects
Issue: ideas cannot be like material objects (Berkeley)
Berkeley’s idealism
Berkeley’s attack on the primary/secondary distinction
Berkeley’s ‘master’ argument
Issues with Berkeley’s idealism
Issue: arguments from illusions and hallucinations
Issue: idealism leads to solipsism
Issue: problems with the role played by God in Berkeley’s idealism
Reason as a source of knowledge
Innatism
Plato’s argument from the ‘slave boy’
Innate ideas: Leibniz
Empiricist responses
Locke’s arguments against innate ideas
The mind as tabula rasa
The intuition and deduction thesis
Intuition, deduction and ‘clear and distinct ideas’ (Descartes)
The cogito (a priori intuition)
Arguments for the existence of God (a priori deductions)
Proof of the external world (a priori deduction)
Limits of knowledge
Scepticism
The differences between philosophical scepticism and normal incredulity
Local and global scepticism
Descartes’ three waves of doubt
Responses to scepticism
Descartes
Empiricist responses: Locke, Berkeley, Russell
Reliabilism
Section 2 Moral philosophy
Normative theories
Comparison of the three normative ethical theories
Utilitarianism
Utility and maximising utility
Hedonistic utilitarianism
Bentham’s utility calculus (act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism)
John Stuart Mill’s qualitative hedonistic utilitarianism
Mill’s ‘proof’ of the greatest happiness principle
Non-hedonistic utilitarianism
Issues with utilitarianism
Is pleasure the only good?
Fairness and individual liberty/rights
Problems with calculating utility
Issues around partiality
Moral integrity and intentions of the individual
Applied ethics: utilitarianism
Stealing
Simulated killing
Eating animals
Telling lies
Kantian deontological ethics
A ‘good will’
Acting in accordance with duty versus acting out of duty
Hypothetical versus categorical imperatives
The categorical imperative (first formulation)
The categorical imperative (humanity formulation)
Issues with Kantian deontological ethics
Clashing/competing duties
Not all non-universalisable maxims are immoral (and not all universalisable maxims are moral)
The moral value of consequences
The value of certain motives such as love, friendship, kindness
Morality is a system of hypothetical, not categorical, imperatives (Foot)
Applied Kantian ethics
Stealing
Eating animals
Simulated killing
Telling lies
Aristotelian virtue ethics
Aristotle’s account of the ‘good’
‘The good’ for human beings
The meaning of eudaimonia as the ‘final end’
The relationship between eudaimonia and pleasure
The function argument: virtues and function
Aristotle’s account of virtues and vices
Virtues as character traits or dispositions
The role of education and habituation in the development of a moral character
The skill analogy
The importance of feelings
The doctrine of the mean and its application to particular virtues
Aristotle’s account of moral responsibility
Voluntary actions
Involuntary actions
Non-voluntary actions
Aristotle’s account of the role of practical reason and action, and of pleasure
The relationship between virtues, actions and reasons
The role of practical reasoning/practical wisdom
Issues with Aristotelian virtue ethics
Does virtue ethics give clear guidance about how to act?
Can virtue ethics deal with clashing virtues?
The possibility of circularity
Must a trait contribute to eudaimonia in order to be a virtue?
The individual and the moral good
Applied ethics: Aristotle
Stealing
Simulated killing
Eating animals
Telling lies
Meta-ethics
The origins of moral principles: reason or emotion/attitudes or society?
The distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism about ethical language
Moral realism
Moral naturalism (cognitivist)
Moral non-naturalism (cognitivist)
Issues with moral realism
Hume’s fork
Ayer’s verification principle
Hume – moral judgements are not beliefs
Hume’s is–ought gap
Mackie’s arguments from relativity and from queerness
Moral anti-realism
Mackie’s error theory (cognitivist)
Ayer’s emotivism (non-cognitivist)
Hare’s prescriptivism (non-cognitivist)
Issues with moral anti-realism
Can moral anti-realism account for how we use moral language?
Problem of accounting for moral progress
Does anti-realism become moral nihilism?
Glossary
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