A-Level Philosophy

Subject-Matter

One of the reasons why it is hard to ‘define’ Philosophy is that the scope of its subject-matter is so broad. Whereas Psychology is about the mind, History is about the past, Religious Studies is the study of religion(s), Politics is about… well, Politics, and so on, Philosophy has no single subject matter: rather, there are numerous areas or fields of Philosophy, some of which partially intersect with areas that you might think of as being the preserve of other subjects (such as Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Religion, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Maths), and some of which do not (such as Ethics and Epistemology).

As a very broad generalisation, one might say that Philosophy tends to concern itself with questions that other subjects leave unanswered. For example, whereas a physicist can tell you about the nature of the constituent parts of an object like a teapot or a washing machine – the molecules and atoms and so on of which it is made – and an engineer could tell you about good and bad ways of manufacturing such objects, philosophers may ask deeper questions, such as what it takes for any collection of smaller parts  to constitute a larger object.

(The question is far from easy: after all, it seems that you don’t always get a larger object when you join two smaller objects together: when you and I shake hands, for example, most people would agree that this does not create a new, two-headed being; nor would such a creature be created if we superglued ourselves together, nor even if we attached ourselves together surgically. But then what sort of ‘bonding’ between smaller parts is it that means that there are composite objects called frying pans and washing machines? Some philosophers, finding all proposed answers to this question deficient in some respect, have even doubted that frying pans and other ordinary composite objects really exist.)

Again, Politics concerns itself (in part) with just, or fair, distributions of goods in society; philosophers consider questions such as what it means to say that a distribution is fair, or just, and whether and why distributions ought to be fair or just in the first place – what’s so good about fairness?

One of the many achievements of biological science has been to create a useful and scientifically-informed taxonomy of biological species, detailing the relations between different types of plants and animals. It falls to philosophers to worry about the status of such taxonomy – asking, for example, whether there are any ‘real’ divisions between different biological kinds in nature, or whether the distinctions are merely human constructions.

Many philosophical questions, then, intersect with the sciences; but a distinctive feature of the subject is that, while philosophers often use the data of the sciences (and most have an enormous respect for science), they use no experimental tools other than their brains: the subject can be practised entirely ‘from the armchair’. And the questions that they consider are also distinctive – often seeking a deeper understanding of the fundamental assumptions that, in our ordinary lives, we tend not to question.

Equally, though, plenty of philosophical topics have no particular connection with science (or the social sciences) at all. In Aesthetics, for example, philosophers consider such matters as the nature of beauty and the value of artistic works. Moral Philosophy examines whether there are any moral truths, and the methods and nature of moral decision-making. In Epistemology, you may be asked how (if at all) you can tell that the world around you is the way it seems, and that you are not just a brain being stimulated to have the experiences that you are having. In studying Personal Identity, you may be asked what would happen to you if your brain were transplanted into another body, or whether you could survive being teletransported to another planet by radio waves.

Indeed, it is much easier to get a feeling for what Philosophy is by considering particular issues that have traditionally been of interest to philosophers than by trying to define the subject in the abstract. For example:

• Is there a God?
• What (if anything) really exists?
• Why does anything exist? And is it right to think that that question must have an answer?
• How (if at all) can we know that the world really is the way we think it is? How can we be sure that we are not victims of a massive illusion or Matrix-style deception as to the nature of the world we live in?
• What – precisely – is it to know that something is the case anyway (as opposed to merely thinking that it is the case and being right)?
• How do we even manage to think anything? How is it that a lump of organic matter – your brain – can have thoughts about its surroundings?
• What does it mean to say that we ought not to do something? Are any such claims about what we ought to do strictly and objectively true, and if so, what could make them true?
• What (exactly) are you anyway, and does life have any meaning or purpose?

Some, or all, of these are probably questions about which you have already wondered at some point in your life: for whilst most students do not study Philosophy formally before the Sixth Form or University, practically all of us (in an informal way) have, whether we realised it or not, been doing Philosophy almost since we first learned to speak.

Methodology

As to methodology, the essential point to stress is that Philosophy is all about argument – in the sense of the development of a clearly-expressed, logically-ordered set of reasons for adopting one view rather than another.

One popular misconception of the subject (among many) has it that Philosophy is somehow all about constructing extraordinary, elaborate, and (to the layman) implausible-sounding hypotheses about the world. Various such world-views have indeed been proposed by philosophers at various times: they include, for example, the following:

• the view that there are no material objects at all;
• the view that there are no composite material objects – that nothing bigger than the tiniest fundamental particles is real;
• the view that there is another realm of reality that is wholly or largely invisible to us, and of which our world is some sort of pale shadow or image;
• the view that in additional to our ‘actual’ world there is a whole collection of millions and millions of other ‘possible worlds’ in which ‘counterparts’ of all the things in the actual world exist, and in which all the billions of possibilities that are not realised in the actual world are played out.

It is vital to realise that, while such views have historically been held by some philosophers, the adoption of such views is not of interest in itself – and there is no philosophical merit in any of them that is independent of the arguments for it.

The true situation is that such views have been adopted for reasons: because these have seemed (to the different philosophers at different times who have proposed them) to be the only, or best, ways of accounting for certain aspects of the world as we find it. And views like these – as well as alternative, more ordinary-sounding views that have been defended by other philosophers – stand or fall on the merits of the arguments that are advanced in support of them. Philosophers are not interested in wacky-sounding hypotheses for their own sake: they are interested in accounting for, explaining (and sometimes explaining away) the various aspects of the world as we find it which seem puzzling and in which they have, for that reason, traditionally been interested. And in assessment of these and other views, we are interested, as philosophers, in assessing the quality of the reasons or arguments that have been advanced for them.

It would be impossible to overstate the importance of argument, for virtually all assessment in Philosophy (including the assessment of your A-level work) is really an assessment of the quality of argument advanced for or against a given view or position.

At A-level (and even at degree level), it would be unrealistic to expect you to solve any philosophical problem; nor can you even be expected to come up with an original proposal or brand-new argument in any given area. What you can and will be expected to do is to understand, and to be able to explain, the details of different positions that have been advanced; you can be expected to understand and explain the arguments that have been proposed for them and those that might be advanced against them, and you can be expected to evaluate those arguments and positions.

In all of these assessed tasks, you will be showing (if you are doing them well) your grasp of the structure of arguments, and your ability to deploy logical arguments to defend or attack a view or position:

• In explaining a position or an argument, you will be showing your understanding of what the reasons for adopting such a position are, and in doing so you will be showing your ability to explain, in clear logical order, the steps in reasoning that might lead to the adoption of a position.
• In evaluation of a given view, you will also be arguing: you are not free to adopt or reject a given view for no reason, or for an arbitrary one such as that you ‘don’t like the sound of it’. So what you will be doing, in defending or attacking a given view, is advancing – again, in logical order and with clarity, if you are doing it well – one or more arguments for or against the view in question.