Queen Elizabeth High School

Reason & experience
Mind as a tabula rasa

• The strengths and weaknesses of the view that the import of all ideas derives from and is determined by sense experience.
• The strengths and weaknesses of the view that claims to know about what exists or occurs must be justified by sense experience.

• The state of nature
• The social contract
• Political obligation

Reason & experience (contd)

Innate knowledge

• The strengths and weaknesses of the view that the mind contains innate knowledge regarding the way the world is: the doctrine of innate ideas and its philosophical significance.
• The view that some fundamental claims about what exists can be grounded in and justified by a priori intuition and/or demonstration.
• Is ‘certainty’ confined to introspection and the tautological?

Conceptual schemes

• The idea that experience is only intelligible as it is because it presents sensation through a predetermined conceptual scheme or framework; and the philosophical implications of this view.

Why should I be governed? (contd)

• Power, authority & legitimacy
• Legitimacy & democracy
• Civil disobedience & dissent

Knowledge of the external world

Realism

• What are the immediate objects Of perception? Do physical objects have the properties we perceive in them? Is the common-sense view naïve? Do sceptical arguments cast doubt on the common-sense view?
• The secondary qualities thesis: does this establish that only the primary qualities of objects are objectively real? Characteristics of primary and secondary qualities.

Representative realism

• Do sceptical arguments establish the sense-data theory? Examples of sceptical arguments: illusion, perceptual variation, science inspired arguments, time lags. Differences between sense-data and physical objects.
• Could we know of a relation between sense-data and physical objects? Could the existence of the external world be a hypothesis?

Tolerance

Defining Tolerance:

• Rainer Forst's analysis of tolerance as involving 3 components: objection, acceptance and rejection.
• Different conceptions of tolerance: permission, co-existence, respect, esteem.
• The paradoxes of tolerance.

The Tolerant Society:

• Why tolerance is important to liberal, pluralist democracy.
• Should society be neutral with regard to conceptions of the good life?
• Should a tolerant society be nurtured?
• Arguments for and against a tolerant society.

Knowledge of the external world (contd)

Idealism

• Should physical objects be regarded as collections of ideas/sense-data? Are there good reasons for accepting idealism, eg solving the problem of material substance, consistency with empiricism, no linking problem?
• Inherent difficulties with idealism: problem of unperceived objects, availability of simpler, more systematic alternatives and confusion in the use of the term ‘idea’.

Tolerance (contd)

The Tolerant Individual:

• What characteristics do tolerant individuals possess?
• The difference between tolerance and indifference, indulgence and weakness.
• Does tolerance merely imply that we leave other individuals alone to think and do as they please, or does it also require us to do or say nothing to offend others?

Tensions and applications:

• Could a liberal society tolerate a minority culture that doesn’t respect its values without undermining those values?
• Could a liberal society nourish a particular culture and make judgements about the relative worth of diverse lifestyles without becoming intolerant?
• Tolerance, diversity and difference: issues raised by religious and social diversity and difference

Revision programme

Revision programme