A Level Philosophy offers students an exciting opportunity to study and explore some of life’s most intriguing questions. All aspects of the course involve a study of a wide range of philosophers past and present, and draw on contemporary examples to ensure that debate is lively and relevant. A Level – Year 1 The first unit on Epistemology centres on philosophical debates about knowledge. We explore ideas about perception as a source of knowledge, including realism and idealism; and reason as a source of knowledge, including innatism and the intuition and deduction thesis. We also consider the limits of knowledge by considering different types of scepticism. The second unit on Moral Philosophy explores ethical theories and their application. We examine the ethical theories of Utilitarianism, Kant, and Aristotle and evaluate the extent they can be successfully applied to a wide variety of modern ethical scenarios. We also study Meta-Ethics, which approaches ethics from a more abstract position, considering what is meant by ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and explores whether ethical statements can ever be meaningful. A Level – Year 2 The third unit on the metaphysics of God examines the concept of God and explores arguments for the coherence and incoherence of the concept. We consider arguments relating to the existence of God, including the ontological argument, the teleological argument, the cosmological argument and the problem of evil. We also explore debates surrounding religious language, including the empiricist challenges to metaphysical language. The final unit on the metaphysics of mind centres of philosophical debates about what is meant by ‘mind’ and features of different mental states. We consider dualist theories, including substance dualism and property dualism; and physicalist theories, including behaviourism, identity theory, eliminative materialism and functionalism.