TASC Philosophy Level 3 cheat sheet

Pre-Socratics sought an arche (fundamental principle): Thales water, Anaximenes air, Heraclitus flux and logos, Parmenides unchanging Being.

Plato's theory of Forms: sensible things participate in eternal, non-physical Forms; the Form of the Good grounds knowledge and value.

Aristotle rejects separate Forms; substance is form plus matter, change explained by four causes: material, efficient, formal, final.

Medieval synthesis: Augustine fuses Platonism with Christianity; Aquinas fuses Aristotelianism with Christianity, stressing analogy of being.

Descartes' method of doubt reaches cogito ergo sum; mind-body dualism treats mind and body as distinct substances.

Hume's fork divides relations of ideas from matters of fact; causation is reduced to constant conjunction and custom.

Kant's Copernican turn: space, time, and categories are conditions of possible experience, not features of things in themselves.

Hegel's dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis; history is the progressive unfolding of Spirit toward self-conscious freedom.

Ontology asks what exists; categories include particulars, universals, substances, properties, events, and abstract objects.

Nominalism denies real universals; realism affirms them; conceptualism treats universals as mental constructions only.

Identity of indiscernibles (Leibniz): if two things share all properties, they are identical; discernibility requires a distinguishing property.

Modal notions: necessary truth holds in all possible worlds; contingent truth holds in some but not all; possible truth holds in at least one.

Causation theories: regularity, counterfactual dependence, probabilistic, and interventionist accounts each answer what makes X cause Y.

Free will positions: hard determinism denies freedom; compatibilism reconciles freedom with determinism; libertarianism posits undetermined agency.

Personal identity criteria: bodily continuity, psychological continuity (memory, character), or soul-based accounts; fission cases test them.

Mereology studies parts and wholes; composition questions ask when parts compose an object rather than a scattered plurality.

Knowledge as justified true belief (JTB): belief, truth, and justification are necessary; Gettier cases challenge sufficiency.

Foundationalism grounds knowledge in basic beliefs; coherentism justifies beliefs by mutual support within a system.

Rationalism holds reason is the primary source of knowledge; empiricism holds experience is; Kant combines both.

Internalism requires justifying factors be accessible to the subject; externalism (e.g., reliabilism) does not.

Reliabilism: a belief is justified if produced by a reliable cognitive process; truth-tracking accounts add sensitivity and safety.

Skepticism challenges knowledge via global doubt; responses include Moorean common sense, contextualism, and transcendental arguments.

A priori knowledge is independent of experience; a posteriori depends on experience; analytic truths hold by meaning.

Testimony and social epistemology: knowledge can be acquired from others; reductionism versus anti-reductionism debate its justification.

Consequentialism evaluates acts by outcomes; utilitarianism maximizes aggregate welfare (Bentham, Mill), act versus rule variants differ.

Deontology evaluates acts by duty and rules; Kant's categorical imperative tests maxims for universalizability and respect for persons.

Virtue ethics centers character and flourishing; Aristotle's eudaimonia requires habituated virtues guided by practical wisdom.

Moral relativism holds right and wrong depend on culture or individual; moral objectivism holds some universal standards.

Metaethics: cognitivism versus non-cognitivism (emotivism, prescriptivism); moral realism versus anti-realism; is-ought gap (Hume).

Ethical egoism claims agents ought to pursue self-interest; psychological egoism claims they always do (a descriptive thesis).

Justice theories: Rawls' veil of ignorance yields two principles; Nozick's entitlement theory stresses historical holdings and liberty.

Moral luck (Williams, Nagel) concerns praise or blame affected by factors beyond the agent's control.

Validity: an argument is valid if premises cannot be true while the conclusion is false; soundness adds true premises.

Deductive arguments aim at validity; inductive arguments aim at strength, where premises make conclusion probable.

Common fallacies: ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, begging the question, equivocation, hasty generalization, post hoc.

Modus ponens: P implies Q; P; therefore Q. Modus tollens: P implies Q; not Q; therefore not P.

Affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent are invalid forms; distinguish them from valid modus forms.

Categorical logic: universal affirmative (All S are P), universal negative, particular affirmative, particular negative; square of opposition.

Necessary versus sufficient conditions: A sufficient for B means A guarantees B; A necessary for B means no B without A.

Counterexample method tests universal claims; thought experiments and controlled comparison support causal inference.

Social contract theories (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) ground political authority in consent; state of nature assumptions differ.

Hobbes: absolute sovereignty prevents war of all against all; Locke: natural rights to life, liberty, property limit government.

Rousseau's general will aims at common good; tension with individual liberty and with majority tyranny.

Mill's harm principle: coercion is justified only to prevent harm to others; offensiveness alone is insufficient.

Rawls' justice as fairness: original position, veil of ignorance, equal basic liberties, and difference principle for inequalities.

Libertarianism (Nozick) emphasizes self-ownership, minimal state, and entitlement; socialism stresses equality and collective ownership.

Feminist and Marxist critiques examine power, labor exploitation, gendered division of labor, and structural injustice.

Citizenship debates: communitarianism stresses shared values; cosmopolitanism extends justice beyond state borders.

Mimesis theory: art imitates reality; Plato distrusts imitation as twice removed from Forms; Aristotle values catharsis.

Formalism evaluates art by formal properties (line, color, composition) independent of content or context (Bell, Fry).

Expression theory: art expresses emotion (Tolstoy, Collingwood); expression differs from mere arousal or symptom.

Institutional theory (Dickie): something is art if the artworld confers that status; challenges essentialist definitions.

Aesthetic judgment (Kant): judgments of beauty claim universal assent yet rest on subjective feeling, not concepts.

Art and truth: Heidegger and Gadamer treat art as disclosing world; Adorno stresses art's critical negativity.

Ontology of art: are works physical objects, types, or performances? Forgeries and multiple copies test identity claims.

Aesthetic properties (graceful, sublime, ugly) raise questions about objectivity, response-dependence, and taste.

Cosmological argument: contingent things require a cause or explanation; forms include Kalam and Thomistic versions.

Teleological argument: apparent design or fine-tuning supports a designer; Hume and Darwinian evolution supply counterarguments.

Ontological argument (Anselm, Descartes, Plantinga): from the concept of a greatest being to its existence; Gaunilo and Kant object.

Problem of evil: logical version claims evil contradicts omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence; evidential version is probabilistic.

Free will defense and soul-making theodicy respond to evil; distinguish moral evil from natural evil.

Divine attributes: omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, simplicity, eternity; tensions arise over foreknowledge and freedom.

Faith and reason: fideism versus evidentialism; Clifford's ethics of belief versus James' will to believe.

Religious language: verificationist challenge; analogy, symbol, and myth accounts of talk about God (Aquinas, Tillich).