WACE Philosophy Ethics ATAR cheat sheet

Argument = premises + conclusion; an argument is valid when the conclusion cannot be false while all premises are true, and sound when it is valid and every premise is actually true.

Deductive arguments aim at validity (conclusion follows necessarily); inductive arguments aim at strength (premises make the conclusion probable, never guarantee it).

Common formal fallacies: affirming the consequent (P→Q, Q, therefore P) and denying the antecedent (P→Q, not-P, therefore not-Q).

Informal fallacies include ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, begging the question (circularity), equivocation, hasty generalisation and appeal to authority or popularity.

Counterexample method: to show an argument invalid, construct a case with the same logical form where premises are true and conclusion false.

Modus ponens: P→Q, P, therefore Q (valid). Modus tollens: P→Q, not-Q, therefore not-P (valid).

Necessary condition: X is required for Y (Y only if X). Sufficient condition: X guarantees Y (if X then Y); a condition can be one without the other.

Justification types: a priori (independent of experience, e.g. mathematics) versus a posteriori (dependent on empirical evidence); deductive versus inductive support.

A good explanation of evidence must be internally consistent, fit the data, and not be ad hoc; competing hypotheses are compared on explanatory power and simplicity.

Consequentialism judges acts solely by outcomes; utilitarianism specifies the good as welfare and requires maximising total (Bentham/Mill) or average utility.

Act-utilitarianism evaluates each act directly; rule-utilitarianism evaluates acts by rules whose general acceptance maximises utility.

Deontology (Kant) holds that rightness depends on the maxim, not consequences; the categorical imperative has a formula of universal law and a formula of humanity (never treat persons merely as means).

Kant distinguishes hypothetical imperatives (means-end, conditional) from the categorical imperative (unconditional, binding on all rational agents); acting from duty differs from acting merely in accordance with duty.

Virtue ethics (Aristotle) centres on character traits, the doctrine of the mean (virtue between vices of excess and deficiency), practical wisdom (phronesis) and eudaimonia as flourishing.

Moral particularism and situationism challenge rule-based ethics; virtue ethics is criticised for failing to guide action and for circularity in defining right action via the virtuous person.

Meta-ethics: moral realism (mind-independent moral facts), anti-realism (error theory, non-cognitivism such as emotivism/prescriptivism), cognitivism versus non-cognitivism about moral statements.

Hume's is-ought gap: descriptive premises alone cannot logically entail a normative conclusion; Moore's naturalistic fallacy warns against defining 'good' by natural properties.

Moral reasoning tools: reflective equilibrium (adjusting principles and intuitions), thought experiments (trolley, experience machine), and testing principles against counterexamples.

Bioethics four principles (Beauchamp and Childress): autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, justice; these are prima facie and can conflict, requiring specification and balancing.

Autonomy requires informed consent: disclosure, comprehension, voluntariness and competence; paternalism overrides autonomy for the patient's supposed good.

Consequentialist reasoning supports active voluntary euthanasia when suffering is unbearable and alternatives exhausted; deontological views typically prohibit intentional killing, invoking the acts/omissions distinction.

Environmental ethics positions: anthropocentrism, biocentrism (all living things have moral standing), ecocentrism (ecosystems/holistic entities), and deep ecology versus resource-management approaches.

Aldo Leopold's land ethic extends the moral community to soils, waters, plants and animals; Singer's argument extends equal consideration of interests to sentient animals.

Technology ethics: privacy, algorithmic bias, surveillance, automation and responsibility gaps; the precautionary principle versus innovation-permissive approaches to uncertain risk.

Distributive justice in applied contexts uses Rawls's difference principle, utilitarian cost-benefit aggregation, or sufficiency and capability approaches (Sen, Nussbaum).

The doctrine of double effect permits foreseen but unintended harmful side effects under conditions: act itself good, bad effect not a means, intention good, proportionality satisfied.

Tragic dilemmas and moral remainder: when obligations genuinely conflict, choosing one may leave residue requiring acknowledgement and compensation.

Knowledge as justified true belief (JTB) faces Gettier cases: a belief can be justified and true yet true only by luck, so JTB is insufficient for knowledge.

Foundationalism grounds knowledge in basic beliefs; coherentism justifies beliefs by mutual support within a system; reliabilism requires beliefs produced by reliable processes.

Rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz) holds reason can yield substantive knowledge; empiricism (Hume, Locke) holds all substantive knowledge derives from experience.

Scepticism: global sceptical hypotheses (brain in a vat, evil demon) raise the problem of the external world; responses include foundationalism, externalism and contextualism.

The mind-body problem: dualism (substance or property) versus physicalism; the hard problem of consciousness concerns subjective experience (qualia) and explanatory gaps.

Personal identity theories: bodily continuity, psychological continuity (Locke's memory criterion, Parfit's connections), and the bundle theory; fission cases test intuitions.

Free will: hard determinism denies free will; libertarianism affirms it via agent causation; compatibilism redefines freedom as acting on one's own desires without external constraint.

The consequence argument: if determinism is true, our actions are consequences of past laws and events, so we cannot do otherwise; Frankfurt cases challenge the principle of alternative possibilities.

Modality and possible worlds: necessary truths hold in all possible worlds, contingent truths in some; identity across worlds raises questions about essential properties.

Ontological argument (Anselm): God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived; existence in reality is greater than existence in the mind alone, so God exists. Gaunilo's perfect-island objection and Kant's claim that existence is not a predicate target it.

Cosmological argument (Aquinas, Leibniz): everything contingent has a cause, so a necessary being is required; Hume and Russell object that the universe may be brute fact or that an infinite regress is possible.

Teleological/design argument (Paley, fine-tuning): apparent purpose and order suggest a designer; Hume's objections include analogical weakness and the problem of evil; Darwinian evolution offers a naturalistic alternative.

Moral argument (Kant, Newman): objective moral obligations require a lawgiver; Euthyphro dilemma asks whether actions are good because God commands them or commanded because they are good.

Problem of evil: logical version (Mackie) claims evil is incompatible with omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence; evidential version claims evil makes God's existence improbable.

Responses to evil: free will defence, soul-making theodicy (Hick), greater-good theodicies, and sceptical theism; natural evils and animal suffering remain difficult.

Faith and reason: fideism (Tertullian, Kierkegaard) versus evidentialism (Clifford: it is wrong to believe on insufficient evidence); reformed epistemology (Plantinga) holds belief in God may be properly basic.

Religious language: verificationism (Ayer) and falsificationism (Flew) challenge religious claims; Wittgensteinian and analogical accounts defend meaningful religious discourse.

Pascal's wager is a prudential decision-theoretic argument, not evidence for God's existence, and is criticised for ignoring other possible gods and infinite-utility complications.

Social contract theories: Hobbes (security under sovereign power), Locke (natural rights to life, liberty, property; right of revolution), Rousseau (general will and popular sovereignty).

Rawls's justice as fairness: original position, veil of ignorance, two principles (equal basic liberties; fair equality of opportunity plus the difference principle benefiting the least advantaged).

Nozick's entitlement theory: justice in acquisition, transfer and rectification; minimal state; taxation of earnings is claimed to violate self-ownership.

Utilitarian political theory justifies institutions by aggregate welfare; it is criticised for permitting sacrifices of minorities and for failing to respect individual rights.

Positive liberty (freedom to, capacity and self-mastery) versus negative liberty (freedom from interference, non-domination in republican theory); Berlin warns positive liberty can license coercion.

Mill's harm principle: power may be exercised over a person against their will only to prevent harm to others; paternalism and offence require separate justification.

Legitimate authority: consent theory, fair play, natural duty of justice, and philosophical anarchism; civil disobedience is justified when laws are unjust and legal channels exhausted (Rawls, Thoreau, King).

Distributive patterns: equality, desert, need, and capability; the equality/equity distinction and debates over affirmative action and reparations turn on these criteria.

Feminist and multicultural critiques challenge the public/private divide and neutral-state assumptions, arguing that apparently neutral rules can embed structural disadvantage.

Plato's Republic: the allegory of the cave (appearance versus reality, education), the tripartite soul (reason, spirit, appetite), and the philosopher-king; justice as each part performing its function.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: eudaimonia as the highest good, function argument, habituation into virtue, the doctrine of the mean, and phronesis guiding particular judgments.

Descartes' Meditations: method of doubt, cogito ergo sum, the wax argument on identity, proofs of God, and the real distinction between mind and body.

Hume's Enquiry and Treatise: impressions versus ideas, causation as custom/habit rather than observable necessity, the is-ought gap, and the bundle theory of the self.

Kant's Groundwork: the good will, acting from duty, the categorical imperative formulations, autonomy of the will, and the kingdom of ends.

Mill's On Liberty and Utilitarianism: harm principle, liberty of thought and expression, the greatest happiness principle, and higher versus lower pleasures with competent judges.

Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality: master and slave moralities, ressentiment, and critique of Christian moral values as life-denying; perspectivism about knowledge.

Existentialism (Sartre, Kierkegaard, Camus): existence precedes essence, radical freedom and responsibility, bad faith, the absurd, and the leap of faith.

Reading primary texts: identify the author's conclusion, reconstruct the premises, note the historical context and audience, and distinguish the author's argument from later interpretations.