IB Philosophy SL flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Substance dualism

Substance dualism is the view that mind and body are two distinct kinds of substance, so mental properties cannot be reduced to physical properties.

Property dualism

Property dualism holds that there is one kind of substance but mental properties are irreducible to physical properties, often because consciousness has subjective features.

Physicalism

Physicalism is the thesis that everything, including mental states, is physical or depends entirely on physical entities and processes.

Personal identity

Personal identity concerns the conditions under which a person persists over time as the same person, often explained by psychological continuity or bodily continuity.

Compatibilism

Compatibilism argues that free will and determinism are compatible because freedom means acting from one’s own desires without external coercion, not being uncaused.

Bad faith

In Sartre, bad faith is self-deception in which a person denies their freedom by identifying wholly with a social role or facticity.

Facticity and transcendence

Facticity refers to given facts of a person’s situation, while transcendence refers to the capacity to surpass them through free projects.

Personhood criteria

Personhood criteria are features such as rationality, self-awareness, moral agency, and capacity for interests used to decide who counts as a person.

Consequentialism

Consequentialism judges the rightness of actions solely by their outcomes, so an action is right if it produces the best overall consequences.

Categorical imperative

Kant’s categorical imperative is an unconditional moral command; its universal-law formula asks whether a maxim could consistently be willed as universal law.

Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics focuses on character traits and flourishing rather than isolated acts, asking what a virtuous person would do in a situation.

Moral realism

Moral realism is the metaethical view that there are mind-independent moral truths, so moral claims can be true or false independently of beliefs.

Error theory

Error theory holds that moral statements express beliefs and purport to state facts, but all such statements are systematically false because no moral facts exist.

Moral luck

Moral luck occurs when praise or blame depends on factors beyond a person’s control, challenging the idea that moral responsibility requires control.

Difference principle

Rawls’s difference principle permits social and economic inequalities only if they benefit the least advantaged members of society.

Care ethics

Care ethics emphasizes relationships, dependency, and responsiveness to particular others, treating care and contextual judgment as central to morality.

Prescribed text

The prescribed text is one philosophical work chosen from the IB list, studied closely for its argument, concepts, context, and critical reception.

Argument reconstruction

Argument reconstruction identifies an author’s conclusion and the premises offered for it, making implicit steps explicit so the reasoning can be evaluated.

Charitable interpretation

Charitable interpretation reads a text in its strongest reasonable form, resolving ambiguity in the author’s favor before criticizing the position.

Textual evidence

Textual evidence is specific passage-based support for an interpretive claim, using quotation or close paraphrase rather than general summary.

Authorial voice

Authorial voice distinguishes the author’s own position from views expressed by characters, narrators, or interlocutors within a dialogue or literary text.

Conceptual ambiguity

Conceptual ambiguity occurs when a key term has multiple meanings in a text; analysis requires noting the senses and tracking shifts.

Objection and reply

An objection-and-reply analysis states the strongest criticism of a textual argument, the author’s response, and whether that response succeeds.

Philosophical context

Philosophical context is the tradition, debates, and historical situation that shape a text’s questions, used to explain rather than replace textual analysis.

Non-philosophical stimulus

A non-philosophical stimulus is a source such as a news item, advertisement, film, or image that is not itself a philosophical text but raises philosophical issues.

Stimulus selection

Stimulus selection requires choosing a non-philosophical source that contains enough conceptual tension to support sustained philosophical analysis.

Philosophical analysis

Philosophical analysis identifies and evaluates the concepts, assumptions, arguments, and implications raised by a stimulus rather than merely describing it.

Internal assessment

The internal assessment is a school-assessed, externally moderated component in which students produce an independent philosophical analysis of a chosen stimulus.

Moderation

Moderation is the IB process of checking teachers’ internal assessment marking against standards to ensure consistent and fair judgments across schools.

Academic honesty

Academic honesty requires acknowledging all sources, citing borrowed ideas, and submitting work that is the student’s own.

Criterion-based marking

Criterion-based marking awards levels for specified qualities such as understanding, analysis, evaluation, and organization, rather than comparing students directly.

Word limit penalty

A word limit penalty is a mark deduction applied when an internally assessed piece exceeds the prescribed maximum length stated in the subject guide.