BSEH SS Philosophy common mistakes
BSEH SS Philosophy · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Asked about the nature, scope or methods of philosophy, the candidate writes a list of branches (metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics) and presents it as 'the scope', then defines philosophy twice in different words without naming a single method of doing philosophy.
Every textbook chapter opens with the same branch list, so it is memorised as the answer to any introductory question, and the syllabus phrase 'nature, scope and methods' is mentally treated as one heading rather than three separate demands.
What to do instead
Keep three separate one-page sheets and answer only the one demanded. Nature: philosophy as a second-order, critical, reflective enquiry, explicitly contrasted with science (empirical, particular, cumulative) and religion (revelation, faith, authority). Scope: the range of questions, with branches shown as the domains those questions fall into. Methods: name and illustrate at least five - Socratic dialectic/elenchus, Cartesian method of doubt and analysis, phenomenological description/epoche, analytic conceptual clarification, and the Indian pramaṇa method (prama, pramaṇa, saṃśaya, tarka). Give one worked example for each.
Writes 'the argument is true' or 'the conclusion is valid', rejects a formally valid argument because one premise is factually false, and labels any argument whose conclusion happens to be true as 'sound'.
Validity and truth are interchangeable in everyday speech, and soundness is remembered as a slogan ('valid and true') rather than as two separate tests applied in a fixed order.
What to do instead
Apply two tests in sequence. Form first: replace content with variables (P, Q) and ask whether premises true with conclusion false is even possible; if impossible, the argument is valid regardless of the actual facts. Content second: check each premise for truth; only valid plus all premises true equals sound. Drill the four standard forms - modus ponens, modus tollens, denying the antecedent, affirming the consequent - and one argument with true premises whose conclusion is false, so the independence of form and content is seen concretely.
Classifies 'All bachelors are unmarried' as a posteriori because the candidate first learned the word 'bachelor' from experience, and calls 'Every event has a cause' analytic because it feels certain and unopposed.
The pairs a priori/a posteriori and analytic/synthetic are sorted by felt confidence or by when the statement was encountered, instead of by the source of justification and the relation between subject and predicate.
What to do instead
Run two independent questions for every sentence. (1) Source of justification: would justifying it require any sensory observation? If no, it is a priori. (2) Predicate-subject relation: does denying it generate a contradiction, i.e. is its truth fixed by meanings alone? If yes, it is analytic. Record the standard alignments (analytic-a priori, synthetic a posteriori) and then the deliberate exceptions Kant built the Critique around - '7 + 5 = 12' and 'every event has a cause' as synthetic a priori - since examiners use exactly these to test whether the distinction is understood or merely recited.
Places Carvaka among the astika schools because it is 'orthodox Indian philosophy', calls Buddhism nastika only because it denies the self, and lists Saṁkhya as nastika because it does not affirm a creator God.
The terms are read in their ordinary English senses ('believer/unbeliever', 'theist/atheist'), so the actual classificatory criterion is never applied and the familiar meanings silently override the technical one.
What to do instead
Memorise the criterion as a single line: astika means accepting the authority of the Veda (it does not mean 'believes in God'); nastika means rejecting it. Then drill the three nastika (Carvaka, Bauddha, Jaina) and six astika (Nyaya, Vaiśeṣika, Saṁkhya, Yoga, Mimaṁsa, Vedanta) together with the two counter-examples that expose the error: Saṁkhya and Mimaṁsa are astika although they deny or marginalise Isvara, and Buddhism is nastika although it is a full metaphysical system with sophisticated arguments for rebirth and liberation.
Explains Śaṅkara's maya as 'the world is an illusion, nothing really exists', then attributes the same doctrine to Ramanuja, or says that in Advaita the individual self is extinguished and destroyed at liberation.
The English word 'illusion' carries the sense of a private hallucination, and the Vedantic schools are revised as names attached to a single shared doctrine rather than as rival theses about the relation between Brahman, world and self.
What to do instead
Learn each school as a package: causal theory, status of the world, status of the individual self, and path to liberation. Advaita: vivarta-vada, the world is an appearance of Brahman; maya is anirvacaniya, neither sat nor asat, so 'illusion' means indeterminable appearance, not hallucination; the jiva is not destroyed but recognised as non-different from Brahman; mokṣa is jñana. Ramanuja: Viśiṣṭadvaita, world and selves are real modes or the body of Brahman. Madhva: Dvaita, real and eternal difference. Set this out as a table and answer only with the school the question names.
Files Locke as a rationalist because he discusses ideas, calls Hume a rationalist because he reasoned about causation, says Kant 'invented empiricism', or labels Descartes an empiricist because he begins from the experience of doubting.
Philosophers are memorised as names with a famous phrase attached (cogito, tabula rasa, impressions), and the classifying criterion - the source of substantive knowledge of reality - is never stated, so any mention of reason or of experience is taken as grounds for the label.
What to do instead
State the criterion before classifying anything. Rationalism: reason alone can yield substantive knowledge of reality, with innate or structural ideas (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz). Empiricism: all content of thought derives from experience, the mind contributing only operations on that content (Locke, Berkeley, Hume). Then write out the traps deliberately: Locke attacks innate ideas and is therefore an empiricist; Hume is the empiricist whose analysis dissolves rational demonstrability of causation; Kant supplies the forms but not the content, so calling him an empiricist loses the very point of the Copernican turn.
On an applied question (euthanasia, capital punishment, abortion, animal ethics, environmental duties), gives a personal verdict supported by common-sense slogans such as 'it is cruel' or 'society must be protected', never names a normative theory, or names utilitarianism in a single line and then does not use it to reach the verdict.
Applied ethics reads like opinion writing, and under time pressure the argument is driven straight at the conclusion; theories have been memorised as definitions for a separate descriptive question and are not perceived as tools for deciding a case.
What to do instead
Use a fixed four-move template on every applied question. (1) State the precise moral question and who is affected. (2) Apply one theory mechanically: utilitarian - list all affected parties, compare total welfare under act versus rule, state the result; Kantian - universalise the maxim and test for contradiction in conception and in will, then apply the humanity formula; virtue - identify the relevant character traits and what the phronimos would do. (3) State the strongest objection from a rival theory. (4) Conclude with a defended position. Rehearse the template on three cases until the moves are automatic.
Treats 'the ontological argument' as a general title for any argument for God's existence, presents the design argument using the premises of the cosmological argument, and attributes the Five Ways to Anselm or the ontological proof to Aquinas.
The proofs are learned as a trio of labels under a single heading, and the question of what kind of premise does the work in each is skipped, so the three structures become interchangeable under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Build a four-column table - proof, author, the move, the standard objection - and learn it as structures, not labels. Ontological (Anselm, Proslogion; Descartes, Meditation V): from the concept of a greatest conceivable being to its existence; objection: existence is not a predicate, Kant's hundred thalers. Cosmological (Aquinas, first three ways; Leibniz): from motion and contingency to a first cause; objection: why terminate here, and Hume on necessary connexion. Teleological (Paley's watch; Hume's Dialogues; fine-tuning versions): from apparent order to a designer; objection: weakness of the analogy plus Darwinian explanation. Learn Paley's watch analogy in detail so the structure is recognised whatever wording the paper uses.
Defines negative liberty as 'freedom to do whatever you like, with no law at all' and positive liberty as 'freedom of thought or inner freedom', and retells Hobbes's state of nature as one containing natural rights and a right of rebellion.
Negative and positive are matched to 'no' and 'yes' by loose everyday association, and the social contract thinkers are collapsed into one generic story, so the specific premises that generate each theory's distinctive conclusion disappear.
What to do instead
For liberty, use the interference criterion throughout: negative liberty is the absence of external interference (Berlin's non-interference), positive liberty is self-mastery or realisation through the rational or collective will, together with the standard worry that positive liberty can license coercion in the name of a 'real' self. For the contract theorists use a four-row grid - state of nature, motive for contracting, what is surrendered, right of resistance - and fill it in: Hobbes (war of all against all, fear, all right transferred to the sovereign, resistance only for self-preservation); Locke (inconveniences of a rights-bearing state of nature, protection of property, limited trust, justified resistance to tyranny); Rousseau (natural freedom corrupted into dependence, the general will, inalienable sovereignty).
Attributes Sarvodaya to Tagore, trusteeship to Ambedkar, or practical Vedanta to Radhakrishnan; writes that Vivekananda preached non-cooperation and satyagraha, or that Aurobindo's integral yoga is a political programme of non-violent resistance.
The thinkers are revised as a run of inspirational names carrying a vaguely similar reformist message, and no signature concept or text is pinned to a specific person, so under pressure the nearest familiar label is borrowed and attached to the wrong name.
What to do instead
Make one card per thinker with four fields - name, text or context, signature concept, one-line explanation - and rehearse the cards aloud. Gandhi: Hind Swaraj, satyagraha and trusteeship, unity of means and ends. Tagore: The Religion of Man and Visva-Bharati, humanism and freedom in creative self-expression. Vivekananda: Chicago address, practical Vedanta, daridra-narayaṇa, man-making education. Aurobindo: The Life Divine, integral yoga, supramental evolution. Radhakrishnan: The Hindu View of Life, idealist reinterpretation of Vedanta as experiential realisation. Ambedkar: Annihilation of Caste, caste as graded inequality, conversion as liberation. Answer only with the concept the question actually names.