Philosophy (Advanced Matriculation): Argument, Exposition and Evaluation
Domain scope
The MATSEC Advanced Philosophy paper is essay-led. It tests two things at once: accurate exposition of canonical positions, and your own philosophical evaluation of them. Strong answers reconstruct arguments in premise–conclusion form, use technical vocabulary precisely (valid, sound, a priori, analytic, supervenience), and engage named objections. Textual anchors-Plato's Euthyphro, Descartes' Meditations, Hume's Enquiry-must be accurate, not decorative. Where the syllabus includes formal logic, expect to test argument forms with truth tables or counterexamples rather than to recite definitions.
Core rules
- Reconstruct before you criticise: state premises and conclusion explicitly.
- Define contested terms operationally (e.g. 'free will' as the ability to do otherwise).
- Give the objection in its strongest form, then answer it.
- Keep exposition and evaluation visibly separate, and end with a verdict.
- Signal that verdict: 'Hume's conclusion is too strong because…', not a trailing summary.
Worked example: Hume on induction
Reconstruction: (P1) Every inductive inference assumes that unobserved cases will resemble observed ones. (P2) That uniformity of nature cannot be proved a priori, and any empirical proof would beg the question. (C) Induction therefore lacks rational justification.
Evaluation, shown: P1 is close to analytic of what induction is, so the work is done by P2. Reply A (Strawson): the uniformity principle is not a premise but a rule constitutive of empirical reasoning, so demanding a justification mistakes its logical role. Reply B: the circularity is benign because inductive support is defeasible, not deductive. A good paragraph then adjudicates: does Reply A restore justification, or merely relabel habit as rationality?
Traps that cost marks
- Retelling a theory with no argument of your own.
- Writing 'valid' when you mean 'true'.
- Treating Hume's descriptive psychology ('custom and habit') as if it answered the normative question.
- Attributing a view to an author on the strength of a summary rather than the text.
- Ignoring the directive word-'assess' is not 'describe'.