76 lessons in teaching order. Each unit opens with its map lesson — the unit page mirrors it — then takes one part per lesson. Weeks are teaching weeks from the start of the year; the December test falls at the end of Epistemology and covers Q01–Q04. Where a year is taught as two tracks (Track A and Track B run side by side, with different teachers), the weeks of the two tracks overlap.
| Year 12 · Epistemology Unit 1 · The definition of knowledge Track A · Autumn 1 · weeks 1–4 unit page ↗ | |||
| 1 | 1 | The map: what is knowledge? Types of knowledge, the tripartite view, and why every definition in the unit is a reply to Gettier. | deck built |
| 1–2 | 2 | Types of knowledge and the tripartite view Ability, acquaintance and propositional knowledge; individually necessary and jointly sufficient; J, T and B. | deck built |
| 2 | 3 | Gettier: two kinds of failure The two original cases and the fake-barn county; are the conditions necessary, and are they sufficient? | deck built |
| 3 | 4 | No false lemmas and infallibilism Adding a fourth condition; strengthening the third; what each blocks and what each costs. | deck built |
| 4 | 5 | Reliabilism and virtue epistemology Replacing justification with a reliable process, then with intellectual virtue; the ladder. | deck built |
| Year 12 · Epistemology Unit 2 · Perception as a source of knowledge Track A · Autumn 1–2 · weeks 5–8 unit page ↗ | |||
| 5 | 1 | The map: what does perception give us? Direct realism, indirect realism and idealism as three answers to one question. | deck built |
| 5–6 | 2 | Direct realism and its four issues The immediate object of perception; illusion, perceptual variation, hallucination, time-lag — and the replies. | deck built |
| 6–7 | 3 | Indirect realism: Locke and the veil Sense-data; primary and secondary qualities; scepticism about the external world; Locke's and Russell's responses. | deck built |
| 7 | 4 | Berkeley's idealism The attack on primary/secondary; the master argument; God as the permanent perceiver. | deck built |
| 8 | 5 | Issues with idealism Illusion and hallucination, solipsism, the role of God — and the ladder. | deck built |
| Year 12 · Epistemology Unit 3 · Reason as a source of knowledge Track A · Autumn 2 · weeks 9–11 unit page ↗ | |||
| 9 | 1 | The map: is any knowledge innate or a priori? Rationalism and empiricism; innatism, intuition and deduction, and Hume's fork. | deck built |
| 9–10 | 2 | Innatism: Plato and Leibniz against Locke The slave boy; necessary truths; Locke's arguments against innate ideas and the innatist replies. | deck built |
| 10 | 3 | Intuition and deduction: the cogito Intuition and deduction; clear and distinct ideas; the cogito and what it establishes; Russell and Hume on the 'I'. | deck built |
| 11 | 4 | Descartes' proofs of God and the external world The trademark and ontological arguments, the proof of the external world, their objections and the Cartesian circle. | deck built |
| 11 | 5 | Hume's fork and the empiricist reply Relations of ideas and matters of fact; the fork applied to Descartes and to itself; Kant's synthetic a priori; the ladder. | deck built |
| Year 12 · Epistemology Unit 4 · The limits of knowledge Track A · Autumn 2 · weeks 12–14 unit page ↗ | |||
| 12 | 1 | The map: can we know anything at all? Scepticism, the three waves, and the four families of response. | deck built |
| 12 | 2 | Philosophical scepticism and the three waves Normal incredulity vs philosophical scepticism; illusion, dreaming, the demon; local vs global. | deck built |
| 13 | 3 | Descartes' own response The cogito, clear and distinct ideas, God as guarantor — and the Cartesian circle. | deck built |
| 13–14 | 4 | Empiricist responses: Locke, Berkeley, Russell Best hypothesis, the involuntariness of perception, idealism's dissolution of the problem. | deck built |
| 14 | 5 | Reliabilism as a response; the December test Knowing without proving you know; Q01–Q04 practice; the ladder. | deck built |
| Year 12 · Moral Philosophy Unit 1 · Utilitarianism Track B · Autumn 1 · weeks 1–7 unit page ↗ | |||
| 1 | 1 | The map: is the right act the one that produces most happiness? The three levels of ethics; four versions of utilitarianism; the scapegoat. | deck built |
| 1–2 | 2 | Bentham: the principle of utility Hedonism, the calculus, act utilitarianism; the first objections. | deck built |
| 3 | 3 | Mill: quality, the proof and secondary principles Higher and lower pleasures, the competent judge, the 'proof', liberty. | deck built |
| 4–5 | 4 | Rule and preference utilitarianism Strong and weak rule; the collapse objection; Singer and equal consideration. | deck built |
| 6 | 5 | The five issues Pleasure the only good; calculation; fairness and rights; partiality; integrity and intentions. | deck built |
| 7 | 6 | The applied issues Stealing, simulated killing, eating animals, telling lies — through every version; the ladder. | deck built |
| Year 12 · Moral Philosophy Unit 2 · Kantian deontological ethics Track B · Autumn 1–2 · weeks 8–13 unit page ↗ | |||
| 8 | 1 | The map: can an act be right whatever its consequences? The good will, the two formulations, the issues, Foot. | deck built |
| 8–9 | 2 | The good will, duty and the imperatives Acting from duty; hypothetical and categorical; maxims. | deck built |
| 10 | 3 | The universal law formulation Contradiction in conception, contradiction in the will; perfect and imperfect duties. | deck built |
| 11–12 | 4 | The humanity formulation Ends and mere means; consent; dignity and rights. | deck built |
| 13 | 5 | The issues and Foot's challenge; applied Clashing duties, consequences, motives; morality as hypothetical; the four applied issues; the ladder. | deck built |
| Year 12 · Moral Philosophy Unit 3 · Aristotelian virtue ethics Track B · Autumn 2 – Spring 1 · weeks 14–19 unit page ↗ | |||
| 14 | 1 | The map: is the right act what the virtuous person would do? Eudaimonia, the virtues, practical wisdom, the issues. | deck built |
| 14–15 | 2 | Eudaimonia and the function argument The final end; the function argument; external goods. | deck built |
| 16 | 3 | Virtue, habituation and the mean Dispositions; habituation; the doctrine of the mean; acts with no mean. | deck built |
| 17–18 | 4 | Voluntary action and practical wisdom Voluntary, involuntary, non-voluntary; choice; phronesis. | deck built |
| 19 | 5 | The issues; applied Guidance, clashing virtues, circularity, the good for me; the four applied issues; the ladder. | deck built |
| Year 12 · Metaphysics of God Unit 1 · The concept and nature of God Track B · Spring 2 · weeks 20–23 unit page ↗ | |||
| 20 | 1 | The map: is the classical concept of God coherent? The four attributes as one conjunction; where each storey of the stack strains. | deck built |
| 20–21 | 2 | Omniscience, omnipotence, supreme goodness Kretzmann on omniscience; Aquinas on omnipotence; three approaches to omnibenevolence. | deck built |
| 22 | 3 | Eternal or everlasting Boethius and Aquinas on timeless eternity; Wolterstorff's temporal God; Stump and Kretzmann's reply. | deck built |
| 23 | 4 | The paradox of the stone; Euthyphro; free will Mavrodes and Savage on the stone; Kierkegaard and Aquinas on Euthyphro; omniscience and free will. | deck built |
| Year 12 · Metaphysics of God Unit 2 · Arguments for the existence of God Track B · Spring 2 – Summer 1 · weeks 24–27 unit page ↗ | |||
| 24 | 1 | The toolkit for testing any proof of God's existence Premise, conclusion, inference; deductive, inductive, abductive; validity, soundness, cogency; the argument lens. | deck built |
| 25 | 2 | The Ontological Argument Anselm's a priori proof; Gaunilo's Perfect Island; Kant on existence as not a predicate. | deck built |
| 26 | 3 | The Design (Teleological) Argument Cleanthes' and Paley's arguments from analogy; Swinburne's temporal order; Hume's objections; Darwin's alternative. | deck built |
| 27 | 4 | The Cosmological Argument The Kalam argument; Aquinas's three ways; Descartes and Leibniz; Hume and Russell's objections. | deck built |
| Year 12 · Metaphysics of God Unit 3 · The problem of evil Track B · Summer 1 · weeks 28–31 unit page ↗ | |||
| 28 | 1 | Defining evil; the logical and evidential problems Moral vs natural evil; Mackie's inconsistent triad and Plantinga's 4a amendment; Hume, Darwin and Rowe's evidential problem. | deck built |
| 29 | 2 | The Free Will defence: Augustine and Plantinga Augustine's privation and the Fall; Leibniz's best-possible-world theodicy; Flew and Mackie's objections; Plantinga's transworld depravity. | deck built |
| 30 | 3 | The soul-making theodicy: Irenaeus and Hick Irenaeus's two-stage creation; Hick's vale of soul-making; epistemic distance; Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov challenge. | deck built |
| 31 | 4 | Other responses; evaluating the problem of evil Mackie's atheism; Sartre; Midgley on wickedness and the banality of evil; process theology and dualism; the Afterlife defence; the Book of Job. | deck built |
| Year 12 · Metaphysics of God Unit 4 · Religious language Track B · Summer 2 · weeks 32–34 unit page ↗ | |||
| 32 | 1 | The map: does 'God exists' say anything at all? The puzzle of religious language; cognitivism and non-cognitivism; the verification and falsification challenges and the three replies in outline. | deck built |
| 32 | 2 | Verification: Ayer and the logical positivists The Vienna Circle and Hume's fork; Ayer's strong and weak verification; 'God exists' as meaningless; the principle's self-refutation and other criticisms. | deck built |
| 33 | 3 | Hick's eschatological verification Verification in principle after death; the Celestial City; what would count as verification; the issues — identity, communication, one-way verification. | deck built |
| 33–34 | 4 | Falsification: Flew and the invisible gardener The University debate; Wisdom's gardener as Flew develops it; death by a thousand qualifications; whether falsification is a fair test of meaning. | deck built |
| 34 | 5 | Hare's bliks and Mitchell's partisan Hare's non-cognitivist bliks and their issues; Mitchell's partisan and the Stranger; weighing the whole debate — is religious language meaningful? | deck built |
| Year 13 · Metaphysics of Mind Unit 1 · What do we mean by 'mind'? Track A · Autumn 1 (W1) unit page ↗ | |||
| 1 | 1 | The map: what do we mean by 'mind'? Introspection and the contents of a mind; intentionality and qualia previewed; conscious and unconscious states; why the mind resists third-person science. | deck built |
| 1 | 2 | Intentionality and qualia Aboutness and propositional content; the 'what it is like' of experience; states with one feature, both or neither; the two tests every theory must pass. | deck built |
| 1 | 3 | The mind–body problem: the hard problem and the map of theories Chalmers' hard problem and the explanatory gap; substance and property dualism; idealism and physicalism; reduction; the map of the strand. | deck built |
| Year 13 · Metaphysics of Mind Unit 2 · Dualist theories Track A · Autumn 1 (W2–7) unit page ↗ | |||
| 2 | 1 | The map: is the mind something over and above the body? Substance and property dualism, their four arguments, and the issues they face: other minds, interaction, epiphenomenalism. | deck built |
| 2 | 2 | Substance dualism: the indivisibility argument Descartes' argument and Leibniz's law; the mental is divisible in some sense; not everything physical is divisible; the unity of consciousness. | deck built |
| 3 | 3 | Substance dualism: the conceivability argument Clear and distinct conception; mind without body not conceivable; conceivable is not always possible (Arnauld); possible tells us nothing about actual. | deck built |
| 4 | 4 | Property dualism: philosophical zombies Chalmers' zombie argument; a zombie world is not conceivable; conceivability and a posteriori necessity; possible but not actual. | deck built |
| 5 | 5 | Property dualism: the knowledge argument (Mary) Jackson's Mary; ability and acquaintance knowledge; new concept, old fact; Dennett's blue banana and the denial of qualia. | deck built |
| 6 | 6 | Issues facing dualism: the problem of other minds The epistemological problem; Mill's argument from analogy and its criticisms; the best hypothesis; the conceptual problem. | deck built |
| 7 | 7 | Interaction and epiphenomenalism Elisabeth's conceptual interaction problem; conservation of energy and causal closure; Huxley's epiphenomenalism and its four issues. | deck built |
| Year 13 · Metaphysics of Mind Unit 3 · Physicalist theories Track A · Autumn 2 (W8–9, W13–14) unit page ↗ | |||
| 8 | 1 | The map: is the mind nothing but behaviour or the brain? Physicalism and reduction; behaviourism, type identity and eliminativism; the issues they share, setting up functionalism. | deck built |
| 8 | 2 | Philosophical behaviourism: Hempel and Ryle The motivation; Hempel's hard behaviourism and test sentences; Ryle's dispositions and inference tickets; the category mistake. | deck built |
| 9 | 3 | Issues facing philosophical behaviourism Introspection and the asymmetry of self-knowledge; perfect actors and super-spartans; circularity and multiple realisability; mental causation. | deck built |
| 13 | 4 | Mind–brain type identity theory and its issues Place and Smart; a posteriori identity and Ockham's razor; meaning and location objections; dualist arguments and intentionality; multiple realisability. | deck built |
| 14 | 5 | Eliminative materialism: the Churchlands Folk psychology as a theory and its failures; certainty from introspection; predictive success; the self-refutation objection. | deck built |
| Year 13 · Metaphysics of Mind Unit 4 · Functionalism Track A · Spring 1 (W15–17) unit page ↗ | |||
| 15 | 1 | The map: is a mind what a mind does? Functional roles; multiple realisability; functionalism between behaviourism and identity theory; the issues previewed. | deck built |
| 16 | 2 | Issues facing functionalism: qualia and the China brain Inverted qualia; Block's China brain; the knowledge argument against functionalism; the functionalist replies. | deck built |
| 17 | 3 | The Chinese room; weighing the metaphysics of mind Searle's Chinese room and its replies; as-if intentionality; weighing every theory of mind against intentionality and qualia. | deck built |
| Year 13 · Moral Philosophy — meta-ethics and applied ethics Unit 1 · Meta-ethics Track B · Autumn 1–2 · weeks 1–8 unit page ↗ | |||
| 1 | 1 | The map: are moral judgements true or false at all? Realism and anti-realism; cognitivism and non-cognitivism; the four positions. | deck built |
| 1–2 | 2 | Naturalism and Hume's is–ought Utilitarian and Aristotelian naturalism; the is–ought gap; the Humean theory of motivation. | deck built |
| 3–4 | 3 | Moore: intuitionism and the open question The naturalistic fallacy; the open question; disagreement. | deck built |
| 5–6 | 4 | Mackie's error theory Relativity and queerness; what error theory cannot explain. | deck built |
| 7–8 | 5 | Emotivism and prescriptivism; the anti-realist issues Ayer's verification; emotivism and Stevenson; Hare; the anti-realist issues — reasoning and embedding, progress, nihilism; the ladder. | deck built |
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