Candidates must take Part IB Papers 1 and 10 and three other papers. Students taking Paper 8, Experimental Psychology, are exempt from taking the General Paper, Paper 10. (For candidates who have not done Part IA Philosophy, please see section 'Change to philosophy after studying another subject'.)
Essays
In place of any one of Papers 2, 3, 5, 7 and 9 a candidate may submit two essays, each of not less than 3,000 words and not more than 4,000 words in length, including footnotes and appendices but excluding a bibliography, on two topics proposed by the candidate and approved by the Chair of Examiners, which shall both fall within the syllabus of that paper, provided that a candidate who chooses to submit essays may not write in the General Paper, Paper 10 an essay on a subject that overlaps significantly with either of the submitted essays. Please see the GTC for more details.
Candidates are asked to answer three questions out of at least ten set.
- The Nature of Knowledge
- Scepticism
- Primary and Secondary Qualities
- Logical Form
- Truth
- Modality: Semantics and Metaphysics
Candidates are asked to answer three questions out of at least ten set.
The philosophical work of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and Ramsey from 1879-1930, with particular reference to the following:
Frege
Begriffsschrift, Preface, §§1-12 and §§23-4 (1879)
The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884)
Function and concept (1891)
On sense and reference (1892)
On concept and object (1892)
The Frege-Hilbert correspondence
Thoughts (1919)
Russell
The Principles of Mathematics, chs IV-VIII (1903)
On denoting (1905)
On the nature of truth (1906)
Mathematical logic as based on the theory of types (1908)
On the nature of truth and falsehood (1910)
Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description (1911)
The relation of sense data to physics (1914)
Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Ramsey The foundations of mathematics (1925)
Universals (1925)
Facts and propositions (1927)
The paper also includes comparisons of the approaches of the named authors to the following issues: complex and fact; particulars and universals; quantifier and variable; logicism; the theory of types; judgment; truth; knowledge; the mind. Candidates are therefore expected to study more than one author.
Candidates are asked to answer three questions out of at least ten set.
- Consequentialism: demands of beneficence; aggregation
- Deontology: contractualism; promise; consent
- Virtue ethics: Aristotle; contemporary accounts; empirical challenges
- Early modern moral philosophy: voluntarism; rationalism; sentimentalism
- Moral psychology: moral motivation; moral learning; practical reasoning
Examination by three hour set examination.
Candidates are asked to answer three questions, at least one from Section A and at least one from Section B.
Section A: questions on a set text – for 2023-24 Plato Phaedo
Section B: questions covered in other lecture courses – for 2023-24 Aristotle: the Greatest Hits; Early Greek Philosophy; Cicero On Fate and Hellenistic Philosophy
Candidates are asked to answer three questions out of at least ten set, at least one question from each section.
Section A: Early Modern Thinkers
- Leibniz
- Hume
- Descartes
- Du Châtelet
Section B: Themes in Early Modern Philosophy
The thinkers of Section A and the themes of Section B are subject to change, and will be set in advance each Lent term.
For 2023-24: Early Modern Feminisms, Mind-Body Problems
- Some comparative questions may be set.
Examination by three hour set examination.
[Note that there is a maximum quota of 30 Philosophy students able to take this option.]
Candidates are asked to answer three questions out of at least ten set.
- Democracy: forms of democracy; justifications of democracy; the democratic boundary problem
- Equality and egalitarianism: the value of equality; distributive equality; economic justice and gender
- Liberty and liberalism: the concept of liberty; Rawlsian liberalism; liberal feminism
- Property: labour, property and theft; the limits of markets
(The subject Experimental Psychology in Part IB of the Natural Sciences Tripos, for which the examination consists of two papers.) Students taking this paper are exempt from taking the General Paper, Paper 10. Paper 8 is worth 40% of the total marks, and each of the remaining three papers 20%.
Candidates are asked to answer three questions out of at least ten set.
- Aesthetics: aesthetic judgments and properties; realism and anti-realism; aesthetics beyond art.
- The nature of art: the definition of art; the ontology of art; representation; expression; imagination and fiction.
- The values of art: the value of originality; aesthetic and cognitive value; aesthetic and moral value; interpretation and criticism.
- History of aesthetics: Ancient aesthetics; Early Modern aesthetics; Kant’s aesthetics.
Candidates are asked to write a philosophical essay on one of at least fifteen questions set.
