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Philosophy Revision Tips


Sandwich

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To my knowledge, there aren't any. Well, that's sort-of a lie - apparently there is one textbook created for IB Philosophy. My teacher bought it and passed it around to see if any of us thought it'd be worth ordering a copy, but it was no great shakes. In my opinion it's hard to have a Philosophy textbook as everything is so random, in many respects! Getting an A/AS Level Philosophy textbook might give you some decent grounding in the technicalities of Determinism, Utilitarianism etc., but all in all I found that when we did the course, information came from everywhere and anywhere, and that textbooks weren't all that helpful, even though they had decent explanations.

Some of the best stuff (I found) was reading books by people who're into Philosophical analysis. It gives you an idea of the thought process ("attack mode" XD) and how to argue/look at things philosophically. I think it helps show you the right approach and ways to analyse things yourself based on what you know. One of the best books I read was The Ethics of George Bush by Peter Singer. It's basically Singer annihilating G. W. Bush's ethics and how they tie up, but in terms of seeing how to do it yourself, it's some sort of masterpiece XD Also definitely read the articles on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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Firstly: I have a bunch of various textbooks for philosophy ranging from mind/body to environmental in the end I don't think that there is a list of philosophers you need to know. So any good, clear comprehensive text will be fine I think.

Secondly: I need to get myself a copy of that book.

Lastly: IB philosophy students unite! Possibly the most fringe subject out of all the IB subjects available.

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I have read tons of books and papers, and I think my knowledge as such is sufficient for the IB course. I worry, however, about the skills needed for the exams themselves. If there is no IB book (except the 'Philosophy' by Noel Augustes) I will just stick to the criteria.

IB PHILOSOPHY STUDENTS UNITE XD

(btw, in my year philosophy is quite popular. roughly 10/50 students take it. it is the only school in Poland that offers it though, it seems)

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  • 7 months later...

Ok, recently things have gotten better for me with my essays and all and I wanted to share what I changed that has finally brought me up to a six.

Alright, criteria A: The trick seems to be as clear and concise as possible. Use paragraphs to separate out your theory, analysis, arguments etc.

Criteria B: Layout a theory from its assumptions to its final points. For a Kant ethics paper: start with his postulates, then maxims, and continue till you reach the relevant ideas you need.

Criteria C: Refer to the stimulus. Give lots of examples. Critically analyse as much as you can, not just final concepts, assumptions and reasoning as well!

Criteria D: This is my weakest area, really, what I think they're looking for is a very convincing argument. So I would say to almost change your tone between paragraphs. Eg. For knowledge, present the ideas clearly, for analysis show your love/hate for the theory.

Hope this helps!

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Hello fellow IB philosophers!

Together with my philosophy group we had the idea to collaborate on notes, i.e. write our notes together.

It works quite well and I thought of expanding the project onto a global scale.

I've created google documents with the necessary files and notes. We've divided the syllabus into:

Human Being

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AbWnkA70T15VZGhna205YnNfMTEzNnJmNTlyZnQ&hl=en

Ethics

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AbWnkA70T15VZGhna205YnNfMTEzNnJmNTlyZnQ&hl=en

Politics

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AbWnkA70T15VZGhna205YnNfMTEzNnJmNTlyZnQ&hl=en

Also we have a spreadsheet which serves as a sort of glossary of terms. It is incredibly useful to look at these (there is a whole criterion devoted to language) and obviously knowing the name of a concept makes it more likely to know the concept itself. have a look

List of words

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArWnkA70T15VdGJFMzVqVS1KR0ZQaUttdHZ5SFNoc0E&hl=en

Any questions?

Paper 1 is in less than a week so share your notes as fast as you can!

(These documents are open, i.e. anyone can edit them. I hope trolls and viagra spammers won't be as quick as 4 days.)

Edited by Cognac
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  • 1 month later...

Ok, recently things have gotten better for me with my essays and all and I wanted to share what I changed that has finally brought me up to a six.

Alright, criteria A: The trick seems to be as clear and concise as possible. Use paragraphs to separate out your theory, analysis, arguments etc.

Criteria B: Layout a theory from its assumptions to its final points. For a Kant ethics paper: start with his postulates, then maxims, and continue till you reach the relevant ideas you need.

Criteria C: Refer to the stimulus. Give lots of examples. Critically analyse as much as you can, not just final concepts, assumptions and reasoning as well!

Criteria D: This is my weakest area, really, what I think they're looking for is a very convincing argument. So I would say to almost change your tone between paragraphs. Eg. For knowledge, present the ideas clearly, for analysis show your love/hate for the theory.

Hope this helps!

Just to clarify. Criterion D is about EVALUATING. That is, one must stete the weaknesses and strengths of each theory. Be as clear and critical as you possibly can. This is really important. My teacher used to say that if you can describe you'll get a 5, if you can evaluate, you'll get a 7.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Best revision? Read a bunch of random stuff. Wikipedia, Oxford Philosophy, ect. Then get in a group of fellow students and debate past exam topics. Honestly, that's what my whole HL philosophy class did and we got nearly straight 6's.

I do not advice to read philosophy dictionaries and the like other than to refresh your memory or if there is something you don't understand about a certain philosopher. These dictionaries are not very detailed nor specific and I, at least, found them difficult to use. Do not write about a philopsopher unless you are very certain that you understand his/her theories. Philosophy is easy to misinterpret.

But class discussions are the best way of revising!

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  • 2 years later...

Seems like I am waking up a dead thread! Not many people doing Philosophy on IBS unfortunately. Anyways, for those who are; I have added some new links in the "Links"-section of IBS so that people can enjoy them.

Other than that I can tell a bit of how the IB Philosophy-course is built up in my school. First of all, we read a lot (read: our teacher wants us to read a lot). I think I read three or four books last year. Let me count them; existentialism & humanism by Sartre, The Bhagavad Gita, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzche and On Liberty by Mill. In addition we have also had numerous handouts and printouts from other books which I can't remember the name of. I can honestly say that I haven't read all of it, but she (my teacher) expects A LOT from us! I am in my second year now, and so far we have started to read An Introduction to Politcal Philosophy by Jonathan Wolff and Being Good (ethics) by Simon Blackburn. That's two books in a matter of 4-5 weeks and I am assuming there's just coming even more books as we are progressing deeper into Ethics and Politics!

My school (read: my teacher) offers almost all the options for Philosophy, but it might be that you have to study it more or less by yourself since we are not that many students. About a quarter of all the students in my school, both second year and first years in IB, do Philosophy which is pretty awesome! We are 200 students in the school so it is a quite big number!

And to everyone that is doing IB Philosophy or is just interested that are lurking around at IBS; GET IN HERE!

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  • 3 months later...
  • 8 years later...
On 3/28/2009 at 2:03 PM, Sandwich said:

Okay, I realise that not many people here must do Philosophy given the general lack of posts about it, but I was wondering if anybody felt like sharing any useful links or tips about revision, resources etc.

Particularly with regard to set texts :dead:

A few places/things I've found very useful:

IB Philosophy at Pearson College Page

http://peernet.lbpc.ca/Philosophy/contents.htm

Notes on: Philosophy of Religion, Political Philosophy, Plato's Republic, Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, Rousseau's Origin of Inequality (Social Contract), Solipsism, Descartes' Meditations (summary) and various smaller topics.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

http://plato.stanford.edu/

Resources for Plato's Republic

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2075035/Lecture-...Platos-Republic

http://platosrepublic.wordpress.com/

On Liberty by Mill (text)

http://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/one.html

Utilitarianism by Mill

http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill1.htm

Ethics Bites

http://www.open2.net/ethicsbites/

(Series of lengthy, often slow but informative radio interviews)

Huge Collection of Texts from various Philosophers

http://eserver.org/philosophy/texts.htm

OpenLearn Modules

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/advance...arch=philosophy

Peter Singer: Collection of Resources

http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/

Sample Articles from THINK magazine

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displ...Page?pageId=780

Symposia - Online Philosophy Journal (NB. user-submitted content)

http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com/

(all articles appear pretty coherent, though, so it's worth the look even if it's not official)

I also uploaded a load of revision notes to IBS which I made just before the exam, which contained various random ideas and arguments. In combination with ideas from your set text it's definitely enough for the exam in case people wanted any extra stuff. A lot of it depends on what theories you've gone over personally, of course.

Thank you so much

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