Philosophy & Reason: should I choose it?

What will I learn?

How will I be assessed?

Progression and companion subjects

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Will I find it hard?

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• Try explaining a case, source or argument with evidence. Does this type of writing interest you?
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Does it scale up or down?

Philosophy and Reason, 2025. Table 6 of QTAC’s 2025 report publishes separate raw and scaled subject medians for General subjects with at least 50 students. Historical cohort data cannot predict your result or a future scaling direction.

Scaling is not a measure of difficulty or a guaranteed bonus. Prioritise content you can engage with and required subjects for courses you are considering.

Try a little of the subject

Anatomy of an argument: premises, conclusions and standard form

1. What an argument is, and what it is not In Philosophy & Reason an argument is a set of propositions in which one or more (the premises ) are offered as reasons for accepting another (the conclusion ). A proposition is the content of a declarative sentence: something that can be true or false. 'Taxation funds hospitals' is a proposition; 'Fund the hospitals!' is not, because a command cannot be true or false. A claim is a proposition that someone asserts as true. Every premise and every conclusion is a claim, but not every claim sits inside an argument. Three things are often mistaken for arguments: Bare assertion : 'The state should be abolished.' A claim with no reasons offered. Explanation : 'The council banned the market because traders blocked the footpath.' This tells you why something happened; it does not try to convince you that it happened. The test is whether the 'conclusion' is already accepted by both parties. Description or narrative : a summary of what Nozick or Marx said, with no inferential link drawn. The syllabus lists four purposes of argument : to explain (make something understood by showing its causes or structure), to justify (show that a belief or action is reasonable), to analyse (break an idea or argument into its parts and show how they connect), and to evaluate (judge quality using criteria). The external assessment essay does all four: it explains tenets of two political philosophies, analyses arguments from them and from the stimulus, evaluates those arguments, and justifies your own position. A quick diagnostic for any passage: ask 'What is the author trying to get me to believe, and what are they giving me as reasons?' If you can name both, you have an argument. If you can only name a belief, you have an assertion. If the belief is alr

Original practice question: Original practice stimulus. “Councils should not be allowed to ban busking. Busking is a form of expression, and a free society protects expression unless it causes serious harm to others. A guitarist on a footpath may annoy some shoppers, but annoyance is not serious harm.” Deconstruct this argument into standard form, including any hidden premise, and identify its structure. Then evaluate the truth of one premise. (6 marks)

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