PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield PhB Bachelor of Philosophy facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles states that: → No two distinct things share all their properties
2. Hilary Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment was designed to demonstrate that: → Linguistic meaning depends partly on factors external to the speaker's mind
3. Personal identity over time is often analyzed in terms of which of the following criteria? → Psychological continuity, physical continuity, or narrative identity
4. Thomas Hobbes described life in the state of nature—without government—as: → 'Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'
5. The primary difference between semantics and pragmatics is that semantics studies: → The conventional, context-independent meanings of linguistic expressions
6. A sufficient condition for event A is a condition whose presence: → Guarantees that A occurs
7. Positive liberty, contrasted with negative liberty by Berlin, refers to: → The power and resources to realize one's potential and self-determination
8. Communitarianism, associated with Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor, criticizes liberalism for: → Neglecting the role of community and shared values in forming identity and justice
9. Which term refers to the qualitative, subjective 'feel' of experience, such as the redness of red or the painfulness of pain? → Qualia
10. According to Frege, the 'sense' (Sinn) of an expression is best described as: → The mode of presentation by which the referent is determined
11. Which position holds that mental states are entirely identical to physical brain states? → Mind-body identity theory
12. Descartes was disappointed when he realized that many of the purported truths he had learnt in his boyhood were ______. → false.
13. Which metaphysical position holds that reality is fundamentally mental or mind-dependent? → Idealism
14. Which philosopher is most closely associated with virtue ethics and the concept of eudaimonia? → Aristotle
15. Which of the following best captures Rousseau's concept of the 'general will'? → The common good as willed by citizens reasoning as members of the political community
16. The Turing Test, proposed by Alan Turing, evaluates machine intelligence by whether a machine can: → Fool a human judge into thinking it is human through conversation
17. Thomas Nagel's famous paper 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' argues that physicalist accounts of mind fail to capture: → The subjective, first-person character of experience
18. Which term describes the view that moral facts are objectively true independently of what anyone thinks or feels? → Moral realism
19. Hard determinism is in contrast with _____, claims Taylor. → scientific determinism
20. Modal realism, defended by David Lewis, is the view that: → All possible worlds are equally real and concrete
21. John Locke's political philosophy holds that individuals possess natural rights to: → Life, liberty, and property
22. The doctrine of double effect holds that an action with a harmful side effect may be permissible if: → The harmful effect is foreseen but not intended and the action is otherwise good
23. Substance dualism, associated with Descartes, holds that mind and body are: → Two entirely distinct substances
24. Grice's maxim of Quantity states that a speaker should: → Make their contribution as informative as required, but not more so
25. Descartes asserts that a bad devil _______ → could possibly be deceiving him
26. Inductive arguments, unlike deductive ones, aim to show that their conclusions are: → Probably true given the premises
27. Which philosopher argued that the meaning of a word is its use, understood through participation in 'language games'? → Ludwig Wittgenstein
28. Which philosopher introduced the concept of the 'original position' and the 'veil of ignorance' in political ethics? → John Rawls
29. Care ethics, developed by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, emphasizes which of the following above universal rules? → Relationships and context-sensitive caring
30. Descartes initially assumes that everything he observes is _____. → false.