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. What does the term 'epistemic circularity' refer to? → Justifying a belief-forming process using that same process
5. Which philosopher argued that we can never truly know the external world because our senses only give us appearances, not things-in-themselves? → Immanuel Kant
6. Thomas Hobbes described life in the state of nature—without government—as: → 'Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'
7. Which philosopher is most closely associated with the view that knowledge is 'true belief plus the right causal connection'? → Alvin Goldman
8. What is the primary target of the 'zygote argument' put forward by Alfred Mele against compatibilism? → It shows that determinism entails that even one's initial character was not self-made
9. The primary difference between semantics and pragmatics is that semantics studies: → The conventional, context-independent meanings of linguistic expressions
10. A sufficient condition for event A is a condition whose presence: → Guarantees that A occurs
11. Positive liberty, contrasted with negative liberty by Berlin, refers to: → The power and resources to realize one's potential and self-determination
12. Communitarianism, associated with Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor, criticizes liberalism for: → Neglecting the role of community and shared values in forming identity and justice
13. Which of the following best characterizes 'fallibilism' in epistemology? → Knowledge is compatible with the possibility of error
14. The 'closure principle' in epistemology states that if you know P, and you know that P implies Q, then: → You know Q
15. Which term refers to the qualitative, subjective 'feel' of experience, such as the redness of red or the painfulness of pain? → Qualia
16. In Stoic philosophy, living according to nature (kata phusin) in the context of meaning primarily refers to living according to: → Reason and one's rational nature
17. According to Frege, the 'sense' (Sinn) of an expression is best described as: → The mode of presentation by which the referent is determined
18. Which position holds that mental states are entirely identical to physical brain states? → Mind-body identity theory
19. Descartes was disappointed when he realized that many of the purported truths he had learnt in his boyhood were ______. → false.
20. Which metaphysical position holds that reality is fundamentally mental or mind-dependent? → Idealism
21. Which philosopher is most closely associated with virtue ethics and the concept of eudaimonia? → Aristotle
22. 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
23. 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
24. 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
25. Which philosopher famously claimed that 'God is dead' and diagnosed nihilism as a cultural crisis? → Friedrich Nietzsche
26. The 'narrative theory' of life's meaning holds that a life is meaningful when: → It coheres as a unified story with intelligible structure
27. Which concept from Kierkegaard describes the leap beyond rational justification required to embrace religious faith as life's ultimate ground? → The teleological suspension of the ethical
28. P.F. Strawson's influential paper 'Freedom and Resentment' (1962) argued that free will debates should focus primarily on which of the following? → Reactive attitudes such as gratitude and resentment
29. The 'regress problem' for foundationalism arises because: → Every justified belief seems to require further justification
30. Which term describes the view that moral facts are objectively true independently of what anyone thinks or feels? → Moral realism