PhD Doctor of Philosophy Cheat Sheet 2026

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

1. Virtue epistemology, associated with Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski, grounds knowledge in: → Intellectual virtues of the knower
2. Rawls' difference principle states that social and economic inequalities are just only if they benefit: → The least advantaged members of society
3. Mereology is the study of the relationship between: → Parts and wholes
4. Substance ontology, dominant in the Aristotelian tradition, holds that the fundamental entities of reality are: → Individual substances that bear properties
5. Critical race theory examines how race and racial inequality are perpetuated through: → Legal systems and institutional structures
6. Ontology is the branch of metaphysics that investigates the nature and categories of: → Being and existence
7. Philo claims that the analogy Cleanthes draws to support his position is _____. → weak
8. Kant asserts that only _____ can be characterized as "good" without further explanation. → a good will
9. John Rawls' 'veil of ignorance' is a device used in his theory to ensure that principles of justice are chosen: → Without knowledge of one's place in society
10. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its strong form claims that language: → Determines what thoughts are thinkable
11. Gödel's first incompleteness theorem states that any consistent formal system capable of expressing basic arithmetic contains statements that are: → True but unprovable within the system
12. According to Aquinas, ______ is the first effective cause of everything. → God
13. The problem of induction, highlighted by Hume, questions the rational justification for inferring: → General laws from particular observations
14. Pragmatic theories of truth, associated with James and Peirce, hold that truth is a property of beliefs that: → Work satisfactorily or prove useful in practice
15. John Locke differed from Hobbes on the state of nature by arguing it is governed by: → Natural law conferring rights to life, liberty, and property
16. A question-and-answer exchange in which claims are meticulously examined to ascertain the truth is referred to as _____. → the Socratic method
17. Metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and _____ are the four main subfields of philosophy. → logic
18. Frege's sense/reference (Sinn/Bedeutung) distinction distinguishes between the meaning of a term and its: → Actual object or referent in the world
19. Which term refers to the view that scientific theories are merely useful instruments for prediction, not descriptions of unobservable reality? → Instrumentalism
20. The mind-body problem concerns the relationship between mental states and: → Physical brain states
21. In the philosophy of science, 'underdetermination' refers to the thesis that: → Scientific data alone is insufficient to determine the truth of a unique theory
22. The capability approach, developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, evaluates social justice in terms of people's: → Real freedoms to live flourishing lives
23. The sorites paradox (heap paradox) challenges the classical logic of predicates by exploiting the fact that vague predicates like 'heap' lack: → Sharp boundaries between their positive and negative extensions
24. The realism vs. anti-realism debate in metaphysics concerns whether the objects studied by a given domain: → Exist independently of human minds and practices
25. David Chalmers' 'hard problem of consciousness' concerns explaining why physical processes give rise to: → Subjective phenomenal experience (qualia)
26. Substance dualism, as defended by Descartes, holds that mind and body are: → Two distinct and fundamentally different substances
27. It is attributed to _____ that the proverb "An unexamined life is not worth living" was first said. → Socrates
28. Libertarianism in political philosophy holds that individual liberty is the paramount value and opposes: → Coercive redistribution of wealth
29. Imre Lakatos introduced the concept of 'research programmes' to show that: → Scientific theories are immune to falsification by a single counterexample
30. What is the classical tripartite definition of knowledge according to Plato's Theaetetus? → Justified true belief