IBDP Philosophy HL
IB Diploma Programme Philosophy at Higher Level is one of the most intellectually demanding Group 3 courses, inviting students to engage with the deepest questions human beings have ever asked: What am I? What can I know? What should I do? What is real? The course is structured around a compulsory core theme — Being Human — which explores personal identity, the mind-body problem, freedom and determinism, and conceptions of the self across Western and non-Western traditions. Students then study two optional themes chosen from Epistemology, Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Political Philosophy, and Aesthetics, developing sustained expertise in the arguments, thinkers, and debates that define each field.At Higher Level, three additional components deepen the intellectual challenge. The Philosophy of Logic and Language extension develops students' capacity for formal reasoning — propositional logic, argument reconstruction, fallacy identification — and introduces major theories of meaning from Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein. The Prescribed Texts component requires close reading and critical analysis of two canonical philosophical works, one from the Western tradition and one from a non-Western tradition, assessed in Paper 3. The Internal Assessment asks students to identify a genuine philosophical problem in a non-philosophical stimulus and produce a 2,200-word analytical essay demonstrating original philosophical inquiry.Throughout the course, students develop transferable skills of exceptional value: the ability to identify and reconstruct arguments, expose hidden assumptions, construct counterexamples, evaluate competing positions with intellectual honesty, and write with precision and clarity. Comparative engagement with African, Asian, and Indigenous philosophical traditions ensures that students encounter philosophy as a genuinely global human enterprise rather than a purely Western one.AccelaStudy's adaptive platform maps every IB Philosophy HL learning goal to the four IB assessment objectives, tracks mastery at the level of individual arguments and thinkers, and delivers targeted practice for all three external papers and the internal assessment. Whether you are working through Descartes' Meditations, Rawls' veil of ignorance, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, AccelaStudy ensures you build the depth of understanding and the argumentative fluency the IB examiner expects.
270
Minutes
60
Questions
4/7
Passing Score
$173
Exam Cost
Who Should Take This
This course is designed for IB Diploma students taking Philosophy at Higher Level who want structured, adaptive preparation aligned precisely with the current IB syllabus. It is ideal for students who enjoy rigorous debate, careful reading, and the challenge of defending a position under examination conditions. It will particularly benefit those planning to study philosophy, law, politics, cognitive science, theology, or any humanities or social science discipline at university, as well as students who simply want to sharpen their analytical and argumentative skills across all their IB subjects. No prior formal study of philosophy is assumed.
What's Covered
1Personal identity, the mind-body problem, freedom and determinism, and the self across Western and non-Western philosophical traditions
2Two from: Epistemology, Ethics, Philosophy of religion, Philosophy of science, Political philosophy, Aesthetics — each with prescribed sub-topics and key thinkers
3Formal and informal reasoning, propositional logic, fallacies, theories of meaning, language and thought (Wittgenstein, Frege, Russell, Sapir-Whorf)
4Close reading and critical analysis of two prescribed philosophical texts: one from the Western tradition and one from a non-Western tradition, from the IB prescribed list
52,200-word philosophical analysis essay based on a non-philosophical stimulus; demonstrates philosophical inquiry, argumentation, and conceptual analysis; teacher-marked, externally moderated
What's Included in AccelaStudy® AI
Adaptive Knowledge Graph
Practice Questions
Lesson Modules
Console Simulator Labs
Exam Tips & Strategy
13 Activity Formats
Course Outline
1Core Theme: Being Human 4 topics
Personal Identity
- Describe the philosophical problem of personal identity over time, including the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity, and identify the main criteria proposed for personal persistence such as psychological continuity, bodily continuity, and soul theories.
- Explain Locke's memory theory of personal identity, analyse its reliance on psychological continuity, and apply it to thought experiments such as the prince and the cobbler to reveal its implications and limitations.
- Evaluate competing theories of personal identity — including Hume's bundle theory, Parfit's reductionism, and Buddhist no-self (anatta) — by comparing their metaphysical commitments, assessing their responses to fission cases, and judging which account best captures what matters in survival.
Mind and Body
- Outline the mind-body problem and identify the main positions — Cartesian substance dualism, property dualism, physicalism, and functionalism — stating the key claims and representative thinkers associated with each.
- Explain Descartes' argument for substance dualism from the conceivability of mind without body, analyse the interaction problem it generates, and apply Gilbert Ryle's critique of the 'ghost in the machine' to assess its coherence.
- Evaluate physicalist and functionalist accounts of mind — including identity theory, eliminative materialism, and multiple realizability — by examining Nagel's 'what is it like to be a bat?' and Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness as challenges to reductive explanations.
Freedom and Determinism
- Define hard determinism, compatibilism, libertarianism, and hard incompatibilism as positions on free will, and state the core thesis and key proponents of each position within the free will debate.
- Explain compatibilist strategies — including Hume's conditional analysis and Frankfurt's hierarchical account of free will — and analyse how they attempt to reconcile causal determinism with moral responsibility.
- Evaluate the implications of determinism and indeterminism for moral responsibility by examining Strawson's reactive attitudes, Sartre's radical freedom, and African ubuntu perspectives on relational agency, judging which account best grounds practices of praise and blame.
The Self Across Traditions
- Describe conceptions of the self in at least two non-Western philosophical traditions — such as the Hindu atman/Brahman relation, the Confucian relational self, and the African ubuntu notion of personhood — and identify how they contrast with Western individualist accounts.
- Compare and contrast Western and non-Western conceptions of the self with respect to individuality, relationality, and continuity, evaluating the philosophical strengths and limitations of each tradition's account of what it means to be a person.
2Optional Theme: Epistemology 3 topics
Nature and Sources of Knowledge
- Define propositional knowledge, acquaintance knowledge, and procedural knowledge, and outline the traditional tripartite analysis of knowledge as justified true belief, identifying the role each condition plays.
- Explain Gettier's counterexamples to the justified true belief analysis of knowledge, analyse the philosophical challenge they pose, and suggest how epistemologists have responded through reliabilism, virtue epistemology, and contextualism.
- Evaluate rationalist and empiricist accounts of the sources of knowledge — contrasting Descartes' innate ideas and a priori reasoning with Locke's tabula rasa and Hume's impressions — assessing which tradition better explains mathematical and scientific knowledge.
Scepticism and Its Responses
- Outline Cartesian scepticism, the evil demon hypothesis, and the brain-in-a-vat scenario, identifying the sceptical inference pattern and the epistemic standards these thought experiments invoke.
- Evaluate responses to scepticism — including Descartes' cogito, Moore's common-sense philosophy, Wittgenstein's hinge propositions, and externalist reliabilism — by assessing whether each successfully defeats the sceptical challenge or merely sidesteps it.
Perception and Knowledge
- Explain the argument from illusion and the distinction between direct (naive) realism, indirect (representative) realism, and idealism as theories of perception, analysing how each account handles perceptual error and the external world.
- Evaluate Berkeley's idealism — 'esse est percipi' — by examining his arguments against material substance, his appeal to God as guarantor of continuity, and contemporary responses from phenomenalism and disjunctivism.
3Optional Theme: Ethics 3 topics
Normative Ethical Theories
- Describe the core claims of consequentialism (utilitarianism), deontological ethics (Kantian), and virtue ethics (Aristotelian), identifying the foundational principle, key thinker, and primary moral criterion of each theory.
- Explain Kant's categorical imperative in its three formulations — universal law, humanity as end, and kingdom of ends — and apply it to concrete moral dilemmas such as lying, promise-breaking, and assisted dying to test its prescriptions.
- Evaluate utilitarian, Kantian, and virtue ethics frameworks by comparing their treatment of moral motivation, justice, and moral luck, and assess which theory provides the most defensible account of moral obligation in the context of global poverty and environmental ethics.
Metaethics and Moral Epistemology
- Outline the metaethical positions of moral realism, moral anti-realism (error theory, expressivism, relativism), and constructivism, identifying the key claim each makes about the nature and status of moral judgements.
- Evaluate moral relativism and moral universalism by examining cross-cultural ethical disagreement, Mackie's argument from queerness, and Shafer-Landau's moral realist response, judging whether moral facts can be objective and mind-independent.
Applied Ethics and Non-Western Moral Traditions
- Explain care ethics (Noddings, Gilligan) and ubuntu ethics as alternatives to impartialist moral theories, analysing how each foregrounds relationships, community, and context as morally fundamental rather than abstract principles.
- Evaluate the philosophical adequacy of care ethics and ubuntu ethics as complete moral frameworks by comparing their treatment of justice, impartiality, and individual rights with Kantian and utilitarian alternatives, assessing their applicability to global bioethics.
4Optional Theme: Philosophy of Religion 2 topics
Arguments for the Existence of God
- Outline the ontological argument (Anselm, Descartes), the cosmological argument (Aquinas' Five Ways, Kalam), and the teleological argument (Paley's watchmaker, Swinburne's fine-tuning), identifying the logical structure and key premise of each.
- Evaluate the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments for God's existence by examining Kant's objection that existence is not a predicate, Hume's critique of the design argument, and the multiverse response to fine-tuning, judging the cumulative force of theistic arguments.
The Problem of Evil and Religious Language
- Explain the logical and evidential problems of evil, distinguish natural from moral evil, and analyse theodicies — including the free will defence (Plantinga), soul-making theodicy (Hick), and process theology — assessing their success in reconciling evil with an omnibenevolent God.
- Evaluate the meaningfulness of religious language by examining Ayer's verificationism, Flew's falsification challenge, Wittgenstein's language games, and analogical predication (Aquinas), judging whether theological claims can be cognitively significant.
5Optional Theme: Political Philosophy 2 topics
Justice, Rights, and the State
- Describe social contract theories of political authority — Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's consent-based government, and Rousseau's general will — identifying the state of nature, the terms of the contract, and the scope of legitimate authority in each.
- Evaluate Rawls' theory of justice as fairness — including the original position, veil of ignorance, and the difference principle — by contrasting it with Nozick's libertarian entitlement theory and communitarian critiques from Sandel and MacIntyre.
Liberty, Power, and Global Justice
- Explain Berlin's distinction between negative and positive liberty, analyse Foucault's account of power and governmentality as a critique of liberal conceptions of freedom, and apply these frameworks to contemporary debates about surveillance and digital rights.
- Evaluate cosmopolitan and communitarian approaches to global justice — contrasting Pogge's institutional cosmopolitanism and Singer's utilitarian obligations with Walzer's communitarian defence of state sovereignty — assessing their implications for global poverty and refugee rights.
6Optional Theme: Philosophy of Science 2 topics
Scientific Method and Demarcation
- Outline the problem of induction (Hume), the hypothetico-deductive method, Popper's falsificationism, and Kuhn's paradigm shifts, identifying the demarcation criterion each proposes to distinguish science from non-science.
- Evaluate Popper's falsificationism and Kuhn's account of scientific revolutions by examining Lakatos' research programmes and Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism, assessing whether any single model adequately captures how science actually progresses.
Scientific Realism and Explanation
- Explain scientific realism and anti-realist positions — including instrumentalism, constructive empiricism (van Fraassen), and social constructivism — analysing the no-miracles argument for realism and the pessimistic meta-induction against it.
- Evaluate models of scientific explanation — covering Hempel's deductive-nomological model, causal-mechanical explanation, and unificationist accounts — by examining their adequacy in explaining irreversible processes, biological function, and social phenomena.
7Optional Theme: Aesthetics 2 topics
Nature of Art and Aesthetic Experience
- Outline theories of art — including imitation theory, expression theory, formalism, and institutional theory (Dickie) — identifying the defining criterion each proposes for what makes something a work of art.
- Evaluate the institutional theory of art and Weitz's open-concept argument by examining Warhol's Brillo Boxes and Duchamp's readymades as test cases, assessing whether any definition of art can be both necessary and sufficient.
Aesthetic Judgement and Value
- Explain Kant's account of aesthetic judgement — the free play of imagination and understanding, the claim to universal assent, and the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime — and analyse how it navigates between subjectivism and objectivism.
- Evaluate whether aesthetic value is objective, subjective, or intersubjective by comparing Hume's standard of taste, Kant's sensus communis, and postcolonial critiques of Eurocentric aesthetic canons, assessing the implications for cross-cultural aesthetic appreciation.
8HL Extension: Philosophy of Logic and Language 2 topics
Argument Analysis and Formal Reasoning
- Identify and reconstruct deductive and inductive arguments in standard form, distinguishing validity from soundness, and list the main types of informal fallacies — including ad hominem, straw man, false dichotomy, slippery slope, and appeal to authority.
- Apply propositional logic — including truth tables, logical connectives, modus ponens, modus tollens, and disjunctive syllogism — to evaluate the formal validity of philosophical arguments drawn from the core theme and optional themes.
- Evaluate the limits of formal logic as a tool for philosophical reasoning by examining the paradoxes of material implication, the Liar paradox, and Gödel's incompleteness theorems, assessing what these reveal about the relationship between formal systems and truth.
Language, Meaning, and Thought
- Outline Frege's sense/reference distinction, Russell's theory of definite descriptions, and the picture theory of meaning from the early Wittgenstein, identifying the philosophical problem each is designed to solve.
- Explain the later Wittgenstein's meaning-as-use thesis and language games, analyse the private language argument, and apply these ideas to assess whether philosophical problems arise from linguistic confusion or reflect genuine metaphysical puzzles.
- Evaluate the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity — in both its strong (determinism) and weak (influence) forms — by examining cross-linguistic evidence on colour perception, spatial reasoning, and moral vocabulary, assessing the extent to which language shapes thought.
9HL Prescribed Texts Component 2 topics
Close Reading and Textual Analysis
- Identify the central thesis, key arguments, and philosophical methodology of each prescribed text, outlining the historical and intellectual context in which the text was written and the tradition of philosophical inquiry it belongs to.
- Explain the internal structure of a prescribed philosophical text by reconstructing its main arguments in standard form, identifying implicit premises, distinguishing the author's own position from positions considered and rejected, and analysing key philosophical concepts as the author uses them.
- Evaluate the philosophical arguments of a prescribed text by identifying objections the author anticipates, constructing independent counterexamples, assessing the strength of the author's responses, and judging the overall success of the text's central philosophical project.
Comparative and Cross-Traditional Analysis
- Compare and contrast the philosophical methods, assumptions, and conclusions of the Western prescribed text with those of the non-Western prescribed text, identifying points of convergence and divergence on shared philosophical questions such as knowledge, self, or justice.
- Evaluate the extent to which the philosophical insights of the prescribed texts remain relevant to contemporary philosophical debates, justifying a reasoned position on the enduring significance of each text's contribution to its philosophical tradition.
10Philosophical Skills and Methodology 3 topics
Argumentation and Conceptual Analysis
- Identify the structure of philosophical arguments in unseen texts, distinguishing premises from conclusions, recognising implicit assumptions, and labelling the type of reasoning — deductive, inductive, abductive, or analogical — employed.
- Apply conceptual analysis to philosophical terms — such as 'knowledge', 'justice', 'freedom', and 'consciousness' — by identifying necessary and sufficient conditions, testing proposed analyses against counterexamples, and refining definitions through the method of cases.
- Construct original philosophical arguments in response to unseen stimuli by formulating a clear thesis, providing supporting premises with reasons, anticipating objections, and offering a considered reply, demonstrating the skills required for Paper 1 and Paper 2 extended responses.
Thought Experiments and Philosophical Imagination
- Explain the philosophical function of thought experiments — including trolley problems, Rawls' veil of ignorance, Searle's Chinese room, and Nozick's experience machine — and analyse what each is designed to reveal about our intuitions and the theories they test.
- Evaluate the epistemic status of philosophical thought experiments by examining whether intuitions are reliable evidence, how cultural background affects intuitive responses, and whether experimental philosophy's empirical findings should revise or replace armchair methodology.
Internal Assessment: Philosophical Analysis Essay
- Identify a philosophical problem embedded in a non-philosophical stimulus — such as a news article, artwork, film, or literary extract — and state a focused philosophical question that the IA essay will investigate, demonstrating the ability to move from stimulus to philosophical inquiry.
- Apply relevant philosophical concepts, theories, and thinkers from the syllabus to the IA philosophical question, demonstrating accurate understanding of the positions invoked and their relevance to the specific problem identified in the stimulus.
- Evaluate competing philosophical positions on the IA question by constructing a sustained argument, engaging with objections, and producing a justified conclusion within the 2,200-word limit, meeting the IB criteria for philosophical inquiry, knowledge and understanding, and argumentation.
Scope
Included Topics
- Core theme: Being human — covering personal identity, the mind-body problem, freedom and determinism, and the self across philosophical traditions
- Optional themes (two required at HL): Epistemology, Ethics, Philosophy of religion, Philosophy of science, Political philosophy, Aesthetics — each with prescribed sub-topics and key thinkers
- HL-only extension: The philosophy of logic and language, including formal and informal reasoning, validity, soundness, fallacies, and the relationship between language and thought
- Prescribed texts component (HL only): close reading and critical analysis of two prescribed philosophical texts from the IB list, one from the Western tradition and one from a non-Western tradition
- Internal assessment: Philosophical analysis essay (2,200 words HL) based on a non-philosophical stimulus, demonstrating philosophical inquiry, argumentation, and conceptual analysis
- Four assessment objectives (AO1 knowledge and understanding, AO2 application and analysis, AO3 synthesis and evaluation, AO4 philosophical skills) and the IB command terms taxonomy
- Philosophical methodology: argument identification, reconstruction, evaluation, thought experiments, conceptual analysis, counterexample construction, and comparative cross-cultural philosophy
- Key thinkers and texts from the Western analytic and continental traditions as well as African, Asian, and Indigenous philosophical traditions as specified in the IB syllabus
- Paper 1 (core theme: Being human), Paper 2 (optional themes), Paper 3 (HL only: prescribed texts), and Internal Assessment
Not Covered
- Psychology, sociology, or cognitive science content beyond its direct relevance to philosophical arguments about mind and personal identity
- Formal symbolic logic beyond the level of propositional logic and basic predicate logic as required by the HL extension
- Religious studies or theology content not directly engaged as philosophical argument
- Historical biography of philosophers beyond what is necessary to contextualise their arguments
- Literary or artistic analysis not framed as philosophical aesthetics or used as IA stimulus
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