IB Diploma Programme Philosophy SL (first assessment 2025; current guide). The core theme is compulsory for all students, and this topic covers it in full — BEING HUMAN: what it is to be human, examined through identity, freedom, personhood and mind–body, with the PHILOSOPHICAL CRAFT (argument analysis, the classic skills) taught alongside. Every study of an optional theme returns to this core; every paper rewards the craft it teaches. The worked examples are original.

Must-know for the core theme:

Philosophy 哲学 proceeds by argument 论证: premises offered in support of a conclusion. The craft the papers test: identify the CONCLUSION and the PREMISES; evaluate the INFERENCE (VALID if the conclusion follows necessarily, whatever the premises' truth; SOUND if valid with true premises — validity is about form, soundness adds truth); and recognise the argument forms: deductive (necessity) and inductive 归纳的 (probability from cases). The classic failures each have names: BEGGING THE QUESTION (the conclusion smuggled into a premise), the STRAW MAN (refuting a weakened copy), the FALSE DILEMMA (two options declared the only ones), the APPEAL TO AUTHORITY (a name where a reason belongs). Philosophical writing is this discipline made visible: a CLAIM, a REASON, an OBJECTION answered: the essay's spine in three moves. The second craft is the thought experiment 思想实验 (philosophy’s laboratory): an imagined case (the ship of Theseus, the teleporter) that isolates a concept by stressing it; the paper asks what the case shows and what it assumes.

Worked example. “Every event has a cause, so my choices have causes, so I am not free.” Identify: P1 every event caused; C1 choices caused; C2 not free. Valid? Only with a suppressed premise — that caused choices are not free — and THAT premise is precisely what the compatibilist denies: the argument begs the question against compatibilism. The analysis is the model: name the parts, test the form, find the suppressed premise.

Personal identity 人格同一性 asks what makes you the same person over time, with three classic answers. The body theory 身体理论: numerical continuity of the organism (its strength: it matches how we identify people; its problem: the ship of Theseus — replace every part and identity seems untouched). The memory theory 记忆理论 (Locke): sameness of consciousness — memory connections join the person across time (its problem: Reid's brave officer — the old general remembers the officer, the officer the boy, the general not the boy: memory is not transitive, identity must be). The psychological continuity theory 心理连续性理论 (Parfit): overlapping chains of psychological connections; identity is not what matters, as the teleporter thought experiment suggests survival without identity, so personal identity may be a matter of degree.

Personhood 人格 asks what qualifies as a person — a moral category, not a biological one: humans are biological, persons are beings with rational agency, consciousness, the capacity for relationships (persons may be non-human; some humans, arguendo, may lack personhood). The criteria (self-consciousness, rationality, communication, moral agency) each draw edges — the infant, the severely cognitively impaired, the possible machine — which is why the concept is ethically loaded: abortion, end-of-life and animal ethics all turn on it. The craft applies: a criterion proposed, a counter-case found, the criterion refined.

The free will 自由意志 problem in one line: if every event has a cause, is any choice free? HARD DETERMINISM: no — causation is universal, freedom is an illusion, and moral responsibility needs rethinking. LIBERTARIANISM: yes — agents originate actions; at least some choices are uncaused causings (its burden: how an uncaused event can be controlled, and thus an agent's). COMPATIBILISM: freedom and determinism coexist — a free act is one caused in the right way, by the agent's own desires and reasons without coercion (its burden: if the desires are themselves caused, is the “right way” enough?). The thought experiments stress each: Frankfurt's unwilling addict (he acts on his desire but wants otherwise — unfree even undetermined? second-order desire as the key) and the manipulation case (a agent's desires implanted — desires “his own” by the compatibilist criterion, yet intuitively unfree).

The human condition frames the whole theme: that we are the animal that asks what it is — self-interpreting beings whose identities are partly chosen, partly given; finitude, embodiment and mortality as the conditions philosophy thinks within. And MIND: Dualism 二元论 (mind distinct from body — substance or property) against physicalism 物理主义 (all facts, mental included, are physical): the KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT (Mary the scientist who knows all the physical facts and learns something new on seeing colour, a physicalist must say what she learns) and the ZOMBIE thought experiment (a being physically identical with no inner life — conceivable? and does conceivability entail possibility?).

• Argument anatomy: premises, conclusion, validity vs soundness, deduction vs induction; the named fallacies; the claim-reason-objection spine; thought experiments read as stress tests (craft).
• Identity: the three theories with their classic counter-cases (Theseus, Reid's officer, the teleporter); Parfit's survival-without-identity claim (identity).
• Personhood: the criteria and their edges; the moral uses of the concept (personhood).
• Freedom: hard determinism, libertarianism, compatibilism with each one's burden; Frankfurt's addict and the manipulation case (freedom).
• Mind: dualism vs physicalism; the knowledge argument and the zombie; what each shows and assumes (mind).
• The worked determinism argument's suppressed premise found and named (craft).

Boundary notes: the papers mark PHILOSOPHICAL SKILL — argument analysis in Section A, developed response in essays — and the core theme's concepts reappear in every optional theme. All worked examples are original; the classic cases cited are the standard canon.

IB Diploma Programme Philosophy SL (first assessment 2025; current guide). SL students study ONE optional theme from seven (aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, political philosophy, social philosophy) and ONE prescribed text. This handout kits the most-taught themes (ethics and epistemology in depth, the other five compactly) so any school's choice is covered, and teaches the PRESCRIBED TEXT craft: reading a philosophical classic as philosophers do. All worked examples are original.

Must-know for the optional themes and the text:

ETHICS (the most-taught theme): the three classic theories in permanent debate. Consequentialism 结果主义 judges acts by outcomes — utilitarianism (maximise aggregate wellbeing; its power is decision-guidance, its burdens the tyranny-of-the-majority cases and the demand to calculate the uncalculable). Deontology 义务论 judges acts by duty — Kant's categorical imperative (act only on a maxim you could will universal; treat persons as ends) with its burdens the conflict of duties (the inquiring murderer) and rigour's coldness. Virtue ethics 德性伦理学 judges agents (what would the phronimos do?); character is built by habituation; its burden, action-guidance vagueness. The applied debates (euthanasia, lying, capital punishment) are run three ways, which is the paper's favourite shape.

EPISTEMOLOGY: Knowledge 知识 analysed as justified true belief — and Gettier's cases 葛梯尔案例 (the stopped clock: a true belief justified by luck) breaking the definition; responses (no false lemmas, reliabilism, virtue epistemology). The SOURCES of knowledge: Rationalism 唯理论 (some substantive knowledge is a priori — innate or grasped by reason) vs Empiricism 经验论 (all substantive knowledge from experience) with Kant's synthesis (the mind structures experience). SKEPTICISM as the stress-test: the evil demon, the brain in a vat — and what the skeptic forces the theorist to say.

The other five compactly: AESTHETICS — the definition of art (imitation, expression, form; the institutional theory's move) and the aesthetic attitude (disinterested pleasure; Hume's standard of taste against relativism). PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: the arguments (ontological, cosmological, teleological) each with their classic objections, and the problem of evil (logical and evidential; the free-will and soul-making replies). PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE — induction (Hume's problem), falsification (Popper), the theory-ladenness of observation (Kuhn's paradigms), realism vs anti-realism about science's unobservables. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY — the state's justification (consent, utility, fairness — the social-contract debate), liberty (negative and positive; Mill's harm principle), justice (Rawls's veil of ignorance against Nozick's entitlement). SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY — the social self (we become selves through others), ideology and alienation (Marx), and oppression lived (Simone de Beauvoir on the second sex: the othering of women as the paradigm).

The text is studied PHILOSOPHICALLY, not literarily: the paper asks for the text's CLAIMS, its ARGUMENTS for them, and the student's CRITIQUE. The fourfold read 四重解读: context (the question the text answers — its historical and dialectical position), CLAIMS (the positions stated, in the text's own terms), ARGUMENTS (the reasoning offered — reconstructed with the core theme's craft: premises, conclusions, suppressed premises), CRITIQUE (objections the student develops and the text's best reply — evaluation, not summary). The classic list runs from Plato's REPUBLIC through Descartes's MEDITATIONS, Hume's ENQUIRIES, Mill's UTILITARIANISM AND LIBERTY, to contemporary prescribed texts — whichever the school chose, the fourfold read is the method.

Worked example. On Descartes's MEDITATION I (if prescribed): the context, defeating skepticism to found knowledge; the claims: sense deception, dreaming, the evil demon as doubt's escalation; the arguments — the deceiver argument reconstructed premise by premise; the critique — the demon hypothesis is not really dubitable (the “hyperbolic doubt” charges science more than common life), and the cogito's reply already assumes what the doubt questions (the “I”). The fourfold read applied once is the pattern for any text.

• Ethics: the three theories stated with their signature burdens; one applied issue run three ways (ethics).
• Epistemology: JTB and Gettier's cases with one response; rationalism vs empiricism with Kant's move; skepticism as stress-test (epistemology).
• Aesthetics: the definition debate and the aesthetic attitude (aesthetics).
• Religion: the three arguments with classic objections; the problem of evil and its replies (religion).
• Science: induction, falsification, paradigms, realism vs anti-realism (science).
• Political: the contract debate; negative and positive liberty with Mill; Rawls vs Nozick (political).
• Social: the social self; Marx's alienation; de Beauvoir's othering (social).
• The fourfold text read — context, claims, arguments, critique — with the worked Meditation I example (text).

Boundary notes: the theme paper asks one essay on the chosen theme; the text paper asks passage-based analysis and evaluation — the fourfold read answers both. All positions cited are the standard canon; the worked analyses are original.

IB Diploma Programme Philosophy SL (first assessment 2025; current guide). The internal assessment is shared by SL and HL: the philosophical analysis 哲学分析 — a 2 000-word analysis of a non-philosophical stimulus, worth 25% at SL. This handout walks the marked components — stimulus choice, issue finding with the framing sentence, the treatment's five moves, and the personal-voice criterion — with the worked commuter-and-sleeper stimulus throughout.

Must-know for the analysis:

The stimulus 刺激材料 must be non-philosophical — no textbook extracts, no famous thought experiments lifted whole: the point is to philosophise the world, not summarise the canon. Rich stimuli: a news photograph (a rescue triage), an advertising image (beauty and manipulation), a cartoon (freedom and surveillance), a game's rules (fairness), a lyric (personal identity and change). The issue 问题 is found by asking the core theme's questions OF the stimulus: what does this assume about persons? about freedom? about knowledge? about what matters? The question must be PHILOSOPHICAL (answerable by reasoning, not by polling or measurement) and the student's OWN (not the stimulus's slogan, not a teacher's framing).

The framing sentence is the IA's spine: “This advertisement raises the question of whether treating someone as a means requires intending to use them” — stimulus, concept, question, in one line.

The ANALYSIS (2 000 words) develops the question philosophically: Explain the concept 概念 (deontology's means-ends principle, precisely, with a source attributed), APPLY it to the stimulus (the specific features of the image read through the concept), DEVELOP the argument (the student's reasoning — not a tour of positions but a pursued line), Consider the objection 反对意见 (the strongest counter-view stated and answered), and CONCLUDE (the finding, with its limits owned). The marked criteria reward: philosophical TREATMENT (concepts used correctly and applied, not name-dropped), PERSONAL engagement (the student's own argument, developed and evaluated), and CLARITY (the writing of someone thinking, not performing). The classic failures: the gallery (five philosophers, no argument), the essay-report (all exposition, no position), and the non-philosophical drift (sociology or psychology where the reasoning should be).

Worked stimulus. A photograph: commuters stepping over a rough sleeper outside a luxury shop window. The issue: does the ordinary duty to help survive when the helper's own plans must be sacrificed — the supererogation question, run through the core's craft. Concept: duty vs charity (deontology's imperfect duties; consequentialism's demandingness objection). Application: the window's display (the good life advertised) against the sleeper (the person unseen) — the image's structure IS the demandingness problem. Development: the commuter's duty cannot be read off the image; the question is what a willing of the maxim would require. Objection: the singer's pond case — distance and salience do not change the duty; reply: the image's window does change it (institutional, not individual, responsibility). Conclusion: the photograph indicts the arrangement, not the commuter — and the analysis owns that this is one reading of an image that supports others.

• The stimulus: non-philosophical, specific, the student's own; the framing sentence in one line (stimulus).
• The issue: philosophical (reasoning-answerable) and genuinely drawn from the stimulus (issue).
• Treatment: concept explained with attribution, applied to the stimulus's specific features, argument developed (treatment).
• Objection stated at its strongest and answered; conclusion owning limits (treatment).
• Personal voice: a pursued line of the student's own, not a gallery or a report (personal).
• The worked sleeper stimulus's framing, development and conclusion understood (worked).

Boundary notes: 2 000 words, marked on philosophical treatment, personal engagement and clarity; the stimulus is attached to the submission. The worked stimulus and its development are original.