Philosophy
Philosophy empowers students to reflect on themselves and the world. They investigate the challenges faced by individuals and society and interrogate approaches used to address questions, and consider solutions to, those challenges. Students critically analyse and deploy philosophical ideas from a range of periods and cultures to understand enduring problems and critique accepted wisdoms and arguments about solutions. They refine analytical and critical thinking skills and learn to question and challenge assumptions about the world around them.
Philosophy empowers students to reflect on themselves and the world. They investigate the challenges faced by individuals and society and interrogate approaches used to address questions, and consider solutions to, those challenges. Students critically analyse and deploy philosophical ideas from a range of periods and cultures to understand enduring problems and critique accepted wisdoms and arguments about solutions. They refine analytical and critical thinking skills and learn to question and challenge assumptions about the world around them.
Students develop the skills of philosophical inquiry, such as logic, textual analysis, respectful dialogue, and the precise communication of ideas that allow them to evaluate, apply and communicate philosophical ideas and their conclusions about self, life, and the world logically and coherently. In doing so, students develop general capabilities in thinking, research, literacy, and skills applicable to all areas of study and life.
Philosophical skills, knowledge and understanding support students to become engaged, active, and reflexive citizens. As such, the study of Philosophy provides knowledge, skills and understanding to interpret and change the world, and can be utilised in a wide range of pathways and for living an examined life.
The Philosophy course is written under the Humanities and Social Sciences Framework
Achievement Standards for PHILOSOPHY courses can be found within the Framework.
Humanities and Social Sciences is the study of how people process and document the human experience and their place in it. It empowers students to better understand humankind, society and culture and communicate ideas for the future. Humanities and Social Sciences examines what it means to be human and to ask questions about society and its institutions.
By analysing how people have tried to make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of the world, it promotes empathy and understanding. It also requires students to deal critically and logically with what can be subjective, complex and imperfect information.
Humanities and Social Sciences courses provide a context for the contemporary world and a framework for students to critically and creatively assess possible, probable and preferred futures for themselves and the world in which they live. It empowers students to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse and complex and interdependent world.
The study of Humanities and Social Sciences promotes well-rounded, thinking, analytical young citizens equipped for the demands of the 21st Century globalised world.
Courses written under this framework focus on concepts from a discipline or draw ideas from a number of disciplines. The analytical, critical and communication skills taught in the Humanities and Social Sciences will be valuable for future study, work or profession.
Knowledge and Knowing
In this unit, students investigate and interrogate the nature of knowledge claims, and their assumptions and foundations. They evaluate claims to knowledge in a variety of academic and popular contexts. Students critically analyse the epistemologies of knowledge claims by applying established epistemological arguments and their own insights and propositions, including logic and First Nations Australian epistemologies.
Students apply their understanding and critical and logical thinking to draw conclusions about epistemological problems and communicate their insights. They develop skills relevant to forming philosophical positions and enter into constructive, logical, and critical dialogue with other people, existing scholarship, and popular epistemologies to address the perspectives and ideas of others and reflect on their own understanding of philosophy.
Existence and Reality
In this unit, students explore the nature of existence and reality. They interrogate the philosophical notions of existence and reality by drawing on philosophies from a range of traditions, including Metaphysics. Students examine their assumption of their own existence, and that of others, and apply their experience of this existence to evaluate claims about the fundamental nature of how they exist and the reality that they exist in, including notions of origin, self, transformation, and death. They develop skills relevant to forming philosophical positions and enter into constructive, logical, and critical dialogue with other people, existing scholarship, and popular notions of existence and reality to address the perspectives and ideas of others and reflect on their own understanding of existence and reality.
Judgement and Value
In this unit, students explore the nature of judgement and value. They evaluate these philosophies to universal and particular human dilemmas and consider the significance and effects of their conclusions. They critically analyse the validity of individual and collective judgements around value. They develop skills relevant to forming philosophical positions and enter into constructive, logical, and critical dialogue with other people, existing scholarship, and popular notions of value, such as ethical or aesthetic judgements, to address the perspectives and ideas of others, and refine their own values and their justification of these commitments.
Philosophy in the World
In this unit, students investigate issues in the world, applying significant philosophical theories and methods to better understand the beliefs, judgements and thinking of the actors involved, and to assist in the construction of their own robust and well-informed beliefs. Students relate the issues to their own lived experience to find parallels and give insights into their own conduct, assumptions and thinking. They develop skills relevant to forming philosophical positions and enter into constructive, logical, and critical dialogue with other people, current debates in philosophical scholarship, on issues in the world to address the perspectives and ideas of others and refine their own values and ideas and their justification of these commitments.
Independent Study
An Independent Study unit has an important place in senior secondary courses. It is a valuable pedagogical approach that empowers students to make decisions about their own learning. An Independent Study unit can be proposed by an individual student for their own independent study and negotiated with their teacher. The program of learning for an Independent Study unit must meet the unit goals and content descriptions as they appear in the course.
Independent Study units are only available to individual students in Year 12. A student can only study a maximum of one Independent Study unit in each course. Students must have studied at least three standard 1.0 units from this course. An Independent Study unit requires the principal’s written approval. Principal approval can also be sought by a student in Year 12 to enrol concurrently in an Independent Study unit and their third 1.0 unit in this course of study.
