UPHESC Assistant Professor Philosophy 2025 PYQs

Concept: Opening of the Introduction to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (B1): “Though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience.”

1. Sense experience supplies the matter; the a priori forms (space, time) and categories of the understanding supply the form.
2. This synthesis of empiricism (Locke) and rationalism (Leibniz) is Kant's critical philosophy.

Short trick: Begins with experience (empiricism) + not from experience (rationalism) = Kant's synthesis.

Concept: Early Wittgenstein (Tractatus) held the picture/representational theory of meaning; later Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations) rejected it.

1. Later ideas: language games, forms of life, meaning as use, family resemblance, private language argument.
2. The representational (picture) theory belongs to the earlier Tractatus period.

Short trick: Tractatus = Picture; Investigations = Use.

Concept: Philosophical Investigations §109: “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”

1. Philosophical problems arise when language ‘goes on holiday’; philosophy is therapy that dissolves them.
2. His aim: “to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.”

Short trick: Bewitchment + fly-bottle = Wittgenstein.

Concept: Moore's ‘The Refutation of Idealism’ (1903) attacked Berkeley's esse est percipi.

1. Moore distinguished the act of consciousness from its object: the object (blue) is not the awareness of blue.
2. So existence of an object does not consist in its being perceived – this launched British neo-realism; Russell followed.

Short trick: Moore 1903 = first refutation of ‘esse est percipi’.

Concept: P. F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (1959).

1. Descriptive metaphysics describes the actual structure of our thought about the world; revisionary metaphysics (Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley) tries to produce a better structure.
2. Strawson argues that material bodies and persons are the basic particulars.

Short trick: Strawson: Descriptive vs Revisionary metaphysics.

Concept: Match each philosopher with his major work.

1. Husserl – Ideas (1913).
2. Wittgenstein – Philosophical Investigations (1953).
3. Sartre – Being and Nothingness (1943).
4. Heidegger – Being and Time (1927).

Short trick: Heidegger = Time, Sartre = Nothingness.

Concept: Existentialists are divided into theistic and atheistic.

1. Theistic: Kierkegaard (father of existentialism – ‘leap of faith’), Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel.
2. Atheistic: Sartre, (Heidegger is usually grouped with the non-theistic), Camus, Nietzsche.

Short trick: Kierkegaard – leap of faith → theistic.

Concept: Match the thinker with his central thesis.

1. Sartre – existence precedes essence.
2. Strawson – material bodies (and persons) are basic particulars (Individuals).
3. Quine – ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ (1951).
4. Husserl – intentionality of consciousness.

Short trick: S-E, S-B, Q-D, H-I → a-II, b-III, c-IV, d-I.

Concept: p ≡ q is true exactly when p and q have the same truth value (TT → T, TF → F, FT → F, FF → T).

1. (A) (p . q) ∨ (~p . ~q): ‘both true or both false’ – the textbook form of material equivalence (Copi’s Equiv rule). Truth table T, F, F, T – correct.
2. (B) (p ∨ q) ⊃ (p . q): TT → T⊃T = T; TF and FT → T⊃F = F; FF → F⊃F = T. Truth table T, F, F, T – it is also exactly equivalent to p ≡ q.
3. (C) (p ⊃ q) ⊃ (p ⊃ q) is a tautology; (D) (p ∨ q) . (~p ∨ ~q) is exclusive-or, the negation of ≡.
4. Since both (A) and (B) define p ≡ q correctly, the question has two correct options as printed and is treated as a bonus.

Short trick: Test any candidate with the pattern T, F, F, T – both (A) and (B) pass.

Concept: This is De Morgan's theorem: ~(~p ∨ ~q) ≡ (~~p . ~~q) ≡ (p . q).

1. Truth table: TT → T≡T; TF → F≡F; FT → F≡F; FF → F≡F – true in every row.
2. So the biconditional is a tautology (always true).

Short trick: Negate the disjunction → conjunction of the negations (De Morgan).

Concept: The classical (Aristotelian) laws of thought are three.

1. Identity: p ⊃ p (A is A).
2. (Non-)Contradiction: ~(p . ~p) (nothing is both A and not-A).
3. Excluded middle: p ∨ ~p (everything is either A or not-A).

Short trick: I-C-E: Identity, Contradiction, Excluded middle.

Concept: Figure depends on the position of the middle term (M) in the two premises.

1. Fig 1: M-P, S-M; Fig 2: P-M, S-M; Fig 3: M-P, M-S; Fig 4: P-M, M-S.
2. Aristotle recognised three; the fourth (Galenian) figure was added later – so standard logic has 4 figures (and 256 moods, 15/24 valid).

Short trick: Middle term can sit in 2 × 2 = 4 positions → 4 figures.

Concept: AEE-1: All M is P; No S is M; therefore No S is P.

1. Conclusion E distributes P (major term).
2. In the major premise ‘All M is P’ (A), P is the predicate – undistributed.
3. A term distributed in the conclusion but not in its premise → illicit major.
4. Middle M is distributed in the A premise; only one premise is negative, so no other fallacy.

Short trick: Check the major term P: distributed in conclusion, not in premise → illicit major.

Concept: Use the traditional square of opposition.

1. A and E are contraries: A true → E false.
2. A and I are in subalternation: A true → I true.
3. A and O are contradictories: A true → O false.

Short trick: A true → E F, I T, O F.

Concept: Relations in the square: A–E contrary, I–O sub-contrary, A–O and E–I contradictory, A–I and E–O subalternation.

1. Contraries (both universal, differ in quality) cannot both be true but can both be false.

Short trick: Top line A–E = Contrary; bottom line I–O = Sub-contrary.

Concept: The reformative theory treats crime as a disease of the mind and the criminal as a patient.

1. Aim: to reform/cure the offender (education, probation, therapy), not to inflict pain.
2. Retributive: punishment as deserved return for the wrong. Preventive/deterrent: punish to prevent future crime.

Short trick: Cure not punishment → Reformative.

Concept: Sidgwick (The Methods of Ethics) is an ethical (rational, universalistic) hedonist, not a psychological hedonist.

1. (A) is true: for Sidgwick pleasure (desirable consciousness) is the ultimate good, known by rational intuition.
2. (R) states psychological hedonism – that man by nature always seeks pleasure. Sidgwick rejects it (paradox of hedonism; men desire many objects other than pleasure).
3. So, in Sidgwick's view, (R) is false.

Short trick: Sidgwick: pleasure is what we OUGHT to seek, not what we ALWAYS seek.

Concept: T. H. Green (Prolegomena to Ethics) holds that the highest good is self-realisation – perfectionism.

1. Bentham and Mill are hedonists (utilitarians), not rationalist or intuitionist.
2. Kant is a rigorist/rationalist, opposed to hedonism.

Short trick: Green = self-realisation = Perfectionism.

Concept: C. L. Stevenson (Ethics and Language) is an emotivist: the primary meaning of ethical terms is emotive.

1. Ethical judgements express the speaker's attitude/feeling and seek to influence the attitude of others (‘This is good’ = ‘I approve of this; do so as well’).
2. Since they express attitudes rather than state facts, they cannot be proved by logic or facts – reasons only support them psychologically (persuasive method).
3. So the emotive (feeling-expressing) character explains why their validity cannot be logically proved.

Short trick: Emotive meaning → no logical proof, only persuasion.

Concept: Kant's categorical imperative: “Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will to become a universal law.”

1. The maxim ‘make a false promise when in difficulty’ cannot be universalised – if everyone did so, promising itself would collapse (contradiction).
2. Hence breaking promises is immoral – R gives exactly the reason for A.

Short trick: Universalise the maxim → self-contradiction → immoral.