Grade 12 · secular
This is a one-semester high school philosophy course, and it has one real job: teaching your kid to rebuild someone else's argument in its strongest possible form before they're allowed to attack it. That's it. Everything else, the famous thought experiments, the dead philosophers, the debates about God and free will and trolleys, is that one skill applied to a new question every few weeks. First they learn what makes an argument logically solid versus just persuasive. Then they turn that tool on "can we know anything for certain" then "is the mind just the brain" then "what makes an action right." Nobody wins the debates in this course, your child learns to state both sides so well that a fair judge couldn't tell which one they actually believe.
The whole year, in plain English. Tap any unit to see every skill inside, nothing is hidden.
This is where your child learns the actual vocabulary of logic, not vibes about 'good points,' but a real test for whether an argument's structure holds up, separate from whether you like where it ends up. They'll learn to pull apart premises and conclusions, run a test for validity, add a separate test for truth (soundness), name five common fallacies, and, hardest of all, build the strongest version of an argument they disagree with before they're allowed to criticize it.
Given a short argumentative passage in ordinary prose whose premises and conclusion appear in the same order and with the same indicator words (because, therefore) used in the Day 1-2 worked examples, the student identifies which sentence functions as the conclusion and which sentences function as premises.
Given a standard-form argument that reproduces the exact structure and content of one already reconstructed together in class (same premises, same conclusion, only surface wording changed), the student correctly reruns the counterexample test taught on Day 4 to state whether it is valid, applying the routine exactly as modeled without needing to adapt it to a new structure.
The student rewrites an argument given in ordinary persuasive prose into numbered standard form (premises listed, conclusion last), preserving the original argument's actual content rather than a simplified version of it.
Given an argument in standard form, the student judges whether it is valid (would the conclusion have to be true if the premises were true) as a distinct operation from judging whether it is sound (are the premises actually true), producing two separate verdicts rather than one combined judgment.
The student classifies an argument as deductive or inductive based on the relationship the argument itself claims between its premises and conclusion (certainty vs. probability), not based on subject matter or length.
Given a flawed argumentative passage, the student identifies which of the six named fallacies (ad hominem, straw man, false dichotomy, affirming the consequent, circular reasoning) is present and explains, using the discriminating test for that fallacy, why the passage fits that test rather than a confusable neighboring fallacy.
The student explains, using a specific example, why validity and soundness are logically independent properties of an argument, i.e., why an argument can be valid without being sound, and why no argument can be sound without being valid.
Given a real, previously unseen persuasive passage on a contested issue that the student personally disagrees with, the student produces a charitable reconstruction of the position, adding the strongest available missing premise or clarifying an ambiguous term, before writing any critique of it.
Given two structurally similar conditional arguments, one modus ponens (valid) and one affirming the consequent (invalid), presented side by side, the student determines which is valid by constructing a counterexample test (a case where the premises could be true and the conclusion false) rather than by the arguments' surface resemblance.
Given a wholly unfamiliar real-world persuasive text (e.g., an advertisement, political cartoon caption, or social-media argument never discussed in class) the student has not seen reconstructed by anyone, the student independently determines whether the persuasive technique used constitutes one of the six named fallacies or is instead non-fallacious rhetorical emphasis, and justifies the call.
This unit asks a genuinely unsettling question: can you ever fully prove you know something, or does every chain of reasons eventually run out, into a circle, an endless chain, or a stopping point you just have to accept without proof? Your child will meet the classic definition of knowledge, the famous case that breaks it, the three ways philosophers have tried to patch the problem, Descartes'-style skeptical arguments, and finally faith-and-reason positions treated as real philosophy, not as a debate to be won.
State the three components of the justified-true-belief (JTB) definition of knowledge and identify which component is missing in a given short scenario.
Explain why a Gettier-style case (true belief, justified, but true only by luck) shows that justification plus truth plus belief is not sufficient for knowledge.
Reconstruct the regress problem (Agrippa's trilemma) by identifying its three exhaustive outcomes, infinite regress, circularity, and arbitrary stopping point, for a given chain of justification a student produces themselves.
Formally reconstruct the dream argument or the evil-demon argument in premise-conclusion form and determine whether it is valid, using the method taught in Unit 1.
Compare foundationalism's and coherentism's replies to the isolation/regress objection and explain how each reply follows from what that position treats as needing no further justification.
Given a previously unseen skeptical scenario (not the dream argument, not the evil demon), determine which premise a foundationalist, a coherentist, and an infinitist would each be most likely to reject, and justify each attribution from that position's core commitment.
Distinguish fideism, evidentialism, and reformed epistemology by identifying, in a short quotation, which position's core claim about the relationship between faith and evidence it represents.
Explain the is/ought distinction and the appearance/reality distinction as two separate conceptual moves that block a specific commonly attempted argument (e.g., inferring a moral or metaphysical conclusion directly from a perceptual or factual premise).
Given two strongest-form responses to the regress problem that a student has not directly compared before (e.g., infinitism versus foundationalism on the arbitrariness objection), generate a novel third position's likely reply by reasoning from the same abstract structure (what must be immune from further justification, and why).
Write a comparative analysis essay presenting two responses to the regress problem, each in its strongest form with its strongest objection, using charitable reconstruction as a graded criterion.
This unit asks whether the mind is just the brain, and it splits that into two separate questions your child has probably never separated before: what a mental state does, and why it feels like something to have one. They'll work through Descartes' argument for a separate mind, physicalist replies, the 'hard problem of consciousness,' philosophical zombies, whether a teleported copy of you is really you, and free will versus determinism, ending in a live oral defense where they have to hold a position under real pushback.
State Descartes' conceivability argument for substance dualism in premise-conclusion form and identify whether it is valid.
Distinguish the claim that Descartes' argument is valid from the claim that its premises are true, using a case where a student accepts the logical form but rejects premise 1 (conceivability entails possibility).
State the identity theory and functionalist claims about mental states using necessary/sufficient condition language, and explain how the two claims differ.
Explain why a successful physical/functional account of a mental state's causal role does not by itself resolve the hard problem of consciousness.
Construct a philosophical zombie thought experiment for a mental state not used in class examples (e.g., regret, boredom) and use it to argue whether physicalism can fully account for that state.
Recall the definitions of psychological continuity and bodily continuity as competing criteria for personal identity over time.
Apply the psychological-continuity and bodily-continuity criteria to a teleporter/duplication case not covered in class and determine which criterion, if either, the case satisfies.
Compare hard determinism, libertarian free will, and compatibilism on whether moral responsibility requires that choices not be fully caused by prior events.
Judge whether a given real-world excuse ('I was raised that way,' 'it's my brain chemistry') is best explained by hard determinism, libertarian free will, or compatibilism, and defend the judgment against a compatibilist rebuttal.
Defend a chosen position on mind (dualism, physicalism, or functionalism) for four minutes and respond to two live objections using validity/soundness and knowledge/belief vocabulary correctly.
Generalize, across dualism, physicalism, and functionalism, what kind of evidence would count as resolving the hard problem, if any evidence could.
The last unit asks whether three big ethical theories, judge by outcomes, judge by duty, judge by character, are all trying to answer the same question and one of them is simply right, or whether they're actually asking different questions about what makes an action right in the first place. Your child learns to actually run all three frameworks on real cases, then uses the trolley problem to pin down exactly which premise two frameworks disagree on, and closes with a position paper and the question of whether morality is more like a fact or more like an invention.
Given a short case description, state the verdict and the single guiding principle (maximize aggregate well-being) that an act utilitarian would use to reach it.
Distinguish act utilitarianism from rule utilitarianism by identifying, for a given case, which type of entity each theory evaluates (the individual act vs. the general rule).
Apply Kant's categorical imperative test (universalizability and the contradiction-in-conception test) to a new maxim to determine whether it could be willed as universal law.
Explain why the categorical imperative test evaluates the coherence of willing a maxim as universal law rather than predicting the consequences of universal adoption.
Apply the virtue-ethics decision procedure (what would a practically wise person, possessing the relevant virtues, perceive and do here) to a new case, naming the specific virtue(s) at stake.
Given the trolley problem and one structural variant (e.g., the footbridge case) not previously analyzed together, reconstruct in standard form the strongest argument each of the three frameworks would make, and identify which specific premise differs between the two frameworks' arguments for the same case.
Given a completely unfamiliar moral dilemma never discussed in class (e.g., a resource-allocation case from a different domain than any used in instruction), determine whether two named frameworks' disagreement on the verdict is a disagreement about a fact of the case or a disagreement about what counts as a moral reason, and justify the determination.
Construct the strongest available argument for moral realism and the strongest available argument for moral anti-realism, using the unit's three normative frameworks as evidence in the argument, without stating a personal preference.
Given a case where an action produces a good outcome but was performed for a self-interested or accidental reason, separately evaluate the act's rightness (consequentialist question) and the agent's character (virtue-ethics question), and explain why these are not the same question.
Produce a position paper analyzing one contested case through two ethical frameworks, reconstructing each argument in standard form, identifying whether their disagreement is factual or normative, and stating what would have to be true for each side to be right, without declaring a personal winner.
From the parent guide
This is a one-semester high school philosophy course, and it has one real job: teaching your kid to rebuild someone else's argument in its strongest possible form before they're allowed to attack it. That's it. Everything else, the famous thought experiments, the dead philosophers, the debates about God and free will and trolleys, is that one skill applied to a new question every few weeks. First they learn what makes an argument logically solid versus just persuasive. Then they turn that tool on "can we know anything for certain" then "is the mind just the brain" then "what makes an action right." Nobody wins the debates in this course, your child learns to state both sides so well that a fair judge couldn't tell which one they actually believe.
Unit 1 · what to expect
This is where your child learns the actual vocabulary of logic, not vibes about 'good points,' but a real test for whether an argument's structure holds up, separate from whether you like where it ends up. They'll learn to pull apart premises and conclusions, run a test for validity, add a separate test for truth (soundness), name five common fallacies, and, hardest of all, build the strongest version of an argument they disagree with before they're allowed to criticize it.
The full guide covers all 4 units: where kids get stuck, what to say, and how to tell it's working. Included with the course.
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