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Philosophy podcast aimed at school students. Fun, informative, engaging. Philosophers at universities and schools talk about loads of questions and topics that come up in Philosophy, Ethics and Political Theory - A-Levels / IB / Highers and even GCSE. Hosted by Simon Kirchin, University of Leeds and Director of the British Philosophical Association. Timetable of topics: https://stkirchin.wixsite.com/mysite/schools-podcast (Music by Alex Grohl)Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ A-level/GCSE philosophy revision • metaphysics of mind: dualism, physicalism, functionalism, AI • epistemology: scepticism, perception, reason, Gettier • philosophy of religion: God, evil, arguments, religious language • ethics: Kant, utilitarianism, virtue, metaethics, applied issues (animals, sex, war, business, abortion, euthanasia)This podcast is a philosophy series designed for school students studying topics in philosophy, ethics, and political theory (including A-Level/IB/Highers and GCSE). It aims to introduce core ideas in a way that supports classroom learning, with the host and guest philosophers and teachers explaining key theories, standard arguments, and common exam-relevant distinctions. Discussions typically combine clear definitions with structured evaluation, often setting out arguments for and against a view and then testing them with thought experiments and objections.
A major strand of the podcast focuses on philosophy of mind and metaphysics, especially debates about whether the mind is physical. Listeners are guided through leading positions such as substance dualism, property dualism, behaviourism, identity theory, functionalism, and eliminative materialism. These conversations draw on widely taught examples and challenges, including zombies, the knowledge argument (Mary), inverted qualia, multiple realisability, and questions about introspection, mental causation, and the relation between consciousness and the brain.
Another central theme is epistemology. The podcast covers different types of knowledge, the tripartite account of knowledge and Gettier-style problems, and responses such as reliabilism and virtue epistemology. It also explores scepticism (including brains-in-vats scenarios) and classic responses from rationalist and empiricist traditions, alongside detailed treatment of perceptual knowledge through debates between direct realism, indirect realism, and idealism. There is also explicit support for philosophical method via episodes devoted to key terms in logic and argumentation (e.g., deductive vs inductive reasoning, consistency, fallacies, modality, and related concepts).
Philosophy of religion and ethics form a substantial portion of the material. The show examines arguments about God’s existence (cosmological, teleological/design, and ontological arguments), questions about divine attributes (such as omniscience, foreknowledge, and paradoxes), the problem of evil, and the nature of religious language (including cognitivism vs noncognitivism and verificationist critiques). In moral philosophy, it spans normative theories (utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, Aristotelian virtue ethics), metaethics (realism and anti-realism), and applied ethics topics including abortion, euthanasia, sexual ethics, animal ethics and eating animals, war and peace, and business ethics.