Philosophy SL?

[Revolution]

So, my school just began letting us choose our elective class for senior year since Psychology SL is a one year course and I learned that my school will begin teaching Philosophy SL next year and was wondering, how is the class? Is it closely related to Theory of Knowledge? Is the exam or course hard with Philosophy as a subject being a bit more abstract (at least that's how I see it)?

[Award Winning Boss]

philosophy =/= TOK. It doesn't resemble it that much imo (but I think ToK is a terrible subject so there's that). They're both similar in the sense that they both focus on epistemology but the problems you encounter vary in difficulty.

The exam isn't too difficult once you grasp the problems and understand why the counters work.

[Sandwich]

I think if you find English Literature straightforward, Philosophy requires similar skills - basically analysing what other people have written and thought about certain subjects and then coming up with your own arguments. Philosophy and TOK aren't really related to each other, I would say. TOK is a very specific thing and I didn't do anything in TOK which seemed to relate to the Philosophy course and vice versa, except that both require a similar distancing of the brain from reality in order to come up with some artful BS.

Personally I found Philosophy very easy. There's not a great deal to learn, most of it is about being able to construct your own essays and arguments from other people's thoughts, ideas etc. and being able to re-explain ideas and also associate philosophical ideas with non-philosophical things. It's an especially good subject to take in terms of humanities because it doesn't have the huge information load associated with things like History, Geography and so on, so it gives you more time to concentrate on your more important subjects at finals. For an SL in an area I can only assume you're not interested in pursuing (why else put your humanities at SL?) it does the job of easy grade with minimal effort.

I'd recommend it to anybody who's decent at expressing themselves in writing and analytical thinking. All you really need is comprehension skills, logic, and the ability to get all that down on paper in the context of an exam A tiny bit of BS is also useful.

[Revolution]

Thank you both for the feedback!

[Morgan1105]

Personally I found Philosophy very easy. There's not a great deal to learn, most of it is about being able to construct your own essays and arguments from other people's thoughts, ideas etc. and being able to re-explain ideas and also associate philosophical ideas with non-philosophical things. It's an especially good subject to take in terms of humanities because it doesn't have the huge information load associated with things like History, Geography and so on, so it gives you more time to concentrate on your more important subjects at finals.

Hi! I am in the process of having to decide between taking Philosophy or Biology in addition to Chemistry for next year. Now that i have researched what Philosophy is all about, I think i may be interested in it. However, i was wondering if it is hard to balance having to take TOK, Philosophy, and a Language A1/ Literature class? (in my case it would be English). I mean this in terms of having to possibly read, analyze, and write for all 3 classes... Was that hard to handle?

* Also, I am an artsy person and enjoy music and etc. but i want to become a pharmacist. However, if i double science i still want to stay in touch with my artsy way of expressing myself. In that case, do you think that taking only Lit. and TOK will not allow me to fulfill this if i double science or should i get just enough mix of my career goals and passion for the arts??? I definitely want to be well rounded!!! Thanks in advance for the help!

Edited April 1, 2013 by Morgan1105

[Sandwich]

Personally I found Philosophy very easy. There's not a great deal to learn, most of it is about being able to construct your own essays and arguments from other people's thoughts, ideas etc. and being able to re-explain ideas and also associate philosophical ideas with non-philosophical things. It's an especially good subject to take in terms of humanities because it doesn't have the huge information load associated with things like History, Geography and so on, so it gives you more time to concentrate on your more important subjects at finals.

Hi! I am in the process of having to decide between taking Philosophy or Biology in addition to Chemistry for next year. Now that i have researched what Philosophy is all about, I think i may be interested in it. However, i was wondering if it is hard to balance having to take TOK, Philosophy, and a Language A1/ Literature class? (in my case it would be English). I mean this in terms of having to possibly read, analyze, and write for all 3 classes... Was that hard to handle?

* Also, I am an artsy person and enjoy music and etc. but i want to become a pharmacist. However, if i double science i still want to stay in touch with my artsy way of expressing myself. In that case, do you think that taking only Lit. and TOK will not allow me to fulfill this if i double science or should i get just enough mix of my career goals and passion for the arts??? I definitely want to be well rounded!!! Thanks in advance for the help!

Actually it was incredibly easy to handle because, as I explained earlier, it's the same skill being deployed in all 3. So if you're an analytical person capable of expressing yourself quickly & well in writing, you're all sorted - versus having to learn different sets of facts, you basically just apply one intrinsic skill et voila. There's basically no reading to be done for TOK (and apart from the final TOK essay and perhaps a few practice ones, also no writing), very little reading to be done for Philosophy (you have ONE set text...) and to be honest English Lit doesn't exactly present a massive stress on the reading front either, unless you're one of those people who really isn't in to reading books. You can read a book in a few weeks just by spending 20 minutes before you go to bed, to be honest.

Neither English Lit or TOK are particularly artistic, in my opinion - the only properly artistic IB subjects are Art, possibly Music (although to be honest that's a lot of theory) and perhaps Theatre/Dance. If you want to study pharmacy it makes the most sense to do sciences and do arts as your hobbies, where you can make it all count for CAS.

The IB will force you to be well-rounded whether you like it or not, so I wouldn't worry about that.

[TykeDragon]

If you like writing essays, take it. It's assessed through six essays (with one coursework essay included), and you need to be able to give your own arguments and make it strongly personal, as stated above. Philosophers and 'knowledge' is useful but not necessary, it is even preferred that you come up with your own examples - being quirky makes you interesting to examiners. You only need the basic knowledge of what everything is, and how you would argue for/against your view. The only thing making it difficult is that you need to be able to churn out an essay every 45 minutes, roughly, for the exam situations. And the markscheme is vague and entirely subjective, which makes it fairly unpredictable how you'll be graded, perhaps making it difficult to get a 7.

It's not too bad though - writing clearly and being able to strongly and personally argue for and against a thesis will be enough to get you a very solid mark.

[Morgan1105]

Thank you so much guys!!! The specific details on what the class is about has really helped!!!