Singapore A-Level H2 Knowledge and Inquiry central themes overview quiz (SEAB 9759) quiz

Any belief held with confidence

A true statement, whether or not anyone believes it

Justified true belief

A belief that is useful in practice

They mean exactly the same thing, so any argument that is valid is automatically also sound and the reverse holds too

A sound argument may have a false conclusion even when it is valid, since soundness concerns only the form of the reasoning

Validity requires that the premises actually be true, whereas soundness is concerned only with the logical form of the argument

A valid argument has a conclusion that follows from its premises; a sound argument is valid and has true premises

That justified true belief can fail to be knowledge when the belief is true only by luck

That every belief we hold is in fact false, so genuine knowledge of any kind turns out to be impossible to attain

That justification is wholly unnecessary for knowledge, which requires nothing more than a belief that happens to be true

That truth and belief are one and the same thing, so to believe a proposition just is for that proposition to be true

That deductive arguments are always invalid, so no conclusion can ever be reliably drawn from a set of premises

That inferences from observed cases to general or future conclusions cannot be justified without circularity

That observation of the world is impossible, since our senses can never give us any reliable access to external facts

That all scientific theories are false, since every one of them is eventually overturned and replaced by a later theory

A theory counts as scientific only once it has been conclusively proven true by a sufficient body of evidence

A theory counts as scientific if a large number of observed instances confirm it and none has yet been found against it

A theory is scientific only if it makes predictions that could in principle be refuted by observation

A theory counts as scientific if it is widely believed and accepted by the community of researchers in the field

A single falsifiable prediction that a theory makes and that observation could in principle show to be false

A logical fallacy in which the conclusion of an argument is smuggled in among its premises from the very start

A type of deductive argument in which the conclusion follows with certainty from the premises that are given

A shared framework of theories, methods and assumptions that guides normal science within a community

A necessary condition must hold for something to occur; a sufficient condition, if it holds, guarantees it

They are simply interchangeable terms for the same idea, so a condition that is necessary is always also sufficient

A sufficient condition must always also be a necessary one, since anything that guarantees an outcome is required for it

A necessary condition on its own guarantees that the outcome will occur, with no further conditions needing to be met

That there are objective moral facts that hold true for everyone, independent of any particular culture or individual view

That the truth or justification of moral claims is relative to a culture, society or individual rather than universal

That morality does not exist in any form whatsoever, so that no moral claim is ever either true or false to begin with

That all moral claims, however much they conflict, are in the end equally well justified by careful reasoning and reflection

The difference between two rival scientific theories that each set out to explain the very same body of observed evidence

The difference between perception and testimony as two distinct sources from which a person can come to know something

The distinction between descriptive claims about how things are and evaluative claims about how things ought to be

The gap between validity and soundness, that is, between an argument's logical form and the actual truth of its premises

There is no real difference between the two, since setting out clearly what a position claims is itself a full evaluation of it

Evaluating a position simply means agreeing with it and then restating its central claims in your own words as persuasively as you can

Describing a position always earns the higher marks, because an accurate and complete account of the view is what examiners most reward

Describing states what the position claims; evaluating analyses arguments for and against it and reaches a reasoned judgement

Because it applies the syllabus's own skills, framing a question, justifying a method, evaluating sources and defending an argument

Because it requires no argument at all and asks only for a neutral, balanced summary of what others have already written on the topic

Because it must reach a certain, wholly unqualified conclusion, with any hedging or acknowledgement of doubt counting heavily against it

Because it strictly forbids the candidate from acknowledging any limitations in the evidence, the method or the argument that is offered

Knowledge and Inquiry is simply the broader of the two subjects and, like General Paper, draws all of its material from current affairs and contemporary debate rather than from any formal philosophy

Knowledge and Inquiry asks second-order, philosophical questions about knowledge itself, demanding rigorous analysis, while General Paper is the broad current-affairs subject

They are in truth the very same subject set at two different levels of difficulty, with Knowledge and Inquiry being merely a harder version of the General Paper syllabus

General Paper involves no writing of any kind and is assessed entirely through short comprehension exercises and multiple-choice questions rather than through essays