1. Introduction

I thought it would be good to explore how chatGPT can be used in relation to Higher Philosophy. There are a number of possibilities. Among other things, it can be used to

  • explain concepts
  • give examples
  • create questions
  • answer questions
  • comment on answers, and even
  • mark answers, both essays and short answer questions.

It is important to remember that with chatGPT you may get a different response even if you ask the same question. You can sometimes get a radically different response if you ask the same question but in a different way. ChatGPT is also prone to making things up. I've had examples where the bot has supposedly been telling me something about Descartes and supporting what it says with appropriately referenced quotes only for it to give me quotes that not only don't come from Descartes, they don't seem to come from anywhere. They've just been fabricated.

So, bearing in mind that you may well get different answers even if you ask the same questions as I did, let's begin by seeing how well it copes with the short answer questions from 2021.