OCR AS Philosophy and Ethics Exam 16th May 2012

panickingggggggggggg
thought i did so well as well
answered aristotle question but didnt write naything about his 4 causes would i loose marks because the question was to explain prime mover ?????????????

First person on here who did it!!
What did you think of the paper?
I thought it was *odd* compared to other past questions, they seem to have made it a lot harder in my opinion..??
And which questions did you do??!

Hopefully they'll be low enough for us to all pass.. I don't really understand how the grade boundaries work, but I'm hoping that however they work, and whatever they are.. we can all pass..

Hey guys im still really worried about ethics, like did we need to talk about specific theories or could we have just said it general personhood/quality/sancity/rights/universalise etc for q1 2??

Thanks in advance

I think the boundary will be quite high. The questions were really good to be fair, like 'Moral issues surrounding euthanasia' for Ethics and 'Explain Kants Moral Argument' for Philosophy were dream questions. The were straight forward and no messing around trying to figure out what they actually wanted. I think a lot of people will have done well and therefore boundaries will be higher. Sorry to be the mood-killer.

For people who did Kant on of PoR paper, what did you guys write about?

I basically talked about he dismissed the other arguments, believed the Categorical Imperative had an unconditional, transcendent claim on us and, therefore, as we couldn't fulfil the summum bonum in our human lifetime, there must be an afterlife where the moral balance is fulfilled...? Oh, and that God is the source of this transcendent claim on us? I'm not sure I wrote enough though as we didn't really cover it much in class... about three and a half pages I think?

Just asking out of opinion.. *why* did you pick augustine and kants moral argument?
I'm just curious as MANY people seem to have done these two.
But me and literally the *tiny* amount of people I actually know chose the Plato and Aristotle..
(i'm not saying its wrong for you to have picked them, but just wondering your.. reasons? do you like those best, or think the plato was *too easy??*

This makes me feel better ^^ Thanks.

For the Aristotle one, I still did struggle a bit, because to be honest, I didnt know what a prime mover was, but i have made 3 pages worth of points about it being unmoved mover, thought about itself, pure actuality and how it didnt interact with the world like the classical theism God. I started off about writing about the School of Athens painting, the quote from Metaphysics, Permanence and change, Matter and form, potentiality and actuality.. so hopefully I haven't missed *too* much out. :/
If not, re-sit

Basically the foundation of the moral argument is 'ought implies can' and therefore if we ought to achieve summon bonum then there is no reason why we cannot. If we can there must be a rewarded which is what Kant believed was God. The first thing to do would have been to explain what summon bonum is and how it influences morality and then link that with the idea of God. I was surprised at this question because summon bonum came up only last year and it's almost the same here except you are required to explain why it proves the existence of God as well.

For an AS part one question you should be aiming to write about 2-3 pages in order to get enough info in (provided that your not prone to waffling about rubbish) So I think, depending on how big your handwriting is, that 3 and a half is sufficient.

I did 2 and 3, those were the least evil lol. Yeah it was alot harder compared o past ones I was aiming for an A but would be content with a B. What questions did you do?

The B part on Aristotle was amazing! You could talk about creationism,cosmological argument and teleological argument! It just wasn't linked closely to Aristotle.

Yeah it wasnt too bad.
I just talked about the aspects of God if he was all-loving etc etc. Mill's teleological against and Paleys for were a big part of my essay as well Creationism, Science, yepp, think I might have done okay... *maybe.....* XD

I did 1 and 4. Haha
Hoenstly had no idea about the fig tree story and I decided that the only topic I wouldnt even touch was the resurrections, (even though my teacher predicted matthews resurrection to be on the paper, and it was )

Roman occupation went super well.
I made up the one about Gethemsane.... so i've not got *good* mark for that, but it was my best shot at it. Couldnt even attempt the other two
I *want* and A... but i'd be happy with a C or something, considering I didnt revise

What did you write about for the Euthanasia?

Think it was a bit of a flop tbh! The practise essays I've done have all got really good marks but I'm not feeling too confident about the actual exam!

Rights and personhood
Sanctity vs Quality
Doctrine of Double effect (because I did like a whole paragraph on the Church and Natural Law)
Slippery Slope
Kill vs Let Die
Dignity w/ Hospice

I included more scholars and ethical theories than I explained each of those issues; apparently you weren't supposed to do that.