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OCR RS Philosophy and Ethics A2

Anyone sitting these exams? If so, how is your revision going? What topics do you hope will come up?

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Hi! I'm sitting the Philosophy one but not the ethics! Hoping that either RE/miracles or attributes will come up... religious language is SO long!
Original post by cocopopscastle
Hi! I'm sitting the Philosophy one but not the ethics! Hoping that either RE/miracles or attributes will come up... religious language is SO long!


I hate the attributes topic, it's so boring! D: I loooove religious language, it's my favourite. Hopefully we'll get a really general question on it. Miracles would also be good, as would a body and soul question.

How's your revision going?
Alright I think! Just finished miracles and I hope to finish to the topics by the end of half term minus Religious language!


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Original post by WannaGetAnA
I hate the attributes topic, it's so boring! D: I loooove religious language, it's my favourite. Hopefully we'll get a really general question on it. Miracles would also be good, as would a body and soul question.

How's your revision going?


A* or I'll be disappointed.. haha.

General questions on religious language, religious experience, miracles and life after death (or at least two of these) and I'm acing that exam. If not.. Well, If I were Hume I wouldn't worry, the exams almost always have two easy, general questions, so it's more probable than four tough, specific questions.. Lol.
Original post by CheesusCrust
A* or I'll be disappointed.. haha.

General questions on religious language, religious experience, miracles and life after death (or at least two of these) and I'm acing that exam. If not.. Well, If I were Hume I wouldn't worry, the exams almost always have two easy, general questions, so it's more probable than four tough, specific questions.. Lol.


Ooh it's good that you're aiming high! I want at least an A, but an A* would be amazing! What's your favourite topic?
Original post by WannaGetAnA
Ooh it's good that you're aiming high! I want at least an A, but an A* would be amazing! What's your favourite topic?


Favourite topic, either miracles or religious experience.. Two questions on these two (but definitely not related to God's omnibenevolence, I can never get enough marks on this topic) and I'll be very, very happy.. haha. What about yours?

I don't see A* as aiming high here, but I guess it's just me.. Last year I got 87/83 and an A, despite doing horrible and not doing too much revision. This year my marks in class are a lot higher, I never even had above 28 at AS and now at A2 I had 30+ consistently, last two essays being 33/35 and 34/35, which really gave me hope for the exam.. And revising 2 hours every day, not counting the school lessons just for Philosophy and Ethics for the last few months really, really helped. I really want full UMS marks even though to get into uni I want is a BCC lol.
Original post by CheesusCrust
Favourite topic, either miracles or religious experience.. Two questions on these two (but definitely not related to God's omnibenevolence, I can never get enough marks on this topic) and I'll be very, very happy.. haha. What about yours?

I don't see A* as aiming high here, but I guess it's just me.. Last year I got 87/83 and an A, despite doing horrible and not doing too much revision. This year my marks in class are a lot higher, I never even had above 28 at AS and now at A2 I had 30+ consistently, last two essays being 33/35 and 34/35, which really gave me hope for the exam.. And revising 2 hours every day, not counting the school lessons just for Philosophy and Ethics for the last few months really, really helped. I really want full UMS marks even though to get into uni I want is a BCC lol.


My favourite topics are religious language, conscience and free will/determinism. I find them so interesting!

And oooh that's really good, well done! How are you revising? I got 97 ums in Phil and 92 in ethics, even though I'm pretty sure I didn't mention the principle of utility in the 'describe the main principles of utilitarianism' essay.
Reply 8
Philosophy:

In religious language I'm hoping analogy, falsification, Wittgenstein, verification or via negativa comes up

In experience I'm cool as long as it isn't conversion... If it is corporate I will be so happy

Miracles would be nice

Life after death is okay

Attributes of God can die in a hole

Philosophy is so much harder this year - feels like there's so many more names than at AS... Like Rudolph Otto... Who the hell is Rudolph Otto?

Ethics:

Meta ethics, free will and determinism, conscience is good

Virtue ethics, environment/business is okay

Sexual ethics can die in a hole

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Haha you really like religious language! I do too :biggrin: a question on analogy would be good, or just a really general question. And meta ethics is horrible, bleeeeh! I find it so boring.

And I totally agree, there's a lot more content to learn this year! But a lot of the marks are awarded for evaluation, which is good in a way.
Original post by WannaGetAnA
My favourite topics are religious language, conscience and free will/determinism. I find them so interesting!

And oooh that's really good, well done! How are you revising? I got 97 ums in Phil and 92 in ethics, even though I'm pretty sure I didn't mention the principle of utility in the 'describe the main principles of utilitarianism' essay.


Oh yes, conscience and free will/determinism are also my favourites from the ethics part :biggrin:. I only mentioned philosophy there.

I see you also got a really good score, well done!

My revision consists of an A2 mindmap and I just re-read it many times and try to remember everything, as well as visualising is so when I get to writing it I can visualise my mindmap's structure and then it's easy from there. I also made detailed notes, typed up on the computer but I tend to type up too much lol.

Conscience and free will + determinism would be my dream ethics two questions.. But I doubt both are going to come up. Probably meta-ethics, conscience or free will/determinism and two of applied ethics and maybe virtue. Meta-ethics is okay for me provided they ask something like 'ethical language is meaningless. discuss' and not 'evaluate prescriptivism'. Virtue ethics would probably be the worst topic, especially like one of the questions from the past about modern virtue ethics..
Analogy and good ol' Tommy sound nice as well.
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by CheesusCrust
Oh yes, conscience and free will/determinism are also my favourites from the ethics part :biggrin:. I only mentioned philosophy there.

I see you also got a really good score, well done!

My revision consists of an A2 mindmap and I just re-read it many times and try to remember everything, as well as visualising is so when I get to writing it I can visualise my mindmap's structure and then it's easy from there. I also made detailed notes, typed up on the computer but I tend to type up too much lol.

Conscience and free will + determinism would be my dream ethics two questions.. But I doubt both are going to come up. Probably meta-ethics, conscience or free will/determinism and two of applied ethics and maybe virtue. Meta-ethics is okay for me provided they ask something like 'ethical language is meaningless. discuss' and not 'evaluate prescriptivism'. Virtue ethics would probably be the worst topic, especially like one of the questions from the past about modern virtue ethics..
Analogy and good ol' Tommy sound nice as well.


I revise like that... I make notes, then write/summarise the notes on A3 - one topic per half page. then I type it up from memory.

Yeah the modern VE questions are horrible! But they seem to like asking that type of question a lot D: conscience hasn't come up for a while, and it normally comes up every year, so I think it's likely we'll get a question on that. Do you want it to be a really broad conscience question?
Original post by WannaGetAnA
I revise like that... I make notes, then write/summarise the notes on A3 - one topic per half page. then I type it up from memory.

Yeah the modern VE questions are horrible! But they seem to like asking that type of question a lot D: conscience hasn't come up for a while, and it normally comes up every year, so I think it's likely we'll get a question on that. Do you want it to be a really broad conscience question?


A really broad question gives you a lot of room to write about a lot of thinkers and their views on conscience (so a lot of AO1) and evaluating should be easy.
Conscience came up January 2013 and June 2012 and Jan 2012 (just looked through the past papers, they're on my desk lol). I'd love a question like 'Evaluate the claim that conscience is the voice of God' and then just throw all the names I can remember and evaluate them. But I'm probably dreaming and it won't happen.

We also get the ethics exam 8 days later so that will help A LOT. I didn't particularly enjoy doing both papers in one sitting.
Original post by CheesusCrust
A really broad question gives you a lot of room to write about a lot of thinkers and their views on conscience (so a lot of AO1) and evaluating should be easy.
Conscience came up January 2013 and June 2012 and Jan 2012 (just looked through the past papers, they're on my desk lol). I'd love a question like 'Evaluate the claim that conscience is the voice of God' and then just throw all the names I can remember and evaluate them. But I'm probably dreaming and it won't happen.

We also get the ethics exam 8 days later so that will help A LOT. I didn't particularly enjoy doing both papers in one sitting.


Yeah, that was horrible /: no time to cram in between! Omg that question would be perfect! But my problem is that when I get a really broad question, I feel the need to talk about everything, so I don't have time to evaluate D: I need to work on essay structure
Original post by WannaGetAnA
Yeah, that was horrible /: no time to cram in between! Omg that question would be perfect! But my problem is that when I get a really broad question, I feel the need to talk about everything, so I don't have time to evaluate D: I need to work on essay structure


Having too much to talk about is much better than having little to talk about :biggrin:. You don't really need to talk about every single thinker, or you could very briefly mention them hoping the examiner would give you more marks :P
As long as attributes of God doesn't come up, I'll be content. It depends on the question for miracles as that's my weakest subject.
Does anyone think business/ environmental ethics will come up? I like all the ethics topics except those two!
Hoping for an A this year. Got an A last year.
Reply 16
Don't wanna worry you, but attributes has come up every year except for January 2011. I hate it too

Miracles doesn't come up that often

Dunno about environment/business though sozzie :/

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Original post by JonnyD
Don't wanna worry you, but attributes has come up every year except for January 2011. I hate it too

Miracles doesn't come up that often

Dunno about environment/business though sozzie :/

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So you think attributes is likely to come up?
Reply 18
Probably - language is another that comes up regularly

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Reply 19
Also taking this! Just doing some preparation at the moment,

how would you structure a monism vs dualism essay?

I was thinking....
Intro: Briefly explain monism/dualism
P1: Plato analysis, mainly bad, add in Brian Davies/Bernard Williams as key critics
P2: Aristotle analysis, showing how although it was more realistic, still some issues
P3: Hick & St. Paul
Conclusion: Neither are very successful, but Aristotle influenced science so his is most tenable (obviously in better words)

Any ideas?

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