Edexcel Unit 4 Implications - Philosophy - Ayer

Oh the other thing I was thinking about, how are they going to mark this? Like Waterish says they might be lenient because it's the first year, but I'm not so sure. What if they mark them like they would any other paper, and only adjust it next year to combat the low marks of this year?

Probably just being pessimistic.

Reply 22

. My teacher also said they would be lenient because they have had a lot of complaints from centres. I did mention this in a bit more detail on a post yesterday, but basically thats my feeling.

Have you seen a mark scheme?

Reply 23

wolfie__22

Ok, not wanting to worry you guys, but according to my teacher, Sarah Tyler's actually doing the Ethics anthology with her students, so not she might not be doing Westphal, but shes's also not doing Ayer and Donovan either...

Reply 24

But that doesnt mean she didnt mention the Philosophy of Religion paper in the conference Limey talked about?

Lots of people have have their teachers say that too. I think its a case of religous experience...the more people have them, then more credible they become. However...i am also aware that that argument is flawed...

Reply 25

But in saying that, what exactly are you suggesting?

Reply 26

Limey.

GaryCarter

Wow Limey thanks for all that. It's a bit wierd to have so much to talk about though, and that wasn't the order I would have written it in either. Your way sounds better though, and if that's what Sarah Tyler said then yippee. :biggrin:

One thing I might question, when you say don't sit on the fence do you mean only show one strong opinion? Because I've been told to give a "yes but no but" type of approach, so a fairly strong opinion for or against the passage but also with the odd "however" or "on the other hand". :smile:

Another thing, when you said about quoting from the extract did you mean from the one or two paragraphs you're given or the extract as a whole? I hope you mean from the bit you're given, it'll be so hard to fit the rest of the extract in. :frown:

Yeh, take a 'yes but no but' approach but by the time you reach a conclusion in part B they want to know whether you agree or disagree. They don't want conclusions that just sit on the fence is what I meant. Sorry I didn't make that very clear.

And in terms of quoting, I meant from the extract we're given. It would probably be a bonus if you can quote from other parts as it shows you understand the whole extract, but they don't expect you to.

I'm only going by what my teacher said Sarah Tyler said though, so don't take it completely as gospel.

Although what Sarah Tyler also did is told my teacher that she'd have a look at an essay that one student had done. So she emailed one of my classmates essays, based on the first paragraph of Ayer, to S.T. She sent it back with a bit of annotation.
From what she said it seems as though they want all of the clarification in part A obviously, but leave at least some criticisms to B. My friend had put loads of criticisms in A and basically the whole way through there are comments from S.T. asking whether she's going to have enough to say in B and enough evaluation. It turns out she did but I think as a general rule they expect to see the majority of criticism in B.
Also at the end she wrote 'the examiners will be told to credit any appropriate/relevant response', so basically as long as you can justify it, you can write anything! There are no right/wrong answers.

Reply 27

GaryCarter

OP

Limey.

From what she said it seems as though they want all of the clarification in part A obviously, but leave at least some criticisms to B. My friend had put loads of criticisms in A and basically the whole way through there are comments from S.T. asking whether she's going to have enough to say in B and enough evaluation. It turns out she did but I think as a general rule they expect to see the majority of criticism in B.
Also at the end she wrote 'the examiners will be told to credit any appropriate/relevant response', so basically as long as you can justify it, you can write anything! There are no right/wrong answers.

Awesome, thanks for that. Wish I could give you some info in return, but my class only did one essay and that was before we really knew what to do, so I'm almost literally written what Ayer had said but in my own words. :p:

I thought all criticism was meant to be in part B, right? As far as I know we're just meant to describe things in part A, like for religious experience just talk about the types of experience and what defines them, not their strengths or weaknesses (unless they're what Ayer is talking about), right?

Reply 28

Limey.

Well to be honest I've only done one myself. Lol. It's just useful that I had all the Sarah Tyler input.

I'm a bit confused about the difference between clarifying the extract and saying who support it, they're the same thing pretty much aren't they?? I mean, in the essay I did, I picked up on Ayer saying that it is widely acknowledged among philosophers that the existence of God cannot be demonstratively proved, and talked about David Hume opposing such arguments as the Cosmological Argument. Is that clarifying or support???? And on 'no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance', I talked about the verification and falsification principles. Isn't the supporting as well as clarifying it? Can anybody spell out the difference to me please?

Personally, I'd talk about like early Wittgenstein etc, and about Flew, who agrees with the conclusion but takes a different approach in part a. Even though it's not strictly clarification. As I will almost certainly say I disagree with the extract by the conclusion, I'd put the criticisms in B to 'justify my point of view'. I don't think it would be any bad thing to briefly mention people who would directly criticise Ayer/Flew/Hume etc. There's only so much clarification you can actually give, but there are more marks for part A, so I think you'll have to put some for/against in there.

That seems like a rather long waffle to me, I don't know if I made any sense. Never mind. Lol.

Reply 29

GaryCarter

I thought all criticism was meant to be in part B, right?

No, my teacher has told us that she has been told that any evaluation that you put in part a) will contribute to your marks for part b). However, in my practice essay that i did for this question, i did absolutely no evaulation whatsoever in part a) and got 24 marks out of 30. I don't think there's really time to do evaluation in part a), just leave it the second part of the question.

Ill clarify what evaluating actually entails. In part a) it is a good idea to say "Ayer says x, this is reminiscent of y", where y is a concept or theory, say the Verification Principle, that can be seen to be relevant to x. You can then say "Although Wittgenstein's theory of language games makes religious language meaningful for many [then briefly say why], for Ayer it fails because [then say why Ayer would disagree with it based on his passage]." This is NOT evaluation, since you are not passing judgement on whether Ayer's argument is strong or weak. You are merely summing up relevant viewpoints.

Its a good idea to get the gist of what the passages say so that you can reference different parts of it, even if they are not contained in the paragraph you are given. We've been given some pages from our teacher summing up the main ideas in each section. Im going to make sure i know roughly whats in each section and what ideas can be applied to it (see below).

Ive made a sort of revision plan for the next two days, you might find it helps:

Today

•

Go through the passages (or in my case the summing up by my teacher) and write down any ideas that are relevant. For instance, for Ayer i might list the Verification Principle, Wittgenstein, Aquinas' analogy ideas, etc

•

Next i will make sure i know the main strengths and weaknesses of each of the relevant concepts. This isn't as daunting as it sounds since (hopefully) you will have revised most of them for Paper 3

•

Finally, if there's time, i may write one or two essays to make sure i'm happy with how to do the exam

Tomorrow

•

Basically, just write a load of essays

•

If needed, i'll tweak some of the ideas and add or remove concepts if they are/are not very relevant

•

I'll make sure i go over the strengths and weaknesses/main points of any troublesome areas

Is it ok to scan in the model answer? It's not cheating is it? :confused:

Just a niggling worry.

Hope these ideas help.

Reply 30

marksykid

star_light90

Ok, not wanting to worry you guys, but according to my teacher, Sarah Tyler's actually doing the Ethics anthology with her students, so not she might not be doing Westphal, but shes's also not doing Ayer and Donovan either...

i dont understand... is she not putting westphal on the paper or just not teaching it :s-smilie:

or what im lost :s-smilie:

and its got me worried

Reply 31

marksykid

oooo
i just got you
so theres a possibility that westphal may be on the paper even though people have said its def not going there?!
eugh i dnt have time to revise it!

Reply 32

Waterish, I found those ideas really helpful..thank you.

One thing - could you please give me an overview/insight into what Donovan is actually trying to argue? As in what is the aim of his article? What is his stance/perspective? I find his writing much easier and accessible than Ayer's, but Ayer's position is so much clearer and easier to debate!

Also, how would it be cheating? Was the model answer intended only for you? Who even is it by? It would be very much appreciated by me...even if just to see roughly what they are lookin for :smile:

Reply 33

marksykid

so theres a possibility that westphal may be on the paper even though people have said its def not going there?!
eugh i dnt have time to revise it!

Dont worry if you don't know it all off by heart, the uncertainty over which section and then which paragraph will be included will mean that no one will. Just try to remember the most relevant concept for each section. By remembering about 4 really really relevant ones, others will spring to mind once you start the exam. In addition, youll have a while to plan, so dont worry about learning exactly how youre going to set out your essay and what order youll make the points, you can do that in the planning part.

Reply 34

GaryCarter

OP

Heh, I love how everybody's coming up with different things that they've been told to do. We didn't have much time to talk about it in my lessons, but my teacher basically said just write down all the things you've learned about whatever comes up, and tie it in so it's relevant. For example, if Ayer was saying you can't prove religious experience and so it's meaningless, I'd talk first about proof (which brings in loads of paras on different things - analytical and synthetic statements, verification and thus Ayer's past, empiricism, possibly Wittgenstein's influence), then move on to what religious experience constitutes (different types, possibly features of it), then a bit on what it actually means to be meaningful. As far as I can see if you bulk it out with a few examples of religious experience and synthetic statements it would take ages to write this out (probs way more than 30 mins for me). In doing this I'd also have talked about Ayer, Wittgenstein and William James (for religious experience). Then this would lead me into lots of criticisms for b (John Hick's eschatological verification, Swinburn saying experience is meaningful to the person, problems with verification, Wittgenstein's language games), which would easily tide me over for long enough.

It must sound like I'm fairly confident... I'm not.

Oh yeah and please do scan that model answer. I don't see how it could be cheating at all.

Reply 35

jkyng1

10

thanks for everyone's input. does anyone have a model answer for Ayer?

Reply 36

Scan scan scan scan! We'll all rep you :smile:

Reply 37

Sorry to seem a spoil-sport, but since it seems the model answer was photocopied out of a book, by posting links to you people am i not breaking copyright?

Just want to cover my back, im not trying to build you up then knock you down!

Reply 38

Ooooo. Out of a book? Which one? Definitely a model for this paper?

However...if it was photocopied then surely copyright has already been breached...

Reply 39