Group for those who do OCR A2 Philosophy & Ethics [Post Exam Discussion]

does anyone else think business ethics will come up this year over the environment ? x

Was getting 95-100% in A2 ethics mocks, took the exam in Jan and got 64%....
Yeah my confidence is rock bottom right now, dreading the day with both exams, my essay writing skills just aren't there. I cannot write critically, I'm awful. Help me, please?

ME TOO ! sorry that was just a little too enthusiastic but i really do hope this comes up ! it's only been up once out of the three times and that was on the very first paper (january 2010) so i'm pretty confident it will come up ! going to make sure i know it really well, hope your revision's going well too x

You aren't the only one. I got 40/100 in the Ethics paper in January despite having got a B in my Ethics mock (and my teacher was an OCR examiner) - though I looked at the Ethics questions and didn't understand how to answer any of them, so I can't help on that front.

I can help with Philosophy though, this essay was virtually the same as the one which came up in the Jan exam, my teacher gave it near enough full marks, and I memorised it for the exam which I got 89/100 for (and I didn't even finish my 2nd question.)

This exam is probably going to kill me, I swear. -.-
I've been making notes from the textbooks (the thick ones, the all Ethics in one, Philosophy in another >.>) and trying to plan exam questions. I've been getting low A's in my Philosophy but B/C's in my Ethics, sigh. I'm worried that even if I can nail it outside of the exam once I'm in the exam it's all going to go seriously wrong.

Same. This exam is the bane of my life.

Can anybody tell me Anthony Flew's contribution to Religious Language? I often see him coupled with Falsification and John Wisdom's parable of the gardener ("death my a 1000 qualifications")... but what exactly did Flew say? Or does he just endorse Wisdom in saying Rel. Lang is meaningless?

Flew argued that since religious language cannot be falsified - proven false - it is meaningless.

He borrowed Wisdom's analogy to try and prove his point. He claimed that in the parable of the gardener, the believer continuously altered their argument in order to fit in with new 'evidence' they found. When the believer couldn't catch the gardener, he claimed that the gardener must be some transcendent, invisible being. This changed his argument from being about a physical gardener to a transcendent one.

Since his argument changed, it was incapable of being falsified. In the same way, religious believers continuously change the way in which they approach God, making it incapable of being proven wrong. Instead, they change their argument to fit in with new criticism, never truly allowing it to be falsified.

E.g. When people say that 'God is love', and others challenge this with natural disasters, claiming that a benevolent God would not allow these to happen, they alter this statement to mean 'God's is love...BUT his love is different from human love. We do not truly understand him'

They prevent it from being falsified, so it is meaningless!

Hope that helped

Cheers, thanks for clarifying that Was pretty much what I thought in the first place, he states rel lang is meaningless as believers refuse to have it falsified by shifting the boundaries.

And what was Mitchell's criticism of this? I know Hare spoke about Bliks (which i understand but won't expand on here to save time) and Swinburne said we know things that needn't be falsified (analogy of toys never coming to life)... I never understand the point Mitchell was trying to make though.

Ohhh Basil Mitchell claimed that religious believers do not change their arguments to suit new criticism. Instead, they do look at opposing evidence, but they try and view it in a positive light.

He gave the example of a French stranger who said that he was fighting the Germans. He saw this stranger around and saw him sometimes fighting the Germans, and other times it appeared as though he was fighting the French. However, since he had faith in the stranger and had no reason to doubt him, he interpreted every action as him fighting the Germans, even though it didn't appear that way. In the same way, religious believers may see opposing information, but choose to look beyond it and interpret it as a good thing.

They're not necessarily changing their original argument. They are just sustaining it but viewing God's behaviour as good.

Ahhh! Thanks so much and that concludes my revision on Rel Language

Waheyyyyyy hi5! What do you have left to revise?

hey, I was just wondering how everybody would answer these ethics questions:

'Virtue ethics is of little use when dealing with practical ethics.' Discuss. (35)

and

'The problem with virtue ethics is that it gives no definite answers to moral problems.' Discuss. (35)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks so much