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

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wooo! just came home from philosophy paper and ethics paper
I thought the philosophy paper was brilliant and the ethics wasn't bad by any means :smile:

I did the following questions with the following points - feel free to discuss and give feedback:

Philosophy Q1) Rel lang is meaningless

Spoiler

Q2) Body/Soul are distinct

Spoiler

Ethics: Q1) Ethical language:

Spoiler

Q2) responsibility over actions

Spoiler

got 200/200 last year so only need to get a C on the dot to get an A. However, i really hope I could be in the running for an A* this time. either way, hopefully, that's a grade A guaranteed.

How did everybody else find it?

Ohh i did half of what you did:

Philosophy:

1. religious lang is meaningless (DREAM OF A QUESTION!!!)
intro: what constitutes meaning? - each scholars definition
p1 - ayer
p2 - criticisms
p3- falsification + R.M Hares crit
p4- wittgenstein = solution
concl - good ol' witty is the best :smile:

2. omnscience of god is a problem (found this slightly tough as hadnt written an essay on attributes before)

intro: his omniscience creates problems for his justice, moral responsibility + free will
p1 - Boethius' view of atemporal God
p2 - how this creates a problem for omniscience -> simple necessity stuff criticism, no relationship and the counter argument including aquinas' analogy
p3 - one solution = everlasting God . Stated theory and crit that what was he doing before then? And other crit
p4 - alternative solution = Friedrich Schleiermacher (spelt his name COMPLETELY wrong though in exam!) - knowledge is like that of friends thus absolving any issues of his justice or intervention
concl - atemporal + everlasting problematic, schleirmacher best view

--

Ethics:

1. no responsible of 'evil' actions: (this was a great q i thought)

intro - differing views, implications of them; SD is best approach for us
p1 - hard determinsim - calvinism
p2 - HD - Honderich, Spinoza & Lock
p3 - Crit of HD - no moral responsibility is bad thing for society etc, Darrow's trial
p4- alternative: libertarianism - van inwagen + crit
p5- best = SD most compatible for humans - hume,
concl - we need moral responsibilty in society therefore, SD is best view to take

2. Secular approaches to environment more helpful than religious (found this quite tricky, miscalculated time so rushed the middle only to realise had 20mins left!)

p1 - secular approach of deep ecology + gaia
p2 - how it's useful for us in environ issues
p3- how it's more useful than Religious - listed bad things about christianity
p4 - however; religious has it's strengths - listed christian positives
p5 - secular also has its weaknesses (small paragraph)

concl - secular is better

What do you guys think - will this get me an A (need a low B to get an A) or A*? Were the structures correct??
SO glad it's over

Reply 921

skygirl999

Phew! Just got back home and so glad that is over!
Looking through the past couple of pages I'm surprised with the low number of people who did omniscience, I thought that was a brilliant question!
Wish that virtue had been a stand alone question rather than applied, but so glad that free will and determinism was on there!

So I have a couple of questions: Do you get penalised for writing the wrong philosopher? It was the omniscience question and I wrote that J.L Mackie had said about the inconsistent triad....seeing as it was a minor point and not on the syllabus do you think they will still take marks off for that?

And secondly, for philosophy the question on religion, I wanted to explain then analyse verificationism, falsificationism and then mention some theories which state religious language is meaningFULL (Via negativa, language games) but I didn't have enough time so only explained and analysed verificationism and fealsificationism before putting the others into my conclusion - something like "the existence of theories such as the via negativa and language games show that many philosophers do not agree with the idea that religious language is meaningless" Do you reckon thats alright?

Reply 922

umm123

Ohhh no!! Looking at my notes i think i massively screwed up :cry:

For the ethics Q about the environment, for secular approaches does Virtue ethics & situation ethics count?!
I just panicked and thought secular meant anything that wasn't to do with God, my mind blanked out on the deep ecology stuff :cry:

Was that all completely wrong?

Reply 923

skygirl999

Original post by umm123

Ohhh no!! Looking at my notes i think i massively screwed up :cry:

Was that all completely wrong?

I didn't do this question but I wouldn't worry, I think virtue ethics at least would count as a secular approach :smile:

Reply 924

umm123

Original post by skygirl999

I didn't do this question but I wouldn't worry, I think virtue ethics at least would count as a secular approach :smile:

Thanks

, I really hope so. Oh well I guess there's nothing I can do, atleast its all over now :smile:

Reply 925

SpriteOrSevenUp

Original post by umm123

Ohhh no!! Looking at my notes i think i massively screwed up :cry:

Was that all completely wrong?

My understanding of secular approaches is the whole shallow/deep ecology stuff alongside the Gaia Hypothesis.

However, since the exam is not negatively marked, you won't actually lose marks for saying that. You may just get fewer marks for talking about Virtue Ethics.

Since you spoke about Situation Ethics, that will count as religious ethics, so all the points you wrote will be valid. The question was about secular approaches V religious approaches, so Situation Ethics makes sense in relation to the question :smile:

Don't worry, for Philosophy I only mentioned the Falsification Principle and Via Negativa, and I'm worried about that too :frown:

But don't worry, I'm sure we'll be ok, fingers crossed :smile:

Reply 926

jbarfie

Original post by umm123

Ohhh no!! Looking at my notes i think i massively screwed up :cry:

Was that all completely wrong?

Virtue ethics is but I think what they meant was Gaia hypothesis, deep ecology and shallow ecology

Reply 927

KieranJones

I answered:
1. "Religious language is meaningless." Discuss.
2. Body and soul distinct yadda yadda

2. "We are not morally responsible for our evil actions." Discuss.
3. Virtue Ethics + extramarital sex

I'm happy with my answers to all of them except the religious language one. It was an excellent question, but I only really talked (very thoroughly) about strong verification, weak verification and falsification. Do you think I will score lowly for going into lots of detail + evaluating just those three, or is there a depth/breadth tradeoff?

Reply 928

AccioChocolate

Original post by skygirl999

I didn't do this question but I wouldn't worry, I think virtue ethics at least would count as a secular approach :smile:

I agree! Virtue Ethics is based on Eudaimonia, not God, that's one of its strengths over theories that depend on a belief in God, and Singer's Utilitarianism is definitely secular. I'm sure it will have been fine :smile:

I did the moral responsibility and meta-ethics questions though.
I hate that you can't tell how it went really until August. I can't wait that long!!

Reply 929

AccioChocolate

Original post by KieranJones

I did religious language too, as did most of my class - it sounds like we all missed out different things - there's no way you could have included everything in enough detail. Like I criticised Verification but only in reference to Strong Verification, but then I planned to include Myths and Symbols and all that jazz and ran out of time. In fact I intended to agree with Wittgenstein, but didn't even mention him until halfway through my last paragraph, and spent most of the time on analogy. To conclude :P I think as long as what you did put is relevant and well-reasoned, and you managed to reach a definite conclusion by evaluating those three, that's all they can ask for in 45 minutes really :smile:

Reply 930

skygirl999

Original post by SpriteOrSevenUp

Don't worry, for Philosophy I only mentioned the Falsification Principle and Via Negativa, and I'm worried about that too :frown:

But don't worry, I'm sure we'll be ok, fingers crossed :smile:

For philosophy I did something similar and only mentioned the falsification and the verification principles...I think perhaps they will have only have expected us to focus on a couple of theories, because otherwise that question encompassed the entirety of the religious language section.

Reply 931

SpriteOrSevenUp

Original post by KieranJones

I did a similar thing. I wanted to talk about analogy, falsification and via negativa, but only managed the last two. I didn't get a chance to talk about analogy.

My work on the falsification principle was in depth though, so I'm hoping we won't be penalised.

Reply 932

Liam_G

Original post by emilylikeeee

Got 62% in ethics in January, was predicted an A*, thought it had gone really well... So yeah, had January not happened, I would have believed you :smile:

Not trying to scare anyone though :redface:

I know how you feel, in my AS exam I got an A in Philosophy and a D in Ethics, so I resat Ethics and thought it went brilliantly... only to find that I got another D :indiff:

3rd time lucky :rolleyes:

Reply 933

skygirl999

Original post by AccioChocolate

I did the moral responsibility and meta-ethics questions though.
I hate that you can't tell how it went really until August. I can't wait that long!!

Precisely. In fact one of the strengths of virtue was that it could be applied to both secular and religious morality :smile:

I did the exact same questions as you though, but I don't know if I went too broad on moral responsibility. I basically did a paragraph on one type of determinism, criticized it, then did another types of determinism etc. But I did bring in soft determinism and libertarianism as criticisms so....keeping my fingers crossed!

Reply 934

-Liv-

i turned over the philosophy paper, saw the question "assess the view that religious language is meaningless" and got so happy it was ridiculous haha. i thought the paper was really good, I did language is meaningless, body and soul, ethical statements are just emotion and we are not responsible for our evil actions. start to finish, lovely lovely questions.

i don't know if anyone else who sat this exam also did edexcel history a2 last friday afternoon, but i feel like this paper has made up for the appalling questions we were given in that haha

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 935

umm123

Original post by SpriteOrSevenUp

Don't worry, for Philosophy I only mentioned the Falsification Principle and Via Negativa, and I'm worried about that too :frown:

But don't worry, I'm sure we'll be ok, fingers crossed :smile:

Can't believe I did that :mad:

, I hope the other ethics question went well then... :frown:

Good luck with your results :smile:

Hope we all get what we need for uni!

Reply 936

Nickyxx

I did the religious language question (completley messed it up, went on about how Flew applies the verification principle to religious language using his gardener story :| realised about 2 minutes from the end what i'd done. Never even mentioned Wittgenstein and hardly did anything on falsification) and the omniscience question, which i think I did okay in- was the one I was really hoping would come up.

Reply 937

jbarfie

Guys we were very looking me thinks- best papers there's been IMO

I did the religious language one (included verification, falsification, wittenstein and via negativa) and body/soul questio (Plato, Dawkins, descartes/Ryle and then hick)

ethics I did the meta ethics one and free will/determinism

Reply 938

xbabycakes

I did 1 and 3 for philosophy, and 2 and 4 for ethics.

My concentration was lagging for the environmental question, but managed to put in shallow/deep ecology, gaia hypothesis, dominion, stewardship, virtue and breifly mentioned utilitarianism and kant as well I think, bahah. I worried though that the ethical theories I talked about weren't that in depth and I might have lost view of the question, and my conclusion for that one was no less than shocking (ran out of time, poo).

Over all it went pretty well. Free will/determinism was a life saver too! Just a bit worried that I lost sight of the question a few times, but hay. It's done, dusted. Nice meeting to all, hope you all do well in August! :biggrin:

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 939

Liam_G

Original post by KieranJones

I done exactly the same questions :yes:

And I'm a bit worried about my Religious language one as well... All I talked about was the origins of VP, its strengths/weaknesses, the weak VP and a little tiny bit about using analogy to express the divine.

I think we'll do fine :biggrin: