AQA Philosophy A2 June 2013

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I am familiar with all of those criticisms, I'm sure I'll be able to come up with some of my own also to throw in. :smile:

Was hoping for some strengths more than anything, but I guess it's evaluation in itself that the theory doesn't really have any strengths, thank you!

EDIT: In fact, do you have any resources on Mackie and Charlatan Leadership? I am aware of the criticisms relating to Plato but not that specific philosopher/idea, have a feeling Charlatan Leadership may be very similar to something I already have i.e. Plato's Philosopher Kings/Guardians.

Erm, I don't really have any resources for Mackie, it's just my own knowledge that I'll adapt to the exam. Although, one well recognized quote by Mackie is:

"it is not our moral beliefs which shape society it is in fact society which shapes our morals."

This is to defend a form of relatavism, thus an argument against Plato's Resolute leadership/philosopher kings holding knowledge from a universal Form of the Good.

Charlatan leadership is just basically about how there is no qualification for someone knowing the Form of the Good, so that means some could pretty much say they know what the Form of the Good is, and becoming a philosopher king, WITHOUT knowing any moral truth...This could lead to immorality and totalitarian ideals as seen in Hitler's Nazi State/Stalin's Soviet Union, both of which, particularly Hitler, claimed to have some moral knowledge concerning the perfect state.

Afterall, Plato's "Republic" is pretty much pre-Nazism... (Please don't write that in your exam haha! It's not justified, just kind of one of those coincidences)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlatan

^ A nice little summary on Charlatans by Wikipedia, just in case you wanted to make a few sophisticated notes :smile:

Reply 101

jool

Original post by Gillymander95

That's quite cunning, I will be sure to use that, thank you! Tried to positive rep but I've ran out. :frown:

Will do it tomorrow, thanks again.

Reply 102

Gillymander95

Original post by jool

That's quite cunning, I will be sure to use that, thank you! Tried to positive rep but I've ran out. :frown:

Will do it tomorrow, thanks again.

Ahh, it'd be my first positive rep on here, that'd be nice, thank you! And no problem, as I said, we're all here to help each other out. This time next week, we'll be free from Unit 3...Leaving us about a week to be frantic over Unit 4, then liberation from A-Levels! :biggrin:

(for the majority of us anyway)

Reply 103

Gillymander95

How many UMS does everyone need in order to get their target grade?

I think sometimes knowing how much you need to do puts you in the right frame of mind - although, sometimes it has the opposite effect...

http://store.aqa.org.uk/over/stat_pdf/UMS-GRADE-BOUNDARIES.PDF

In order to work out how many UMS you need at A2 to get your overall A-Level target grade, do the following.

1) Look at how many UMS you need to achieve your overall target grade. For example, mine is an A, so I need 320 UMS overall.

2) Subtract your total UMS from your AS Philosophy grade from the UMS overall A-Level grade. For example, I got 163 UMS overall at AS Philosophy, so, 320 - 167 = 157

3) I need a very high B to get an A overall for Philosophy A-Level, since 160 UMS at A2 is an A.

Obviously, you don't have to reply to this if you don't want everyone to know your grade, but it might be useful for you to know yourself.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 104

jool

Original post by Gillymander95

How many UMS does everyone need in order to get their target grade?

I think sometimes knowing how much you need to do puts you in the right frame of mind - although, sometimes it has the opposite effect...

http://store.aqa.org.uk/over/stat_pdf/UMS-GRADE-BOUNDARIES.PDF

In order to work out how many UMS you need at A2 to get your overall A-Level target grade, do the following.

1) Look at how many UMS you need to achieve your overall target grade. For example, mine is an A, so I need 320 UMS overall.

2) Subject your total UMS from your AS Philosophy grade from the UMS overall A-Level grade. For example, I got 163 UMS overall at AS Philosophy, so, 320 - 167 = 157

3) I need a very high B to get an A overall for Philosophy A-Level, since 160 UMS at A2 is an A.

Obviously, you don't have to reply to this if you don't want everyone to know your grade, but it might be useful for you to know yourself.

I got 167 UMS at AS however I am resitting PHIL1 so hope that to be higher, means I need 153 UMS at A2 for an A overall, i think it's manageable!

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Reply 105

iwasJack

Could anyone help me out with a mock question for PHIL 3? It is
"Can any reductive account of the mind explain the existence of qualia?"
(50 marks)
I'm kind of stumped on how to set it out.

Reply 106

Gillymander95

Original post by jool

I got 167 UMS at AS however I am resitting PHIL1 so hope that to be higher, means I need 153 UMS at A2 for an A overall, i think it's manageable!

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Wait, has the resit for PHIL1 not already been and gone? I thought AS exams were in May?

Reply 107

jool

Original post by Gillymander95

Wait, has the resit for PHIL1 not already been and gone? I thought AS exams were in May?

Yes, I mean I resat it so hopefully my UMS will have increased overall before A2. :smile:

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Reply 108

Ronak134

Original post by iwasJack

Could anyone help me out with a mock question for PHIL 3? It is
"Can any reductive account of the mind explain the existence of qualia?"
(50 marks)
I'm kind of stumped on how to set it out.

That's quite an odd question, because a lot of the reductionist theories simply dismiss qualia and mental states in general as a wrong way of understanding the mind, such as behaviourism and eliminative materialism. where did you find it?

I would probably start by outlining a theory like EM, which just disregards qualia and mental states as misleading, or behaviourism which argues that all our knowledge of the mind is simply acquired through behaviour, but then point out that these theories ignore the vital role of qualia: the vivid experience, or qualia, of pain gives us some inherent knowledge which cannot be simply acquired through analysing behaviour or biology.

you might then move onto functionalism; the idea that our mental states can be explained purely by their functional role but again point out that simply classifying our mental states as functions doesn't take into account our qualia, and cannot give an explanation for problems such as the chinese room dilemma. A functionalist might argue that as long as something can fulfil the functional role of a mind we can assume that it has the mind in order to fulfill this role, even if its mind is different to ours, but this doesn't get past the fact that functionalism doesn't actually give us any explanation or indication as to what the nature of a mind is, and qualia's role in it.

Perhaps token identity has a solution; if we don't dismiss our qualia like eliminative materialism we can still argue that qualia and mental events are simply a different way of conceiving physical events. Nevertheless Token identity seems to take a big step in logically calling qualia something physical; how can a mental property be a physical one?

You might then modify this argument by taking a less reductionist start such as anomalous monism, which states that mental properties and qualia supervenes on physical properties. even though qualia is ultimately grounded in something physical it doesn't make sense to call mental properties physical properties. This view nevertheless faces its own problems; if qualia is just supervienience of the physical world then we face the threat of epiphenomalism; that mental states are causally inert. it could be argued that Perhaps this is inevitably true, seeing as theories like functionalism can't actually provide an explanation for how qualia and the mental and physical cause each other. or you might go along Davidson's view, that if properties supervene then they jointly form a causal chain; it isn't a matter of mental causing physical and physical causing mental, it is about one join mental-physical event causing another.

so you might conclude that theories that are too reductionist and try to define qualia in terms of something physical are bound to fail as qualia is logically something beyond the physical realm. but perhaps if we accept that qualia is a mental property of a physical event we can have a quasi-explanation of what qualia really means. completely disregarding the relationship between the mental and the physical world seems absurd so we have to find a way of interweaving qualia into a theory of the physical world without completely disregarding its mental property.

hope that makes some sense!

Reply 109

iwasJack

Thanks for that, I had no idea what to even include in that.

Original post by Ronak134

We were set it in class a while ago but everyone went for the second question of "How convincing is the view that the mind and body are distinct substances", much easier.

Anyone have any bets on whats going to come up for philosophy of mind? I'm hoping for a Behavourism or Substance Dualism but I guess anything could happen.

Reply 110

aaf

Anyone got any predictions for moral philosophy and religion ???

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Reply 111

Gillymander95

Original post by aaf

Anyone got any predictions for moral philosophy

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Erm, Moral Philosophy

I have a really strong feeling that one question might ask us to link Deontology to a practical issue, or if not, talk about Utilitarianism in general.
Perhaps also a question about Transcendent Moral Truth too.

I'm scared they're going to be vicious and not ask us a question about Normative Ethics this year, and split the choice between Moral Truth and The Denial of Moral Truth...It's the 2013 paper - "Unlucky 13", perhaps? :frown:

Reply 112

aaf

I hate deontology.. Cannot understand it :frown:

wahhhh

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Reply 113

ann2013

Hi, I'm studying moral and political for unit 3 :smile:

how is everyone spending these last few days of preparation?

Reply 114

aaf

I started revision today and I know nothing yay

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Reply 115

Saima12345

Few days left :P And then Unit 4, which is (I think) harder. Well.. I'm just reading over all the notes/textbooks. Hoping distributive justice comes up, and for moral normative ethics.

Reply 116

jool

Original post by Saima12345

Few days left :P And then Unit 4, which is (I think) harder. Well.. I'm just reading over all the notes/textbooks. Hoping distributive justice comes up, and for moral normative ethics.

Word, they're my best topics, I don't particularly mind morality at all but I'm not keen on the political stuff aside from justice and the ideologies. :frown: