The OFFICIAL AQA A2 Philosophy Units 3 & 4, (3rd/6th June 2014) Exam Thread

Hello! Harry here. Well, I'm taking Political and Moral Philosophy for Unit 3 and Mill's On Liberty for Unit 4. I find it all so hard! Political Philosophy is extremely complex and there is either too much or too little to write about a particular question. :/ Also, Moral Philosophy just does not click with me, and I haven't done much of Mill. Oh gosh. I need an A this year for university! Aim to do around six hours of revision a day now. My teacher says to miss out natiion states, as it came up twice last year. Human nature/political organisation, liberty and rights are reasonably straightforward, but I cannot get my head around justice. And anarchism is bloody annoying with its right-wing and left-wing elements!

Throughout my political philosophy and Mill essays, I know I'll take the classical liberal/libertarian approach, and the rule utilitarian approach for moral philosophy. I'm very opinionated, I need AAB for Exeter, what do you guys need?

Naturalism is the belief that moral truths exist. So moral sentences have actual tangible meaning. Morality is an actual 'thing' or concept that exists.

Different philosophers have different definitions of what the 'moral truth' is:
Plato argues that morality can be known through "the form of the good"
Bentham and Mill claim is that morality is the "greatest happiness for the greatest number" aka utilitarianism.
Virtue ethicists such as Foot argue that what is moral can be "fixed" to certain facts about the world and that 'goodness' is to further human welfare and development.

Naturalism has critiques from all across the board:
Hume's fact-value gap argues that morality is based purely on our "passions and emotions" or values, there is nothing "matter of fact there." Morality is purely composed of personal human feelings or "sympathy."
A.J Ayer claims that as moral statements are not empirical or analytic they are all meaningless.
If you need more depth or content just ask. It's good revision for me

Hey, thank you for your response, i get it now and I'm glad i can help lol . I was looking at the past papers and i have a feeling something relating to how to bridge the fact value gap might come up. It is either that or something on transcendent moral truth i.e. how it can be compared to mathematical truths. I don't have a essay plan for neither of these themes . How would you structure and what would you include in such essays?

Can anyone doing Descartes for unit 4 outline his separate arguments for establishing mind and body as separate, and those establishing that bodies exist? There seems to be so mamy jumbled together in the last meditation...

The three arguments for mind and body distinction are (this is how the exam spec recognises them):
Knowledge argument: Descartes is certain of his mind but not his body, therefore they cannot be the same
Appeal to God's Omnipotence: What is "clearly distinctly" conceived by Descartes can be created by God as "precisely as I conceive it." Descartes has a clear and distinct idea of the mind as a "thinking thing" while the body is "extended and changeable." As they are two separate clear and distinct ideas they must be different.
Indivisibility argument: Thought cannot be split into separate components, Descartes thinks with the "whole" mind. The body can, we can literally chop bits off. Therefore they are different.

Descartes argues the existence of bodies differently. He proposes four different causes for our ideas of external bodies: ourselves, God, an evil Demon and the objects themselves. He then disproves all other accounts apart form the last one, that our ideas of external bodies come from the bodies themselves.

We cannot create the ideas ourselves, through the "imagination" in Descartes terms, as they are "involuntary." As we Descartes believes we know our own minds (have "immediate access"), we would know that we created them ourselves. As it's obvious we haven't (I would voluntarily create instant A*s for all my exams) the ideas cannot come from our minds.

We know God is not the source of this ideas as God is not a deceiver.

A demon tricking us would just be a Deceiver by proxy.

Therefore the source for our ideas of external bodies form the objects themselves. Even though it may seem we are being deceived God has given as the "criterion for truth" or clear and distinct reasoning to guide us when we get it wrong.

I know for dualism those are the three arguments the spec expects. They will only ask about the material world in A questions and they did that last year so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Good luck

Thank you, this has really cleared it up! I'm hoping for a certainty question because that's the only bit I really know... Do you reckon there'll be a part B mind and body question? It keeps coming up every year, but AQA are sneaky like that.

Neither my teacher nor the book has mentioned comparing moral truths to mathematical. I'm not going to worry about it too much, if it did come up I would talk about G.E Moore's open ended question how moral truths lack the tautology of mathematics.

For the fact value gap I would introduce it then use various naturalistic positions in order to overcome it. May favorite for these sorts of essays is:
Introduce Hume fact value gap
Explain how Foot tries to overcome it
Use G.E Moore's opened question, moral "facts" lack tautology.
Williams thick thin concepts provide tautology by being more specific.*
Then reply with cultural relativism, Williams doesn't explain which "thick" concepts respond to which "thin".

That little chain of arugments responses then counter argumetns will get loads of analysis marks (I hope.) For more content introduce a naturalistic position first (i like Plato's form of the good) then when explaining the fact value gap illustrate it with reference to your earlier paragraph, explaining why it's values cannot be derived from facts. Or at the end offer another attempt that isn't Foot, I use Searle's Social obligations, then a quick reply.(this bits covered in the aqa book.)

However with that in mind you need to come up with your own plans and be able to write them fluently, if you don't like or understand an essay plan but still try to write them the examiner will be able to tell you don't know what you're chatting about.

When planning, our philosophy teachers tell us to roughly use the PACE format. Point, argument, counterargument then evaluate with at least two PACES per essay.

For revision I'm going through all the past papers and writing fairly detailed plans, then I'll try and write all of them in timed conditions before June.

Anyway, I hope that helped, it might seem a load of nonsense which is fair enough. Good luck

*if you haven't studied these or understand how I use it in this context just ask