OCR AS Philosophy & Ethics: Official Thread for May/June 2016

Yeah, mine is AQA B (linear) too but we're sitting the exam this year as a kind of 'mock' exam to get an idea for predicted grades for next year. What texts are you studying?

What was aristotles view on the nature of God? is it the judeo christian God

how reliable are these predictions ? I mean does OCR usually ask questions on what hasn't been tested in a while ?

Seems well structured. But how could you manage this in 25 - 30 minutes?

How would you approach a question saying 'Explain Descartes' Ontological Argument'. (25)

I could do this for 25 marks on Anselm, but Descartes...

Okay, so for the first part of the essay you would talk about what ontology is, what type of knowledge it uses (a priori and deductive) and also contingent/necessary existences and how it links to the existence of God. I would also talk about analytic statements too and how this links with God (Anselm's analytic statement of 'God exists'.

For the second half of the essay I would then talk about Descartes and how he developed the ontological argument. I'd talk about his analogy and quote what he said about God: "God is perfect, he's unchanging and has always existed and will contiue to exist for eternity".

I hope I have been some help and best of luck!

I took AS philosophy and ethics last year - got a B
Resitting for an A, i think Problem of Evil is due because it hasn't been up for ages - bare in mind that John Hick's Theodicy has never come up as a stand alone question, i understand that he isn't named on the spec but that wont stop a "Explain Modern Irenaen Theodicy's" to come up (Sorry i haven't got a clue how to spell his name!).
Ontological is surely due soon, hasn't been up since 2011 i think.
Plato - probably due but wouldn't take this question anyway as everybody takes it making it harder to score a Band 5.

Good Luck

Can someone quickly go over the predictions. They're different on different sites but i want to focus on certain topics.
Philosophy Investigations have put out predictions, however i don't know how reliable they are.
Their predictions are:
Question 1 Explain Plato’s theory of Forms.
Question 2 Explain Anselm’s Ontological Argument
Question 3 Explain Hume’s criticisms of the cosmological argument.
Question 4 Explain the theodicies of both Augustine and Irenaeus.

Hi Everyone

This is the official thread for the OCR AS Specification of Philosophy and Ethics

Exam dates:
Thursday 19th May AM: Philosophy of Religion
Friday 27th May AM: Religious Ethics

// Please use this thread to post any predicted questions or topics that may come up in the exams in a couple of weeks (not long to go!)

I'll be posting some revision notes / flash cards that I have made, which may be of some use to you. It will be attached to this thread soon.

In the meantime, get predicting, get revising, and get your game on!

Good luck!

Ontological hasn't come up for a few years so i may be that, also my teacher thinks problem of evil may be coming up this year

My teacher has said this too, also maybe Judeo God and Cosmological could come up

My teacher told me that we would never get two arguments on explaining the existence of God; for instance, Explain Anselm's ontological argument (25), and Explain Aquinas' cosmological argument (25).

But could we get this if one of the questions were to explain the criticisms?

Predicted 25 Marker Philosophy Q's
Anyone else have different predictions?

1A) Explain Plato's Analogy of the cave
2A) Explain concept of 'Creatio ex nihlo'
3A) Explain Paley's version of the Teleological (Design) argument
4A) Pending



If Plato does come up, people should avoid that question because it will be by far the easiest and most popular question, so the exminers will only dish out good grades to the best answers. Making any mistakes in the cave analogy or his notion of life after death could prevent you from passing.

Creatio ex nihilo is a good guess. I too believe this will come up.

Teleological came up last year, so that means that IT WILL BE ontological or cosmological this year. I hope someone pays attention to this!!

Then it'll be Problem of Evil or Moral. These have the highest chance of coming up. Hope this helps..

Not many people have predicted religion and science or creationism. I noticed they've not come up recently.

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I agree , although moral argument came up last year I believe so I doubt it will come up, I think it will be either Plato or religion and science, creatio ex nihilo, ontological and the problem of evil