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A2 OCR Philosophy and Ethics 2016

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Original post by De Re Publica
I see. I firstly explained Kants theory in detail, then compared it to Christian ethics and natural law on the topical issues of homosexuality.


Was very hard paper, my ******* puckered up so bad when i saw them
THIS PAPER RUINED MY ****ING LIFE AND IM NEVER GOING TO GET TO UNI! oh also guys there is a petition some amazing soul created to get the grade boundaries lowered for our paper, so please sign and share it so we can get something back from the harshness of the ocr paper writers!
Original post by gabbynutley98
THIS PAPER RUINED MY ****ING LIFE AND IM NEVER GOING TO GET TO UNI! oh also guys there is a petition some amazing soul created to get the grade boundaries lowered for our paper, so please sign and share it so we can get something back from the harshness of the ocr paper writers!


Link?
Original post by gabbynutley98
THIS PAPER RUINED MY ****ING LIFE AND IM NEVER GOING TO GET TO UNI! oh also guys there is a petition some amazing soul created to get the grade boundaries lowered for our paper, so please sign and share it so we can get something back from the harshness of the ocr paper writers!


Exams are meant to be hard. Grade boundaries are adjusted to reflect how people do. Petitions will get you no where...

Sometimes I feel people spend more time venting about how awful the exam boards are than actually revising
Original post by 9dobbo1
Exams are meant to be hard. Grade boundaries are adjusted to reflect how people do. Petitions will get you no where...

Sometimes I feel people spend more time venting about how awful the exam boards are than actually revising


I didn't write the petition, who are you to say i spend too much time complaining how awful an exam you do not know me, so can not make a judgement! Obviously exams are hard-by the way you've said this you clearly did not sit the paper!!
Original post by De Re Publica
Link?


Course, did you not like it either think it was extremely mean of them!

https://www.change.org/p/ocr-lower-grade-boundaries-on-a2-ocr-ethics-exam-paper-june-2016
Original post by 9dobbo1
Exams are meant to be hard. Grade boundaries are adjusted to reflect how people do. Petitions will get you no where...

Sometimes I feel people spend more time venting about how awful the exam boards are than actually revising


Did you take the paper?
Original post by Fibsy
The meta ethics Q was challenging but I was forced to learn it because I didn't learn any of the applied topics. I wasn't sure what kind of an answer they were looking for, but I discussed Hare's prescriptivism and argued that he might think his metaethical theory is equally as important as his normative preference utilitarianism because they complement each other and have different aims. Then I discussed how Ayer's emotivism argues that normative ethics is meaningless.

I loved the virtue ethics question though :smile: I argued that the eudaimonia aspect is more important because it is the end telos of the theory. I got a lot in about Aristotle's city-state as the only political platform in which the virtues can be fully exhibited and eudaimonia reached and all that, so I was pleased 😉

What did everyone else put for the metaethics Q? Still not sure what they were after

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Yeah kind of did this but showed how Humes natualistic fallcy can be used to critique utilitarianism and other normative ethics. Then how Ayer developed the the fallacy into emotivism which I then refuted with the Frege-Geach problem which means that conditionals can still have a property of good which led to non-naturalism. Also that if no act can be good this has implications for bother christian and kantian view of the afterlife as there would be no way to be judged to reach heaven if no act is good.

Then I compared Intuitionists to Kant as they are similar in their non-naturalism. E.g both Kant and Moore use Plato's idea of forms as the starting poinnt for their Moral Argument and non-naturalism respectively. W.D. Ross also had those prima facie duties which are almost like normative ethics. Then I added that bradley used utilitarianism to justify his naturalism and that Hare's idea of universal rules based on our prescriptions in society just becoming instinct was similar to Kant.

Concluded with saying that even if good doesnt exist as a property of an action, ethical theories can still be used to lead a life which doesnt cause pain even if there is no ultimate goal like the summum bonum. Then I said that this still leaves problems with life after death but both are equally important and kind of co-dependant.
Reply 108
Original post by De Re Publica
Afraid so, as freewill and determinism is not a normative-based ethical theory. You may however be able to pick up marks from knowledge in the form of meta ethics, or marks for attempting to make a comparison between the two ethical issues, so I wouldn't worry too much!

What other question did you do?


erm my other one was sexual ethics which i thought was okay
Original post by Jamyes
erm my other one was sexual ethics which i thought was okay


What did you put?
Reply 110
Original post by De Re Publica
What did you put?


Kant and Christians then split Christians into liberal and conservative cant remember my points cause my heads messed up from the exam i feel like **** and i might not get to go to uni because of it
Original post by 9dobbo1
Exams are meant to be hard. Grade boundaries are adjusted to reflect how people do. Petitions will get you no where...

Sometimes I feel people spend more time venting about how awful the exam boards are than actually revising


Completely agree with you on this, the paper was by no means nice but it could have been a lot worse, it was just how the questions were worded that threw me a bit.

A petition to change grade boundaries will never do anything anyway, there's no way OCR are just going to turn around like "oh sorry guys it was a bit hard this year you can all have As".. Smh
For the metaethical Q I stated how metaethical theories were better in the following way. Said how normative theories such as util try to work out what good is and this is wrong so used Moore's naturalistic fallacy and his open Q argument to prove this. Then said Moore's intuinitionsm is better as Normative theories over complicate what good is and how it is a non reducible characteristic of a thing. Then mentioned prescriptivism and emotivism and explained what they tried to do but said how they both failed in proving cognitivists wrong. So conclude how saying cognitive theories were better and consequently intuionism is better so as a whole meta ethics is more important that normative ethics because of this.
For the meta question I said how normative theories fail because of Moore's naturalistic fallacy and his open Q argument. Then explain how intuitionism was a good theory as it doesn't over complicate what something like good meant. Then explained non cognitivist theories like prescriptivism and emotivism and said how they both fail so a better approach is a cognitive theory and consequently intuitionism due to the fact normative/ naturalistic theories fail because of the naturalistic fallacy. So the concluded by saying metaethical theories are better because of this.
Original post by De Re Publica
Did you take the paper?


Yes. Got 100% in Ethics AS
This is very late but does anyone remember the exact wording of the questions for the philosophy paper, as I'm currently studying for the A2 exam
what came up as the philo and ethics questions?
Original post by TySnaps97
This is very late but does anyone remember the exact wording of the questions for the philosophy paper, as I'm currently studying for the A2 exam


From Twitter, it sounds like normative ethics (so i think Virtue ethics, utilitarianism, situation ethics as Normative ethics is distinct from meta-ethics because it examines standards for the rightness and wrongness of actions, while meta-ethics studies the meaning of moral language and the metaphysics of moral facts or so says wikipedia lol), Virtue ethics, Kant theories where in the questions.

These theories were applied to sexual ethics and environmental.

- Kant was applied to sexual ethics (Kant is of no use for sexual ethics, something like that)
- Virtue ethics was applied to environment.
- "Meta-ethics is more important than normative ethics"
- I think meta ethics came up twice in this paper. Can't find out what it was about!.
Original post by sa13
I though it was a really nice paper. Did wittengstein and miracles. But I screwed up my miracles essay, ran out of time so missed out a conclusion and I only talked about Hume :/ . Annoying I ran out of time as it was such a nice question.


Sorry this is late but I did the same thing aha but perhaps mine was even worse because I didn't realise revelations was on the spec in great detail because all my books hardly mentioned it so I thought the question was an inference thing so I focused on William James, I didn't get as many counter points as I'd have liked only managed one 😔 And left a gap as if to come back and went on to do a conclusion but never came back to do more counters I'm praying by some miracle I got 20ish marks for my pathetic attempt at it BUT that was definitely my worst essay I think I did quite well in everything else so here's to hoping they cancel out this one!
Ps I moved over from Edexcel to OCR because I changed schools I'm not entirely sure how OCR marking goes if anyone knows if they're harsh etc pls let me know!
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by beccamxo
If it makes you feel any better I called Aristotle Aquinas


**** I did this all the time in mock essays too, now I'm bricking it hoping I didn't do it in the essay but I did my best to check fml 😂😂

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