AQA A-level Philosophy Paper 1 - 13th May 2025 [Exam Chat]

You could use the Foot presentation of the nihilism issue to overcome anti-realism yes, but you'd have to explain a bit about her form of naturalism (explained in my naturalism paragraph - as the response to the is-ought gap). Either by including that whole paragraph in the essay somewhere - or just explaining a bit more about it in that nihilism paragraph.
Meta-ethics was very hard to create paragraphs for because of the diversity of questions. Combined with it being a hard topic already certainly makes it a challenge.
If you prefer to argue for error theory, then leave out the Foot stuff and say that the nihilism objection just fails because it attacks the emotional attractiveness rather than the actual truth of anti-realism. That would be totally fine.
I do go into more detail about Foot and the virtue ethics revivalists in my main meta-ethics article. However I'd say it's quite close to the exam so learning extra stuff at this point isn't a great idea. I've included it, but you could absolutely get full marks with something else instead.
Also, there's no way to predict the question topic or how it will be phrased, so I wouldn't rely on predictions! But yes it's good to be ready for a cog/non-cog question.
My paragraph about moral disagreement works very well for a question like that (ends up saying Mackie is right)
But so does the naturalism vs is-ought gap - since the is-ought gap attacks the cognitivist claims of naturalism as well as its realist claims.
They could even phrase the question by asking you whether the origin of moral principles is emotion/attitude/society/reason!

im referring back to Locke a lot as the question could be phrased around his theory of "the mind as a tabula rasa", so its very back and forth

hiya, my predictions for the 25 markers tomorrow are either Kantian Ethics or a Metaethics question on either Cognitivism or anti-realism as neither of those things have come up yet, praying its not on metaethics tho 😭

the mind as the tabula rasa is a reason as a source of knowledge topic lol its got nothing to do with perception

Anti-realism came up in 2022

You could use the Foot presentation of the nihilism issue to overcome anti-realism yes, but you'd have to explain a bit about her form of naturalism (explained in my naturalism paragraph - as the response to the is-ought gap). Either by including that whole paragraph in the essay somewhere - or just explaining a bit more about it in that nihilism paragraph.
Meta-ethics was very hard to create paragraphs for because of the diversity of questions. Combined with it being a hard topic already certainly makes it a challenge.
If you prefer to argue for error theory, then leave out the Foot stuff and say that the nihilism objection just fails because it attacks the emotional attractiveness rather than the actual truth of anti-realism. That would be totally fine.
I do go into more detail about Foot and the virtue ethics revivalists in my main meta-ethics article. However I'd say it's quite close to the exam so learning extra stuff at this point isn't a great idea. I've included it, but you could absolutely get full marks with something else instead.
Also, there's no way to predict the question topic or how it will be phrased, so I wouldn't rely on predictions! But yes it's good to be ready for a cog/non-cog question.
My paragraph about moral disagreement works very well for a question like that (ends up saying Mackie is right)
But so does the naturalism vs is-ought gap - since the is-ought gap attacks the cognitivist claims of naturalism as well as its realist claims.
They could even phrase the question by asking you whether the origin of moral principles is emotion/attitude/society/reason!

Do you have any quick tips for for how to think/what to think about/how to frame things if they do ask in terms of origin of moral principles? I think I mostly get it but then the textbooks start talking about Marx and Freud and stuff and now I'm a little concerned

reason = naturalism & non-naturalism
emotion = emotivism
attitudes = prescriptivism
society = error theory
So it's really just asking you which theory is right!

Can u explain error theory a bit more pls? I cant get my head around why it’s called error theory

Can u explain error theory a bit more pls? I cant get my head around why it’s called error theory

What would be an essay plan for cognitivism or non-cognitivism?

Can u explain error theory a bit more pls? I cant get my head around why it’s called error theory

Any possibility the 25 marker will be virtue ethics applied? Its the one thing i havent prepared for and now im stressed..... im guessing it wont come up because that was the essay in 2023 i believe but im unsure whether it is applied changes things

It claims we should understand ethical language as expressing beliefs that could be true or false.
However, it also claims anti-realism is true, that there are no mind-independent moral properties like goodness and badness.
So, when someone makes an ethical claim like 'stealing is bad', they express a belief about reality. However there is no badness in reality. So it's not true that stealing is bad. So, it's false. Similarly if someone said stealing was good, that would also be false, because there is no goodness in reality.
So all ethical language is false, i.e., in error.
It's kinda like how kids believe in santa - they clearly cognitively believe santa actually exists. But all their statements about santa are false, because there is no santa.