OCR Philosophy AS Exam May 17th

Earlier I shared a video I tried to make with advice for tomorrow’s AS exam. I say tried to make because my 4 year old daughter tried to steal the show…

Exam Advice

Anyway, My key advice was from the examiner’s report last year –

1. In the AO1 don’t just write everything you know/all the scholars you know on the general topic – knowledge must relate to the question
2. In the AO2 don’t do sweeping generalisation or resort to assertions without justification – use arguments
3. Perhaps be ready for questions on the topics that didn’t come up last year, so that would mean:

• Ancient Greek Philosophical influences (Plato and Aristotle)
• Religious Experience
• Ontological Argument
• Teleological Argument

I then had a stab at three possible questions along these lines:

1. ‘Plato’s rationalism is stronger than Aristotle’s empiricism’ Discuss.
2. Critically evaluate physiological and psychological challenges to religious experience
3. To what extent does Anselm’s ontological argument survive the criticisms of Gaunilo?

I have no idea if these will come up but they are as good a guess as any. That first one is quite hard though, perhaps too hard.

Some thoughts: Rationalism clearly has the strength of being capable of producing logically valid arguments which are true by virtue of their own inherent logic rather than relying on possibly flawed sense-data. On the other hand, there are many areas where we rely on empirical data for knowledge, for instance whenever we make predictions about the natural world such as weather forecasts. The fact that such forecasts may be unreliable does not mean people cease to use them.

Physiological and psychological challenges: Dennett, Dawkins et al argue that these are the best explanations for religious experience. Don’t forget that there are many flaws in reductive materialism, the worldview that is usually behind such challenges. For instance, it is self-defeating, as it if it is true, people are not actually free to hold any beliefs whatever, as they are just complex lumps of meat. In that case, on materialism’s own account, there is no reason why I should take the materialists views as any more valid than anyone else’s!

Anselm I will leave to you to have a think about…

Good luck tomorrow!