OCR AS Ethics Exam 25th May

Edit 20/5 – I have amended some of my questions as the ones I posted before were not quite right – I thought Kant hadn’t come up but he came up last year.

Well after the success of my last post in which I accurately predicted the three areas that would come up…

Actually let me burst my own bubble a bit here; as it is a new specification and there has only been one set of three questions for philosophy last year OCR would be unlikely to have questions on the same three topics again as they would want to make sure other areas of the spec were covered. So if three out the 7 topics came up last year that means I had a choice of 3 out of 4 possibilities this year, so it was pretty easy to pinpoint the general area.

If we apply the same logic to Ethics we can make these predictions:

2017: Natural Law

Kantian Ethics

Business Ethics

Thus 2018: Situation Ethics

Utilitarianism

Euthanasia

This of course comes with a massive caveat – there is no guarantee this will be the case.

So, my theoretical questions this time are:

1. To what extent does situation ethics’ lack of moral absolutes undermine moral decision-making?

2. “It is not possible to measure good or pleasure” Discuss

3. Critically examine natural law approaches to the question of euthanasia.

Have a go at doing these between now and the exam – set yourself half an hour and attempt without notes. That is a really good way of revising even if you don’t get it all in the essay, as you can then read it back with notes/textbook next to you and add in what you didn’t get.

Also don’t forget the examiners tip – don’t list everything you know in the AO1 – be specific and answer the question. And in the AO2 make sure you don’t do sweeping generalisations.

My students use a format in which they make sure that every paragraph has a back and forth between explanation, evaluation, counter evaluation and then link back to the question. For example, a paragraph for question 1 might look like this:

Fletcher emphasises the role of what he calls agape in every situation. The key question to ask being “what is the most loving thing to do in this situation?”. Fletcher’s rejection of legalism and emphasis on loving action means that the only guiding light in a moral decision should be what kind of consequences it will produce. As a consequentialist, relativist theory situation ethics is therefore open to some fairly strong challenges: for instance, what criteria do we have for deciding that one course of action is the most loving? W D Ross filled out some of the gaps here, but Fletcher’s theory is seriously lacking in detail on this point. It seems clear already from this that one of the key weak points when it comes to moral decision making is Fletcher’s emphasis on agape.

OK, good luck!