MAY13 Philosophy Exam Topics

[allimac]

Hey guys,

im revising for my philosophy mock exam and I was wondering if any of you took the actual exam in May 2013 and could tell me the questions for the core theme, ethics and political philosophy so I can write some practice essays to prepare for my mock.

Thankss!

[TykeDragon]

The way core will work is that you'll get a text and a picture source. You can 'interpret' these however you may, although it has to be relevant/justified. For example, if the picture shows a sunny beach and you said 'the source reminds me of the mind/body problem so i will write about mind/body' then you aren't being at all relevant.

The May 2013 picture had a guy pointing at a chimp and the chimp touched his finger so it was basically about humans/animals - how are we different, etc etc.

The text was something obscure about how video games was changing human interaction I think - it said about how we used to hug and empathise etc but video games were making us lose this. Some people reasonably interpreted this at what the meaning of life is - as it might question whether it is for leisure, please others, fit in, etc. Some (like what I did) interpreted it as whether man is naturally social or solitary, and whether technology/society is corrupting us. I hate the topic and I wanted mind/body or meaning of life, so I was disappointed with my options (and did not think to interpret the source as meaning of life) so I wrote an essay about human nature and whether we have recently been corrupted. It was a boring essay, I did not like it and in my humble opinion I don't think it represented at all my 'skills' from the past 2 years. However, I hope it contained enough information etc etc to get a decent score.

I don't do political philosophy (@dniviE can help you with that) but ethics was also bland (basically, I found the May 2013 philosophy paper 1 to be cruddy completely.) One question was really wordy and was about distribution of wealth and responsibility to do this, it was an Applied Ethics question and I'm sorry but I don't really remember it. The question I did was 'To what extent do we have a moral obligation to be happy?' I disliked the question and did a strong start on defining happiness and the whole 'what if bad things make them happy' stance, I then fumbled through comparing it to Kant and Utilitarianism which was a weak middle, and then strengthened the essay by comparing it to egoism, finding the similarities and concluding that due to the problems inherited from egoism, we don't have the moral obligation.

It was a **** paper really, I didn't like it at all. I think the paper may block me from my predicted 7 as it was nasty for me, I just hope my examiner is nice. At least my Paper 2 and Paper 3 were much stronger.

Here's what I recommend you practice for Core/Ethics:

Core

• What is the meaning of life? (Eg religion, absurdism, nihilism, existentialism. Is there one? Do we make our own? Is there none at all?)
• Mind/Body problem (materialism: mind = brain or dualism: there is a non-physical mind and physical body)
• Human nature (naturally good/social, or naturally bad/solitary? Does society improve or corrupt us?)
• Do we have free will or are we determined?

Ethics

• Utilitarianism vs Kantian
• Absolute vs Cultural Relativism
• Egoism vs Altruism
• Applied Ethics

Try some of those