This is a copy of the famous bronze. If you would like to see a crap 3-D rotating version, click here. And those anoraks amongst you who prefer Lego to bronze could try here. But whichever way you take it, he is locked into thinking.
And that is how to fail philosophy exams. Time spent thinking about how to express your thoughts on paper is time wasted. And, with one caveat (noted below), time spent thinking how to structure your material is time wasted. All of that should have been dealt with at the revision stage. We present our simple 9-step programme for getting it right:
The Questions the Candidates Actually Answered | What the Examiners want | Word Limit | Practice Without Tears | Structure | Knowledge of the Text | Opening Paragraph| Closing Paragraph | Authorial Voice | Oofle Dust | Hitler
Marking examination scripts is drudgery, and the sodden examiner must needs play all kinds of silly intellectual games just to avoid falling into clinical depression. One of them is "Guess the Question", and its object, given the assumption that the answer you are staring at is an honest, decent attempt at the question set, to work out what the question must have been. Here are some samples from recent examinations.
Q.1. Write down all you can remember about Locke on Personal Identity, in no particular order. Abandon any attempt at accuracy or rigour. Above all, do not draw any conclusions.
Q.2. Think up a really stupid view on Personal Identity, which no philosopher has ever held, and blame it on Hume. Remember to end your essay in the middle of a sentence.
Q.3. Compose a brief piece on Personal Identity parodying the style of Readers' Digest, and beginning with the phrase "Ever since the dawn of time...".
Q.4. Copy out from memory your tutorial essay on Personal Identity.
Q.5. Confuse Hume with Berkeley. If you have never heard of Berkeley, just confuse Hume.
Philosophy examiners know what they are looking for. Much more so than in Politics or Economics, surprisingly enough. When papers are double-marked, the two philosophy marks are usually near-as-dammit the same. Which is not true in the other two subjects. So it is well worth your while knowing what they are looking for.
So what do they want? Well, here is a typical comment from the Examiners' Reports. They say something similar every year.
.....All candidates would have done better if they had concentrated on clearly explaining simple points which they did understand, and which were under their command, rather than gesturing vaguely at more complex or sophisticated condiderations which they did not understand, and which were not under their command.
And they mean it. All candidates. They want to see if you have acquired the art and skill of making a philosophical case, that you have grasped how to explain a simple point so as to really make it stick. You are not being tested on how much you know about philosophy. You are being tested on how well you can explain and argue what you do know.
And everything else follows from that thought......
Before you begin practising exam essays, you need to know your own personal word-limit, namely how much you can write in the time allowed. So: copy out something (anything) at thinking speed, as if the words flowed from your mind through your pen, for ten minutes. Then multiply by 4 (for prelims essays you should allow 5 minutes of thinking time) or by 5 (for finals essays you should budget for ten minutes of thinking time).
This will give you your personal limit, and in exam practice you will write essays up to that limit. Remember, philosophy exams are not a speed test, or a volume test.. They are a clarity test.
Nota Very Bene Indeed:
Do not practice essays by sitting down and trying to write an essay from scratch under time-constraints. All you are practising there is being under-prepared and under pressure. Instead, take an exam question, and spend as much time as you have available on putting together the best essay you can (at your word-limit). Use books, use lecture notes, ask other people, do some further reading if you need to. But make it your best shot. Result:
If anything like that title comes up in the exam, Bingo!
If a closely related question comes up, at worst you may have to think about how to restructure your material under this new title: the material itself will be at your fingertips.
There are many individual points you will want to make in any essay in the area: again, the material will just flow from your pen onto the page. And following that last thought where it leads.....
When revising, you will - over and over - come across a point that you want to make, and want to make well. STOP RIGHT THERE. Take time out and really work on expressing that point as clearly, concisely and elegantly as you can. Concentrate on producing a gem of a paragraph. The effort will be well worth the while. Not only will you be practising writing accurately, but you will be storing up in memory how you make your point. And when you need to do it for real, you will find that it flows from the pen.
Given a store of points superbly made, you have the makings of superb essays under a variety of titles. All you need on top is:
There is a very simple way to think about structure in philosophy essays. Any piece of philosophy argues a case - that's what philosophers do. And so the structure of the essay will be the structure of the argument. Full stop.
Think of your task as that of persuading an intelligent, philosophically trained (but not necessarily philosophically well-informed-on-the-topic-in-question) audience of your view on the question in hand. And work out the flow of argument you would use to persuade them. Of course, this requires that you know your view on the matter. Which requires in turn that you actually have a view on the matter. Which leads to
SOME VERY IMPORTANT ADVICE: Don't answer questions upon which you do not have a settled view. Authorial Voice is important here. Authors have things to say. And if you haven't got anything to say, it will come across in your prose. Loud and clear.
Some of you will be taking text-based papers. So you should know your texts inside out, and be able to locate every major quote, argument, topic or theme. And not just to locate them textually, but intellectually as well. Indeed, the second is the more important. For those of you not taking text-based papers, it is still a very good plan to demonstrate awareness of classic texts in philosophy. (See also Oofle Dust).
Whisper it only in safe and secluded places, but examiners are human beings like the rest of us. Well, like some of the rest of us, at least. I was forgetting John Redwood. For them, as for us, first impressions make a big difference. Inscribe this in letters two feet high on your wall:
You don't get a second chance to make a first impression
Which means that the most important part of any essay is the opening paragraph. And the most important element of your script as a whole is the opening paragraph of your first essay. So practice your opening paragraphs. It matters.
Make your opening paragraphs crisp, clear and punchy. No flannel. No waffle. No clumsy constructions. No mis-spellings.
The authorial voice should be of one in command of the material. It should directly engage with the reader: no passive or impersonal constructions, for they distance the author from the reader; no questions left hanging, for they depower the author.
If possible, your opening paragraph will exhibit a propensity for formalism where appropriate. (See also Oofle Dust).
For examples of good and bad, click here.
And the same applies to your closing paragraph. For that is the second most salient matter in an examiner's mind. We look at your opening paragraph, to see where you think you are going. We look at your closing paragraph, to see where you think you have ended up. And then we look at the rest of the essay, to see if the considerations therein deployed do indeed link starting-point to ending-point.
So don't
Vital. If you have the right voice, you can get away with murder. Your essay will sound like the right stuff, even if it is intellectually deficient on closer scrutiny. And if you have the wrong voice, you will have to display a most impressive understanding of your material to correct the powerful initial impression
T
And finally, a most useful piece of advice: avoid Hitler.
I quote from a recent examiner's report on the Ethics paper:
