Skills practice questions.

Which of these questions is still open however much is settled about the woman's condition, her family's needs and the law?

• What makes a person at one time the same person as someone at a later time?
• Which forms of amnesia leave procedural memory intact?
• How should relatives be supported when a family member loses her memory?
• Does the journal count in law as a record of the patient's own decisions?

Answer: What makes a person at one time the same person as someone at a later time?

A stimulus response is credited for moving from the case to the concept, here the criterion of personal identity over time. The other three are closed by clinical evidence, by a decision about support or by statute, and none of them requires an argument about what identity consists in.

A candidate wants to develop this passage as an issue about personhood. Which opening move does that best?

• Explaining the technical process by which such a model is trained on message archives
• Asking what something must satisfy to count as a bearer of responsibility
• Setting out the firm's data-protection duties towards the retired employee
• Reporting how the colleagues in the passage react to the model's decisions

Answer: Asking what something must satisfy to count as a bearer of responsibility

Questions about personhood ask after criteria such as agency, responsibility and inner life, whereas the other options are technical, legal or descriptive. Personhood is also not the same question as consciousness: a candidate could grant the model no experience at all and still ask whether responsibility can attach to it.

After reading a passage about a firm that scores its employees' attention using desk cameras, a candidate lists four questions. Which one is philosophical rather than empirical, legal or practical?

• Does attention scoring measurably raise output in the firms that have adopted it?
• Does the practice satisfy the notice requirements set out in employment law?
• What would it cost the firm to move to a less intrusive system of monitoring?
• Is a choice made under constant observation still an exercise of freedom?

Answer: Is a choice made under constant observation still an exercise of freedom?

Empirical, legal and practical questions are settled by evidence, by statute or by costing. The remaining question asks what the concept of freedom requires, which is the move a stimulus response has to make before any argument can begin.

A plan for a stimulus response consists of four paragraphs summarising the passage and a closing sentence saying that it raises interesting questions. Which single change does most to lift the answer out of the lowest markband?

• Adding a paragraph on the historical background of the events described
• Quoting more of the passage so that the summary is demonstrably accurate
• Naming one philosophical issue in the passage and arguing for a position on it
• Listing several philosophers whose work is loosely connected with the subject matter

Answer: Naming one philosophical issue in the passage and arguing for a position on it

The lowest band is reserved for answers that retell the stimulus without philosophical work, so what is missing is an identified issue together with an argument. Adding names or background without argument leaves the answer descriptive and therefore in the lower bands.

A Paper 1 essay states a clear thesis, defends it with two developed arguments and closes with a summary. No objection is discussed anywhere in the answer. Which single addition would do most to lift it into the top markband?

• A developed objection to the thesis, with a reply that defends the thesis
• A further supporting argument drawn from a second philosopher's work
• A longer introduction defining each technical term in advance
• An account of the historical background to the debate

Answer: A developed objection to the thesis, with a reply that defends the thesis

The markbands separate a competent answer from the top band chiefly by the treatment of counter-argument: an answer that never meets an objection argues in one direction only. A third supporting argument merely repeats work that has already been credited.

A Paper 1 Section B question asks: 'To what extent can scientific method deliver objective knowledge?' Beyond an accurate account of what that method involves, what does the command term require of the answer?

• A definition of each technical term that appears in the question wording
• An equally detailed account of two rival positions, with no verdict reached
• A judgement about how far the claim holds, supported by reasons
• A description of how the debate about objectivity arose

Answer: A judgement about how far the claim holds, supported by reasons

'To what extent' is an evaluative instruction: the answer must reach a defended verdict about how far the claim holds, not merely display the competing positions. Setting out two rivals in balanced detail and stopping is the standard way of staying in a middle band.