QCE Philosophy & Reason Practice Questions
The 64 practice questions inside the QCE Philosophy & Reason Mastery Pack, grouped by area of study. Every question comes with a full worked solution.
- Unit 1 Topic 1 — Fundamentals of reason (argument skills assumed in every unit)
- Multiple choice × 14
- Analyse × 2
- Evaluate × 1
- Unit 3 Topic 1 — Moral philosophy (internal assessment IA1)
- Multiple choice × 6
- Explain × 1
- Unit 3 Topic 2 — Philosophical schools of thought (internal assessment IA2)
- Multiple choice × 2
- Evaluate × 1
- Unit 4 Topic 1 — Rights (internal assessment IA3)
- Multiple choice × 8
- Explain × 1
- Analyse × 1
- Evaluate × 1
- Unit 4 Topic 2 — Political philosophy (external assessment)
- Multiple choice × 18
- Explain × 2
- Evaluate × 2
- Analyse × 2
- Create × 1
- Justify × 1
Original practice stimulus. “Councils should not be allowed to ban busking. Busking is a form of expression, and a free society protects expression unless it causes serious harm to others. A guitarist on a footpath may annoy some shoppers, but annoyance is not serious harm.”
Deconstruct this argument into standard form, including any hidden premise, and identify its structure. Then evaluate the truth of one premise. (6 marks)
Show the worked answer
Answer: Worked solution
Standard form
P1 A free society protects expression unless that expression causes serious harm to others.
P2 Busking is a form of expression.
P3 Busking causes, at most, annoyance to others.
P4 Annoyance is not serious harm.
P5 (hidden) Councils in a free society should not be allowed to ban expression that a free society protects.
C Councils should not be allowed to ban busking.
Structure. The argument is deductive. P2–P4 establish that busking is expression that does not cause serious harm; with P1 this yields the intermediate conclusion that a free society protects busking; P5 links that protection to a limit on council power. If all premises are true the conclusion must be true, so the argument is valid.
Evaluation of P3. P3 generalises from one case — ‘a guitarist’ — to all busking. It is implausible as a universal claim: amplified busking can block a footpath, prevent people with a mobility aid or vision impairment from passing safely, or drown out nearby businesses all day. These effects are closer to the ‘definite damage’ Mill counts as harm than to mere offence. Because P3 is doubtful, the argument is valid but probably unsound as stated. A stronger version would conclude only that councils should not ban busking outright, while permitting regulation of volume, location and hours — a conclusion consistent with P1's harm exception.
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