The mark schemes for the 2024 AQA Philosophy A level exams were released this summer and you can now find them on the AQA website here. They include a breakdown of how to answer the hardest 3 marker I have seen for this exam – in Parer 2, Metaphysics of Mind:

What do functionalists mean when they claim that mental states can be multiply realised? [3]

Oh my, I strugged with this one as an examiner last year for this exam. On the face of it, it is not a terrible question. It asks for a definition of multiple realisability, specifically a functionalist definition. However, this effectively introduces two parts to what is normally a very short quesiton that can be answered in a single sentence. Not so this time! Let’s break it down, starting with the marking rubric for all three mark questions in AQA Philosophy A Level:

In essence, for full marks you say everything the question asks you to say, accurately of course, and nothing more. So how do you achieve that for a question like this? Thankfully now, we have the mark scheme to give us some pointers.

There are two key areas where students can score marks on this question: (1) the functionalist dimension; (2) the multiple realisability dimension. The latter is encountered in other contexts on the Specification (eg in relation to behaviourism and mind-brain type identity theory). It is therefore likely that some students will be able to show some understanding of what it means for a mental state to be ‘multiply realisable’, but not to be able to relate this effectively to what ‘functionalists mean’ by the claim. Conversely, some students will have some understanding of what ‘functionalists’ claim about ‘mental states’, but will not be effective in explaining what it means for them to claim that mental states can be ‘multiply realised’.

So – as we would expect – you will not get 3 marks here unless you identify precisely what a functionalist means by multiple realisability. And how do we do that?

You might want to define functionalism fisrt, but you do not need to. You can – and you won’t be marked down for it – but it is isn’t necessary. You can implicilty show you understand funcationalism if you can identify their understanding of multiple realisability, the focus of the question. If all you do for this question is define functionalism, e.g. writing something like the following, you will only get 1/3 marks:

Functionalists claim that mental states are (or can be reduced to) functional states (or processes).

You will need to build on this by applying it to muliple realisability, the idea that the same mental state could be instantiated many ways – now tell us what ways the functionalist has in mind. It is about functionally the same mental state (as that is how they reduce mental states) being realised by multiple different physical states (if you are a physicalist) or something else, metaphysically, if you are a dualist functionalist (note that this is a very unusual position, but it is a position one could take.).

Thankfully, AQA have now provided some examples of what a full marks answer looks like here:

Functionalists hold that mental states are functional states (involving causal inputs and outputs). This claim that mental states can be multiply realised means that the same mental state can be instantiated in various/different ways (whether physically or non-physically).

This is a very achievable answer – you can memorise this and use it in a functionalism essay or if we get a nasty question like this in the future!

Good luck all 🙂