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AS Religious studies NOTES: Utilitarianism, Situation ethics, Religious Experience

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Reply 40
Oh, agreed, philosophy was easier by miles. I don't think conclusions are necessary for part A's, except for the Utilitarianism one, you had to sort of give an ultimate overview on the theory you applied. I wouldn't worry about it, I didn't focus on introductions or conclusions much either.
For the A02s I found I was writing even more than for my A01s... which is slightly concerning, even though I spent a shorter amount of time on them. How many pages were your answers generally?
Reply 41
Original post by seafolk
Oh, agreed, philosophy was easier by miles. I don't think conclusions are necessary for part A's, except for the Utilitarianism one, you had to sort of give an ultimate overview on the theory you applied. I wouldn't worry about it, I didn't focus on introductions or conclusions much either.
For the A02s I found I was writing even more than for my A01s... which is slightly concerning, even though I spent a shorter amount of time on them. How many pages were your answers generally?


yeah the questions were a lot nicer for philosophy, for ethics the utilitarianism AO2 question threw me a bit, the one about about the pursuit of happiness, not sure if what I was writing was totally relevent lol. for my AO1's i wrote about 2-3 pages, ao2 about 1 page and a half to 2 pages. i had to ask for some more paper lol, how about you, which questions did you answer?
Reply 42
Yeah my lengths were approximately the same, I needed more paper too xD.
I did Utilitarianism, Abortion, Jung and the Cosmological Argument - what about you? Thankfully I'd done the pursuit of happiness question before, so after a bit of a stressful hedonic calculus application, I was able to relax for about 10 minutes :tongue:
Reply 43
Original post by seafolk
Yeah my lengths were approximately the same, I needed more paper too xD.
I did Utilitarianism, Abortion, Jung and the Cosmological Argument - what about you? Thankfully I'd done the pursuit of happiness question before, so after a bit of a stressful hedonic calculus application, I was able to relax for about 10 minutes :tongue:


I did utilitarianism, situation ethics, cosmological and religious experience. I really wish I revised abortion now lol the question seemed so much nicer than the situation ethics question aha. aw that's gd that you did it before hand, yeah it was on the specification I did make a mindmap for it but it was worded slightly differently and i had a total mind blank lol
Reply 44
Actually for abortion my mind went blank, I started going on about anything that popped into my head xD Hopefully it was all relevant! And fingers crossed the grade boundaries are nice and low this year, they were for January.
Reply 45
That situation ethics question was haarrdd
Reply 46
Did you guys applied all 7 factors of the hedonic calculus to your ethical issue? ...and did you anyone do situation ethics? ...for a02: what did you right for against? (saying situation is not weak?)
Reply 47
Original post by Vevean
Did you guys applied all 7 factors of the hedonic calculus to your ethical issue? ...and did you anyone do situation ethics? ...for a02: what did you right for against? (saying situation is not weak?)


i never applied all 7 as i never had enough time i only did 3 (intensity,something else, amount of people it effects) the situation ethics question Ao2 was difficult, dont think i wrote much but im sure i wont get full marks on that
Reply 48
i only applied 3 of the hedonic calculus factors in detail, not quite sure how we could do all 7 in the time available...well unless they only want like 2 lines for each lol
Reply 49
Original post by yaboy
i never applied all 7 as i never had enough time i only did 3 (intensity,something else, amount of people it effects) the situation ethics question Ao2 was difficult, dont think i wrote much but im sure i wont get full marks on that


Yeah it was, I just went on about love being subjective blah blah so no clear guidelines
Reply 50
Original post by xxZazxx
Yeah it was, I just went on about love being subjective blah blah so no clear guidelines


phew i was the only guy in the entire test to do situation ethics but the first part was a bunch of waffling about agape, st Pauls letter And Jesus basically

just wondering what ethical did you apply to the first question?
Reply 51
Original post by yaboy
phew i was the only guy in the entire test to do situation ethics but the first part was a bunch of waffling about agape, st Pauls letter And Jesus basically

just wondering what ethical did you apply to the first question?


I wrote about william temple will believe situation is not weak because it's based on the formula 'love thy neighbour as thyself' so it takes love into account and that it's useful in extreme situation which can save someone. And for weak: I wrote about William Barely? Hopefully they will give me the marks. I need an A* for next year :frown:

I did animal testing :smile:
Reply 52
Original post by yaboy
phew i was the only guy in the entire test to do situation ethics but the first part was a bunch of waffling about agape, st Pauls letter And Jesus basically

just wondering what ethical did you apply to the first question?


aha yeah, I only revised 2 out of the 4 topics, so i had no choice on what to answer. if I had revised abortion I would have done that question instead it looked so much easier lol. umm my ethical issue was the legalisation of cannabis or medicinal or recreational purposes...gotta admit i was gutted when it came up lol, a similar question came up last year so i didn't think it was coming up lol
I'm quite worried now. My teachers taught us, for the A02 question, to state your personal viewpoint in the first line of your answer and then just argue for that viewpoint whilst also arguing against any arguments that would be made by the other side. But looking at what people have talked about here, everyone seems to have been writing more balanced answers. Would I be marked down for having quite opinionated A02 answers?
Did anyone do the New Testament paper? :smile:
Reply 55
I found I had enough time to apply all 7 factors of the calculus - how detailed did you guys go :eek: Slightly concerned now... haha, mine was about 3.5 pages
I listed all 7 points of the calculus and then explained them all. then introduced my ethical issue (legalisation of drugs) and went through each point applying it to the issue and probably about a sentence or 2 for each point. I feel like I could of spent more time applying it to the ethical issue but I spent about half the essay talking about Utilitarianism and the reasons why Bentham made the Hedonic Calculus...
Reply 57
Original post by sunflower77
I listed all 7 points of the calculus and then explained them all. then introduced my ethical issue (legalisation of drugs) and went through each point applying it to the issue and probably about a sentence or 2 for each point. I feel like I could of spent more time applying it to the ethical issue but I spent about half the essay talking about Utilitarianism and the reasons why Bentham made the Hedonic Calculus...


I was on route to do that as well, and half way through I was like... oh dear... I need to start talking about some kind of issue soon xD
Original post by seafolk
I was on route to do that as well, and half way through I was like... oh dear... I need to start talking about some kind of issue soon xD


At first I only read through the first part of the question saying Explain how a Utilitarian would use the hedonic calculus for making decisions. I was a quarter way through the essay when I noticed the second part XD
Reply 59
I nearly jumped for joy when I saw the hedonic calculus question since I pretty much had my essay memorised. Feel like a bit of a fool on the atheism and postmodernism though... I had an acronym for the reasons of the rise of atheism which gave me the letters SEAPR for science, empiricism, awareness of other faiths, problem of evil and rejection of moral absolutes.. I accidently mistook the P for philosophy, I couldn't remember what it stood for so took a wild guess. Ah well.
Hope you all found it ok :smile: English wasn't too bad either luckily but my hand is killing!

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