Another solid Pass 2, just shy of 80%. Most of the criticism of the essay seemed to be about not mentioning Act and Rule Utilitarianism, which was a deliberate decision on my part based on the fact that the question was about their views on hedonism, and because I had been marked down previously for going off topic.
Oh well.... could have been worse, now to concentrate on the very overrated ideas of Descartes before Saturday's tutorial.
2 comments:
Hi, That is a really good mark, I am doing the course as well and only scrapped over 60%!!
What were your main arguments/conclusions?
Hi,
I didn't stray too far from the course books.
I had a good intro, introduced the question, set out what would happen in the essay and summarised the conclusion. Then defined / explained the terms in the question which were hedonism and sufficient.
Started with Bentham, only interested in quantity not quality of pleasure, he was looking for an empirical calculation to propose the most hedonistically ethical course of action. Mill however was more interested in the quality of pleasure, and that people should be better than swine, so favours the higher pleasures.
Criticised Bentham's method as too labourious, subjective and could lead to immoral acts appearing ethical. Critisied Mill as higher pleasures were elitist and subjective. Some acts can have a mixture of higher and lower pleasures that cannot be separated - how would you compute ?
Concluded that hedonism cannot be a complete theory with regard to ethics but could play its part in a suite of theories.
The main thing I think is to question ideas, the higher pleasure of reading does it matter if it is Hamlet or Hello ? What is a higher pleasure now as art and music are less refined now than in Mills time, are the Sex Pistols a higher pleasure, situation and time also effect the quality and quantity of pleasures. Mills time was much simpler, what would he have made of the vast quantity of simultaneous pleasures we experience today ? Also, add as many of your own examples as possible, I mentioned the calculation you'd have to do if you were taking a penalty kick - should you score or deliberately miss - how would you calculate that ? I mentioned Red Dwarf and opening Christmas presents - anything to show I could connect their ideas to my life.
It was also fairly well referenced, and well presented which I think is half the battle, as if it looks nice and is easy to read then the marker may be better disposed when it comes to giving marks.
I should have mentioned act and rule utilitarianism but word count was against me, and I didn't think I was supposed to anyway.
Does this help ?
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