ATS2839: Ethics

The exam is the major assessment of the unit but it's crazy easy. Before the exam you get given five short-answer questions, of which three will appear on the exam, of which you will have to answer two. The exam has a multi-choice section which is worth 20%, and the short-answer is also worth 20%, but you get the short-answer gifted to you. You also get a "sample" multi-choice exam with twelve questions, even though there is twenty five questions on the actual exam. Of those twelve questions, nine of them appeared on my exam (luckily I had the good sense to look at the answers once or twice before entering the exam room - saved me a shitload of time). The other multi-choice questions can be kinda like "wut". This is why I say keep up with the readings because if you're unsure, the multi-choice are like "dafuq" whereas when you're sure they're impossible to get wrong. Unless you're me, in which case you find out on the train from a friend that you answered a question incorrectly after correcting him on the same question the day before. Just... how?

Paul's lecturing is good. Some people found him monotonous but they're silly. We had a pretty small lecture hall/room on level four of the Menzies - this actually sucked but yolo - and so it restricted his ability to move around. He basically couldn't even if he wanted to, which meant the lectures consisted of him at the podium thing talking. His lecture slides were humorous but consisted of Star Wars jokes and things of the like which is why I think some people were bored by lectures whist I was pmsl. He also uses really funny examples/phrases despite not being overly vocally animated. I digress a bit - basically, he's a good, solid lecturer, but not as good as Toby or Bob (my two favourites if you read my other reviews lol).

The content is almost entirely based around the "big three" normative theories; consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Amongst those, you touch on egoism, Hume (excellent). Honestly, if you weren't really interested in morality/ethics, you're probably going to find this content a bit dry . I love Philosophy and there were moments of this semester where my enthusiasm waned slightly (that said, it was a "low on enthusiasm" type of semester. Due to the nature of the unit - covering many topics etc., it can seem like less of smooth progression that some other units, like a bit "jumpy" but really, I don't think there's many ways around this except for have an extra lecture a week which is probably a bit unnecessary.

The assignments are pretty stock standard. Questions on the readings, basic comprehension, standard comprehension/argument essay. I had Ros as a tutor who I thought marked generously. Ros is a good tutor, but our tute this semester had a very difficult dynamic, so it wasn't the most effective hour of my week - hard to fully evaluate Ros because of that but I did like her.

It'd probably be an easy grade if someone put the work in, but I probably wouldn't recommend this to someone who is just lazily thinking of taking a Philo unit or something like that. It'd be a horrible time to realise that you didn't like normative ethics or something like that. I'd recommend it to someone who's interested in the field and wants to go a bit deeper than Life, Death, Morality. Also expect the content to be a little bit more difficult that previous Phil units. Hume, Kant, and the Frege-Geache problem gave many people a lot of trouble so expect to be challenged in parts.

No, but unnecessary.

3.33 out of 5

The unit reader and study guide are both necessary for high marks. The study guide is like "the explanation" and the reader is the collection of chapters/articles that make up the course content. Would keep up to date with the readings for both because the exam tests every week and it's just horrible to cram (I weep at the not so distant memories). Those two are all that's necessary.

TBA