WJEC/Eduqas RS for A2/Yr2: Religion and Ethics (DRAFT)

T4 Determinism and free will

AO1 Developing skills It is now important to consider the information that has been covered in this section; however, the information in its raw form is too extensive and so has to be processed in order to meet the requirements of the examination. This can be done by practising more advanced skills associated with AO1. The exercises that run throughout this book will help you to do this and prepare you for the examination. For assessment objective 1 (AO1), which involves demonstrating ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ skills, we are going to focus on different ways in which the skills can be demonstrated effectively, and also refer to how the performance of these skills is measured (see generic band descriptors for A2 [WJEC] AO1 or A Level [Eduqas] AO1). Your task is this: Below is a summary of John Locke’s hard determinist theory . It is about 200 words long. This time there are no highlighted points to indicate the key points to learn from this extract. Discuss which five points you think are the most important to highlight and write them down in a list. John Locke developed a philosophical determinism theory based on universal causation. This is the belief that all human actions and choices have a past cause and therefore all events that happen are determined by an unbreakable chain of past causes. The future must logically be as fixed and unchangeable as the past. Locke coined the phrase: ‘free will is just an illusion’. People who believe they have free will think they do because they can pause and reflect before making a choice; Locke believed that all such thoughts were just the person’s ignorance of universal causation. Indeed, Locke argued, most people do not have the intelligence to see that there are no choices at all to be made. Locke developed the idea of universal causation by creating an analogy to illustrate the theory. His analogy starts with a man who wakes up in a room that, unknown to him, is locked from the outside. He chooses to stay in the room believing he has chosen freely to stay there. In reality, however, he has no option but to stay in the room, it is only his ignorance that the door is locked, that gives him an illusion of freedom. Now make the five points into your own summary (as in Theme 1 Developing skills) trying to make the summary more personal to your style of writing. This may also involve re-ordering the points if you wish to do so.

DRAFT

Key skills Knowledge involves:

Selection of a range of (thorough) accurate and relevant information that is directly related to the speci c demands of the question. This means: ■ Selecting relevant material for the question set ■ Being focused in explaining and examining the material selected. demonstrating depth and/or breadth with excellent use of evidence and examples including (where appropriate) thorough and accurate supporting use of sacred texts, sources of wisdom and specialist language. This means: ■ Effective use of examples and supporting evidence to establish the quality of your understanding that expresses personal knowledge and understanding and NOT just reproducing a chunk of text from a book that you have rehearsed and memorised. Understanding involves: Explanation that is extensive, ■ Ownership of your explanation

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