Two things to note:
1) Received an A in the class, so the review to follow is not really a impulsive reaction to a grade.
2) Professor Lawrence, for Winter 2014 quarter, was gone for about 4 weeks of the course, so I am not exactly sure how accurate this review will be for future classes.

Pros: Professor Lawrence is an extremely brilliant man. In addition, he is very responsive to emails and his lectures are podcasted (however, would advise you do not let the lectures pile up on you. I did this and I was playing catch up in this class the whole quarter). Also, a lot of this class is luck-dependent because of the TA you get They are your best friends in this class and the ones who are actually grade your papers and clarify lecture concepts. My TA was Jordan Wolf and he was awesome. If he is TAing for any course you are in for the future, I highly recommend him.
Cons: Once again, Professor Lawrence was gone for roughly half of the quarter, so I do not know if this review can hold for future classes. However, I had a very negative experience with this class last quarter as did a lot of my peers. Overall, the lectures and the class overall was very disorganized. Professor Lawrence often went in tangents in lecture and was very hard to follow. In addition, his office hours were extremely unhelpful as he would just simply say , "Read the book." Also, most of the readings, especially Hume,were impossible to understand. Finally, the grading structure format (40 percent midterm; 60 percent final) is very harsh for a GE class as it puts extreme pressure on those two exams. It basically means working your butt off to receive a good grade on the first paper and for the final.

Advice: My biggest advice is to actually attend the lectures and take good notes while you are there. Professor Lawrence, for the most part, actually gives you the answers to the essays in the lectures;however, you need to be extremely patient in this course because lectures are around 2 hours and extremely boring. Also, having a good TA makes the biggest difference in the world. Finally, you do not really have to do the readings in the course except for the take home essay. Since the final is in-class, you would be fine just going off his lectures and discussions. In our discussions, we never once did a close reading of the book and just went over lecture concepts.

So, I thought overall this was not a very useful class and one I would advise against if you were just taking it for a GE. If it's for your major, just follow the above advice and you should be able to pull off at least a B/B+.

Where's my grade? We took the final like almost 2 weeks ago and the grade is still not up yet...

I got a B+ but I didn't expect it since I got a B- on my essay which was 40 percent. So, it is worth it to study hard for the final. For the final, I listened to his lectures on the podcast while walking at the park. Good times lol! I thought the lectures were pretty interesting but sometimes missing one word or getting distracted in one instance will get you lost in what he is saying. I listened to the podcast for each lecture twice because i never went to discussion so that helped me. However, If you need an elaboration on what Lawrence says, then you should go to discussion. Also, use sparknotes.

He is disorganized and hard to follow.. You will learn most lecture materials from TA and handouts that professor posts online.

DO NOT take this class if you're looking for an easy GE. Some of the material was interesting, but Gavin's lectures were hard to follow, even though I went to all but one of them, and his podcasts were difficult to listen to for review because he spent so much time pausing. Maybe if you care about ethical theory, you'll enjoy it, but in my opinion the grading was overly harsh. He told us that grades could be adjusted upward at the TA's discretion if a person did better on the final than the midterm (the only factors in your grade) but although I got an A- on the midterm and studied my ass off for the final, thinking I wrote two really good essays, I ended up with a B+ in the class. My TA (Ashley Feinsinger) was helpful overall but a fairly harsh grader, and didn't always seem to grade based on the criteria she gave us in class. Avoid if at all possible.

I'm not really sure if I can truly be an authority on Lawrence as a professor, mostly because, even though I took his course, he wasn't my professor. SparkNotes was. And Pink Monkey. And Barron's Book Notes.
Admittedly, I attended maybe two lectures. This was due to the fact that his lectures were ridiculous and not beneficial at all. I was much more educated by the online sources on the 4 books he assigned. Oh, the books...they're not that cheap. You buy them, then he assigns about 30 pages of 300. That sucked.
I did get a B+ in his class. Which seemed messed up to me. I got an A on the midterm (40% 5 page paper), and spent a good amount of time preparing for the final(60% blue book, 3 essay questions). But whatever, I guess a B+ is pretty good when your instructor is the World Wide Web.
To sum it up, Lawrence is not much of a professor. More of a name assigned to the course that SparkNotes teaches. If you do end up in his class, well, have fun with Professor Internet.

one of the worst professors i have ever had. his material is too subjective and you are only graded on a midterm and final. He digresses too much and his TAs do not care about the class at all!

Professor Lawrence is an incredibly disorganized lecturer who makes NO sense. I did the reading but had NO idea what he was talking about. He would ramble on and it was difficult to understand what he was referring to. The information was conveyed poorly and the readings were poor as well. There is only a midterm and a final for this class so basically the TAs are all that matter. Taking this class will be a waste of your life -- avoid it at all costs!!

Hes a pretty good professor and it seems like he really cares about the students understanding the material. He isn't the type of professor that wants you to regurgitate material, he really tries to make you understand Philosophy. i recommend him to other students.

His lectures were awful. You can't read his handwriting. No one ever had any idea what he was talking about. Although he was very entertaining jumping around the stage, I found this class difficult. I took this as a GE and that was a bad idea. I did well in the class, but I had to work harder than I wanted to.

Go to discussion. The TAs will save you because trust me you will have no idea what Gavin is talking about.

You also don't really have to do the readings...