do not ever take this class. no matter how much effort you put in it will not pay off unless you are cracked at philosophy.

Overall, this class was pretty solid. Professor Rescorla is super nice and genuinely wants his students to do well. I went to every lecture, but you could definitely get away without going. Also don't waste your money on the course reader—I never used it. Before each lecture, there are two to three short videos (usually between 10 and 30 mins) assigned, which give you all the information you need to know for the class. The lectures are pretty much just a Q&A session, and there's also a chunk of class dedicated to writing exercises—which are graded for completion and are pretty straight forward. Lectures are also on Zoom if you can't make it in person. Section attendance is mandatory, and you just discuss/clarify the material from the videos. The midterm and final are both in-person and consist of hand-written mini essay questions, but Professor Rescorla provides a review sheet beforehand that's very helpful for the exams. There are two papers, but they're both fairly short (under 1000 words). I heard some TAs are tough graders, but I think all of my work was graded super fairly. This class was by no means a breeze, but it was very manageable.

I hoped the reviews were wrong and I would ace this class. In fact, all throughout the quarter I thought I was doing great, but then I got a B. The professor is very very very boring and it's a bunch of philosophy jargon. I'm a STEM major and found the material simple to understand, but some humanities majors might struggle as they might overthink it. VERY IMPORTANT: Do not buy the materials. In fact, don't even read them. Just watch the videos and you should be fine.

listen to the other fall 2023 review. listen to it.

This class single-handedly made me switch my major from philosophy to sociology. None of my upper-division philosophy classes were as tough and complicated as this one. I found that whatever answer I gave was wrong, even if it was in the exact terms of the videos. Rescorla did not even teach during lecture hours, but instead held Q&A sessions about the videos he required you to watch before the lectures. The only good thing about lectures was that attendance was not taken and they were all available on Zoom. In each lecture, there was either a multiple-choice quiz or a written short response question for you to answer. Each was graded on participation rather than correctness, but I would rather be graded for correctness. Without feedback on the written responses, I didn't know what was expected in terms of writing style and wording. I found the essays to be more on the easy side, but TAs are looking for very specific wording as a slight change in language could convey an entirely different philosophical concept. The midterm and final were both outrageous. We were given short answer questions with a good amount of time to answer, but the answers expected were answers akin to what is written in an essay (even though Rescorla says that isn't what he is looking for). I would NOT recommend this class to anyone.

This class is really interesting and I enjoyed learning the course content a lot. However, the grading is so harsh and you won’t fully understand what you did wrong because the TA’s can be picky about the smallest details in your writing. The communication between the TA’s and professor is horrible, it seems like they all have different interpretations of the concepts and it was apparent during the final study sessions. One TA had a different interpretation of concepts and taught us that, then another TA disagreed so we spent a large portion of the study session trying to figure out what was actually right two days before our final. You’ll have to go above and beyond to get an A, and students I know who did go above and beyond still didn’t get an A, so only take this if you’re genuinely interested philosophy but don’t take it as a GE or your first philosophy class. This was my first philosophy class as a major requirement, and I wish I took a different one because of the harsh grading which brought my GPA down. The content is really interesting so don’t let the grading discourage you if you love philosophy.

This class is pretty bad. Don't really take into account the Covid-19 reviews because they are skewed to be more lenient since you are able to type up essays and it just seems like it might have been more lenient with grading. With that being said, being a freshmen taking this class was honestly pretty horrible. It's not even that the professor is so terrible, its just the grading is SO SO HARSH. The class itself consists of this breakdown: First Paper 15%, Second Paper 20%, Midterm 15%, Final Exam 25%, in class exercises 15%, section participation 10%. The class itself seems pretty easy not accounting the papers, because all you do is just watch these pre-recorded videos he made from a long time ago and then take a little quiz or writing exercise in class (super easy, should get a 100 in all this). But when you're writing the papers, it's so apparent that the grading is just so so harsh. And the communication between Rescorla and the TAs is horrible. A lot of people said get to know your TA or make sure you write your paper early, which is true and valid advice, it just didn't even matter at that point because they will always find something to mark you down (5/10/15/20 points) on automatically. You could feel so good and confident about the midterm (3 written essays) and the final (10 written essays), but in the end, no matter how much you study or think you know the material, you will get marked down and you will not get a proper answer of why. And good luck with your TAs office hours, because mine broke theirs down into 5 minute intervals to read over your whole paper and get advice on what to fix. Five minutes is an impossible amount of time to get any actual feedback you might think, and that is absolutely the case. My TA just told me that they weren't even going to try to read my paper, they just said point at the part you think you need help on. And from there they only nitpick like one word you are using and try to find that word in the rest of the paper to say "Oh, that's wrong." That is all the feedback you get. And don't be surprised if Rescorla says that you definitely shouldn't do something or use a certain phrase AFTER we turned in the paper. The TAs didn't even know that we couldn't use these words or phrases, so they didn't say to correct them when we were getting feedback. But you'll definitely see it marked down in your grade. That was one of the most frustrating parts. Additionally, the only grade we knew before taking the final was our first paper grade (which everyone that I talked to in my discussion somehow got an 86 on) and the midterm (which he said the average was "in the teens out of 30." Everything else you don't know. And it's not like everyone just doesn't study for this class, we are really trying. Additionally, Rescorla says to ignore everything on bruinlearn because he doesn't input correct grades and it doesn't reflect our true grade, so we just didn't even know what our grade was before the final. The second papers weren't graded before the final either. I don't want to be super negative because I do think that I learned a lot by the end of the class, but I just feel like my grade didn't reflect that as much as I would've wanted, and I know for a fact that even if I studied more or I tried to get my paper looked at more, I still would've gotten the same grade, which is kind of frustrating.

Anyways, my advice for those who have to take the class is just to expect the grading to be harsh, and try to connect with your TA in as many ways as you can. Who your TA is is honestly just luck, so just try to make the best of it because they are the ones grading everything. Rescorla's office hours are helpful though, more helpful than the TA in my experience. If you don't need to take this class, don't. I didn't, I just took it as a GE as a STEM major, and now it's my first B lol. If you do need to take this class, I don't know who else teaches it, but maybe try to wait and see if there is someone else that has a different grading scheme.

Anyways, good luck, because you'll need it.

Prof Rescorla has gotten an unnecessarily bad rep and the fact that he openly acknowledges it it hilarious. Yes I agree this class as a GE may not be the easiest but that is because of the content that is covered, not because of the professor. The units are structured well and we explore different theories of the mind.
It consists of 2 papers, the midterm and the final, where the papers focus on explanation and cohesion while the exams are solely based on understanding the concepts.
I learnt a lot from this class, not in terms of the verbatim content but of how cool different theories are.
USE THE TAs, all of them seemed very helpful, and that was my biggest key to success in this class. Go to office hours, finish papers in advance so you can get feedback, and take writing exercises seriously!

I will forever scorn myself for taking this forsaken class. I am still trying to raise my GPA after taking this class. Before the end, I actually enjoyed this class. Discussion was interesting (albeit confusing), lecture was engaging. The lectures were filmed videos that were fun to watch. Professor Rescorla seemed like a very quirky and fun professor; I liked him.
However. The class grade breakdown included quizzes (which literally were made to give us points, so nice), 3 papers worth 15%, 20%, and 25%, participation, and the final. Each paper had the same prompt. Restate the argument or concept that we were talking about in class at that time. No opinions, no perspectives, literally just restate what the philosopher said exactly. Oh yeah, but use your own words. I got a B on the first paper, without putting too much effort in or getting any feedback beforehand. So, going into the second paper, I felt good and more prepared. I made an outline, drafted, edited, followed the prompt exactly. Felt like an A paper. Got a C...
I am an excellent writer, that is my strong suit. I have never received less than an A on almost any essay. The feedback I received was extremely vague, but I was explicitly told that I used the words "real"/"external"/"natural" interchangeably when I shouldn't have, or something of the sort. So ultimately, restate the philosophers' cracked up ideas perfectly and exactly using their words, but you have to do it using your own words.
The final was the same way. It was a 7 question paragraph style test and you had to explain different concepts. Same thing, explain in your own words but even if you had the concept down but didn't use the right words, failed. So ridiculous. Maybe philosophy just isn't my thing, but this is one of those classes where you feel like you have a grasp on it, and then suddenly, without any feedback or explanation, you are told you are wrong.

This class wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard either. It was manageable, and I don't think it was bad. I took this class when it was online, and it was pretty chill. Professor Rescorla did a great job at simplifying difficult concepts. (IMO)

We watched pre-recorded lectures that had one question at the end; it was very easy. There was a textbook for the class, and he assigned us readings every week, but they weren't necessary. The readings were there for students who wanted to dive deeper into the subjects covered in class. He also assigned three short essays. The essay prompts were unclear, but my TA helped us understand them. The final exam wasn't hard. We had to answer 5-short response questions about the topics we learned in class. The professor gave out a very useful study guide to the point where some of the questions on my study guide ended up being on the exam.

He's pretty passionate about the content, and sometimes I found him amusing. I don't regret taking this class, but I regret not putting more effort into it.