Hsu tries his best to thoroughly explain what is a difficult subject, and concepts that are not clear-cut. His lectures can be hard to follow, especially if you're tired, so get a redbull, come to class and pay attention. His recorder often failed so don't count on the podcasts being uploaded. He's very soft-spoken, so you may want to sit up front.

Hsu is a super nice, intelligent, well spoken guy. He definitely cares a lot about the topic and is very knowledgable. He takes the time to answer questions and is very patient. On the negative side, he can sometimes be hard to follow during lecture. First of all, the lecture is two hours long, so it is very easy to lose focus. His voice will fade and when he speaks he tends to go on tangents. It is very helpful that the lectures are put on BruinCast because you may need to listen again to pick up the main points. Thankfully the TA's are more straight forward with explaining concepts and main ideas, opposed to the way Hsu dissects sentences at a time during lecture. I am not a philosophy major so the concepts of this class are difficult the material contains extremely new ways of thinking that I am not used to. Overall, if you think you might be interested in philosophy, this class is the place to be, but if not then I'd veer away.

Professor Hsu is an incredibly intelligent and well spoken guy. He knows what he's talking about and answered any question throughout the course of our course with sensitivity and critical thought.

However, he could be difficult at times due to his quickness of lecturing pace and well... his accent. He has a English accent that sounds awesome but if you don't listen in carefully you may miss a word or two and be lost for the next few sentences he says.

In any case, the material is fairly interesting, but can be tough for non-philosophy majors (due to lack of interest most likely). I received a B in the class although I definitely slacked even with the minimal amount of reading he assigned every week.

Good professor overall, take him.

SO BORING. Goes on extreme tangents. Can't be straightforward and answer a question. Thank goodness the material is interesting and my TA was helpful.

Here is the absolute bottomline most students, if not all, are interested in (since you're at this site anyway now): Very little reading, out-of-the-box thinking, and detail-oriented instructions.

With that said, I did not enjoy this class very much. Hsu is a great professor, and is a naturally-skilled speaker that makes the meat of the class a tad easier to get through. However, this is philosophy about the conscious vs. subconscious, reality vs. dreams... so expect it to be something you've most likely never encountered before. My problem was that the lectures flowed with a misunderstanding that a large portion of the class was to understand the material. The TAs were very helpful, but they too were in the mind-state that perhaps most of the students were philosophy majors and probably were able to digest a lot of the material.

Problem is.. the material's tough. If you don't see yourself rereading 3 sentences about 12 times to fully understand it, then don't take this class. Professor Hsu's routine/style makes an assumption that students are able to understand the material just by a few questions being brought up in class. No student will pass this course without some difficulty. I had more difficulty understanding this material than I had with Neuroscience. Go figure...

All the previous reviews have been fairly accurate. Professor Hsu is really articulate, but unfortunately, it doesn't really make the class more interesting, especially since, it's a 2 hour lecture that drags on and on. There's very little reading for this class, but the time we spent on it was a little painstaking, dissecting sentences weeks at a time. Although the professor and the TAs make themselves available to students, it's really hard to get an A in class if you're not a philosophy major. I definitely would not recommend taking this class if you're not a philosophy major because it kind of builds on other philosophy classes.

All most everyone slept through most lectures, even the RAs. Hsu is a nice guy, approachable, and answers too many questions during lecture. I was planning to major in phil but this class changed my mind. I ended up dropping this class. I really would suggest to not to take this class, it was the worst class i have taken.

Oh, Hsu. You tried to make lecture interesting, and it sometimes was, but let's face it: when only a third of the students enrolled show up on any given day you know you have a problem. This class was intriguing if and only if you could grasp the material yourself. At least my TA, Skef, was awesome.

Professor Hsu is one of the smartest, most articulate, most interesting people I've ever talked to at UCLA.
He's probably the most patient person in the world. The only reason I'd discourage taking his class is because when I took it the questions a lot of people asked were either already addressed ad nauseum or just a bunch of moronic, garbled, pseudo-philosophy that wasted a lot of time.

so like, andrew hsu is like, really smart and stuff, but like his grading's like really harsh, and like philosophy is like kinda cool n all but really abstract and like just weird n stuff

Oh well, at least I got an A