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

Excellent class! Hsu was the most approachable professor I've taken yet, and always seemed willing to discuss the material in depth with students after class, whether clarifying or exploring new issues. You need to take this class seriously though, but if you do the prerequisites, going to lecture and discussion and finishing the reading (and there's not that much), then it will definitely help. This is the kind of stuff you just need to give time. And sure he may seem to belabor points at times, but think of it as an open guideline on how to do philosophy, and listening closely you can learn a lot from the detailed approach of his thought process.

Overall it was a pretty good class. There's one midterm that's a take home essay, a take home essay final, and in class all worth 1/3 of your grade. Very little reading. Bassicly the whole quarter was on Descartes meditations with a few pages here and there of other people's comments on the issues Descartes raises. Hsu is nice and English accent is entertaining, but the most important thing in this class is to get to know your TA who will be grading all your work. It is a very detail driven and whole class periods can go on about a paragraph or two in Descartes. I'm sure that can get a little boring but for people like me who aren't philosophy majors it was handy. Hard class to get an A in, but an A- is doable. Hardest thing about this class is getting used to writing essay in the backwards unequivocal philosophy style. My TA told us that he didn't want us to use more than 14 words per sentence, and that if we wrote an introduction or conclusion he wouldn't read it. Tough grading scale, but very little work.

This class was a major disappointment. The exams were excruciating (the average on the multiple choice for the 2nd midterm was less that half correct, you be the judge)... and everything was graded harshly on top of that. Hsu was a good speaker but had a tendency to make a 15 minute lecture into a 2-hour one. I would not recommend his class. It would not have been so bad if there was a participation grade or something, but there is nothing to cushion your grades. I got a B+ and I worked VERY hard for it.