This was the best class I have ever taken, period. Low key changed my life. I always looked forward to attending Professor McHose's lectures.

Really interesting class; I took it as a major prereq but it also fulfills the philosophical analysis GE. Definitely recommend choosing a different ge though if you’re looking for an easy A. The class has a really light workload, just attend lecture to understand the notes and handouts prof posts on CCLE. There’s about 3 readings assigned throughout the quarter related to the material discussed in lecture which range from 10-20 pages but if you skim them and follow lecture you should be able to understand what’s going on. Grading is based on three quizzes and two papers. Quizzes tested your ability to apply content and concepts from lecture and readings; pretty mind numbing imo. Papers were on whether abortion or medical exploitation is morally permissible or not. Prompts are given about a week in advance but are pretty dense so definitely get a head start on your paper. The TAs and prof have lots of OH so definitely make use of them. Prof McHose definitely knows what he’s teaching and explains things thoroughly, with examples, and repeats often to reinforce the material. Really smart guy and engaging lecture all-around.

Grading Breakdown:
10% - Quiz #1 (metaethics material)
10% - Quiz #2 (medical exploitation material)
15% - Quiz #3 (abortion material)
30% - First Paper
35% - Final Paper

TLDR: interesting course, not easy A, no busy work

This was my favorite class that I took this quarter. I thought the material was super interesting and the professor was good at keeping us engaged by allowing us to participate in zoom polls every lecture. The professor asks for questions periodically during lecture and repeats what we’ve gone over a lot, so that was also really helpful. I also thought he was pretty funny at times. We took 3 quizzes for the quarter, which I thought were kinda tricky but as long as you really pay attention in lecture and go over the handouts you should get an at least decent grade. Plus, he curves them to your favor at the end of the quarter. On a straight scale I would’ve gotten around a B+ average, but it was bumped up to an A. You can also get a bump in your grade if you participate, this can be done in lecture, discussion, office hours, or even just by shooting an email to the professor with your thoughts about the material. There were 2 papers, not very long and like I said for the quizzes, paying attention in lecture and following the handouts should get you through it pretty well. Both the professor and TAs held extra office hours leading up to due dates for the paper, so there’s always help if you need it. Discussion is optional but I definitely recommend going so that you get a better understanding of what’s going on in lecture. I had Amber and I liked her a lot, she was really nice and helpful. If there was ever something you were having trouble understanding, she would take the time to break it down for you until you got it. Overall, I would definitely recommend this class.

The professor himself is SUPER funny and chill and he taught the subject VERY well!! His quizzes were kinda difficult though. I did okay on the first two (mid As), but I tanked the last one (mid C). He averages them up and then curves instead of dropping the lowest. I ended up with a low A average for my quizzes, which I felt was a VERY fair grade considering I straight up got a C on one of them.
His materials have unique and engaging examples, and his method of lecturing is very relaxed (colloquial words, jokes, funny examples, back-and-forth student participation, etc.), but also very structured at the same time (pre-made handouts you can follow along with, polls, tangents that make sense/are relevant, etc.).
The bulk of your grade are your two papers. There were no example papers to base your paper off of, but he does go over an overall structure-ish. We did not have to write a lot of original stuff (the first paper he gave us the introduction paragraph entirely), but the structure is VERY specific, so if you can follow that structure to a T, you'll do great. You're kind of thrown into it a little bit too though. However, he has mandatory 1-1 sessions with the TA to go over the papers, and if you listen to all of the criticisms, you should get an A on the second paper.
Overall, a super fun class! I would recommend, but you should probably put in some work in really getting the concepts rather than memorizing stuff or the papers and quizzes will mess you up.

Professor McHose took a different approach to political philosophy than I expected, the entire class emphasized exclusively distributive justice, so if you're interested in Nozick, Rawls, and Parfit, you will certainly enjoy the course.
My biggest complaint is the way he structures his quizzes, multiple answers are correct in each question and you're deducted points for not selecting all the correct ones, I averaged a B- on the quizzes despite feeling fairly confident about the material. But he does curve the quizzes so it wasn't two bad. He's certainly not the only professor to do this, but I felt it was worth mentioning.
Grades were made up of 3 papers, 3 quizzes, and participation.
If you haven't written philosophy papers before, listen very closely to his instructions, he helped me with my writing a lot!
Lecture was necessary because your papers had to reflect examples that were given in class. Lectures were recorded and uploaded after.
He was very flexible with the pandemic and meeting students needs, which I appreciated!

This was not an easy ge, but i definitely enjoyed it. The professor uses lots of examples and repeats himself a lot so that you understand the material, which is pretty helpful. In regards to the quizzes, they can be pretty tricky but if you go over the lectures and review them a lot you should be fine. In regards to the papers, just make sure you pay attention to what’s going on in class and really use the material you know, because that will help to show that you understand it (and that’s a good portion of the paper grade). The professor has a lot of extra office hours leading to the paper due dates, so take advantage of them if you feel like you’re lost on what to do. Overall, I enjoyed the class but I don’t think it’s for everyone. The professor was pretty funny and I thought he lectured well. We went over distributive justice almost the whole quarter and the papers consisted of explaining certain viewpoints on distributive justice and arguing for a certain type of distributive justice in the context of a health care policy.

As an introductory political philosophy class, I wish we had done a more broad survey of different topics instead of spending the entire ten weeks mostly covering distributive justice. Despite the readings, which were for the most part quite dry, I think Brad did a good job of making the lectures as engaging as possible (many, many zoom polls), and illustrated topics well by going over lots of different hypothetical cases. The quizzes were somewhat tricky, but you can do pretty well on them by just relying on the handouts he provides which the lectures are based on. The first paper was far more straightforward than the final paper, which had an 11 page prompt that made writing it kind of a chore.

Honestly, the only thing that made this class hard were the quizzes. I know some people did really well on them but most of the class really struggled. Fortunately, everything was graded on a curve so even if you completely bombed it, you'd still get a reasonable grade. At the end we also had an extra credit opportunity for 1/3 of a grade raise on either the quiz overall or the first essay. I think professor Brad is a really enthusiastic and funny character in his way of teaching and i really enjoyed the evolvement of the entire class on taking live polls on how we feel about certain topics. My class in particular was very opinionated so the class never felt dull. Brad is a great professor and you can tell he cares how his students are doing in the class. He's always willing to help and answers questions in class and office hours.

The course had 3 essays with strict wordcap, and two short quizzes about 12-13 questions (all multiple choice). No book needed, all the reading material was given in class on weekly basis. As a transfer student, if I could retake the quarter, this class would for sure not be my first choice fresh off the CC boat but its manageable. Overall, 8/10.

Professor McHose is a great guy and is super knowledgeable. He’s super willing to answer questions in class, is very funny, and cares about his students. While I thought the content was tricky at first, I think he has a really good way of teaching with stories and drawings that help you grasp the concepts. There are three papers in this class, all which you should do well on as long as you put effort in to them. There were also three quizzes which were a little trickier — I spent a lot of time studying for these and still sometimes underperformed. Overall, I think this class is really engaging and shouldn’t be too hard to get a good grade in.

HATED THIS CLASS. and unless you have a philopsohy brain you probably will to. the course is super misleading and is basically the philosophy of property rights, not politics, and argues over land ownership for 10 weeks straight. the professor is a classic philosophy stereotype and his notes are scribbled words and pictures that make the content more confusing. It seemed impossible to achieve well in this course and seemed very bias in students performance based on previous philosophy experience, and the professor and TA were not helpful in getting your foot in there, giving no feedback on essays . dont take this class unless you love all philosophy or have a strong affinity for property rights