Hey Insiders

My brother's friend is interesting in studying Philosophy @ McMaster and wants to know what the program and department is like. If anyone could give a quick overview about the program, profs, classes, degree, etc. that would be awesome

Thanks

Hmm... I'm only minoring in philosophy so i'm sure there are people much better qualified to answer your question, but I'll try my best anyway.

The philosophy department has always been really helpful to me, whether I had questions about courses, scheduling, or accomodating ridiculous course permissions. The only real issue I've had with them is that they tend to not answer emails, so I keep having to go into the office to get things done.

I've taken a bunch of classes so far, Problems of Philosophy, Moral issues, Ancient Greek and Aesthetics and I've like all the profs I've had. They all ran lectures so that students had a chance to particupate, they encouraged discussions and questions, and I never got the impression that they were shoving a certain view point down my throat. Dr. Allen and Dr. Garrett are some of the best professors I've had at Mac so far, and the courses they taught were awesome.

I know they changed a bunch of classes this year so that incoming students dont have as many full year courses, but instead two one-semester courses. I can't remember what the exac t courses are but to major in philosophy I'm pretty sure you need a full year of Ancient Greek and Descartes to Hume. There may be other requirements I'm not sure. All the upper year courses look really interesting, tell your friend to look through the Undergrad course calendar for next year.

Honestly, just like with any course, philosophy classes get dry sometimes; there are some things that you're especially interested in and then sections that seem to drag on forever. staying up to date with readings makes classes easier to follow. The one major problem I have with philosophy courses (and humanities courses in general) is the mark breakdown: most only have 2 essays (each 20-40%) a tutorial grade (~10%) and a final exam (30-40%), so if you mess up one assignment or the final, you're pretty much screwed out of a good grade even if you do well on the others.

I see you're in Eng too, and I keep telling engineers this, but no one gets it: philosophy classes (and other humanities courses, in my experience) are easy to pass but hard to do well in (i.e. 10+), whereas Eng classes are hard to pass but easy to do well in once you understand the basics. If essays and reading are not your friends forte, then philosphy may not be for him. If they are, then good luck to him!

Hope that helped a bit.

It is good.

If thats too brief I could add that the profs that I have had are excellent and know their stuff. Walachouw is excellent, as is Rodde take his ethics courses, but he is demanding, the TAs are usually really good and always put in effort to make sure you understand the concepts. What I can say though is that you get out of it whatever you put into it, you can't really sit down and cram or memorize a bunch of facts, like you could in maths and sciences, you really need to develop and be prepared to defend your interpretations and positions in your essays and exams.

The thing about philosophy seems to be that some people are good at it because they enjoy it, others because they work hard at it, but some people just don't get it and never will. That last part might sound hard but its true.