[kokosas]

The material for this class was very interesting and focuses a lot on the concept of a god. No matter your religious standing you will find this class interesting if you like a good debate. The professor who taught it in my day was Dr. Garrett and it was a night class so he spent the first hour arguing for a theory and the second hour disproving that theory. Religion and the concept of god was the main focus for the majority of the class but other topics were explored: morality, ethics, politics, etc.
The reading load was slightly heavy for this class. If you're not into reading old philosophy like Descartes then I suggest you stay away from this class. Unfortunately I do not remember the break down but there was two essays involved and a midterm.

See the course description here.

I was just wondering if you might known someone who would be able to 'review' Philosophy 1D03... I'm having trouble choosing between the two. I thought I'd choose based on profs, but I can't find the prof for 1D03. Is Garret generally good?

Originally Posted by Isabel

I was just wondering if you might known someone who would be able to 'review' Philosophy 1D03... I'm having trouble choosing between the two. I thought I'd choose based on profs, but I can't find the prof for 1D03. Is Garret generally good?

I only had Garret once and it was for this class. His personality isn't exactly outgoing and cheerful but he's a good prof, he'll tell you what you need to know. Sometimes he a tad rude when he feels people are wasting his time with their banter but he stimulates good discussion. As for the class, I've never taken 1D03 but if you ask Nicole (her Profile here) she might know as she's a Philosophy Major.

Hope this helps you!

Hey, I took 1E03 this past year and I have mixed feelings about it. The material was really interesting and it's comprised of pretty standard philosophy stuff (what is reality? does God exist? do we have free will? etc.) The material is difficult to wrap your head around at times and this is NOT bird course for sure.

The essay questions are tough but there is choice. Garrett goes over exactly what he wants several times which is good.

Now on to what I hated about the class, Garrett. I really really dislike this guy. He was so pompous and outright rude and disrespectful to his students. It got to a point where very few people would ask questions out of fear that he would make fun of them. He went on and on and just wrecked a friend of mine and basically called her stupid after she asked a question. That really made me angry, no prof has the right to act like that.

He was a good professor though, he went over all the expectations very well and made everything clear. His lecturing style was weird and hard to follow. He would usually spend the first half of class summarized the last class while going off on tangents and introducing really confusing examples. The second half of class was new material but he often didn't finish and ended up combinng the summary with the new material during the next class.

I'm sure many people found it not too bad but I found it very confusing, I like very ordered lecturing. Taking organized and concise notes was difficult.

This course is a crash course in really intense philosophy and don't take it expecting it to be a very easy elective. Get ready to be challenged.

What has been said above holds pretty true.
Dr. Garrett does take some warming up to, but he does know his stuff.
He brings his dog Jerry to class sometimes which honestly made my Monday's survivable.

My TA marked EVERYTHING in this class.

Breakdown:
10 Weekly mini papers (summarize a criticize an assigned argument or passage) - 50%
Essay - 20% (4 Choices, broken down specifically in terms of what is asked, not like a traditional essay so to speak)
Exam - 30% (were given 4 choices BEFORE exam and told two (unannounced) topics would be on the exam. Topics weren't covered in lecture so one had to prepare for all of them.

Reading could get very boring!
Interesting perspectives and debates though - Dr. Garrett was very good and convincing me of one thing and then presenting an equally probably case for the opposing side.

The thing I like most about Dr. Garret was that he wasn't afraid to lay into students who would raise there hand without thinking through their ideas. That was definitely a welcome break from teachers who were afraid of hurting the feelings of the students.

I didn't really like how he approached the class though, despite what my opening paragraph at times he really did seem to baby us. We moved through most of the material incredibly slowly, so by the end the readings we were doing with our tutorial groups were units ahead of the lectures we were hearing. Which made those lectures pretty boring.

As stated above, almost your entire mark is decided by your TA. I was lucky enough to get Ian Wright, an incredibly cool guy. His marking was fair but tough, and he made every topic interesting. You could have a lot of great discussions with him, if you can get him as a TA I would heavily recommend it.

Each week we got a reading in tutorial, they generally were pretty short. Some time the language or style could get a bit tedious, but overall they weren't bad. Then we had to write a one page summary, as well as a paragraph response to the ideas presented. We got 10, with each one being worth 5% of your mark (for 50% overall). Not too difficult, although it could be tough at times to fully explain yourself in a page.

Tip: In your response paragraph ALWAYS DISAGREE WITH THE IDEAS PRESENTED. Sometimes it can be hard, since a lot of them are so soundly supported, but your mark will be much better. Most of the TA's wouldn't give you above a B if you agreed.

We also received a larger essay, which wasn't too bad. I think it was 5 pages, and worth 20-30% of your final mark. You had a bit of leeway with which topic you picked, but I think they were all based around Free Will vs. Determinism, or the Existence of a God. If was lucky enough to have an upper year philosophy student read over mine, which definitely helped me catch some mistakes. If you are part of an organization like SOCS where you meet lots of cool upper years, take advantage of it!

The final exam was worth the rest of our mark. We were given four essay topics in advance, and told that two of them would be on the exam. We were also told that they would be marked harder, since we had them in advance to prepare. When we got to the exam, it turned out we had our choice of any two of the four. Writing these essays out in advance was a huge help (according to those who did it), and many students were able to leave before the half way point. I had only done skeleton notes, and ended up writing right to the last minute. How much of that is because I am just a slow writer though remains unknown >.<

Overall, I would definitely recommend this course. You get a lot of practice in essay style questions, and it is pretty interesting. The workload is also quite reasonable, with the readings and essays due week to week taking 1-2 hours depending on your essay skills. I'm not sure if its 12-able for your average student, but it is quite easy to get a 10 or 11.

I think that this is definitely a bird course. The 4 assignments worth half your grade are only 2 page summaries, which are marked by your TA. If you have a good TA, they will basically tell you exactly what to fix and include. The exam is simple, straightforward and given to you beforehand so you can practice it and ask questions. Overall, the content is really interesting and a bit more of an extension of grade 12 philosophy. The readings at times can be confusing but the textbook does a good job of simplifying the original works. I had Garrett by the way, who is ok if you're not a hardcore believer in God.

This is a good course to take as an elective because its entirely tutorial based, exam and assignments are based on the tutorial so if you want to do well you should attend those. Last year, the exam was given before hand and it was only two questions. hope this helps

Didn't really enjoy Professor Garret's weird way of lecturing at all.. he was very blunt and rude to those lecture-goers who participated although I'll admit that a lot of students' points weren't that great at times. The way it was structured was kind of strange and non-directional, and my TA honestly didn't always seem to know how to concisely explain the information in a way that everyone would understand. Some parts of the course were really quite simple and straightforward, such as cultural relativism, whereas other parts (which largely comprised of the final exam) having to do with materialism and immaterialism and if your body was copied and sent to another planet through a machine(?!), which I found interesting if not kind of absurd and pointless. Also if you are an atheist like I am, this course can be sort of frustrating at how silly some of the arguments are (ie. if God is a perfect being and being perfect is "better" than not being perfect then therefore God must exist).

The course was definitely interesting though, and as long as you kept up-to-date on the readings and did your summary/reviews from whatever was listed in tutorial every two weeks then you'd probably do quite well.

This course made me question my own existence and beliefs .... I'm NOT kidding