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Peter Carruthers PHIL209N Expecting an A Anonymous 05/07/2020	This is really a psych course about decision making. The content is pretty cool and interesting. Carruthers himself is a pretty good lecturer. The class is on the easier side. Each week there is a little reading and quiz in discussion. Besides for that there is a midterm that is basically a few essay questions. You are given different options of prompts beforehand and then you have to answer a subset of those prompts at the midterm. The final is the same format. They grade the exams pretty leniently. The averages when I took the class were in the high 80's. The big assignment in the class is the group paper, which has to be 4000-5000 words. They walk you through the assignment but your experience with it depends on your group. Overall, it was a good class and I'd recommend if the topic interests you.
Peter Carruthers PHIL209N Expecting an A Anonymous 08/20/2016	He is a really nice and cool professor and the class is pretty easy for most of the semester. There is one midterm exam and one final exam which isnt too bad because the questions are posted before hand and you go over some practice ones in class too. Each week you have 2 readings to read that are usually about 10 pages each. They can get kind of long so i usually end up skimming, but everything is really interesting, definitely more of a psych class. Each week you have one quiz on lecture notes and on the readings for that week, just by going to class and skimming the readings i dont think i ever got lower than a B on the quizzes, and he curves them at the end. The only part about this class that sucks is the group project. It has to be 4000-5000 words and can be hard to write if you have a bad group. But overall the course was really interesting and relatively easy.
Peter Carruthers PHIL209N cblumenf 11/05/2014	The lectures are interesting but the quizzes are have a lot of trick questions, plus we don't get them back so it can be hard to know exactly what you missed in the readings. Which brings me to my next point, there are two papers you are expected to read a week which can be very long and very dense. Also this class is listed as a philosophy course, but it's more of a psych course. The test questions are released before hand, which is helpful. There is also a group project that is worth a large portion of your grade.
Peter Carruthers PHIL209N Expecting an A Anonymous 01/23/2013	I really really loved taking Phil209N with Carruthers. He is truly a brilliant man and I'm astounded by the books and papers he has published. I've even cited them in BSCI papers that I've done. Some of the topics can seem obvious and dry but a lot of his lectures are truly amazing and can't help but capture your intrigue. There's a quiz every week on usually VERY long empirical readings. Even though I've read these types of papers for my science courses I still found it difficult. The exams are not difficult as long as you don't slack off a lot. There was also a group paper to write which was incredible annoying. But as a professor he is very approachable and fair and does a brilliant job at presenting his material. And he has an awesome accent
Peter Carruthers PHIL209N Expecting an A Anonymous 12/21/2012	An excellent professor. Carruthers is one of the best in the field of philosophy of mind, and though he does not have a background in psychology, he does a great job of explaining findings in cognitive psychology and thinking about them critically. I'm a psyc major and I learned more psychology in this class than I did in many of my other psyc classes. The one downside for this class is the group project. I had a bad one and the papers are graded harshly. But I was still able to pull off an A by doing well on the quizzes and in-class exams. Overall I would recommend this course.