Didn't finish the class yet, but would like to post a review since I just want to, lol.

Great class. I have a personal interest in philosophy and in particular political philosophy.

Some people said the lectures are boring - to me they're not - she has a very positive vibe that is very bright and nice. This is a huge plus to the class because it makes listening to hour long lectures somewhat engaging and fun and nice. I believe she is a good person, but ultimately the question is: does she believe in Jesus Christ, God the Son, but that is a separate issue.

Truly, you don't have to do all the readings or all the lectures. Like the others said, just listen to and read the pertinent parts to your essay, as essays are the main grades for your class. But to keep you on your toes, they have pop quizzes to see if you read or listened to the lectures - but they're really easy - I copied off a lecture slide one time when I didn't know the answer and probably passed the quiz just fine - it's a pass or no pass. Easy.

Easy class and enjoyable. I can't say I'll get an A - not putting that much effort or sell-out. But it's a nice class. I'm very happy to have taken it.

But I must say, if you aren't philosophically minded or fit this kind of style of thinking, it can be hard. I know some people who are having hard times with writing the essay because the essays require comprehension of the lectures and require also reading comprehension of difficult to understand texts and also even requires your critique or analysis on these topics (which requires you to really understand the material). But if you're curious about philosophy and political philosophy, I recommend it. Even if you get a bad grade, if you pass, it is a good thing to learn. Political philosophy is interesting to me, so I'm biased in that way. It's a field that is philosophical, but has lots of practical implications - how our government should function and what rights/liberties do we have or ought to have. What is justice?

I chose this class as a GE very last minute but it ended up being my favorite class of the quarter. Since I'm not into science or medicine, I didn't expect to find biomedical ethics as interesting as I did. Dr. Gallagher gave very clear lectures and the slides were very useful for the essays. The lectures could be a little boring but all the information in them was very clear. I learned a lot and am so glad I took this class. I also really liked my TA and the discussion sections were really well organized. This class is especially relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Highly recommend!!

The class wasn't too bad if you're just looking for light work as a GE. Three essays are the only real work we have to worry about; although they graded the essays a little more harshly than I had been expecting. I wouldn't recommend taking this if it's online, though, because the professor turns off her video during lectures so if you get easily spaced out I can assure you that will happen.

Here's my comprehensive guide on Philos 6 (online)
The classes were held synchronously, but recorded and posted very soon after class ended so if you didn't attent live, it was completely fine. The first two weeks I actually did the reading for the class and it did help a bit, but it was SO. MUCH. READING. The amount of clarity I gained from the reading did not help enough to make the time commitment worth it. Honestly, google, talking to my TA, and bouncing ideas off of my classmates was much more helpful. Professor has slides that she uses, which contain direct quotes from the text + page numbers and by my second essay I really gave up on finding most of my own quotes from the text and just ripped them off her slides. Her slides were super important to my understanding of what the hell we were discussing in class because they always captured the essence of what the philosophers were trying to get at, so if you do anything... READ THROUGH THE SLIDES!!
The lecture itself was oftentimes dry and hard to pay attention to. I tried my best to take notes but Professor uses a lot of jargon and for someone who's never had real experience with philosophy or ethics, it was kind of hard to understand what she was saying live (I looked up stuff after class a lot).
The class itself has 3 essays, each one getting slightly longer and weighing more of your grade. there were also 4 'pop' quizzes, which are randomly pulled from the study questions that professor provides at the end of every lecture. there is quite a few of them and doing it each week was pretty time consuming, but I always tried to do them because the quizzes are essentially free points to buff your grade.
Your TA MATTERS IN THIS CLASS!!! A LOT!!! I had Shan, and we was lovely for creating discussion and the more philosophical aspect, but I was oftentimes too intimidated to speak in his class because it was almost always "What do you think about ____ Philosopher's ideas?" and some hypothetical situation, and the more experienced philosophers in the class always had some stunning, huge brained answer LOL. But he was an angel in office hours and very helpful when I asked for advice on revising my essay!
Overall, this class is a relatively easy GE if you know how to manage your time and if you're a decent writer and can BS your way through topics that you don't know much on. It also got me thinking about the world around me and started a lot of interesting discussion whenever I'd bring it up to my hallmates :) However, if you are not a good writer STEER CLEAR of this class, it's not worth it! GOOD LUCK!

This class was alright. I did not do any reading and just did the review questions based on the lectures to help me on the pop quizzes (which were just a specific question from the reviews). The three papers were alright as well. I used lecture videos to help me write the papers, which is probably why I did not go that much into depth. But, I rarely got any feedback and had to just deal with the grade given to me. I had an 89.5% and there was no rounding up so it was a bit frustrating. Nonetheless, this class is not too difficult, as I had no philosophy background and did alright in the class.

The majority of this class revolves around the midterms and the final. The ethical content of this class is not that tough, but writing the timed essays for the tests can be a bit difficult, considering there is no wrong or right answer. Participation in discussion counts for this class, and it is MORE than just showing up. The grade you get ultimately ends up in your TA's hands, since they grade your essay. The readings are long and not that interesting for the class, and the lectures feel REALLY long and there was so much writing on the slides.

Professor Gallagher is amazing. Her lectures are so clear and helpful. She also has office hours before papers are due that are very helpful to go to. The reading is dense and definitely will help you if you do it. The thinking in this class was not easy if you aren't accustomed to taking philosophy classes. However, it was interesting and the paper prompts were not very hard.

Gallagher's a pretty boring lecturer, I always fell asleep in class. The workload's not that bad if you don't do the reading, which honestly you don't need to do because they cover all of it in lecture and discussion. An A is pretty possible.

Some things about this class:
- I think getting an A in this class is definitely doable. It's not an easy A because you do have to put in the effort and to make sure that you at least skim through the readings and have a good understanding of the concepts to get a decent grade in the class.

- With that said, the lectures are about two hours long and they can get very tiring towards the end because she barely (if at all) takes breaks in between and she's kind of monotonous. However, every single thing that she mentions during lecture will come up on the midterm and the final with almost the same wording. Her slides alone won't really help you if you miss class and try to use it for reference, so the notes that you take in class is a good determinant of the amount of information that you need to know. If you think she said something that sounded pretty important, write it down.

- Like the previous reviews mentioned, your grade depends on your TA. I had a good TA that, during discussion, was able to clarify or add depth to a lot of the concepts that he talked about in class, so the essay and short answer portions of the exams were manageable. You can't skip discussion and it's pretty important especially if you don't have any background in ethics or philosophy because they teach you how to structure your arguments.

- As for the exams, they can be long and tiring because you have to write so much, but they're not too bad if you feel confident that you know the material. There are a few multiple choice questions, and for these ones you have to make sure you know the difference between different schools of thought, etc., because the differences can be very vague (but there is one right answer). The short answers are more open-ended because if you argue using one school of thought, you'd have a different answer than someone who uses another. The essay questions will be given to you beforehand and both times (midterm and final) you get to choose which one you do, so prepare your points beforehand so you don't lose time brainstorming during the test. There is no right answer for these writing portions, but they do want to make sure that your arguments make sense and that you show that you understand the material from lecture. I often got marked down for being too vague or for noting down ideas that don't really relate to my thesis, so I guess that's one thing to watch out for.

- The content is okay. They're interesting but the readings can be too long and boring (especially during the first few weeks). What I realized midway is that she goes through the readings and goes into detail about points that she wants you to know for the test, so even if you don't read it and just take notes on what she says about the reading during lecture, you're fine. She wouldn't test you on things she didn't mention during lecture.

- She gives back her exams, and while the questions don't repeat, it's good to go over it and see the feedback from your TA so that you don't get marked down the same thing next time. The grading scale for exams is calculated GPA-style or something, and I don't think it's curved because most people do well. The MCQ and short answers are graded to a 4.00 scale and the essay is graded on a separate 4.00 scale, and the average of those two is your total grade. She will send you a long email about how the grades were calculated, how the class did, and the cutoffs for an A, etc.

That's it I think! I didn't hate it, but I didn't really love it either. You get the grade that you work for and it's pretty fair. Some parts were really interesting to me and some were just meh. Don't stress too much if you want to/have to take this class, it will all turn out well in the end!

Gallagher is a super boring lecturer! She just goes off all for 75 minutes and expects you to grasp every detail she mentioned. The class is based off of the readings, so as long as you understand those you should be fine. Your TA really determines your grade, since they grade your midterms, finals, and participation. This is kind of unfair, since some TA's are a lot more lenient than others.