PHIL 2350

Really fun topics and challenges your perspective of the world. Two lectures + One Discussion per week. Excellent TAs and the professor is very friendly. He always stays after class for questions. The lectures are not that engaging, it usually introduces an argument and provides a couple of objections. Our paper had to tackle these moral challenges and explain through your own understanding of the subject. The discussion sections are a must-go; it not only helps you absorb the material; but also helps your term paper and argument building. Believe me, your view of the world and mind would be completely changed after taking this course.

This was my first ever philosophy class. I feel like the instructors did a great job at gearing the class towards newcomers like me, they always explained philosophical concepts in ways that were easy to understand and basically assumed I walked in with zero background in philosophy (which I did). The lectures were all recorded but discussion attendance (once a week) was mandatory for a participation grade. My TA was Prof. Welchance, who was awesome at breaking down concepts in ways that were easy to understand.
I found the content pretty interesting. To be clear, this is not a class about the "ethics of AI" (like copyright and stuff), it's more like Turing Test stuff (like, "what is intelligence?" or "do AIs have real thoughts or do they just simulate thoughts?") It was kind of all over the place, sometimes it felt like we were just using AI as an excuse to talk about more pervasive questions in the field of philosophy (which personally didn't bother me at all). Other times, we got into some more nitty gritty details about how AIs work. It was really interesting to think about philosophical questions that even those who are very knowledgable about the technical details of AI aren't able to answer.

This is my favorite class I've taken at UVA thus far. It was my very first philosophy class ever and while I did feel overwhelmed at times, in hindsight, I had almost all the skills I needed walking in and whichever ones I didn't have, Professor Irving and the TAs taught over the course of the semester.
The course material itself was super interesting. We started the semester talking about machines and what makes them intelligent. We talked a lot about the Turing Test and its variations, as well as the main philosophers that worked with it. The second part of the class talked about beings and what makes a self. It's basically the philosophy of AI. Professor Irving live streams and records all of his lectures, so it's not necessary to go to class. His office hours are super helpful and incredibly underused. I went five or six times and was often the only student there. He helped a ton with the essays, and always re-explained the concepts he went over in lecture. James Reed was my TA, and he was great. He was always available to meet, and gave great ideas for the papers as well. Going to Irving's office hours is great, but if you really want to maximize your time, I recommend just meeting with your TA, because they grade your papers. The assignments were definitely challenging, but the grading was very forgiving because they knew that a lot of people had never written a philosophy paper before.
We had to write three papers. The first one was an argument summary and response, which was a relatively easy paper to start with. Irving was really helpful with this in office hours. The second paper required you to have a conversation with Copilot and then write a paper using that conversation to determine if Copilot is intelligent or not. Really interesting, and definitely more challenging than the argument summary. The third paper felt the most like a traditional essay, and I found it to be the easiest. All the papers were at least somewhat based in class material. Irving assigned papers to read for almost every class, and they're all very long and confusing. I read the first few, fell behind pretty quickly, and then stopped reading them unless they pertained to a paper. I don't think I suffered at all because I didn't read, since all of the material on the final was things that we had talked about in class.
I was really nervous for the final. It was all written, and it's not like you have a bank of terms and definitions you can memorize. However, I did find the short answer part to be really similar to the AP Psych exam FRQs, with the whole define and apply format. It was definitely a lot easier than I expected. Go to the study session that they have and definitely re-read notes/rewatch lectures and do the practice that they give you.
Overall, I really loved this class. Professor Irving is great, the TAs are great, and the material is really interesting and relevant. Definitely take this class if you have the chance.