Achille Varzi

Varzi is such a sweet professor, however his lectures are impossibly draggy. I've seen maybe 10% of people actually take notes on the class while on their laptops because it's that painful to pay attention. The quizzes and exams are pretty fair to the lectures, but watch out for the true-false questions.

Professor Varzi is a gem of the philosophy department. So far, this is the best philosophy class I’ve taken at Columbia/Barnard. He’s a great lecturer—one of the rare professors who is excellent both as a scholar and as a teacher. Even though he doesn’t rely much on writing on the board or on PowerPoint slides, the course still feels very well structured. Lectures overall are clear and engaging. I love this guy. Take it no matter you are a philosophy major or minor, or just simply been curious about metaphysics and different views about the world.

This class is SO MUCH FUN and SO INTERESTING. Each class you read a different thought experiment and discuss it. As a class, you examine the thought experiment from every angle. It is also clear that Vazri is thinking just as hard as we are about the thought experiment and enjoying the new ways we have thought about it. Varzi is a wonderful, enthusiastic, and creative professor who cares deeply about his students and how we think.

Professor Varzi is an ideal teacher--he is brilliant in his field, he teaches it extremely clearly so that people new to the subject can learn easily, he is extremely friendly and approachable. The only negative comment that I might give about this class was that it could have taught more of the strictly formal uses of non-classical logic. Most of the formal training was in the mid-term and final exam. The assignments were not difficult, but it would have been more informative if we went over lots of proofs in class. And, though this was not necessarily the subject of the class, I would have been very interested to learn some metatheory about the logics that we studied.

I really enjoyed this class. Prof Varzi is a really cool guy and he presents the material clearly. Also, some of the funny little comments he makes are priceless. Though it would have been nice to move through the material at a faster pace... it was not boring at all. Even though there were like 30-50 people who actually attended the classes, the room was packed with well over 100 on test days. I would definately recommend going to the classes, because if you go to all the classes and do all the homework... there is really no need to study very much--or even at all. I had two minor issues with the class (neither of which are Prof Varzi's fault). First: the TA's. Maybe they really were intelligent and knowledgeable people, but they certainly didn't prove it when they tried teaching the class one day. They were saying stuff that was obviously incorrect and it made me really appreciate Prof Varzi. Thankfully, that was the only time I ever dealt with the TAs. Second: people do ask some really stupid questions. Especially when they start contributing retarded hypothetical situations that are completely ridiculous (but then again there are people like that in most classes). Even though those 2 things were annoying, the class was great and I would absolutely definitely recommend it! It's light in terms of workload, but you still feel like you are learning something, which is always n…

Introduction to Symbolic Logic, sentential logic, predicate logic, the use of connectives.

I love prof varzi and i would die for him

standard course content for metaphyics, what yu would expect

Philosophical methodology and intuitions

Probably the nicest guy in the entire world. He isn't the best teach I've ever had, but he was so understanding and willing to help out students that you can't help but love him. He's incredibly generous with his grading and really loves teaching it seems. The TA's are always available for help and definitely assist in making you understand. While I didn't like the material in the class that much, Professor Varzi was really kind, and it was refreshing to have a teacher like that.