Philosophy 101 – Introduction to Philosophy: Reflections on the Human Condition (HU)

LEC 402 MW 10:00 – 10:50 CRT 175
LEC 403 MW 12:00 – 12:50 PHY 137
Instructor: Edward Hinchman, hinchman@uwm.edu
Enrollment in one of the large lectures (402 or 403) requires enrollment in a discussion section

This course is an introduction to Western Philosophy. Students need not have any background in philosophy, or any plans for further study. The course has three broad aims:

1. to introduce students to the tradition of philosophical argument in the West via primary texts,
2. to teach students how in general to make and evaluate philosophical arguments,
3. to demonstrate to any student who cares to participate actively how exciting and even fun philosophy can be.

Since philosophy is simply informed public reflection on what we’re up to as we try to do and believe what we ought to do and believe – as Socrates put it, “What we are talking about is how one should live” – I hope that by the end of the term the third aim of the course will have taken priority over the other two.

Philosophy 101, Introduction to Philosophy: Selected Topics & Issues (HU)

LEC 001 W 6:30 — 9:10 CRT 109
Instructor: TBA

We will look at a representative selection of topics from the history of philosophy and current philosophical debates: ethics, social and political philosophy, the scope and nature of our knowledge of the world, the nature of the self and mind.

Philosophy 111 – Informal Logic – Critical Reasoning (HU)

LEC 001 MW 11:00 – 12:15 BOL B68
LEC 002 MW 2:00—3:15 BOL B79
LEC 203 ONLINE WEB
Instructor: Matthew Knachel, knachel@uwm.edu

There’s an ancient view, still widely held, that what makes human beings special—what distinguishes us from the “beasts of the field”—is that we are rational. What does rationality consist in? That’s a vexed question, but one possible response goes roughly like this: we manifest our rationality by engaging in certain activities, chief among them the activity of making claims and backing them up with reasons—that is, constructing arguments.

This reasoning activity can be done well and it can be done badly—it can be done correctly or incorrectly. Logic is the discipline that aims to distinguish good reasoning from bad.

Since reasoning is central to all fields of study—indeed, since it’s arguably central to being human—the tools developed in logic are universally applicable. Anyone can benefit from studying logic by becoming a more self-aware, skillful reasoner.

It is possible to approach the study of logic more or less formally. A more formal approach abstracts from natural language and develops sophisticated artificial symbol-languages within which it’s possible precisely to identify the logically relevant features of arguments. This approach has many virtues, but it is only one among many, and it focuses on only one kind of argument (deductive). In this class, we explore a diverse collection of methods and principles for evaluating many different kinds of arguments. We take a very brief look at the formal techniques mentioned above, but spend most of our time studying arguments presented in natural language, as they occur in everyday reasoning.

Philosophy 192 – First-Year Seminar: Philosophical Clash of Political Ideologies (HU)

SEM 001 TR 11:00-12:15 CRT 203
Instructor: Stan Husi, husi@uwm.edu
Freshmen only. Audit never allowed.

This is an election year. We will be hearing plenty of loud political rhetoric. Yet the by now so familiar heated exchange of political soundbites hardly allows for much reflection on the deeper visions and ideologies that have informed Western politics and have animated more systematic thinkers and commentators. In this seminar, we will take a closer look at the major political visions of our age: conservatism, progressive and classical liberalism, socialism, libertarianism, and some identity politics. We will read and discuss sensible, accessible, and engaging statements of these competing visions, and their attempts at coming to terms with the various challenges facing the US today. We will discuss the merit of traditions, the ideals of liberty and equality and their interplay, the significance of political and civil rights, the engines of economic prosperity and opportunity, issues of fairness and social justice, order and national security, and the role of identity. We will approach these controversies with an open mind, respectful and willing to understand where people are coming from with whom we might find ourselves in vigorous disagreement. The format for the seminar is going to be conversational and discussion-based, designed to empower students to take an active role in class. Ideally, the seminar will comprise a plurality of viewpoints, allowing us to learn from each other. Reading assignments will be fun, relevant, and quite manageable. Students will work together in small groups on one project, the results of which they will present in class. They will write three short memos.

Philosophy 192 – First-Year Seminar: How to get a Time Machine, Lessons from Philosophy (HU)

SEM 002 MW 11:00-12:15 CRT 203
Instructor: Joshua Spencer, spence48@uwm.edu
Freshmen only. Audit never allowed.

One day, while digging around in your backyard, you find some odd mechanical blueprints buried in a box under an old tree. Intrigued, you follow the blueprints and construct what turns out to be a time machine. For your inaugural journey, you take the machine back in time. Realizing that the blueprints might be used to build further time machines, which then might be used to wreak havoc on history, you decide to hide them away—you bury them in a box under a young sapling. There they stay until, sometime in the future, you dig them up to build a time machine. How old are those blueprints? Are they just about the same age as the tree under which you discovered them, or are they infinitely old? If they are infinitely old, why haven’t they crumbled and deteriorated from age? On your way back to the time machine, you encounter a threatening young man who tries to rob you at gun point. A flash of light distracts him and you leap for his gun. After a brief scuffle, you gain the upper hand and hold your would-be robber at gun point. You could pull the trigger and rid the world of this outlaw. Your hand is steady and you have everything it takes to shoot the man. However, unbeknownst to you, that man is your own great-great-grandfather. You can’t shoot him! For, if you did, you wouldn’t exist and hence wouldn’t be around to shoot him. Are you, then, really free? Does this kind of case show us something about our concepts of freedom and moral responsibility?

In this class, we will engage with short fiction to extract and discuss interesting philosophical questions. Some of the fiction we encounter will involve time travel and others not. Robert Heinlein, Ursula LeGuin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Ted Chang are some of the authors we may discuss.

Philosophy 204 – Introduction to Asian Religions (HU)

LEC 401 MW 10:00-10:50 END 107
Instructor: Ágúst Magnússon, magnusso@uwm.edu
Enrollment in the large lecture (401) also requires enrollment in a discussion section.

This course offers a philosophical exploration of the primary religious traditions of South Asia and China. We will examine teachings on the nature of reality, the nature of the divine, and the nature of the human self through the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. Some of the primary questions we will explore in light of these traditions include: What is happiness and how do we achieve it? What is enlightenment? and What is the purpose of human existence? We will also look at the philosophical implications of specific spiritual practices such as meditation, yoga, and tai chi.

This is an introductory course and no previous experience in philosophy is required.

Philosophy 211 – Elementary Logic (HU, QLB)

LEC 001 W 6:30—9:10 CRT 309
Instructor: TBA
LEC 202 ONLINE WEB
Instructor: Matthew Knachel, knachel@uwm.edu

LEC 403 MW 10:00 – 10:50 BOL B52
LEC 404 MW 12:00 – 12:50 END 107
Instructor: Michael Liston, mnliston@uwm.edu
Enrollment in one of the large lectures (403 or 404) requires enrollment in a discussion section.

Humans are reasoning animals, and logic is the study of the rules and principles of correct reasoning, the science of what follows from what. Logic know-how is a skill, one of the most important skills you will ever develop, both for your college and later career and for your everyday life. It teaches you how to analyze concepts, ideas, arguments, and break them down into their simplest components. You are then in a position to recognize the relationships between those components, to see how they are connected together (or not), and thereby to understand how and why one thing follows from another. At the same time, it teaches you how to construct ‘paths of reasoning’, how to get from one idea to another, how, for example, to determine what is the best course of action in a particular situation.

Apart from its application in virtually every field of study, the study of logic will help you develop your analytical and quantitative skills, your writing skills, your communication skills, and your day to day reasoning. You’ll become a better thinker and a better reasoner. You may not be aware that you are doing so, but you’re using logic now, and you’ll use it every day, for the rest of your life.

This is an introductory course in formal (symbolic) logic intended for students who have had no previous work in logic. There will be 3 exams and weekly homework assignments. The course satisfies General Education Humanities and QLB requirements. The course also satisfies the L&S Formal Reasoning Requirement for the B.A. degree.

Philosophy 215 – Belief, Knowledge, and Truth: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (HU)

LEC 001 TR 11:00 – 12:15 CRT 209
Instructor: Elizabeth Silverstein, silvers2@uwm.edu

This course is an introduction to epistemology, the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with knowledge. The course will introduce students to discussions of fundamental questions about knowledge including the idea of a theory of knowledge, problems with the philosophical conception of knowledge, and the relation of knowledge to skepticism.

Philosophy 241, Introductory Ethics (HU)

LEC 401 MW 1:00 – 1:50 LUB N116
Instructor: Nataliya Palatnik, palatnik@uwm.edu

Enrollment in the large lecture (401) also requires enrollment in a discussion section.
Most people agree that morality involves standards that should be taken seriously in guiding conduct and assessing our claims against others. Yet various moral philosophers have offered very different accounts of what morality is and why we should care about it. We will study four basic philosophical approaches to morality and consider how they have shaped the history of ethical thought as well as their influence on moral philosophy today. We will first consider ethical rationalism, which takes moral principles to describe an independent order of values fixed in the nature of things, and the ideal-spectator approach, which takes morally wrong actions to be those an impartial sympathetic observer would disapprove of. We will then turn to Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy, which grounds morality in rational principles which all reasonable agents possess in common in virtue of their status as rational beings, and contractualism, according to which the correct moral principles are those which would be agreed to by all reasonable beings as a basis for their community. We shall see how these basic approaches get reflected in theories of social and economic justice.

Philosophy 243 – Moral Problems (HU)

LEC 201: Abortion ONLINE (09/06—10/08/16)
LEC 202: Euthanasia ONLINE (10/10—11/12/16)
LEC 203: Global Poverty ONLINE (11/14—12/14/16)
Instructor: Miren Boehm, boehmm@uwm.edu

Note: LEC 201, 202, & 203 are worth one credit each. You do not have to enroll for all three sections.
Retakable w/chg in topic to 6 cr max.

243-201 Abortion: What would it mean for abortion to be morally wrong? What is the moral status of the fetus? Does it have a right to life? What is the concept of a person? What does it mean to have a right to one’s body? What does feminist theory say about abortion? What does religion have to say about the ethics of abortion? In this course we will address these and other difficult philosophical questions.

243-202 Euthanasia: Why would there by anything morally wrong with assisting someone in ending her life when she is suffering and wants to end her life? What is death? What is a person? What is personal dignity? What is ordinary as opposed to extraordinary medical treatment? What is the moral difference between killing and letting die? In this course we will address these and other difficult philosophical problems.
243-203 Global Poverty: This course raises some fundamental questions regarding the nature of our relation to the less fortunate and to the victims of discrimination. It raises questions about our individual obligations to others and our collective obligations to others. We shall examine and question our conceptual, moral schemas, starting with our distinction between obligation and charity. We discuss the topics of the distribution of responsibilities in a world swamped in suffering, the population problem, the problem of gender inequalities across the world, and the rights of individuals in the global community.

Philosophy 244 – Ethical Issues in Health Care: Contemporary Problems (HU)

LEC 001 R 6:00-8:40 SAB G28
Instructor: Kristen Tym, tymk@uwm.edu
Retakable w/chg in topic to 6 cr max.

This course will provide a general overview of many of the challenging ethical issues faced in health care delivery today. We will begin the course with an introduction of ethical theories and other approaches to moral decision-making. These theories and approaches will then be applied to ethical problems currently confronting health care providers, patients and their families, and society at large. Issues we will consider include informed consent and confidentiality, futility and withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, euthanasia and assisted suicide, assisted reproduction, genetics, allocation of scarce resources and research ethics

Philosophy 244 – Ethical Issues in Health Care: Bioethics (HU)

LEC 202 ONLINE
Instructor: Elizabeth Silverstein, silvers2@uwm.edu
Retakable w/chg in topic to 6 cr max.

This course will provide a general overview of many of the challenging ethical issues faced in health care delivery today. We will begin the course with an introduction of ethical theories and other approaches to moral decision-making. These theories and approaches will then be applied to ethical problems currently confronting health care providers, patients and their families, and society at large. Issues we will consider include informed consent and confidentiality, futility and withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, euthanasia and assisted suicide, assisted reproduction, genetics, and allocation of scarce resources.

Philosophy 250 – Philosophy of Religion (HU)

LEC 001 MW 12:30-1:45 CRT 309
Instructor: Justin Mooney, mooneyj@uwm.edu

Does God exist? Are miracles possible? Is there life after death? What is the relationship between faith and reason? Could more than one religion be true? Philosophers have debated these questions for centuries and continue to debate them today. In this course we will critically engage with their ideas and arguments as we survey the lively field of philosophy of religion.

Philosophy 317 – Metaphysics

LEC 001 MW 3:30—4:45 CRT 124
Instructor: Joshua Spencer, spence48@uwm.edu
Prereq: jr st. & 3 cr in philos.

Metaphysics is the study of the fundamental nature of reality (or something like that). In this class, I propose that we learn what metaphysics is by doing metaphysics. We’ll seek answers to some of the following question: What is it for something to exist? What is space? What is time? What is possibility? And what are they all like? What is causation and what are the laws of nature? How, exactly, do we fit into the world? Are we just another body governed by the laws of nature and if so do we ever act freely? We’ll explore answers to these questions by reading and discussing recent work in metaphysics.

Philosophy 337 – Environmental Ethics

LEC 001 TR 9:30—10:45 CRT 209
Instructor: Elizabeth Silverstein, silvers2@uwm.edu
Prereq: jr st.

Have you ever asked yourself any of the following questions: Why should I care about the environment? What is my relationship to the natural world? What is my responsibility to the environment?

The course will cover major theories of environmental ethics and their practical applications. We will cover various theoretical approaches to environmental ethics including: Animal rights, the Land Ethic; deep ecology; social ecology; ecofeminism; and rethinking the good life. This will include discussions about the moral value of non-human life and nature; human responsibility to the environment; and various contemporary moral issues related to the environment including: wildlife conservation; poverty as an environmental problem; the ecology of property rights; cost-benefit analysis and environmental policy; and environmental activism. By the end of this course you will be acquainted with concepts and methods of philosophical ethics that apply to issues regarding humankind’s dealings with the natural world; be able to critically assess alternative approaches to, and defenses of, a code of responsibility to nature; have a repertory of resources and skills with which to formulate your own environmental ethic; and be able to articulate and defend your own ideas with clarity, consistency and coherence.

Philosophy 355 – Political Philosophy

LEC 001 TR 11:00 – 12:15 BOL B68
Instructor: William Bristow, bristow@uwm.edu
Prereq: jr st, Philos 242(P) or a course in ethics.

What is the state (the polis) and what are its most fundamental functions? What are the basic kinds of states, and which are best, and why? What can justify (if anything) the employment of force by a state against its citizens? What is the fair or just way to distribute the benefits or goods of society among society’s members, and how is the just distribution best determined? What rights and privileges do individuals retain in relation to their government, and which are or can be ceded to the government? Do people always retain the right to revolt against the political order when there are abuses of power? How is the political unit related to other social organizations, such as the civil society and the family? — In this course we examine these and related questions by reading classic texts in the history of political philosophy (eg., Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) as well as contemporary political theorists (eg., Rawls, Nozick). We will apply the theories we study to contemporary questions of justice.

Philosophy 384 – The Philosophy of Law

LEC 001 MW 9:30 – 10:45 CRT 309
Instructor: Nataliya Palatnik, palatnik@uwm.edu
Prereq: jr st; 3 cr philos or previous course in political theory or law studies recom.
Philos 384 & Pol Sci 384 are jointly offered.

In this course we will examine fundamental issues in the philosophy of law, including, among other things, the nature and content of law, the relationship between law and morality, the obligation to obey the law, and the justification of punishment. Readings will be drawn from both historical and contemporary sources.

Philosophy 430 – History of Ancient Philosophy

LEC 001 TR 2:00 – 3:15 NWQ 1871
Instructor: Nataliya Palatnik, palatnik@uwm.edu
Prereq: jr st & 3cr in philos

The history of philosophy is sometimes said to have begun in 585 B.C.E., when the Greek philosopher, Thales, is said to have predicted an eclipse of the sun. This, of course, is a somewhat arbitrary convenience, and there is nothing particularly philosophical about predicting an eclipse of the sun (what Thales is known for ‘philosophically’ is his conjecture that everything, at bottom, is made of water!). But Thales’s prediction is taken to be representative of a more general tendency away from understanding the natural world through a ‘mythological’ perspective, and towards an understanding of it through a more ‘rationalistic’, ‘scientific’ perspective. It is this general tendency that perhaps better characterizes the beginnings of philosophy. In this course we will consider how this tendency plays out in the thought of some of the central figures in early Greek philosophy – the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle – in order to understand how their ideas and theories about the natural world and human nature resulted in the development of natural science, ethics, and metaphysics. Note that despite its title this is a philosophy course, not a history course – we will be ‘doing’ philosophy with these great thinkers.

Philosophy 535 – Philosophical Topics in Feminism: Sex, Gender, & Social Construction

LEC 001 R 3:30 – 6:10 CRT 607
Instructor: Andrea Westlund, westlund@uwm.edu
Retakable w/chg in topic to 6 cr max. Prereq: jr st; a course in philos or women’s studies.

Philos 535 and WGS (Wmns) 535 are jointly offered; with same topic, they count as repeats of one another.
Many feminist philosophers have argued that gender is a social construct. In this course, we will explore this thesis in detail. We will begin by unpacking the very idea of social construction, and by considering various different senses in which gender and other identity categories (race, disability, etc.) might be socially constructed. We will go on to examine contemporary versions of gender realism and gender essentialism. Finally, we will consider the nature of sex identity and the relationship between sex and gender. Our focus will be on recent work in feminist metaphysics and philosophy of gender, with some attention to related work in queer and transgender theory. Readings will include selections from philosophers such as Linda Alcoff, Judith Butler, Sally Haslanger, Rae Langton, Jennifer Saul, Laurie Shrage, and Charlotte Witt, among others.

Philosophy 551 – Aristotle

LEC 001 MW 2:00 – 3:15 CRT 607
Instructor: Richard Tierney, rtierney@uwm.edu
Prereq: jr st; 3 cr in philos; Philos 430(R).

In this course we will be studying Aristotle’s concept of nature, primarily with a view to understanding that concept and the related concepts of natural change and natural substance, but also with a view to certain current issues in Metaphysics and Philosophy of Mind. We will begin by considering change and the nature of inanimate substances, and progress to consider the nature of animate substances – their form, or soul. Perhaps we’ll ultimately get to consider the Active Intellect – what it is, and what its relation is to human thought and action. If we can figure that out, we will have achieved something! (We won’t.) Along the way we will address such questions as: ‘What is change, and how is change possible?’, ‘What is a natural substance?’, ‘How does a natural substance come into being?’, ‘How do animate substances differ from inanimate substances, and artifacts?’, and ‘Do animate substances have a separable soul?’. We will be reading significant portions of the Physics, Posterior Analytics, On Generation and Corruption, Meteorology, On the Soul, and Generation of Animals, as well as selections from the Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and other works (all in translation).

Philosophy 554 – Special Topics in the History of Modern Philosophy: Projectivism, Realism, and Quasi-Realism

LEC 001 MW 3:30 – 4:45 CRT 607
Instructor: Miren Boehm, boehmm@uwm.edu
Retakable w/chg in topic to 9 cr max. Prereq: jr st; 3 cr in philos; Philos 432(R); or cons instr.

Is greenness a real property of grass? Is wrongness a real property of murder? Such questions are as old as philosophy itself. And we are still asking these questions. In this class we read both classic figures like Locke on the distinction between primary and secondary qualities and Hume on the mind’s projection of necessity and moral properties onto the world. Then we delve into current debates on these fascinating issues which center on the fundamental question of the nature of reality and objectivity. We will focus heavily on Simon Blackburn’s quasi-realist interpretation.

Philosophy 681 – Seminar in Advanced Topics: Ethics and Emotions: Sentimentalism

SEM 001 TR 2:00—3:15 CRT 607
Instructor: Stan Husi, husi@uwm.edu
Prereq: sr st & 12 cr in philos at 300-level or above; or grad st. Retakable w/chg in topic to 9 cr max. Consent required to audit.

Emotions are receiving increasing attention in moral philosophy and metaethics. Philosophers of the broadly sentimentalist tradition believe they are not just important, but actually key to understanding value, meaning and morality. Even though sentimentalism is currently experiencing a noticeable upswing, in no small part due to the development of the theory by the illustrious coauthors Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson, the tradition reaches rather far back, at least to the Scottish Enlightenment championed by Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith. Hume characterized the contours of the tradition aptly when he wrote “The final sentence which pronounces characters or actions amiable or odious, praiseworthy or blamable depends on some internal sense or feeling which nature has made universal in the whole species.” In rough terms, sentimentalism holds morality and value to be grounded in sentiment, and thus advances a broadly stance-dependent metaethical position. In this course, we will critically assess the sentimentalist position, its challenges and prospects, as presented by its earlier to its most recent advocates, culminating in the yet unpublished draft of D’Arms and Jacobson’s monograph “Rational Sentimentalism.”

Philosophy 758 – Seminar in Major Philosophers: Berkeley’s Immaterialism

LEC 001 T 11:00 – 1:40 CRT 607
Instructor: Margaret Atherton, atherton@uwm.edu
Prereq: grad st; cons instr. Retakable w/chg in topic to 9 cr max.

George Berkeley has had a long standing but ambiguous reputation. The poet, William Butler Yeats, said that Berkeley expressed the Irish temperament when he “proved all things a dream” but Berkeley’s editor, A.A. Luce said that Berkeley aligned “we Irish” with common sense. Many have supposed that the claims Berkeley is most closely associated with—that there is no matter and that the only things that exist are ideas and minds that have them–are totally ludicrous. But others are convinced that it is possible to find Berkeley siding with common sense. Still others question whether Berkeley ever intended to ally himself with common sense. At the heart of these disagreements is a central puzzle: What are the principles for which Berkeley is arguing? Is he an idealist? An immaterialist? Or something else? Berkeley’s most famous claims appear only in two of his works, Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. If the denial of matter constitutes the main tenet of Berkeleianism, why did Berkeley suppress all mention of it in his other works? We will try to gain answers to these questions by following Berkeley’s own advice and reading through these two works in turn from beginning to end, although, as he also suggested, we will begin with the “non-immaterialist” work which he prepared at the same time as the later two, Essay towards a New Theory of Vision.

Philosophy 790 – Advanced Topics in Philosophy: Graduate Student Writing Workshop

SEM 001 T 3:30 – 6:10 CRT 607
Instructor: Blain Neufeld, neufeld@uwm.edu
Prereq: grad st; add’l repreqs depending on topic. Retakable w/chg in topic to 9 cr max.

In this workshop, graduate students will present their work in progress and receive peer comments on their work and writing. Students will have the opportunity to hone their presentation skills, sharpen their writing, and develop their philosophical ideas.

Philosophy 903 – Seminar in Epistemology: Pragmatism

SEM 001 MW 5:00 – 6:15 CRT 607
Instructor: Robert Schwartz, schwartz@uwm.edu
Prereq: grad st & cons instr. Retakable w/chg in topic to 9 cr max.

Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in Pragmatism, not only in philosophy, but also in political science, sociology, cultural studies, and many other areas of intellectual pursuit. This seminar will examine main themes, problems, and trends in Pragmatism. It will start focusing on the writings of Peirce, James, and Dewey. The implications of their ideas to current controversies concerning truth, knowledge, relativism, and inquiry will be explored. Throughout the seminar, questions will also be raised about the need to rethink the goals and methods of philosophy, ending with challenges to assumptions underlying some major issues in meta-ethics.