Course Descriptions

Please refer to the UWM Schedule of Classes for each term before registering to confirm which classes are offered.

Spring 2026 Course Descriptions UWM Philosophy Department

PHILOS 101 – Introduction to Philosopy

  • LEC 001 TR 8:30 – 9:45 
  • Instructor: Hannah Sellfors sellfors@uwm.edu 
  • LEC 201 ONLINE 
  • LEC 401 MW 12:30 – 1:20 
  • Instructor: Elizabeth Silverstein silvers2@uwm.edu 

Are you happy? What is happiness? How do you know if you are happy? Is it important to be happy? What kind of work is one that would allow people to be happy? This course is framed around the basic question of what is happiness and how do we live a happy and fulfilling life? 

In this course, we will challenge the basic assumptions upon which we build our understanding of the world. We will ask: what is reality? How do we know? What can we know? What is an idea? What is meaning and truth? What are the causes of things? What is the good life? How do we know what is right? And more. By questioning in this way, we will seek to begin the journey toward knowing and thinking philosophically, so that we may know and think in ways that are secure, sound, and reflective. This is the practice of philosophy, philosophy as a way of life.  

This course is suitable for all, designed to challenge all of our preconceptions in an attempt to build a solid philosophical understanding of the world. This includes challenging dearly held beliefs. However, these challenges are not rejections or attacks on those beliefs. Instead, they are meant to make us strengthen our understanding and our means of believing and knowing, and of living fulfilling, and maybe even happy lives. 

PHILOS 111 – Introduction to Logic—Critical Reasoning

  • LEC 201 ONLINE 
  • LEC 401 MW 9:30 – 10:20 
  • LEC 402 MW 11:30 – 12:20 
  • Instructor: Matthew Knachel knachel@uwm.edu 
  • Jointly offered with and counts as a repeat of MATH 111 
  • Enrollment in one of the large lectures (401 and 402) requires enrollment in a discussion section. 

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 is 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. 

PHILOS 204 – Introduction to Asian Religions

  • LEC 201 ONLINE 
  • Instructor: Agust Magnusson magnusso@uwm.edu 
  • Enrollment in this course requires enrollment in a discussion section. 

The course will offer a philosophical examination of the primary religious traditions of Asia, with emphasis on Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. We will familiarize ourselves with the significant philosophical concepts of each religion and engage with these traditions in a philosophical dialogue that enables us to understand their contributions to our understanding of the nature of the human self, the nature of reality, and the nature of the divine. Although we will examine differences between views and critique philosophical argumentation, there is no intention to disparage or endorse any particular belief system. 

PHILOS 207 – Religion and Science

  • LEC 001 MW 10:00 – 11:15 
  • Instructor: Agust Magnusson magnusso@uwm.edu 

Is it “Science AND Religion” or “Science OR Religion”? In this course we will examine the often contentious relationship between scientific and religious inquiries into the nature of reality. Some of the primary questions we will examine are: What is the relationship between faith and reason? How are we influenced by the practices, institutions, and establishments of science and religion? Is it possible to adhere to a religious worldview yet still take seriously the claims and findings of modern science? What do the terms “science” and “religion” describe, anyway? We will philosophically examine the development of the modern scientific method and critically examine some notorious episodes in the history of science and religion, such as the trial of Galileo and the appearance of Darwin’s Origin of the Species. We will also examine the relationship between faith and reason through literature and film. 

PHILOS 211 – Elementary Logic

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. 

PHILOS 211-401 – ELEMENTARY LOGIC 

  • LEC 201 ONLINE 
  • Instructor: Matthew Knachel knachel@uwm.edu 
  • Prerequisite enforcement: satisfaction of GER QL-A; or graduate standing; or special student. 

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. 

LEC 401 MW 9:30 – 10:20  

Instructor: William Penn pennw@uwm.edu 

PHILOS 212 – Modern Deductive Logic

  • LEC 001 MW 1:00 – 2:15 
  • Instructor: William Penn pennw@uwm.edu 

In Elementary Logic (Philosophy 211), we learned how to symbolize English sentences and arguments in the formal languages of propositional logic and first-order predicate logic. We also learned formal procedures for determining validity and other logical properties of the sentences and arguments we symbolized. In this class, we extend our discussion by first introducing more complexity and abstraction to propositional and predicate logics, and then using this to analyze arguments involving non-truth-functional operators such as identity, modality, and temporality.  We will also spend a significant portion of the course moving beyond deductive logic to analyze inductive arguments and their forms in order to develop a sense of all of the major modes of inference and argument used by philosophers, scientists, and people at large.   

This course also satisfies the quantitative literacy (QLA) requirement through the assessment of homework problem sets and exams.   

This course satisfies UWM learning outcome a) – Students learn to identify the formation, traditions, and ideas essential to major bodies of historical, cultural, literary, or philosophical knowledge; and UWM learning outcome b) – Students learn to respond coherently and persuasively to the materials of humanities study through logical, textual, formal, historical, or aesthetic analysis, argument and/or interpretation; and UWM learning outcome c) – Students learn to apply diverse humanistic theories or perspectives to other branches of knowledge or issues of universal human concern.  This course satisfies UW System learning goal #1 – Students learn Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Natural World, including breadth of knowledge and the ability to think beyond one’s discipline, major, or area of concentration. This knowledge can be gained through the study of the arts, humanities, languages, sciences, and social sciences. 

PHILOS 237 – Technology, Values, and Society

  • LEC 201 ONLINE 
  • Instructor: Stanislaus Husi husi@uwm.edu 

ChatCTP is a shock to many. Questions about AI loom ever larger. Are we etching closer to the singularity? Is our world about to change forever? Many AI researchers issue dire warnings. How will AI change life, work, society, politics, culture? And how shall we respond and prepare? How shall we deal with the vast societal ramifications? Ethical issues pop up everywhere. In the class, we will attempt some philosophical reckoning: on the interconnection between AI and human agency. The technological transformation of choice and responsibility; the workplace and the economy; political discourse; control of information; creativity, art and culture at large. What are ethically better and worse ways for society to adjust? For each and every one of us to adjust? Moral philosophers must step up to keep up. Students complete this asynchronous online course by completing 10 modules at their own pace. 

PHILOS 241 – Introductory Ethics

This course provides an introduction to contemporary normative ethics. Normative ethics is concerned with the question: “what makes an action right or wrong?” We will explore four theories: consequentialism, Kantian ethics, contractualism, and contractarianism. Consequentialism takes the establishment of certain outcomes – the production or maximization of “good” (e.g., “welfare” or “happiness”), and the prevention or minimization of “bad” (e.g., “pain”) – to determine whether actions, rules, or policies are morally right or wrong. Kantian ethics understands morality to consist in those rules that autonomous agents could rationally “will” for all. Contractualism holds that morality consists in principles that mediate relations of mutual respect between free and equal persons. Contractarianism is the view that morality should be understood as a set of social practices or rules adopted by “enlightened” self-interested rational actors. Our discussion of all four moral views will involve readings from both historical sources and contemporary authors. 

PHILOS 243 – Moral Problems

  • Instructor: Miren Boehm boehmm@uwm.edu  

LEC 201 Capital Punishment

Are we ever justified in depriving someone of their life? Some believe that when a person commits murder, the state is justified in ending the life of the perpetrator. Others question whether it is ever morally acceptable for the state to execute people. Is death as punishment ever morally justified? There is also the moral question of whether we can ever ask a public servant to end the life of a person. The most common and convincing argument against capital punishment is that it ends up killing innocent people. Sometimes, innocent people are killed because of innocent mistakes in agents in the system, such as witnesses, prosecutors, and judges. But most worrisome of all is the presence of racism, sexism, and classism within the justice system. And the question is whether a flawed system should be allowed to administer the ultimate punishment of death. 

LEC 202 Animal Ethics

Do we have moral obligations toward non-human animals? May we do with them as we please? We start the class by discussing fundamental questions in animal ethics from different theoretical frameworks. We consider the question of the source of our moral status. Some argue that only beings that belong to the species Homo Sapiens deserve moral regard. Others argue that the human capacity to reason and to be moral agents makes humans and only humans the subjects of moral consideration. We will consider the uses and abuses of animals, the living conditions in factory farms, and their utility as food and as objects of experiments in research. Finally, we examine the question of their legal status: what protections, if any, do animals have and should have? 

LEC 203 Drugs and Addiction

Are the moral arguments in favor of consuming recreational drugs? Some argue that the pleasure they produce or their effect in enhancing creativity or drug induced religious experiences are enough justification. But do the alleged benefits outweigh the harms? And how does the contested phenomenon of “addiction” weigh in on moral considerations? What, exactly, is addiction supposed to be? Do we have a moral obligation to prevent people from taking drugs? Should drugs be legal or illegal? How do we balance freedom and harm? 

PHILOS 244 – Ethical Issues in Health Care

When health care professionals are faced with difficult decisions, have a clear moral framework to guide them is important. In this course we will begin by overviewing the ethical theories that shape our answers to serious ethical dilemmas. The course begins with an introduction to philosophical moral theories, and looks more closely at theories that apply particularly in biomedical ethics. Students will be introduced to and develop an understanding of the concept of autonomy and how it relates to issues in biomedical ethics, paying particularly close attention to how different social and cultural factors effect health care interactions. In particular, we will pay close attention to the role bias can play in medical research, diagnosis, and treatment. The course will be framed around issues of both provider and patient autonomy, paying close attention to threats to the autonomy of traditionally vulnerable populations. Students will also learn to apply these theories to particular moral dilemmas currently confronting health care providers, patients and their families, and society at large. These topics will include issues related to death and dying, pregnancy and birth, genetic testing and therapies, health care allocation, and research ethics. We will be particularly solicitous of issues that pertain to the health care issues of diverse populations and those that have been historically socially disadvantaged.   

PHILOS 304 – Buddhist Philosophy

  • LEC 001 TR 11:30 – 12:45 
  • Instructor: Agust Magnusson magnusso@uwm.edu 

This course will offer an overview of the main philosophical teachings of Buddhism. We will examine key teachings in the Buddhist sutras and critically examine key doctrines in Buddhist metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, including issues related to the nature of suffering, the nature of the self, and what is meant by enlightenment. We will explore a variety of Buddhist traditions and schools of thought, including Theravada, Mahayana, and Chan/Zen. We will also examine how Buddhist thought relates to contemporary issues, such as environmentalism and feminism. 

PHILOS 317/317G – Metaphysics

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. And we will explore both western and eAastern approaches to these topics. 

PHILOS 355/355G – Political Philosophy

This course will look at the great Enlightenment social contract theories that helped to shape the rise of liberal democratic ideals and institutions in the West during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: those of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. Some of the most significant criticisms of those theories from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also will be read, e.g., those advanced by David Hume and Karl Marx. We also will consider the main alternative approach to liberal political thinking in the West during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, utilitarianism, and in particular the views of J. S. Mill. The rise of feminism and feminist criticisms of political institutions and practices also will be considered, including writings by Harriet Taylor, J. S. Mill, and Susan M. Okin. The course will conclude by considering the recent revival of the social contract approach in political philosophy over the past few decades in the work of John Rawls. 

PHILOS 384/384G – The Philosophy of Law

  • LEC 001 MW 1:00 – 2:15 
  • Instructor: Nataliya Palatnik palatnik@uwm.edu 
  • Philos 384 & Pol Sci 384 are jointly offered; they count as repeats of one another. Prereq: jr st; 3 cr PHILOS or previous course in political theory or law studies recom. 

 In this course we will study some important recent work in Kantian practical philosophy (ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of action, etc.), including papers and book chapters by Christine Korsgaard, David Velleman, Tamar Shapiro, Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Lucy Allais, and others.   

PHILOS 432/432G – Great Thinkers of the Modern Period

  • LEC 001 TR 1:00 – 2:15 
  • Instructor: William Bristow bristow@uwm.edu 

We study great thinkers of the early modern period in Europe who played a fundamental role in shaping subsequent debates in western philosophy, science and culture. We begin with Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) by René Descartes, called ‘the father of modern philosophy.’ We then turn to John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), a work which is massively influential in the development of philosophy in Europe and America in 18th Century and beyond.  Locke’s empiricist conception of human knowledge and of science clashes fundamentally with Descartes’ conception of knowledge and science.  The contest between the philosophies of these two foundational thinkers provides a framework for much of subsequent philosophy in the western tradition. We supplement the study of Locke’s empiricism with study of George Berkeley’s Three Dialogues (1713). In the last several weeks of the course, we study two works by the influential Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (“Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” (1754), and Emile (1761)). At the end we study Mary Wollstonecraft’s classic Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) and also Olympe de Gouges’ “Declaration of the Rights of Women and of the Female Citizen.” The study of these works allow us to investigate and examine the ways in which early modern philosophy played transformed our understanding of ourselves and of nature in such a way as to lead to epochal political and social transformations. The overarching questions we study in this course are: what are we human beings, most fundamentally, and what is our proper place in our world, conceived both as realm of nature and as a human social-political world?   

PHILOS 516/516G – Language and Meaning

Philosophy in the early 20th century was marked by what came to be known as “the linguistic turn”. But by the late 20th century that turn was starting to be seen as overturned. Although we have corrected course, we haven’t abandoned the tools developed during that misadventure. Philosophers now take pride in carefully thinking about language and other, more broad, representational entities. But we try to do so without losing our way. In this course, we will learn about central issues in the philosophy of language, and how those issues relate to other philosophical projects. We will focus on theories of meaning and meaningfulness. Although our central focus will be on proper names, we will learn how the same sorts of questions of meaning and meaningfulness arise for indexicals, natural kind expressions, slurs, and more. We will also learn how these issues in the philosophy of language relate to issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics without subsuming those traditional fields. 

PHILOS 532/532G – PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS-Kierkegaard 

  • LEC 001 MW 11:30 – 12:45 
  • Instructor: Agust Magnusson magnusso@uwm.edu 

In this class we will examine the beautiful and weird writings of Søren Kierkegaard. Our focus will be on understanding Kierkegaard’s view of the self and the development of his existential philosophy as an answer to the systematic philosophies of the Enlightenment. Kierkegaard’s philosophy is a mode of engaging with anxiety, alienation, and despair, and we will not only be analyzing but also attempting to practice this therapeutic form of philosophy.   

PHILOS 681/681G – Seminar in Advanced Topics—Philosophy of AI

  • LEC 001 R 2:30 – 5:10 
  • Instructor: Stanislaus Husi husi@uwm.edu 

For this survey course on the philosophy of AI, we will work through David Chalmer’s excellent recent guide Reality +, Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy, supplementing his chapters with pertinent shorter articles. Our topics will be: AL and the problem of knowledge; reality and virtual reality; AI, mind, and consciousness; AI and ethics; AI and politics; AI and the meaning of life. We will also have a few guests to visit us throughout the seminar.  

This is a hybrid course and can be taken partly online/partly in person as well as entirely online. 

PHILOS 712 – Fundamentals of Formal Logic

  • LEC 001 W 1:00 – 2:15 
  • Instructor: William Penn pennw@uwm.edu 

In Elementary Logic (Philosophy 211), we learned how to symbolize English sentences and arguments in the formal languages of propositional logic and first-order predicate logic. We also learned formal procedures for determining validity and other logical properties of the sentences and arguments we symbolized. In this class, we extend our discussion by first introducing more complexity and abstraction to propositional and predicate logics, and then using this to analyze arguments involving non-truth-functional operators such as identity, modality, and temporality.  We will also spend a significant portion of the course moving beyond deductive logic to analyze inductive arguments and their forms in order to develop a sense of all of the major modes of inference and argument used by philosophers, scientists, and people at large.   

This course also satisfies the quantitative literacy (QLA) requirement through the assessment of homework problem sets and exams.   

This course satisfies UWM learning outcome a) – Students learn to identify the formation, traditions, and ideas essential to major bodies of historical, cultural, literary, or philosophical knowledge; and UWM learning outcome b) – Students learn to respond coherently and persuasively to the materials of humanities study through logical, textual, formal, historical, or aesthetic analysis, argument and/or interpretation; and UWM learning outcome c) – Students learn to apply diverse humanistic theories or perspectives to other branches of knowledge or issues of universal human concern.  This course satisfies UW System learning goal #1 – Students learn Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Natural World, including breadth of knowledge and the ability to think beyond one’s discipline, major, or area of concentration. This knowledge can be gained through the study of the arts, humanities, languages, sciences, and social sciences. 

PHILOS 790 – Advanced Topics in Philosophy—Philosophy of Science, Scientific Models and Modeling

  • LEC 001 W 3:30 – 6:10 
  • Instructor: William Penn pennw@uwm.edu 

One of the key areas of study in the philosophy of science is the study of scientific models.  We use models in science in every field.  We model data to form fit curves and filter out noise in our experiments.  We model experimental systems to locate and name points of intervention and key empirical practices.  We model systems more theoretically to describe their key features.  There are models of models, models meant to describe the world, and models meant to specify theories.  In short, models appear in science in a diverse array of situations and are used with a diverse array of goals.   

In this course, we will systematically study these aspects of scientific models and the practice of modeling.  We will begin by looking at a host of models, and trying to form a taxonomy of model kinds within the history of science, and including models from most fields of science.  Next we will study models as an interpretation of scientific theory.  Then, we will study models as a representation of the world, and the means by which we can say that they represent the world.  Finally (and for the majority of the course), we will study the various interesting questions that arise once we understand this baseline:  minimalism, inconsistency, model levels and interlevel relationships, how we build models, how we use simulations, AI models, robustness, realism, validation, model stability and the ethical issues involved in modeling practice, such as the ways in which models aid and inhibit the scientific community qua sociopolitical community.   

This course is designed for philosophy graduate students with any degree science background. 

PHILOS 941 – Seminar in Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy—Contemporary Kantian Practical Thought

  • LEC M 3:30 – 6:10 
  • Instructor: Nataliya Palatnik palatnik@uwm.edu 

This course will be an in-depth study of Kant’s practical thought. Most of the course will be devoted to careful reading of Kant’s key texts on practical philosophy, focusing in particular on the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason, supplemented by selections from the Critique of Pure Reason, The Metaphysics of Morals, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, and other works. Special attention will be paid to Kant’s conception of practical agency, his justification of morality and freedom, and his moral psychology. We will also consider some important recent works in Kantian moral theory, including papers and book chapters by Barbara Herman, Andrews Reath, Lucy Allais, Owen Ware, and others. 

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