Course Descriptions

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

Spring 2025 Course Descriptions UWM Philosophy Department

PHILOS 101 – Introduction to Philosophy

LEC 001 TR 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM; CRT 109
Instructor: Mckenzie Maccaux

LEC 201 ONLINE
LEC 402 MW 12:30 – 1:20; BOL B52
Instructor: Elizabeth Silverstein; silvers2@uwm.edu

Students who register for 401 must also register for discussion sections.

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 12:30 – 1:20; TBD
LEC 402 MW 3:30 – 4:20; TBD
Instructor: Matthew Knachel; knachel@uwm.edu

Prerequisite enforcement: a grade of C or better in MATH 90 (P) or MATH 102 (P); or grade of D in MATH (P); or MATH 95 (P); or Math Placement Level 10.

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

The course will offer a philosophical examination of the primary religious traditions of Asia, with emphasis on Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. The primary purpose of the course is to familiarize the student with the significant philosophical concepts of each religion and to 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 211 – Elementary Logic

LEC 201 ONLINE
LEC 401 MW 1:30 – 2:20; TBD
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.

PHILOS 212 – Modern Deductive Logic

LEC 001 MW 10:00 – 11:15; TBD
Instructor: Matthew Knachel; knachel@uwm.edu

Prerequisite: grade C or better in PHILOS 211 (P).

This course picks up where Philosophy 211, Elementary Logic, leaves off, further exploring relational predicate logic with identity—both proofs and translations from English.

At this stage, we will have in hand a relatively comprehensive version of first-order “classical” logic. From there, it is customary to subject this system to theoretical scrutiny, to engage in “meta-theory”. We will consider the relationship between our logic’s proof system and its semantic properties—truth, validity, and so on. In particular, we aim to prove that our system is both sound and complete—that every proof corresponds to a valid argument (soundness), and that every valid argument has a proof (completeness). To prove these things rigorously, we will first have to develop a more sophisticated “model-theoretic” semantics for our logical language, expressed in set-theoretic terms. So, along the way to our meta-theorical goals, we’ll learn a bit of set theory, some new proof techniques (esp. mathematical induction), alternative deductive systems (sequents, axiom systems, etc.), additional meta-theoretical results (the deduction theorem, compactness, etc.), and other miscellaneous facts of philosophical interest.

One could spend a whole semester exploring meta-theory, but we will not. Rather, the aim is to gain exposure to a variety of topics in formal logic that one may encounter in the course of one’s philosophical studies. We will cover at least one “extension” of classical logic—a system that merely adds to the existing logical system—namely, modal logic. We will also look at some “deviant” logics—those that alter various aspects of the classical version—including at least some basic three-valued logics and “paraconsistent” logics. There are many extensions and deviations to explore. Our choices will be guided by philosophical interest, including especially the particular interests of students in the class

PHILOS 237 – Technology, Values, and Society

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

Prerequisite: none

PHILOS 241 – Introduction to Ethics

LEC 001 TR 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM CRT 309
Instructor: Eric Wilkinson, wilkinse@uwm.edu

Prerequisite: none.

To live is to be confronted with moral decisions. Should I help a stranger in distress? Should I keep a promise despite the hurtful consequences? Should I donate time or money to this cause? Without an understanding of which principles should guide our actions, even everyday moral dilemmas can seem insurmountable. Ethics is the study of how one ought to conduct themselves, and it is ethical theories that provide principled answers to how one should act, and what they should do in a given situation. The course begins by broaching fundamental questions about whether there are objective moral values, before examining some of the most prominent ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. This introduction to ethics is accessible to students with no previous background in philosophy. Upon completing this course, students will have a strong understanding of moral philosophy, and will have refined their critical reasoning and analytical writing abilities.

PHILOS 243 – Moral Problems

LEC 201 ONLINE
LEC 202 ONLINE
LEC 203 ONLINE
Instructor: Miren Boehm; boehmm@uwm.edu

May be retaken w/chg in topic to 6 cr max. Prerequisite: none.

243-201 Abortion

Is abortion (the intentional termination of a pregnancy) immoral or unethical? Does the answer depend on whether we think of the fetus as a person? What is a person; is this the same as being a human being? What is the right to self-determination? What is the Dobbs decision? How did the Supreme Court decide the case in 2022? Before Dobbs there was Roe v Wade—what was the content of this ruling? Most Americans who are religious worship the God of the Bible. But what does the Bible say about abortion exactly? What rights do women as a group have in society? In this class we will address all these questions.

243-202 Drugs and Addition

What are the arguments in favor of consuming drugs? Some defend the use of drugs by appealing to the pleasure they produce; some claim that drugs enhance creativity, others that it enables religious experiences. But do the alleged benefits outweigh the harms? What exactly is addiction? Is it morally wrong to take drugs? Is the commercial selling of drugs wrong? Do we have a moral obligation to prevent people from distributing or from taking drugs? Should drugs be illegal? How do we balance freedom and harm? In this class we will address all these questions.

243-203 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 belong to the moral domain. 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 or should have?

PHILOS 244 – Ethical Issues in Health Care

Biomedical Ethics
LEC 201 ONLINE
Instructor: Elizabeth Silverstein; silvers2@uwm.edu

May be retaken w/chg in topic to 6 cr max. Prerequisite: none.

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 250- God, Faith and Reason

LEC 001 MW 10:00 – 11:15 LUB S231
Instructor: Agust Magnusson; magnusso@uwm.edu

Prerequisite: none.

Is there a God? Is there life after death? What is the meaning of human existence? These are just some of the many questions we will tackle in our philosophical examination of some of the most pressing issues and concerns related to religion. We will examine various arguments for the existence of God, analyze questions related to morality and the existence of evil and suffering, and examine to what extent religious belief can be harmonized with human rationality. Course texts will include both classical and modern philosophical treatises as well as selections from literature and film.

PHILOS 271- Philosophical Traditions: Indigenous Philosophy

LEC 001 TR 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM; CRT 309
Instructor: Eric Wilkinson, wilkinse@uwm.edu

The history of North American Indigenous philosophy has only just recently begun to receive the attention it deserves. Contemporary Indigenous philosophers have also drawn on this intellectual heritage to produce compelling new works of philosophy. This introductory course surveys only a fraction of the history of Indigenous philosophy in North America from the 17th century until today. The course is divided into two parts. The first half of the course examines the thought of Indigenous philosophers from the 17th-19th centuries. The arguments of these earlier thinkers broach universal philosophical questions. What is the nature of reality? How should we understand the divine? What is the meaning of liberty or personal virtue? How should a just society be organized? In the second half of the course, we will turn to Indigenous philosophers from the 19th century to the present day. The works of these later thinkers are often focused more precisely on questions of identity, culture, the relationship of Indigenous peoples to settler society, and are engaged with western philosophy. The views of some earlier philosophers in this course have only recently been reconstructed from records and oral traditions, and this will be the first time they are taught in a philosophy classroom.

PHILOS 304- Buddhist Philosophy

LEC 001 TR 10:00 AM – 11:15 PM; LUB S231
Instructor: Agust Magnusson; magnusso@uwm.edu

The 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

LEC 001 TR 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM; BOL B64
Instructor: William Penn; pennw@uwm.edu

Are the fundamental constituents of the world static or dynamic?  Is the universe infinite or finite?  Does time have a beginning or not?  Is matter a distributed field or localized into particles?  Do things exist independently or only when they are observed?  Is change fundamental to the world or is stability an underlier to change?  What are the causal patterns in the world?  What are the global structures of the world?  In this course, we will investigate some of the answers to these questions that have been given throughout world history in the development of both science and philosophy. 

Our focus will be on how to go about developing and defending a metaphysical picture of the world in general.  While we will cover and discuss many more specific issues within this project, we will be shifting our focus continuously throughout the term.  

This course is suitable for majors and non-majors.  

The required materials for this course cost less than $25 (total cost $).  

PHILOS 384/ 384 G – Philosophy of Law

LEC 001 MW 11:30 – 12:45 BOL B56
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 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.

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

LEC 201 ONLINE
Instructor: Miren Boehm; boehmm@uwm.edu

Prereq: jr st & 3 cr in PHILOS

Human beings have thought about the natural world around us and our relation/the mind’s relation to the external world for thousands of years. But our approach to these issues, the particular questions that frame and guide our inquires, have changed and evolved through time. Our (western) way of thinking about these fundamental issues in the year 2021 has a beginning and many ancestors. Our ways of understanding these fundamental issues trace back to a particular revolution in philosophical and scientific ways of thinking that started around the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. We are still part of this revolution and like many before us, we find it impossible to imagine what the next revolution in philosophical thinking will look like. We begin with Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) by René Descartes, the father of modern philosophy. We then turn to John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) and his revolutionary empirical study of the mind and of knowledge. We then turn to David Hume, whom we can call the father of naturalistic philosophy. We will focus on what he is most famous for, his treatment of causation and of skepticism.

PHILOS 532/ 532 G- Philosophical Problems- Moral Epistemology

SEM 001 TR 5:30 – 6:45 CRT 607
Instructor: Eric Wilkinson; wilkinse@uwm.edu

May be retaken with change in topic to 9 cr max. Additional prerequisites announced in the Schedule of Classes each time course is offered. Prereq: senior standing and 12 cr in PHILOS at the 300-level or above; or graduate standing.

How can we acquire moral knowledge? A lively debate exists in contemporary moral epistemology over what kinds of mental states can provide justification for our moral beliefs. Ethical intuitionists contend that thought-experiments can elicit intuitions, which offer a priori justification for ethical beliefs. Meanwhile, theories of moral perception allege that we can arrive at thoroughly empirical moral knowledge simply by using traditional sense perception—no need for mysterious intuitions! Moral sense theorists reject both of these views, instead arguing that emotions can justify our moral beliefs. This course will consider these prominent contemporary theories of how we acquire moral knowledge, and how ethical beliefs be justified. In order to broach these questions in contemporary moral epistemology, we will also look at current debates in epistemology overall. Upon completing this course, you will have a strong grasp of recent developments in epistemology in general—and moral epistemology specifically—and will be one step closer to acquiring some moral knowledge.

PHILOS 554/ 554 G – Special Topics in History of Modern Philosophy: Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Sprit’

LEC 001 TR 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM; CRT 607
Instructor: William Bristow; bristow@uwm.edu

May be retaken w/chg in topic to 9 cr max. Prereq: jr st; 3 cr PHILOS; PHILOS 432(R): or cons instr.

This seminar is devoted to a study of Hegel’s classic text, The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Hegel wrote this work as an introduction to the system of philosophy. Hegel’s Phenomenology is a founding text of the tradition of so-called “Continental” European philosophy. However, thanks to the work of the Pittsburgh philosophers Robert Brandom and John McDowell (among others), this text is increasingly studied within the context of contemporary analytic philosophy as well. Among the philosophical issues we will discuss: Is immediate knowledge possible? What is the nature of concepts? What is human self-consciousness and how is it related to the human capacity for freedom and for alienation? What constitutes the full and complete realization of human selfhood? What is the relation of rational norms to nature? What is the structure of human action? What is the basic structure of human society and how is it related to reasons for action? What is the relation of philosophy and of reason to human history?

PHILOS 681/ 681 G – Seminar in Advanced Topics: Process Philosophy

LEC 001 TR 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM; CRT 607
Instructor: William Penn; pennw@uwm.edu

Process philosophy exists throughout history as a consistent, sustained challenge to orthodox philosophical schools, especially those developed in Western European rationalist traditions. This challenge is pervasive, present in nearly every aspect of our thinking from our metaphysical presuppositions to our accounts of knowledge to both our practical and meta-ethical models. Put simply, process philosophy arises as a response to the problem of change, and from a recognition that change is not an illusion but an ineliminable part of our experience. As such, our ways of knowing the world must take the experience of change seriously, our ethics must respond to dynamic contextuality and our metaphysics must rest on subject less processes (developments, interactions, activities, etc.) rather than eternal, absolute, or determinate objects/things.

In this course we will analyze, assess, and discuss each of the aspects of the broad process paradigm, drawing from sources throughout history and across the world. This will involve an analysis of the historical and contemporary cross-cultural influences on the development of process metaphysics, the contextualization of the process challenge within other (primarily epistemological) debates about the nature, origin, and methods of acquiring knowledge, and the ethical ramifications of adopting process philosophy. Topics will include process metaphysics (meta models of physicalist/naturalist accounts of the world), process realism about science (especially quantum physics, chemistry, and evolutionary biology), empiricism and its development towards and dovetailing with processist accounts of empirical theories, process accounts of causation and laws of nature, pluralism, virtue ethics, language interpretation, mathematics, sociology, evidence, truth, virtue, happiness, and justice.

The required materials for this course cost less than $25 (total cost $0).

PHILOS 712 – Fundamentals of Formal Logic

LEC 001 MW 10:00 – 11:15 TBD
Instructor: Matthew Knachel, knachel@uwm.edu

Prereq: grad st.

This course picks up where Philosophy 211, Elementary Logic, leaves off, further exploring relational predicate logic with identity—both proofs and translations from English.

PHILOS 790 – Advanced Topics in Philosophy: Pragmatism

SEM 001 M 2:30 PM – 5:10 PM; CRT 607
Instructor: Stanislaus Husi; husi@uwm.edu

The seminar is devoted to defending a poem. The poem is by Richard G. Henson and was brought to my attention by our colloquium guest Don Garrett. The Poem:

Pragmatism 

Try James’ brisk and bracing brew! 
Pragmatism’s good for you. 
It bucks you up, it sees you through 
(And that’s exactly why it’s true.) 

We will read William James, Nelson Goodman, Richard Rorty, and Hilary Putnam.

PHILOS 941 – Seminar in Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Kant’s Practical Philosophy

SEM 001 W 2:30 – 5:10 CRT 607
Instructor: Nataliya Palatnik; palatnik@uwm.edu

Can be retaken with change in topic to 9 cr max. Prereq: graduate standing and consent of instructor.

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.