Fall 2003 course offerings
Introductory Courses in Philosophy |
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| 736-101: Introduction to Philosophy Lec 002: God, Metaphysics and Value 3 credits, U, HU T 6:30-9:10pm Professor Hawi tel 414-229-4395/4719 email hawi@uwm.edu |
This course is a general orientation in the basic issues of philosophy. We discuss certain highlights in the philosophic tradition from Plato to John Stuart Mill. Such topics as: The proofs for God's existence, His nature, His relationship to man, the origin and scope of knowledge, the mind-body problem, evaluation of the scientific procedure, and the various standards of right and wrong behavior are examined and studied in detail. |
| 736-101: Introduction to Philosophy JUST ADDED - Lec 004: Selected Topics 3 credits, U, HU R 5:30-8:10pm Faculty/Staff tel 414-229-4395/4719 email TBA |
Not available at this time. |
| 736-101: Introduction to Philosophy Lec 402: Selected Topics and Issues 3 credits, U, HU MW 10:00-10:50am Lec 403: Selected Topics and Issues 3 credits, U, HU MW 1:00-1:50pm Dist. Professor Koethe tel 414-229-5216/4719 email koethe@uwm.edu |
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. |
| 736-111: Informal Logic-Critical Reasoning Lec 001 3 credits, U, HU TWF 9:00-9:50am Professor Steldt tel 414-229-5217/4719 email karlsteldt@hotmail.com |
This course involves the study of arguments on social issues and on issues in various academic fields. The basic goal is to learn how to construct and evaluate such arguments. Some of the particular topics considered are the structure of arguments, definition, vagueness and ambiguity, informal fallacies, and sufficiency of evidence. |
| 736-192: Freshman Seminar Sem 001: The Idea of the University 3 credits, U, HU T R 11:00am-12:15pm Professor Atherton tel 414-229-5904/4719 email atherton@uwm.edu |
Thinking about philosophical ideas seems like a very private matter. But some of the greatest philosophical writing that exists suggests otherwise. Some of the classics of western philosophy have been written in the form of dialogues—fictional conversations in which philosophical positions are hammered out in the give and take of discussion and argument. We will be reading three of these classic dialogues, Plato’s dialogues concerning the last days of Socrates, Berkeley’s Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous and Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion in which we will explore with the members of the conversations questions about how to lead one’s life, the nature of the natural world and how and whether we can know it, and whether religion can and ought to be addressed through the use of reason. We will also be developing and understanding the techniques of philosophical conversation. |
| 736-192: Freshman Seminar Sem 002: Voices of Ancient Philosophy 3 credits, U, HU MW 5:30-6:45pm Professor Tierney tel 414-229-5217/4719 email rtierney@uwm.edu |
Philosophical
questions are timeless. Not because they have no answers – they
certainly do – but because their answers depend on how we understand the
questions. Philosophy is an activity by which we acquire understanding,
and the activity is timeless. The ancient philosophers asked many of the same questions that
philosophers ask today. And, in many ways, they gave much the same
answers. But their activity has an added freshness and liveliness to it,
because often they are coming to understand what the questions are – for
the ‘first time’. We are going to engage in this activity with the ancient philosophers,
and consider such issues as: Fate, free will, and responsibility;
Knowledge, belief, and skepticism; The nature of reality (!), and How we
should live. We may not arrive at definitive answers – yet – but
perhaps we shall better understand what we do not know. |
| 736-204: Introduction to Asian Religions Lec 001 3 credits, U, HU MW 3:30-4:45pm Professor Lewis tel 414-229-4719 email Jim.Lewis@uwsp.edu |
Emphasis in this course will be upon the philosophy and worldviews—the nature of the universe, human destiny, the problem of evil, etc.—of several forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, though some attention will also be given to Confucianism and Taoism. From time to time, representatives of these traditions will be invited in to dialog with the class. |
| 736-204: Introduction to Asian Religions Lec 402 3 credits, U, HU MW 11:00-11:50am Professor Neevel tel 414-229-5215/4719 email wgneevel@uwm.edu |
This course will be a historical and comparative introduction to Hindu and Buddhist religious life and thought. Special emphasis will be placed upon the development of the classical forms of these traditions within India. The Buddhist tradition will also be stressed as a missionary movement linking the various cultures of Asia and interacting with the indigenous traditions of East Asia. |
| 736-211: Elementary Logic Lec 401 3 credits, U, HU MW 10:00-10:50am Lec 402 3 credits, U, HU MW 12:00-12:50pm Professor Liston tel 414-229-5217/4719 email mnliston@uwm.edu JUST ADDED - Lec 003
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The Island of Knights and Knaves is
a place where only Knights and Knaves live.
A Knight is a person who always tells the truth.
Knaves, on the other hand, never tell the truth.
Harry, who lives on the island, says: "If I am a Knight, then
I'll eat my hat." Did
you know that you can prove from the above information that Harry will eat
his hat? Did you know: 1)
Given that Sarah loves either Jim or Tom and that if she loves Jim then
she loves Tom, you can prove that she loves Tom?
2) that if everyone loves a lover and there is even one lover in
the world, then everyone loves everyone?
Learn how to solve these and other puzzles in Philosophy 211, where
we will study formal deductive logic – the science of what follows from
what.
The concepts and techniques encountered in the study of deductive logic are of central importance to any analysis of argument and inference. They reflect fundamental patterns of proof found in science and mathematics, they underlie the programs that enable computers to "reason" logically, and they provide tools for characterizing the formal structures of language. This is an introductory course intended for students who have had no previous work in logic. There will be 3 exams and weekly homework assignments. |
Intermediate and Advanced Courses |
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| 736-212: Modern Deductive Logic Lec 001 3 credits, U, HU MW 11:00am-12:15pm Professor Leeds tel 414-229-4669/4719 email sleeds@uwm.edu |
The task of the first logic course – Philosophy 211 – was to develop a means for evaluating deductive arguments. This task involved the use of a formal language for expressing the logical structure of English sentences and the use of various formal techniques, including truth tables and deductions, for evaluating arguments. Once an English argument was translated into the formal language, formal techniques were used to solve an apparently informal problem, i.e., the problem of finding out whether it is possible for the conclusion of the argument to be false while all its premises are true. In Philosophy 212 we will continue this inquiry into the evaluation of deductive arguments. We will concentrate on two central areas. First, we will deal with statements and arguments that are more quantificationally complex than those studied in Philosophy 211. Second, we will address the issue of the adequacy of the formal system. Explicit definitions of validity of arguments and formal systems will be used for the investigation, via informal reasoning and proof, of what can be achieved by a deductive system. Philosophy 211 with a grade of ‘C’ or better is a prerequisite for this class. |
| 736-217:
Introduction to Metaphysics Lec 001 3 credits, U, HU TRF 10:00-10:50am Professor Steldt tel 414-229-5216/4719 email karlsteldt@hotmail.com |
Metaphysics is the consideration of issues that underlie the study of the natural world. Certain questions seem reasonable to ask about the objects of the natural sciences (chemistry, physics, biology, psychology, etc.) and about these very inquiries, questions that are not themselves scientific questions. What is the relation between mind and body? What is the causal relation, and why do we explain events in terms of this relation? Do people have free will, or are their actions somehow determined? What is the origin of the natural world? What are space and time? What are the fundamental sorts of things that exist? Questions such as these will be addressed in this course. |
| 736-232:Topics in Philosophy Lec 001: Personal Identity & the Self 3 credits, U, HU MW 2:00-3:15pm Professor Ferrero tel 414-229-5903/4719 email ferrero@uwm.edu http://www.uwm.edu/~ferrero |
In this course we will investigate what philosophy can tell
us about our distinctive nature as persons. What makes us the particular persons that we are and how is this
identity preserved in time? Is
the biological death of the body also the death of the person? Does each of us have something as a unique and unified `self'?
Is this self the object of introspection? Does our existence amount to the existence of the self? In the first part of the course, we will discuss what makes a person the same individual as time goes by. Does personal identity depend on the continuity of memories, beliefs and psychological traits? Or does it rather depend on the continuity of the body? Or is it a matter of the persistence of an immortal and immaterial soul? In discussing these questions, particular attention will be devoted to the treatment of cases where continued personhood is uncertain (like brain bisection experiments, amnesia, multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia, and science fiction cases like "Star Trek" style teletransporter or body exchanges). We will then consider the implications of theories of personal identity for understanding what counts as the death of a person. In the second part of the course, we will look at the implications of theories of personal identity for the idea of the ‘self’. We will discuss issues about the unity of the self, self-deception and the nature of self-knowledge. If time permits, we will consider the implications of theories of personal identity and the self for psychology, morality, law and medicine. We will read works of contemporary philosophers in the analytic tradition. |
| 736-235:
Philosophical Aspects of Feminism Lec 001 3 credits, U, HU TR 11:00am-12:15 pm Professor Westlund tel 414-229-4719 email westlund@uwm.edu |
This is a course in contemporary feminist thought, with special emphasis on feminist contributions to ethics and social theory. We will explore a variety of questions of the following sort: What is gender, and what relevance does it have to moral and political thinking? Are there distinctively feminine and/or feminist ethical perspectives? How might sensitivity to gender affect our thinking about concepts such as justice, care, autonomy, dependence, equality, and difference, and how might it affect our understanding of concrete moral/political issues? In thinking about such questions we will be attentive to ways in which gender interacts with other factors, such as race, class, sexuality and cultural context. |
| 736-237:Technology, Values and Society Lec 001 3 credits, U, HU TR 11:00am-12:15 pm Professor Mink tel 414-229-5903/4719 email kmink@uwm.edu |
In this introductory course, we will examine the works of contemporary thinkers who have addressed the modern "problem of technology." Through the writings of thinkers as diverse as Marshall McLuhan, Heidegger, Roseanne Stone, Donna Haraway, and Deleuze and Guattari, we will especially focus on the way the new media - film, television, video, and the Internet - have changed the routines of everyday life, the patterns of perception, and even raised new issues and introduced new concepts into philosophy. We will also take the opportunity to view and discuss relevant films, videos, and artwork on the Internet. |
| 736-241: Introductory Ethics Lc 401 3 credits, U, HU MW 11:00-11:50am Professor Bagnoli tel 414-229-5903/4719 email cbagnoli@uwm.edu http://www.uwm.edu/~cbagnoli |
This
course offers an introduction to philosophical ethics. We all think
that there are some actions and practices that are wrong, but we differ as
to how we draw the line between right and wrong. We all believe that there
are some things that are valuable, but we disagree as to what is valuable
and why. Philosophical ethics offers the arguments and methods for
the critical assessment of our moral convictions about what is right or
valuable. We will study three major ethical theories:
consequentialism, rationalism, and naturalism. On the
consequentialist view, actions are justified on the basis of consequences
alone. On the rationalist view, our actions are justified if they
can be grounded on reasons that everybody can share. On the
naturalist view, our practices are valuable if they fulfill some natural
purpose. We will consider how these theories approach moral issues
such as famine, war, suicide, and euthanasia.
Readings include contemporary as well as classical works by philosophers such as Robert Nozick, Peter Singer, John Rawls, J.S. Mill, Kant, and Aristotle. |
| 736-244: Ethical Issues in Health Care Lec 101: Contemporary Problems 3 credits, U, HU M 6:30-9:10pm Professor Tym tel 456-4299/229-4719 email ktym@execpc.com |
This course will provide a general overview of
some of the ethical issues in health care. We will begin the course
with an introduction to the basic ethical theories and 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, decision-making capacity, confidentiality,
futility and withdrawal of life sustaining treatment, euthanasia and
assisted suicide, assisted reproduction, genetics, and research ethics.
This
course is taught off-campus at Whitefish Bay HS, 1200 E. Fairmont, Rm. 256. |
| 736-245: Critical Thinking and the Law Lec 101: Law of Torts 3 credits, U, HU M 6:30-9:10 pm Professor Santilli tel 414-229-4719 email santilli@execpc.com |
The goals of critical thinking are to instill in
the student an understanding of the fundamental principles of analysis,
problem solving and construction of an argument. In order to convey these
principles, students are taught how to use tort law using legal materials,
including but not limited to, the language used by the legal profession
and legal resources. It is through the study of law that teachers hope to
impart to their students a system for analytical thinking which they may
use in their every-day lives.
This course is taught off-campus at Center for Continuing Education, 161 W. Wisconsin Ave., Room 6000. |
| 736-250: Philosophy of Religion Lec 001 3 credits, U, HU TR 2:00-3:15pm Professor Mondadori tel 414-229-5904/4719 email mondadf@uwm.edu |
We shall analyze and discuss (a) some of the traditional arguments for the existence of God (especially St. Thomas' Five Ways, and the ontological argument), (b) the so-called problem of Evil (we shall read texts by Leibniz and Hume), (c) the question whether or not God's omniscience and human freedom are mutually consistent, and (d) the problem of miracles. |
| 736-253:
Philosophy of the Arts Lec 001 3 credits, U, HU TR 12:30-1:45pm Professor Mink tel 414-229-5903/4719 email kmink@uwm.edu |
In this course, we’ll study some of the most exciting work of the twentieth century in order to come to terms with the “essence” of modern art. We will look at film (e.g., Eisenstein, Godard, Cassavetes), literature (from Beckett to Burroughs), painting (Duchamp, Bacon, Mary Kelly, Gerhard Richter, et. al.), installation and performance art (Robert Smithson, Mike Kelley, Laurie Anderson, etc.), architecture (Eisenmann, Tschumi and others), music and dance (Cage, Cunningham), digital photography, video, and multimedia work. We’ll be guided by writers like Benjamin, Virilio, and Deleuze and Guattari, along with many other contemporary thinkers and critics. Our discussion of themes like surface and simulacrum; shock, inertia, and speed; the cry, the crack, and the fold will show that ours is an age of the “neo-Baroque”. |
| 736-271: Philosophical Traditions Lec 001: Native American Thought 3 credits, U, HU MW 12:30-1:45pm Professor Lewis tel 414-229-4719 email Jim.Lewis@uwsp.edu |
A study of selected aspects of Native American Thought, from both internal and external perspectives. Native American Religions will be examined in terms of the categories of myth, ritual, etc. The course will also critically examine the images of Native Americans that have been generated within Euro-American culture. |
| 736-303: Theory
of Knowledge Lec 001 3 credits, U/G, HU MW 9:30-10:45am Professor Hinchman tel 414-229-4719 email hinchman@uwm.edu |
This course looks at some arguments for and against several skeptical hypotheses. We'll start with skepticism about the external world and consider an anti-skeptical strategy called 'semantic externalism.' Semantic externalism holds that thoughts get their content directly from the external objects to which they refer, and thus that the skeptical hypothesis is thinkable only if it's false. But, in tying thought content so closely to the world, semantic externalism seems to entail that you cannot know by introspection the contents of your own mind. If we take this approach, we seem forced to choose between skepticism about the world and skepticism about introspective self-knowledge. We'll thus spend several weeks examining the nature of self-knowledge. On another approach, called 'contextualism,' skeptical arguments are not about how a mind relates to the world but about how thinkers may relate to each other. From a contextualist perspective, the interesting question is how high a standard of warrant you must meet to be conversationally entitled to a knowledge claim. When we ponder this question in the conversational context of a philosophy class, as we'll see, we tend to raise the standard so high that no one counts as knowing anything. Does that reveal a flaw in the concept of knowledge or a flaw in the practice of philosophy? In the second half of the term, we'll consider whether skepticism is just an intellectual game, or whether our tendency to raise skeptical questions reveals something important about the habits that these questions cannot quite convince us to abandon. |
| 736-351: Philosophy of Mind Lec 001 3 credits, U/G MW 12:30-1:45pm Professor Ferrero tel 414-229-5903/4719 email ferrero@uwm.edu http://www.uwm.edu/~ferrero |
What is a mind? What is distinctive of mental phenomena? In this course we will discuss and assess some of the traditional philosophical answers to these questions and the impact of cognitive science in the understanding and the explanation of mental phenomena. At the beginning of the course we will look at the standard philosophical theories of the mind (dualism, behaviorism and functionalism). We will then concentrate on the philosophical import of recent developments in the cognitive science. We will discuss the criticisms of the representational theory of mind, the role of computation in the modeling of the mental, Artificial Intelligence, Connectionism and Artificial Neural Networks, Robotics, Dynamics and Artificial Life. We will discuss both the standard problems in the philosophy of mind (levels of descriptions, types of explanation, mental causation, the nature and status of folk psychology) and the novel issues raised by cognitive science (in particular, the nature of emergence, the interplay between life and mind, the idea of mind as intrinsically embodied and environmentally embedded). |
| 736-355: Political Philosophy Lec 001 3 credits, U/G, HU TR 2:00-3:15pm Professor Gendron tel 414-229-4771/4719 email bgendron@uwm.edu |
An examination of the political thought of Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Burke, Rousseau and Mill. Special emphasis will be placed on the problem of elitism, the question of natural rights, the question of political participation, and the importance of "moral factors" (sentiment, custom, shared values, etc.) in constructing and maintaining a good society. |
| 736-381:
Honors Seminar: Nietzsche Sem 001 3 credits, U/G, HU TR 4:00-5:15pm Professor Gendron tel 414-229-4771/4719 email bgendron@uwm.edu |
In his (in)famous
declaration that “God is dead,” Friedrich Nietzsche was drawing
consequences not only for religion but for all of Western culture.
With the death of God, he believed, all the previously held values of the
West -- moral, philosophical, scientific, artistic – had been
devalued and divested of their foundations. This condition of
decadence he labeled “nihilism.” Nietzsche’s whole work is a
diagnosis of nihilism and an attempt to overcome it by laying the
groundwork for the creation of new, post-Christian values. A century
later, Nietzsche’s writings continue to fascinate and provoke. He
is an important predecessor for both existentialism and postmodernism.
This course will explore Nietzsche’s stirring philosophical project through a close analysis of three mature works: The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Genealogy of Morals. These books weave together his explorations into knowledge and truth, science and metaphysics, morality, religion, art and music, modernity and its crises, and so on. |
| 736-430: History of Ancient Philosophy Lec 001 3 credits, U/G MW 2:00-3:15pm Professor Tierney tel 414-229-5917/4719 email rtierney@uwm.edu |
In the thought of Ancient Greece we uncover a remarkable phenomenon. The Ancient Greeks, starting from an essentially myth-making way of understanding the world and the human place in it, as found in the work of Homer and Hesiod, developed their ideas to a culmination in a theory of the natural world and of human nature and human contact put forward by Aristotle, which dominated human thinking for many hundreds of years and is still said to capture human "common sense" beliefs about the world. How did this transition come about? We will look at the changing questions asked by the Pre-Socratics, Plato and Aristotle, as well as the reflections of these questions in Greek literature and history, 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 political theory. |
| 736-437:
Phenomenology Lec 001 3 credits, U/G TR 9:30-10:45am Professor Hawi tel 414-229-4395/4719 email hawi@uwm.edu |
The course is a comprehensive examination of Husserl's phenomenological method and its impact on Sartre's phenomenological existentialism. We shall discuss and evaluate the distinctions and similarities between the views of both thinkers. |
| 736-475: Special Topics in Indian
Religious Thought Lec 001: Vedanta and the Bhagavad Gita 3 credits, U/G MW 3:30-4:45pm Professor Neevel tel 414-229-5215/4719 email wgneevel@uwm.edu |
This course will begin with a close study of two of the most important Hindu scriptural sources, the Upanishads (also known as the Vedanta, "the End of the Veda") and the Bhagavad Gita. We will then consider these two scriptures as the bases for the Vedanta Darsana or school of systematic and critical religious thought, especially according to the interpretation of the two most important classical Vedantic thinkers, Sankara and Ramanuja. In conclusion and as time allows, we will examine modern Hindu interpretation of these texts, especially Mahatma Gandhi's reliance upon the Gita. |
| 736-522: Special Topics in
the Philosophy of Science Lec 001: Explanation in the Natural and Social Sciences 3 credits, U/G TR 12:30-1:45pm Professor Schwartz tel 414-229-5216/4736 email schwartz@uwm.edu |
This course will examine in depth competing views of the nature of scientific explanation. As part of this exploration we will look at such related matters as: the notion of a scientific law, causality, and alternative conceptions of probabilistic reasoning. We shall also consider whether models of explanation found in the physical sciences are applicable to the biological, human, and social sciences. If not, what are the alternatives? |
| 736-681: Seminar in Advanced Topics Sem 001: Contemporary Theories of Modality 3 credits, U/G W 3:30-6:10pm Professor Mondadori tel 414-229-5904/4719 email mondadf@uwm.edu |
The following topics will be discussed: quantified modal logic; essentialism; inter-world identity, counterpart theory. Readings will include papers by Quine, Kaplan, David Lewis, and Kripke. |
| 736-712: Fundamentals of Formal Logic Lec 001 3 credits, G MW 11:00am-12:15pm Professor Leeds tel 414-229-4669/4719 email sleeds@uwm.edu |
The task of the first logic course – Philosophy 211 – was to develop a means for evaluating deductive arguments. This task involved the use of a formal language for expressing the logical structure of English sentences and the use of various formal techniques, including truth tables and deductions, for evaluating arguments. Once an English argument was translated into the formal language, formal techniques were used to solve an apparently informal problem, i.e., the problem of finding out whether it is possible for the conclusion of the argument to be false while all its premises are true. See Description for 736-212. Philosophy 712 provides a more in-depth investigation designed for graduate students. |
| 736-758: Seminar in Major Philosophers Sem 001: 3 credits, G T 2:30-5:10 pm Professor Leeds tel 414-229-4669/4719 email sleeds@uwm.edu |
The aim of the seminar is to get acquainted with some of the classics of contemporary epistemology and metaphysics. My hope is to overlap other courses as little as possible; for that reason, exactly what we read will depend on what the students in the course turn out to have read already. If we stick with the philosophers mentioned in the title, the topics will probably be: for Putnam, Realism (we might branch out and read van Fraassen, Boyd, and other Realists and anti-Realists); for Lewis, possible worlds (everything in Lewis is about possible worlds, of course), Laws of nature, Probability, and Causation (there's a huge literature on each of these we might look at); for Sellars, his views on perception, the language of thought, and qualia - this means we would read the paper Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, and its modern descendents (e.g. some of John Macdowell's work). |
| 736-941: Seminar in
Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy Sem 001: Forms of Ethical Naturalism 3 credits, G M 3:30-6:10 pm Professor Bagnoli tel 414-229-5903/4719 email cbagnoli@uwm.edu http://www.uwm.edu/~cbagnoli |
Ethical Naturalism claims that there is no gap between matters of value and matters of fact, and that in ethics we should adopt the methods of natural science. The naturalist's ambition is to show that there is continuity between ethics and natural science, and we can invoke a uniform kind of ontology and epistemology for both domains. G.E. Moore famously objected that this philosophical project denies the autonomy of ethics. On his count, naturalism commits a logical fallacy: it confounds some (ethical) properties with other (natural) properties. Because of this "naturalistic fallacy", naturalism cannot answer the question why some particular natural property that is judged to be good is good. While Moore did not discover a genuine logical fallacy, he raised significant worries about the reductivist project of denying ethics any kind of autonomy. Kantian philosophers are equally critical of this reductivist project, and object that it fails to account for the authority and normativity of moral judgments. Whether and how naturalism can successfully respond to this challenge are highly contended issues in current debates |
If you have any questions
concerning the above philosophy courses, call the UWM Department of Philosophy
at 414-229-4719 or e-mail the department at philosophy@uwm.edu.
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