Those who claim that the end is nigh – today it’s anthropogenic global warming that’s most widely thought is going to do us in – are aware, are they not, that the world is going to come to an end… Read More ›
Month: July 2017
WHY BLACK LIVES MIGHT MATTER AFTER ALL
You and I allow each other to freely be in each other’s presence on condition that we won’t misbehave. Were this not so we’d all still be cowering in our caves, “and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,… Read More ›
WHAT DO REVENGE FANTASIES TELL US ABOUT ETHICS?
I am not going to claim that all of us play host to revenge fantasies, because then I couldn’t deny – which I categorically do – that I certainly do. So everything I say here is prefixed by an I-hear-tell,… Read More ›
UNDERSTANDING SERIAL KILLERS
It never ceases to amaze me that whatever it is, it’s almost invariably a thing. Who knew, for example, that if you google “diary” and “Holocaust”, there are tomes upon tomes of articles on whether the Anne Frank diary was… Read More ›
REGARDING HEROISM
Each of us has heroes. And in that, the having is enough. Which is just to say my hero needn’t be someone I aspire to be. I don’t aspire to be Frederick Douglass or Rosa Parks or Malcolm X or… Read More ›
THE NON-IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES
“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!” “Mais non, monsieur, zis eez our fly zupe, zee specialite de la maison.” How do we resolve this issue? By deferring to the intentions of the chef? But he might dissimulate, to save… Read More ›
NECESSITATED HYPOCRISY
There are a few things that I get that other people don’t. If this weren’t so I wouldn’t be of much use to them, now would I? So no, since it’s not hubris, no apology warranted, so none forthcoming. And… Read More ›
A COMPLETE COURSE IN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY SHOULDN’T TAKE MORE THAN TWENTY-THREE MINUTES. TIME ME.
LESSON #1: DEFINING ONE’S TERMS Environmental Philosophy (henceforth EP) is that series of phonemes and/or chicken scratches that sustains itself by assiduously refusing to define any of the dozen or so terms which can then be randomized to form sentences… Read More ›
URGENCY
I have a colleague who’s become a little bored with teaching modus ponens and the Meditations, and instead now fancies himself something of an authority on global warming. The way you become an authority, by the way, is by so… Read More ›
IN DEFENCE … NO, MAKE THAT IN PRAISE, OF OMAR KHADR
Here’s a newsflash for all those American servicemen serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. And for their wives. When you enlist in a nation’s armed forces, there’s an understanding that at some point you may be asked to go off somewhere… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 