Author Archives

I'm a philosophy professor at the University of Lethbridge in Southern Alberta, Canada. I specialize in philosophy of war, game theory, contractarianism, and theodicy (the Problem of Evil). I am bald, fat, and ugly, but my wife loves me, so I don't care.

• THE VAUGHN SHOOTING

  By paulosophicalvimplications on December 28, 2022 • ( 1 )

  The other day, in the Toronto Ontario suburb of Vaughn, a 73 year-old man, who’d been at odds with his condo board for over a year, decided he’d had enough and went on a shooting spree against his nemeses. The… Read More ›

• IN FOR A PENNY …

  By paulosophicalvimplications on December 4, 2022 • ( 1 )

  After the humiliation of Afghanistan, the West – and most especially America – cannot allow Ukraine to be defeated without forfeiting any trust it can be counted on to make good on its assurances. The West would allow a negotiated… Read More ›

• “YES, BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?”

  By paulosophicalvimplications on December 4, 2022 • ( 1 )

  Ludwig Wittgenstein, arguably the most insightful philosopher of the 20th Century, made the following seemingly paradoxical (but now considered banal) observation. Pretty much everything makes sense until we try to make sense of it.  So we’d have been just fine… Read More ›

• IN DEFENCE OF THE MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIOPATH

  By paulosophicalvimplications on November 19, 2022 • ( 0 )

  Thought experiment: There’s a very clever man-eating lion on the prowl, so clever that we might just as well accept that it will never be caught. We can take some precautions to minimise the likelihood that our child will be… Read More ›

• “PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, AND LAW” AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE

  By paulosophicalvimplications on November 2, 2022 • ( 4 )

  My hypocrisy abounds. How so? Because I can no more define wokeism than the woke can define racism or indigenisation or decolonisation or any of the myriad indefinables that make up their vocabulary. What I can do, however, is ostend…. Read More ›

• AND ODDER BY THE DAY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on November 2, 2022 • ( 0 )

  As far back as July 20th, I blogged about the oddity of this war in Ukraine. Since then it’s been proving odder by the day. How so? Well … Putin is telling the Russian people that the West is waging… Read More ›

• NATURAL KINDS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on October 17, 2022 • ( 0 )

  Every more than once in a while I get to teach a course in whatever I happen to be thinking about. And so I get to con those students foolish enough to take the course into helping me think about… Read More ›

• A CONJECTURE ABOUT THE DANGERS OF SAFETY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on October 15, 2022 • ( 5 )

  My wife is a conjecturer. The one she offered me this morning – though I’m sure it was already in the ether – has three elements, and they are as follows:  First, the generation of students I’m now teaching were… Read More ›

• DOING THE WORK

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 28, 2022 • ( 0 )

  There’s a myth being marketed – though I’m skeptical that anyone’s buying it – that those of us who are unjustly privileged able-bodied cisgendered white male settler-colonialists are uncomfortable talking about the unjust privilege of being able-bodied cisgendered white male… Read More ›

• CARING

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 28, 2022 • ( 1 )

  I’ve made no secret that of the things I care least about, global warming and the minutes of last night’s city council meeting are pretty much in a dead heat. I say things like this not only because I mean… Read More ›