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.

• ON HIDING MY WISDOM UNDER A BUSHEL

  By paulosophicalvimplications on October 6, 2021 • ( 7 )

  Unlike my colleagues in the Philosophy Department here at the University of Lethbridge, who are clearly experts in climatology, epidemiology, the pre-contact history of the indigenous peoples of this continent, the list goes on and on … I know nothing… Read More ›

• ANTI-SEMITISM JUST AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

  By paulosophicalvimplications on October 4, 2021 • ( 2 )

  (In my defence, my son handed me this title and then commanded me to write into it. Hence any liability is entirely his.) Growing up Jewish in western Canada, I regularly felt that I was other, but I can’t ever… Read More ›

• WHY I MUST BE A WHITE SUPREMACIST

  By paulosophicalvimplications on October 1, 2021 • ( 0 )

  I think I must be a white supremacist. Not because I think all lives matter, contrary to what the Black Lives Matter movement thinks I ought not to think. Rather it’s because mattering requires a ‘for whom?’, and I’m highly… Read More ›

• TRISTAN DA CUNHA

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 22, 2021 • ( 1 )

  In this brave new world of reversing the onus, you’re a racist just in case someone says you are. After all, how can you prove you’re not a racist? In fact to protest your innocence is to confirm your guilt. … Read More ›

• SOME PUZZLES ABOUT SEXUAL ‘INTERFERENCE’

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 22, 2021 • ( 3 )

  I’d hardly be the first to observe that when a small child falls and scrapes her knee, nine times out of ten she looks to her parent before deciding that it hurts. If the parent doesn’t signal alarm, the child… Read More ›

• HUMOUR

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 18, 2021 • ( 2 )

  There’s an important difference between twisted and sick. Dead baby jokes are twisted, but telling them at a SIDS funeral is sick. It might relieve the tension in the room, but I’d hold off unless you really know your crowd…. Read More ›

• SNOW DAYS IN SEPTEMBER

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 17, 2021 • ( 0 )

  A few years ago, the University of Lethbridge went from thirteen-week semesters to twelve. And then this fall, between Virtue Signalling Day (September 30) and cancelling classes today to perform a completely gratuitous Covid reset, we’re down to eleven. If… Read More ›

• PARTISAN BLEATING AND UNSEEMLINESS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 13, 2021 • ( 1 )

  When you’re at war, it’s perfectly understandable that you’ll mourn your own losses, both military and civilian, you’ll rejoice in the losses of the enemy’s combatants, and you’ll pretty much ignore his ‘collateral’ losses, which before and since have been a… Read More ›

• ON THIS TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 7, 2021 • ( 0 )

  All other things being equal – in this case being equally just anybody – some of us will be saints, some of us will be assholes, but most of us will be neither. For example, the likelihood of an American… Read More ›

• THE REPUBLIC OF GILEAD

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 3, 2021 • ( 4 )

  In the Morgentaler Decision (1988), the Supreme Court of Canada very wisely did an end-run around the metaphysical status of the foetus and chose instead to decriminalize abortion on the grounds that variability in access violated the constitution’s equal protection… Read More ›