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.

• A PROOF THAT EGALITARIANISM IS EITHER FALSE OR BANAL

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 7, 2022 • ( 0 )

  Abstract  In this paper I argue that the only equality that need be postulated between agents qua heading into a theory of normative ethics and/or politics is that the agents in question be equally involved in interactivity in which there’s… Read More ›

• A PROOF THAT LIBERTARIANISM IS EITHER FALSE OR BANAL

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 7, 2022 • ( 0 )

  Abstract  In this paper I consider all 243 positions that could constitute libertarianism and show that all but a few are false and the few remaining are banal. I argue further that all 243 versions must issue a promissory note… Read More ›

• THE REDUCTION OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE TO TRIBUTE

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 7, 2022 • ( 0 )

  Von Clausewitz thought that war is just the continuation of politics by other means. I hold that it’s exactly the reverse. But if all political categories are reducible, without remainder, to military ones, to what are considerations of distributive justice… Read More ›

• CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD (Repost, November 2020)

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 6, 2022 • ( 1 )

  Presented at the Seventh World Conference on Metaphysics at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain, Oct 24-27, 2018 ABSTRACT: By a political theodicy is meant an attempt to harness our theological resources to ameliorate the evil we do and suffer… Read More ›

• WHAT IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY?

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 6, 2022 • ( 0 )

  In this paper I attempt to rescue the notion of a crime against humanity from the charge that it is either redundant or else a pseudo-concept. I argue that crimes against humanity are gross violations of basic human rights when… Read More ›

• WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IS WRONG WITH GENOCIDE?

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 6, 2022 • ( 0 )

  — for presentation on October 7, 2009, and again on October 4, 2012, for the Liberal Education Capstone course on genocide —

• PACIFISM, ADVOCACY, AND POPULATION DYNAMICS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 4, 2022 • ( 0 )

  – for presentation at the ILECS in Belgrade on June 23, 2012 – Viminitz, Paul. “Pacifism, advocacy, and population dynamics.” Belgrade Philosophical Annual 25 (2012): 281-291.

• WHAT’S WRONG WITH NUCLEAR HOSTAGE HOLDING?

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 3, 2022 • ( 0 )

  Since no nation can divest itself of its own rearmament capacity, nuclear disarmament amounts to (what Steven Lee calls) weaponless deterrence. But, he thinks, weaponless deterrence can escape the deontological objection to nuclear hostage holding because it only threatens to… Read More ›

• COERCION

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 3, 2022 • ( 0 )

  I argue that if the notion of coercion is given a non-normative interpretation, then it can do no work for us. Of its normative interpretations – any precisification of the term and condemnation of coercion arising from natural law is… Read More ›

• A THEORY OF WAR

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 2, 2022 • ( 0 )

  ABSTRACT: By virtue of what I call the Counterfeit White Flag Problem, a state of civil society and a state of war are shown to be both phenomenologically and epistemically indistinguishable. From this – or so I argue – it… Read More ›