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.

• TAKING THE REVERSE OUT OF REVERSE DISCRIMINATION

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 20, 2021 • ( 3 )

  Suppose I’m a black woman who’s just been denied a job, or accommodation, or whatever, because I’m a black woman, notwithstanding that most of my black brothers and sisters are not being denied these things, at least in the community… Read More ›

• CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK AND THE COULEES

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 19, 2021 • ( 0 )

  Back in 2003 the University of Lethbridge declined to honour its guarantees of confidentiality, and so for the last 17 years I haven’t served on any University-related committee involving that guarantee. In 2016 academic freedom was placed under constructive suspension… Read More ›

• REQUIEM FOR THE UNIVERSITY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 19, 2021 • ( 1 )

  Universities are like any other institution. They evolve, they devolve. Sometimes they rise out of the ashes, and sometimes they go the way of the dodo bird. But they always morph. So though I’ve recently come to co-awfulise with my… Read More ›

• ADMINSPEAK

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 19, 2021 • ( 13 )

  Had we been able to complete the tower we’d have been up there to take Him on face to face. And so to prevent this – He’s a jealous god, remember – He broke us up into different languages, so… Read More ›

• PREEMPTIVE INSURGENCY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 14, 2021 • ( 3 )

  I’ve made no secret elsewhere – but so far not on this blog – of what I take to be the driver of both our moral dispositions and our political arrangements. It is, as Thomas Hobbes argued, the wherewithal to… Read More ›

• HOMEWARD BOUND

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 14, 2021 • ( 1 )

  If someone had told us we were crossing from one continent to another, we wouldn’t have known what he was talking about. We were just following the Antlers, as we’d done for as long as I or anyone else could… Read More ›

• A DEFENCE OF RAPE AND SLAVERY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 14, 2021 • ( 1 )

  Each of us has two parents. Each of them has two. So we have four grandparents, eight great grandparents, sixteen great great grandparents, and so on. So we’d only have to go back ten generations to meet our thousand ancestors… Read More ›

• MOVING THE NEGATION SIGN

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 13, 2021 • ( 2 )

  It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books, and university administrators have learned to play it with panache.  Professor X says or writes something politically incorrect. The media asks for comment, and the dean or president answers, quite correctly,… Read More ›

• WATCH YOUR METAPHORS!

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 1, 2021 • ( 1 )

  People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. So policy statements targeting the unwoke for their micro-aggressions should be especially careful about their own metaphors. Hereafter there shall be no wilful ‘blindness’. No longer should we ‘stand up’ for… Read More ›

• HOW TO TEST YOURSELF FOR AUTISM

  By paulosophicalvimplications on February 1, 2021 • ( 0 )

  It would be so much easier, for all concerned, if we didn’t have to draw a distinction between sexual violence and just garden variety violence. But alas we have to. We have to because a judge would be hard pressed… Read More ›