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 DEFINITION OF INDIGENOUS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2020 • ( 0 )

  After thousands of years of migrations and cullings and displacements and interbreeding, if by the indigenous people of, say, southern Alberta, is meant the people who were first to get here, we have no idea who those people might have… Read More ›

• SOCIAL JUSTICE

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2020 • ( 0 )

  Note to self: Be careful how you sell yourself lest someone’s actually buying. Case in point? Fellow blogger Andrew Roman, may his tribe increase, has asked me to draw the distinction, if there is one, between justice and social justice…. Read More ›

• ALIENS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND RACE

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2020 • ( 1 )

  It’s a little known fact – probably because it isn’t one, but that needn’t delay us here – that we’ve frequently been visited by creatures from outer space. Moreover, we’ve all seen them. But they’re extremely shy. And so whenever… Read More ›

• HOW TO SURRENDER IN THE LANGUAGE WAR

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 9, 2020 • ( 0 )

  What do Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf, George Orwell, and post-modern feminists have in common? They all triangulate on the fact that we think in words. And so if you can control what can be said, you can control what… Read More ›

• NOTES ON THE CULTURE WAR

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 8, 2020 • ( 0 )

  The Cancel Culture War that’s been on high simmer for several years now has heated up considerably since the death of George Floyd on May 25th. That’s probably a good thing, insofar as the conflict is finally revealing what it’s… Read More ›

• THE MEANING OF BLACK LIVES MATTER

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 8, 2020 • ( 2 )

  Had Rudolf Carnap been around today, he’d have pointed out that “x lives matter” is not a well-formed formula. Well-formedness requires that “x lives matter to some y”. And at that, perhaps only at some time t, and only under… Read More ›

• THE RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE STORY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 3, 2020 • ( 1 )

  Here’s another entry in the ongoing saga of news that isn’t. Some of my followers and even more of my readers live in the United States. Does that mean I’m trying to interfere in their upcoming presidential election? Well, I’m… Read More ›

• POLICING 101

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 2, 2020 • ( 0 )

  Poor people don’t have a lot. If they did, they wouldn’t be poor. As a result, their need to protect what little they have is greater than the need of those who have more to protect what they have. This… Read More ›

• THE BOUNTY STORY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 1, 2020 • ( 1 )

  During the 1980s, the U.S. financed, armed, and trained the Mujahideen in what proved to be their successful campaign to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. In other words, they paid the Mujahideen to kill Soviet soldiers. The Taliban, which… Read More ›

• THE NO PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE MANTRA

  By paulosophicalvimplications on June 30, 2020 • ( 1 )

  I wouldn’t have thought it necessary to weigh in on the civil unrest sweeping across the U.S., and now across the entire western world. I’d have thought it almost analytic that people who are pissed off, and are taking their… Read More ›