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 NO-END-IN-SIGHT CLAUSE

  By paulosophicalvimplications on April 5, 2020 • ( 1 )

  All the epidemiologists and politicians are talking about flattening the curve, by which they don’t mean– at least not necessarily – reducing the total area under the curve, i.e. reducing the number of people who’ll eventually contract Covid 19. Even… Read More ›

• THE REAL COST OF COVID 19

  By paulosophicalvimplications on April 4, 2020 • ( 1 )

  Here’s a well-known fact, or at least it would be well-known if it were given a moment’s thought. Most of the people who work for a living, at least in the so-called developed world, don’t actually produce anything. They don’t… Read More ›

• A WALK IN THE SUN

  By paulosophicalvimplications on March 30, 2020 • ( 3 )

  There’s a remote possibility that … Hang on. To assert that something is highly unlikely – for example that civilization as we know it will come to an end as a result of this Covid 19 pandemic – presupposes a… Read More ›

• ONLY BAD PEOPLE ASK BAD QUESTIONS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on March 27, 2020 • ( 1 )

  I guess this is a case of in for a penny, in for a pound. How so? Because once one’s asked – as I have in an earlier post – how many lives have actually been saved once we include… Read More ›

• SOME UNSOLICITED THEOLOGY FROM A SELF-CONFESSED ATHEIST

  By paulosophicalvimplications on March 25, 2020 • ( 5 )

  A being that wants for nothing wants nothing. That’s why it makes no sense to talk about the self-sufficiency of God. If there was nothing He felt was wanting He wouldn’t have bothered creating anything. But apparently He did. In… Read More ›

• EYAM AND THE BLACK DEATH

  By paulosophicalvimplications on March 25, 2020 • ( 0 )

  One of the tropes going around is that the Covid 19 virus doesn’t care whether you’re Democrat or Republican, Christian or atheist, pro-Life or agin’ it, or whatever. But that’s not true. If you mock the draconian efforts being deployed… Read More ›

• CHARLES DARWIN AND DAVID LEWIS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on March 24, 2020 • ( 1 )

  I’m not sure we needed Charles Darwin to alert us to this tautology: Things that persist over time do and things that don’t don’t. I’m not sure this explains anything, but yes, a Monarch butterfly keeps its markings over the… Read More ›

• TRUTHS THAT DON’T BEAR SAYING

  By paulosophicalvimplications on March 18, 2020 • ( 7 )

  When I die, and if I’m remembered at all, it’ll probably be as that misanthropic bastard who authored that scurrilous piece of shite entitled “A Defense of Terrorism.” Sound as it is, I won’t be remembered for the argument. Rather… Read More ›

• BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

  By paulosophicalvimplications on March 15, 2020 • ( 0 )

  ‘cuz you just might get it. Truer words may never be spoken if it turns out the coronavirus delivers on precisely what the environmental movement has been yearning for lo this last half century. In this one fell swoop that… Read More ›

• WHAT DIDN’T KEEP TORQUEMADA UP AT NIGHT

  By paulosophicalvimplications on March 6, 2020 • ( 1 )

  We live in a bivalent three-dimensional world. There’s left and right, there’s up and down, and there’s forward and back. I say ‘bivalent’ because even if you’re only slightly to the left, or you’re feeling just a little bit down,… Read More ›