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.

• MY MARXIST CREDENTIALS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 6, 2020 • ( 1 )

  I’ve never been sure what’s meant by left and right, but I am sure I’m neither. Still, it’s been brought to my attention – by a friend, so he must be right – that I’m more than a tad selective… Read More ›

• ACCOMMODATION

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 6, 2020 • ( 1 )

  Right and wrong are moral terms. Just and unjust are political. But whether we want to know what’s right or what’s just, in either case form follows function. And so the first question to ask is what do we want… Read More ›

• WHITE SUPREMACY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 5, 2020 • ( 0 )

  There are a few people who think the Nazis had the right idea; they just got it wrong about which is the master race. There are more than a few people, myself included,  who think that people of one race… Read More ›

• INDIGENOUS WAYS OF KNOWING

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 4, 2020 • ( 5 )

  We woke up this morning to the sight of a doe and two fawns grazing on our front lawn. If this happened in Berlin or Lyon or Naples, it would have made the front page. Having precious little of it… Read More ›

• 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 ›