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.
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A COMPLETE COURSE IN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY SHOULDN’T TAKE MORE THAN TWENTY-THREE MINUTES. TIME ME.
LESSON #1: DEFINING ONE’S TERMS Environmental Philosophy (henceforth EP) is that series of phonemes and/or chicken scratches that sustains itself by assiduously refusing to define any of the dozen or so terms which can then be randomized to form sentences… Read More ›
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URGENCY
I have a colleague who’s become a little bored with teaching modus ponens and the Meditations, and instead now fancies himself something of an authority on global warming. The way you become an authority, by the way, is by so… Read More ›
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DENIALISM
‘Denialism’ is a neologism in search of a meaning. Let’s see if we can find it one. As it turns out we’re going to fail. As it turns out calling someone a denialist is going to have about as much… Read More ›
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TENNYSON’S ULYSSES
I’m told that “May you live in interesting times!” was actually an old Chinese curse. I guess the Chinese are ill-disposed to excitement. “Soooo,’ I ask my Chinese friend, “what’s happenin’ that’s interesting?” “Nothing,” he answers. “Thank God,” he adds…. Read More ›
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THE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE DEBATE
In the course of his travels, Gulliver came upon an island very much like our own. Not unlike how it was for us, the complementarity of their genitalia was for most of their history the sine qua non of reproduction,… Read More ›
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THE TRUTH ABOUT TRUTHERS
Hans Kuhn observed that a scientific hypothesis survives, and rightly so, until a better one comes along. But surely there are some hypotheses which, notwithstanding we don’t yet have – perhaps we’ll never have – an alternative to replace it,… Read More ›
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THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY
In the same way that my first year students have a penchant for starting their papers with “For thousands of years philosophers have wondered …”, I like to start mine with “Of the things I care least about, in a… Read More ›