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.

• JURIES AND RACE

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2019 • ( 0 )

  During the month of February, 2018, the Crown saw fit, in two separate cases, to put a white man on trial, one in Saskatchewan, the other in Manitoba, for wrongfully causing the death of a young aboriginal man and an… Read More ›

• CALLING OUT CODE-CALLING

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2019 • ( 1 )

  I’m not sure it’s anything new, so I’ll just say there’s a particular effective but pernicious ploy in popular argumentation that I’m going to call ‘code-calling’. For example, during the 2016 Presidential campaign Americans were told that accusing so-and-so of… Read More ›

• THE UCP GOVERNMENT’S FREE EXPRESSION PROPOSAL

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2019 • ( 0 )

  It’s rare that I find myself expressing unqualified support for a piece of legislation that the government, or so I hope, is about to enact.. But the UCP’s proposal for An Act to Protect Free Expression at Alberta’s Public Colleges… Read More ›

• AN OPEN LETTER TO MY AS-YET-UNINITIATED STUDENTS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2019 • ( 1 )

  Some university administrators, and a few of my colleagues, want to offer you a babysitting service, not for your children but for yourselves. And some of you got so used to it in high school that you want to be… Read More ›

• THE SUMMA POLITICA

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2019 • ( 0 )

  I’d like to buy the world a Coke. I imagine you would too, though perhaps we’d both make it something a little lower in sugar. Unfortunately, making the world a better place for some people, even for the vast majority… Read More ›

• ON MORAL URGENCY COMPARISONS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2019 • ( 0 )

  Wherever and whenever one group of people is doing better than another, there’s going to be resentment. The Europeans shipped slaves from Africa to the Americas to cut cane and pick cotton. A mere century and a half later, should… Read More ›

• AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL YOU 9/11 TRUTHERS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2019 • ( 1 )

  For the prosecution to get a conviction, it’s not enough that I confess to the crime. I have to make good on every element the prosecution would have had to make good on had I not confessed, including means, motive,… Read More ›

• ON LIKENING GAZA TO THE WARSAW GHETTO

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2019 • ( 0 )

  Academics sometimes use words in ways that may not correspond to how they’re used among the hoi polloi. For example, I’d have thought that to discriminate means to ascertain a difference and act accordingly. But among the unwashed it means… Read More ›

• WHAT IS HOLOCAUST DENIAL?

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2019 • ( 0 )

  “I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.” In case you’re not old enough to remember, it’s an Eric Clapton song from 1974. “Yes we killed millions of Jews during the war, but not only Jews.” “Yes… Read More ›

• THE UNIVERSITY’S SEXUAL VIOLENCE POLICY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 3, 2019 • ( 0 )

  I’ve just had the opportunity to read the University of Lethbridge’s recently adopted Revised Sexual Violence Policy. On the one hand I’m bound, by what I’m supposed to do for a living, to point out in what respects it’s a… Read More ›