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.

• WHAT DO REVENGE FANTASIES TELL US ABOUT ETHICS?

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 26, 2017 • ( 0 )

  I am not going to claim that all of us play host to revenge fantasies, because then I couldn’t deny – which I categorically do – that I certainly do. So everything I say here is prefixed by an I-hear-tell,… Read More ›

• UNDERSTANDING SERIAL KILLERS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 26, 2017 • ( 0 )

  It never ceases to amaze me that whatever it is, it’s almost invariably a thing. Who knew, for example, that if you google “diary” and “Holocaust”, there are tomes upon tomes of articles on whether the Anne Frank diary was… Read More ›

• REGARDING HEROISM

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 25, 2017 • ( 0 )

  Each of us has heroes. And in that, the having is enough. Which is just to say my hero needn’t be someone I aspire to be. I don’t aspire to be Frederick Douglass or Rosa Parks or Malcolm X or… Read More ›

• THE NON-IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 24, 2017 • ( 0 )

  “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!” “Mais non, monsieur, zis eez our fly zupe, zee specialite de la maison.” How do we resolve this issue? By deferring to the intentions of the chef? But he might dissimulate, to save… Read More ›

• NECESSITATED HYPOCRISY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 21, 2017 • ( 1 )

  There are a few things that I get that other people don’t. If this weren’t so I wouldn’t be of much use to them, now would I? So no, since it’s not hubris, no apology warranted, so none forthcoming. And… Read More ›

• A COMPLETE COURSE IN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY SHOULDN’T TAKE MORE THAN TWENTY-THREE MINUTES. TIME ME.

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 19, 2017 • ( 0 )

  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 ›

• URGENCY

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 18, 2017 • ( 1 )

  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 ›

• IN DEFENCE … NO, MAKE THAT IN PRAISE, OF OMAR KHADR

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 18, 2017 • ( 0 )

  Here’s a newsflash for all those American servicemen serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. And for their wives. When you enlist in a nation’s armed forces, there’s an understanding that at some point you may be asked to go off somewhere… Read More ›

• WHAT’S WRONG WITH THOSE TRUTHERS?

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 18, 2017 • ( 0 )

  The nineteen martyrs of 9/11 were never charged let alone convicted of a crime. This is because – so as not to squander precious prosecutorial resources – we tend not to indict dead people. But now let’s suppose the Truthers… Read More ›

• DENIALISM

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 18, 2017 • ( 1 )

  ‘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 ›