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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.

• MONIKA’S MOM AND PIUS XII

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 31, 2018 • ( 0 )

  Monika Schaefer, a Jasper, Alberta woman, and daughter of post-war German immigrants, is currently in a German prison awaiting trial for Holocaust denial, a criminal offense in that and several other European countries, though not in Canada. The charge was… Read More ›

• NOTES FROM THE JUNGLE

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 31, 2018 • ( 0 )

  Whenever I give a talk, one of my favorite opening schticks is, “Of the things I care least about, the historicity of the Empty Tomb and global warming are pretty much in a dead heat. What I do care about,… Read More ›

• THE CRITICAL THINKING PROFESSOR’S DILEMMA

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 31, 2018 • ( 0 )

    S asserts that not-p. S is paid. Therefore S is paid to assert that not-p. The likelihood of the truth of not-p varies inversely with what one is paid to assert it. If one’s been exposed to the evidence… Read More ›

• THE MIGRANT DILEMMA

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 31, 2018 • ( 0 )

  By a human right, as distinct from a civil right, is meant, presumably, one one has independently of the polity to which she happens to belong. But a human right does not extend between sovereign jurisdictions. By this I mean… Read More ›

• NO SYMPATHY FOR SARAH SANDERS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on July 31, 2018 • ( 2 )

  To the best of my knowledge, since the fall of Apartheid there’s no jurisdiction anywhere in the world under which it’s illegal for me to prefer a white woman in my bed to a black one. But in most jurisdictions,… Read More ›

• PEOPLE SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 25, 2017 • ( 1 )

  Correlation is not causation. Yes it is. In fact that’s all it is. Isn’t that exactly what Hume showed us? You can’t see a cause, you can only infer it. And you can only infer it from a correlation. Sheesh!… Read More ›

• JURAL NULLIFICATION

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 25, 2017 • ( 0 )

  What’s doing the work in justifying some political arrangement we’ve made is not whatever the official justification might be – as, for example, in the preamble to the Second Amendment to the American Constitution – but rather that in virtue… Read More ›

• RES JUDICATA

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 25, 2017 • ( 1 )

  Res judicata is Latin for a matter that’s already been decided. Here’s one: It’s a res judicata that no conversation, including this one, can get off the ground unless some things are taken to be a res judicata. Like what?… Read More ›

• WALLS

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 25, 2017 • ( 0 )

  Here’s the history of the world in seven words: Walls go up and walls come done. The demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam remained militarized for 21 years. The Berlin wall stood for just over 30. The Korean peninsula… Read More ›

• HOW TRUE BELIEVING CAN BE A CRITICAL-THINKING-SKILLS PARALYTIC

  By paulosophicalvimplications on August 13, 2017 • ( 2 )

  I’m not a neurologist but … I’m told that when the doctor tests your reflexes with that rubber hammer and your lower leg springs forward, the message isn’t going all the way up to the brain. I guess that’s because… Read More ›