From the Most-Memorable-One-Liners-in-Cinema file, this one’s from The Princess Bride. And here are just some of my favourite words or phrases that don’t mean what either the speaker or the listener thinks they mean: BLACK LIVES MATTER: No one thinks all… Read More ›
Social and Political Philosophy
A CALL TO ARMS
Don’t demand to know what these words mean. Just accept that EDI programs are assigned three prima facie laudable objectives: equity, diversity, and inclusion. Let’s look at each in turn from this particular stakeholder’s perspective, a perspective shared, I suspect,… Read More ›
UVALDE
At the risk of trivialising the death of those kids and their teachers in the latest spate of school shootings, I guess I am going to trivialise the death of those kids and their teachers in the latest spate of… Read More ›
THE BUCHA MASSACRE
What’s not in dispute is that the hundreds of civilians who’ve been killed in the suburbs around Kyiv would be alive today but for the Russian invasion. No doubt some were collateral damage, though the Russians will call them human… Read More ›
… BUT FEAR ITSELF
Until now in this blog I’ve been pressing my views, for what little they’re worth, on what’s happening in the world, but I’ve assiduously avoided touting myself as some kind of expert in the matters on which I’ve opined. But… Read More ›
The Myth of Civilian Immunity — Why There ‘Could’ Be No Such Law —
Abstract. Busting the myth of civilian immunity has long since been standard, albeit unpalatable, philosophical fare. But such myth-busting has invariably appealed to either a) Hobbes’ argument for the incoherence of the very idea of international law, or else b)… Read More ›
HOW THE ‘LIKE-ALIKE’ AXIOM REALLY PLAYS OUT IN MORAL AND POLITICAL JUDGMENT
Abstract This paper reads like – because it is – a meditation. Its ‘moments’ are these: That like cases are to be treated alike seems to be the core axiom behind all our moral and political reasoning. And yet this… Read More ›
A PROOF THAT EGALITARIANISM IS EITHER FALSE OR BANAL
Abstract In this paper I argue that the only equality that need be postulated between agents qua heading into a theory of normative ethics and/or politics is that the agents in question be equally involved in interactivity in which there’s… Read More ›
A PROOF THAT LIBERTARIANISM IS EITHER FALSE OR BANAL
Abstract In this paper I consider all 243 positions that could constitute libertarianism and show that all but a few are false and the few remaining are banal. I argue further that all 243 versions must issue a promissory note… Read More ›
THE REDUCTION OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE TO TRIBUTE
Von Clausewitz thought that war is just the continuation of politics by other means. I hold that it’s exactly the reverse. But if all political categories are reducible, without remainder, to military ones, to what are considerations of distributive justice… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 