I’ve made no secret that of the things I care least about, global warming and the minutes of last night’s city council meeting are pretty much in a dead heat. I say things like this not only because I mean… Read More ›
Why My Colleagues Are Idiots
STUPIDITY DEFINED
Philosophers are in the business of either drawing distinctions or collapsing them. A case of the latter is David Hume’s observation that, all this palaver to the contrary notwithstanding, causation just is correlation. A case of the former is the… Read More ›
THE WORLD SINCE 1363
Whenever you’re in the moment – as distinct from what? outside of it? – it’s often difficult – no, make that impossible – to see it for what, if anything, it really means. But a moment takes its meaning from… Read More ›
IS SELF-IDENTIFICATION CRITERIAL OR MERELY EVIDENTIAL?
Here’s what I trust will be an instructive analogy. There are very few knock-down arguments in philosophy, but Plato’s Euthyphro is one of them. Does God make something good by approving of it, asks Socrates, or does He approve of… Read More ›
BAFFLEGAB
It’s been around since before we emerged from the cave. Or maybe even before we came down from the trees. So the only thing new about it is how it’s beginning to irritate the fuck out of me. It began… Read More ›
DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE 101
Here are some of the enabling axioms we’re going to need, both a) to define distributive justice, and then b) to settle on what a just distribution might look like. Let the x axis be one’s share of the cooperative… Read More ›
THE ROAD TO PERDITION
The road to perdition is almost always paved with the very best of intentions. For example, in 2000 the Government of Canada instituted and funded a highly ambitious Canadian Research Chair program. Tier Two rewards were designed to encourage scholars… Read More ›
MAGA (MAKING THE ACADEMY GREAT AGAIN)
Today I heard an account I’d never heard before. White males are losing interest in a university education because the oil patch is paying too much. So to survive universities have to attract non-whites, and to do that it has… Read More ›
PARSING THE EDI INITIATIVES
All the palaver aside, EDI is just the latest rebranding of quota hiring. Quota hiring is justified by one or both of two claims: 1) social justice requires it and/or 2) performance excellence does. Hiring a nigh-illiterate indigenous women as… Read More ›
TALK AS STUPID AS IT IS CHEAP
Just when I thought I’d plumbed the depth of Administration stupidity with my entry entitled “The Dean’s Letter”, Pamela Lindsay, my part time research assistant and full time wife – has just brought to my attention what makes Matt Letts… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 