WHAT IS RACE? One defeasible but serviceable tell that two species share a common ancestry is that they remain interbreedable. So though possible, it’s highly unlikely that the pre-contact peoples of the Western Hemisphere were sui generis, as some of… Read More ›
race
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 ›
IDENTITY
I think of myself as tall, dark, and handsome. I’m both fun and funny. I’m warm, sensitive, caring, generous, and incredibly intelligent. In short, I’m God’s gift to women. But apparently this judgment is not widely shared. But surely there’s… Read More ›
WHO GETS A DEPARTMENT OF THEIR OWN?
I know there are people because I’ve met some. But I’m not sure I’ve ever met a people. A people, I’m told, is a collection of people, but not just any collection of people. It has to be of people… Read More ›
THERE GOES THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
A neighbourhood is a location and a socio-economic homogeneity. It’s a location because people don’t want to have to drive to borrow a cup of sugar. And it’s socio-economically homogenous because they like to chat when they’re borrowing a cup… Read More ›
THE DEFINITION OF INDIGENOUS
After thousands of years of migrations and cullings and displacements and interbreeding, if by the indigenous people of, say, southern Alberta, is meant the people who were first to get here, we have no idea who those people might have… Read More ›
ALIENS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND RACE
It’s a little known fact – probably because it isn’t one, but that needn’t delay us here – that we’ve frequently been visited by creatures from outer space. Moreover, we’ve all seen them. But they’re extremely shy. And so whenever… Read More ›
DEFUNDING THE POLICE
There’s a movement afoot in America, one that predates the current fuss over the George Floyd killing, to defund the police, if not entirely then certainly by some amount in excess of just a little. If we want to reduce… Read More ›
A DEFENCE OF BIGOTRY
If I were born blind, I’d have no idea what colour I am. Or even that people come in different colours. I’d only know about it if someone told me about it. As it happens I wasn’t born blind. But even then… Read More ›
INTER-GENERATIONAL JUSTICE
Dr. Doolittle can talk with all the animals. I can only talk with my dog. Still, I can testify – because she’s assured me of this – that she doesn’t think of me as belonging to a different species. She… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 