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Journal of Controversial Ideas

(ISSN: 2694-5991) Open Access Journal
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Editorial
Editorial
Jeff McMahan 1 , Francesca Minerva 2 , Peter Singer 3
1 Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford
2 Department of Philosophy, University of Milan
3 Centre for Human Values, Princeton University
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 21; doi: 10.35995/jci04020021
Received: 23 Oct 2024 / Accepted: 23 Oct 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
Editorial
Jeff McMahan 1 , Francesca Minerva 2, * , Peter Singer 3
1 University of Oxford, Corpus Christi College
2 University of Milan, Department of Philosophy
3 Princeton University, University Centre for Human Values
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(2), 7; doi: 10.35995/jci02020007
Received: 24 Oct 2022 / Accepted: 25 Oct 2022 / Published: 31 Oct 2022
The Uphill Battle of Unpopular Ideas
David Benatar 1 *
1 Philosophy Department, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(2), 1; doi: 10.35995/jci02020001
Received: 20 Aug 2022 / Accepted: 1 Oct 2022 / Published: 31 Oct 2022
This is an opinion piece about the struggle of controversial ideas to be heard. It is occasioned by the rejection, by a dozen publications, of another opinion piece. The rejected article appears as an appendix at the end. In what precedes it, I discuss why it is much more difficult for controversial ideas to receive a platform. Full article
Editorial
Jeff McMahan 1 , Francesca Minerva 2, * , Peter Singer 3
1 Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford
2 Department of Philosophy, University of Milan
3 University Centre for Human Values, Princeton University
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 1; doi: 10.35995/jci02010001
Received: 27 Apr 2022 / Accepted: 27 Apr 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
doesn't apply Full article
Editorial
Jeff McMahan 1 , Francesca Minerva 2, * , Peter Singer 3
1 University of Oxford, Corpus Christi College
2 University of Milan, Department of Philosophy
3 Princeton University, University Centre for Human Values
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1), 11; doi: 10.35995/jci01010011
Received: 18 Apr 2021 / Accepted: 21 Apr 2021 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
No abstract needed Full article
Research
Feminist Separatism Revisited
Kate M. Phelan 1 , Holly Lawford-Smith 2, *
1 RMIT University, School of Global, Urban, and Social Studies, Melbourne, Australia
2 University of Melbourne, Department of Philosophy, Melbourne, Australia
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(2), 6; doi: 10.35995/jci03020006
Received: 23 Nov 2022 / Accepted: 12 Oct 2023 / Published: 31 Oct 2023
Conflict over who belongs in women-only spaces is now part of mainstream political debate. Some think women-only spaces should exclude on the basis of sex, and others think they should exclude on the basis of a person’s self-determined gender identity. Many who take the latter view appear to believe that the only reason for taking the former view could be antipathy towards men who identify as women. In this paper, we’ll revisit the second-wave feminist literature on separatism, in order to uncover the reasons for women-only spaces as feminists originally conceived them. Once these reasons are understood, those participating in debates over women-only spaces will be in a better position to adjudicate on whether shifting from sex to gender identity puts any significant interests at stake. Full article
Why Shouldn’t Race Be a Costume?―A (Qualified) Defense of Wearing Cross-Racial Make-Up During Halloween
Bouke de Vries 1 *
1 Department of Philosophy, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(1), 6; doi: 10.35995/jci03010006
Received: 11 Jan 2022 / Accepted: 30 Mar 2023 / Published: 28 Apr 2023
Over the past decade, many politicians and celebrities in North America have found themselves embroiled in scandals that involved them having worn black make-up and in at least one incident white make-up. In most of these cases, the used make-up was part of a costume for Halloween, Purim, Carnival, or a themed party. This article challenges the view that wearing cross-racial make-up on such occasions as part of personal costumes—as opposed to costumes that are integral to specific cultural traditions, such as the New Orleans Zulu parade—is always wrong. To do so, it assesses the five most promising objections to this practice. Although some of these objections count against certain uses of cross-racial make-up, I show that in several high-profile cases where such make-up was worn, none of them had force, whether because the objections themselves were implausible and/or because they did not apply. Full article
Sex Categories in Healthcare Contexts―A Consequentialist Analysis1
Susanna Flavia Boxall * , Becky Cox-White
1 California State University, Chico, CA, USA
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(1), 3; doi: 10.35995/jci03010003
Received: 3 Oct 2021 / Accepted: 26 Mar 2023 / Published: 28 Apr 2023
We offer a consequentialist-based rejection of a recent argument claiming that patients should no longer be required to specify a sex category (i.e., mark “male” or “female”) on healthcare forms. The targeted argument—based on claims that non-binary and transgender patients experience negative consequences when asked to choose a sex category—fails because (1) no data are provided to support this claim; (2) the broader consequences of removing this information have not been considered; and (3) eliminating the sex category question is unlikely to solve the problems identified. Full article
Politics Aside, Healthcare Considerations Motivate More Caution before Medical Intervention for Trans-Identifying Youth
J. Cohn 1 *
1 Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(1), 10; doi: 10.35995/jci03010010
Received: 23 Aug 2022 / Accepted: 24 Apr 2023 / Published: 28 Apr 2023
The 2022 article “Legislation restricting gender-affirming care for transgender youth: Politics eclipse healthcare” by K. L. Kraschel et al. implies that attempts in the United States to restrict medical interventions for gender dysphoria are due to political motivations. Although there are likely some whose stance on these interventions is based upon politics, there are sound medical reasons, independent of politics, for advocating for more cautious medical intervention protocols. Neglecting mention of these reasons obscures the fact that medical intervention outcomes are difficult to predict and that serious risks and irreversible consequences are present. In other countries, following extensive evidence review, supportive alternatives to medical intervention are being prioritized instead. Here, several claims of Kraschel et al. regarding the state of medical intervention healthcare are compared to the research evidence and shown to fall short. Healthcare issues alone justify challenging current United States medical treatment protocols. Full article
In Defense of Merit in Science
D. Abbot 1 , A. Bikfalvi 2 , A.L. Bleske-Rechek 3 , W. Bodmer 4 , P. Boghossian 5 , C.M. Carvalho 6 , J. Ciccolini 7 , J.A. Coyne 1 , J. Gauss 8 , P.M.W. Gill 9 , S. Jitomirskaya 10 , L. Jussim 11 , A.I. Krylov 12, * , G.C. Loury 13 , L. Maroja 14 , J.H. McWhorter 15 , S. Moosavi 16 , P. Nayna Schwerdtle 17 , J. Pearl 18 , M.A. Quintanilla-Tornel 19 , H.F. Schaefer III 20 , P.R. Schreiner 21 , P. Schwerdtfeger 22 , D. Shechtman 23 , M. Shifman 24 , J. Tanzman 25 , B.L. Trout 26 , A. Warshel 12 , J.D. West 27
* Corresponding author: ; for a full list of author affiliations, see the end of this article
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(1), 1; doi: 10.35995/jci03010001
Received: 26 Sep 2022 / Accepted: 16 Feb 2023 / Published: 28 Apr 2023
Merit is a central pillar of liberal epistemology, humanism, and democracy. The scientific enterprise, built on merit, has proven effective in generating scientific and technological advances, reducing suffering, narrowing social gaps, and improving the quality of life globally. This perspective documents the ongoing attempts to undermine the core principles of liberal epistemology and to replace merit with non-scientific, politically motivated criteria. We explain the philosophical origins of this conflict, document the intrusion of ideology into our scientific institutions, discuss the perils of abandoning merit, and offer an alternative, human-centered approach to address existing social inequalities. Full article
The Word That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Pamela L. Caughie 1 *
1 Professor Emerita, Department of English, Loyola University Chicago, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(2), 2; doi: 10.35995/jci03020002
Received: 8 Jul 2023 / Accepted: 2 Sep 2023 / Published: 31 Oct 2023
This essay asks, when does our effort to avoid offending students interfere with our ability to teach them? Rehearsing conflicts over language and terminology, over who can speak and what can be said, from my four-decade career as a literature professor, critical theorist, and gender scholar, I confront contemporary efforts to censor certain words, to prohibit certain kinds of inquiry, and to limit who can speak about certain subjects by placing recent incidents in relation to previous debates in academia and the public sphere. The university classroom and scholarly peer-reviewed journals have long served as spaces where established viewpoints can be questioned, knowledge can be challenged, and identities can be probed. Increasingly, however, we see classroom curricula under attack, books banned, language policed, and viewpoints prohibited, with teachers, students, and scholars self-censoring as a result. What happens when words are prohibited, and research subjects are deemed off limit, because some fear they may harm fragile young students or readers? Refusing to have that conversation, to allow scholars and teachers to debate controversial positions openly, itself does the harm. Through examples drawn from my teaching and scholarship, and drawing on newspaper editorials and academic publications, I model a means for working through this seeming impasse encapsulated by the title phrase, “the word that dare not speak its name.” Full article
Identity, Representation and the Canon in Classical Music
F. K. Knights 1 *
1 Independent scholar, UK;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(2), 4; doi: 10.35995/jci03020004
Received: 21 May 2022 / Accepted: 26 Jul 2023 / Published: 31 Oct 2023
Classical music has in recent years been under hostile investigation within society as never before: it is alleged to be elitist, sexist and racist, and has been left in a position where it seems unable or unwilling to defend itself. This article, from a British perspective, examines the imprecise but weighted vocabulary which drives the debate, and considers the complex and apparently unresolvable demographic issues around musical representation by identity classification, of whatever kind. The issue of legacy repertoires and quotas is discussed, as well as the concepts of fairness and decolonization, and some of the reasons which drive the selection of musical repertoires. Full article
Pronoun Problems1
Alex Byrne 1 *
1 Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(1), 5; doi: 10.35995/jci03010005
Received: 7 Oct 2022 / Accepted: 4 Apr 2023 / Published: 28 Apr 2023
In recent years, pronouns have become a white-hot interface between language and social and political issues. “My pronouns are he/they” signals allegiance to one side in the culture wars, as does “My pronouns are whatever.” But there is surprisingly little philosophical work at this interface; this paper aims to chart the main questions and argue for some answers, with the hope of stimulating more research. Full article
Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible
Fira Bensto (pseudonym) 1 *
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(2), 5; doi: 10.35995/jci03020005
Received: 23 Mar 2023 / Accepted: 24 Sep 2023 / Published: 31 Oct 2023
As one of our most deeply entrenched social taboos, zoophilia is widely considered to be wrong, and having sex with animals is illegal in many countries. In this article, I would like to go against this de facto consensus and argue that zoophilia is morally permissible. This would have major implications for how we legally and socially deal with zoophilia. Full article
The Study of California’s Past is Dead and Reburied
Elizabeth Weiss 1 *
1 San José State University, Department of Anthropology San José, 95192-0113, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 17; doi: 10.35995/jci04020017
Received: 9 Aug 2024 / Accepted: 8 Oct 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
Repatriation laws, which aim to return human remains and artifacts from past peoples to modern Native American tribes, have recently changed at both the federal and state levels. California has two large public university systems where skeletal collections have been used for both research and teaching. In this paper, I investigate the current availability of human remains collections – both for Native American remains and non-Native American remains – for research in the California State University and the University of California systems. From the responses that I have received and a search of the anthropological literature, it appears that the repatriation process has caused the cessation of human remains research at California’s public universities. Full article
Sex and Sexual Orientation, Gender and Sexual Preference
Raja Halwani 1 *
1 Liberal Arts Department; School of the Art Institute of Chicago; 112 S Michigan Avenue; Chicago, IL 60603; United States of America;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(2), 3; doi: 10.35995/jci03020003
Received: 25 Nov 2022 / Accepted: 24 Sep 2023 / Published: 31 Oct 2023
On what we can call the “folk” conception of sexual orientation, sexual orientation is understood as sex-based attraction, that is, as (partly) attraction on the basis of the perceived sex of the person to whom one is attracted. However, in recent discussions, philosophers have either added gender to sex as the basis of sexual orientation, or have altogether replaced sex with gender. Moreover, this addition or replacement has gone – mostly – unargued for. This paper argues that a sex-based conception of sexual orientation remains plausible because (1) it is compatible with gender-based attraction, which I argue can be understood as a preference; (2) the reasons so far on offer for adding gender to sex (or for replacing sex with gender) are not convincing; (3) we have good evolutionary and non-evolutionary reasons for thinking that sex is the basis of sexual orientation; (4) we have good reasons to not add gender as a basis of sexual orientation; and (5) a sex-based conception of sexual orientation accommodates the various sexual orientations that have recently appeared, orientations in addition to the folk two (or three) of heterosexuality, homosexuality (and bisexuality), such as pansexuality, skoliosexuality, gynsexuality, and androsexuality. What emerges is a conception of sexual orientation based on the sex of the people to whom we are attracted, but that understands sexual-based attraction in broad enough terms to include surgically altered bodies. Full article
Could 19th-Century Authors Have Noticed Bergmann’s “Rule” in Humans?
Robert Asher 1 *
1 Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 18; doi: 10.35995/jci04020018
Received: 10 Jan 2024 / Accepted: 2 Oct 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
The correlation of increasing size with latitude, known as “Bergmann’s rule”, was first articulated in the 1840s, but its potential applicability to humans was not recognized for another century. In this paper, I have tested if human craniometric data collected by 19th-century naturalists supported this “rule”. At least in the northern hemisphere, they did. Bergmann recognized a relationship between size and latitude in the 1840s, but others studying humans did not, possibly because they were preoccupied with applying anatomical data to debates about human intelligence. Links between cranial anatomy and racist dogma have long been debunked and profound similarities across human populations show that ethnic prejudice has no basis in evolutionary biology. Nonetheless, human populations are not homogeneous or less subject to evolutionary processes than other organisms. Some of these processes are evident in the datasets collected by 19th-century naturalists, whatever their socio-political views may have been. Full article
“White Empiricism” and “The Racialization of Epistemology in Physics”: A Critical Analysis*
Alan Sokal 1 *
0 New York University, New York, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(2), 1; doi: 10.35995/jci03020001
Received: 1 Mar 2023 / Accepted: 27 Jun 2023 / Published: 31 Oct 2023
I critically analyze the reasoning in Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s article “Making Black women scientists under white empiricism: The racialization of epistemology in physics”. Full article
Trapped in the Trans Experience: What Mary Couldn’t Know
Miroslav Imbrišević 1 *
1 The Open University, Department of Philosophy, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 16; doi: 10.35995/jci04020016
Received: 19 Aug 2023 / Accepted: 19 Sep 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
Trans women make claims about their sex and/or gender membership, but they also make various claims about their inner life: that they feel like a woman or that they are a woman inside. I will consider the hypothetical case of Marty, who is a scientist studying the embodied experience of women. After years of research Marty realises that he is trans and transitions to become ‘Mary’. Does Mary know what it is like to be a woman? Mary has all the scientific knowledge, but can only imagine what it is like to be a woman. After transitioning, she learns nothing new about being a woman, only about being a trans woman. In the second part I will assess Talia Mae Bettcher’s ‘first-person authority’ account of gender avowals and the ‘liberatory project’; this constitutes the strongest defence available for trans claims such as I feel like a woman or I am a woman inside. Full article
The Diversity Argument for Affirmative Action in Medical School: A Critique
Stephen Kershnar 1 *
1 Department of Philosophy, Fenton Hall State University of New York at Fredonia, Fredonia, New York 14063, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(1), 1; doi: 10.35995/jci04010001
Received: 9 May 2023 / Accepted: 21 Jan 2024 / Published: 29 Apr 2024
In this article, I argue that medical school admissions should be limited to statistically relevant factors. I argue for it based on two other conclusions: a medical school should maximize quality-adjusted medical services per graduate within the overall optimum spending limit and if this is correct, then a medical school should, other things being equal, select medical students who are better than their competitors. I then explore the implications of this argument for whether a medical school admissions system should be holistic and whether it should consider demographic factors. I also consider and respond to a series of objections to the argument. Full article
Intelligence of Refugees in Germany: Levels, Differences and Possible Determinants
Heiner Rindermann 1, * , Bruno Klauk 2 , James Thompson 3
1 Department of Psychology, Chemnitz University of Technology, D 09111 Chemnitz, Germany
2 Department of Business, Harz University of Applied Studies, D 38855 Wernigerode, Germany;
3 Independent Researcher, London WC1H 0AP, UK;
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 20; doi: 10.35995/jci04020020
Received: 8 Sep 2021 / Accepted: 15 Mar 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
Intelligence is the best predictor and the most important causal factor in job performance. Measuring intelligence therefore provides information about future job performance and employment. This applies to different professions and social groups, including immigrants and refugees. Two previous German studies with N=29 and N=552 refugees found average intelligence scores of IQ 92 and 86, respectively. A newer study with N=499 refugees and immigrants from N=15 countries conducted in 2017 to 2018 using the BOMAT, a German non-verbal and purely figural matrices test, found an average IQ of 90 (using the norms of the manual, 84 using a recent German comparison sample). Overall (as a result of our “mini-meta-analysis”), refugees’ cognitive abilities are about (5 to) 10 IQ points higher than the average abilities of people in their home countries (measured by student assessments or intelligence tests and compiled by various research groups), but 12 (to 15) IQ points below the German average. Positive selection, people that are more intelligent being more likely to leave their countries of origin, and accessibility to testing all likely play a role. At the individual level, refugees’ IQ was correlated with education: Each additional year of schooling corresponded to about 2 IQ points (r=.41). At the cross-national level, education was again significantly correlated with immigrants’ average IQ, but so were the level of cognitive ability in the home country (five different measures), income (GDP per capita as indicator of standard of living), positively valued policies (e.g., democracy), indicators of evolutionary ancestry, and culture (religion is used as a measure here). Individuals’ cognitive abilities could be better predicted with individual-level data than with country-level data (multiple R=.50 vs. .34). However, if individual predictors are not available, group predictors are not useless. Path analyses at different data levels showed indirect effects of country of origin cognitive ability on refugee intelligence via income and level of education. Full article
What If Perceived Discrimination in Medicine Isn’t the Same as Real Discrimination?
Stewart Justman 1 *
1 University of Montana Missoula, Montana, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(1), 4; doi: 10.35995/jci04010004
Received: 31 May 2023 / Accepted: 21 Jan 2024 / Published: 29 Apr 2024
Given the fallibility of human perception, it ought to be uncontroversial that reality is not necessarily as we perceive it. However, the medical literature waives this elementary principle in one instance – that of discrimination perceived by minority patients. Judging the perception of discrimination in such cases as equal to discrimination per se, the literature maintains that black patients in particular accurately discern the same insidious bias in medicine that permeates a society that no longer tolerates overt racism. In reality, however, the supposed signals of implicit bias in the clinical encounter are too ambiguous, too uninterpretable, and too conflicting to be discerned with any certainty by anyone. What is clear is that if the perception of bias can lead patients to forgo treatment, so can the misperception of bias. Literature that assumes that medicine is polluted with concealed bias validates misperceptions, foments mistrust, and sends the incautious message that black patients can expect poor treatment. Full article
Ashley on Gender Identity1
Tomás Bogardus 1, * , Alex Byrne 2
1 Pepperdine University;
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(1), 2; doi: 10.35995/jci04010002
Received: 28 Sep 2023 / Accepted: 9 Apr 2024 / Published: 29 Apr 2024
‘Gender identity’ was clearly defined sixty years ago, but the dominant conceptions of gender identity today are deeply obscure. Florence Ashley’s 2023 theory of gender identity is one of the latest attempts at demystification. Although Ashley’s paper is not fully coherent, a coherent theory of gender identity can be extracted from it. That theory, we argue, is clearly false. It is psychologically very implausible, and does not support ‘first-person authority over gender’, as Ashley claims. We also discuss other errors and confusions in Ashley’s paper. Full article
Islamist Extremism in Australia: Tracing the Ideological Roots and Pathways to Radicalisation
Shane Satterley 1 *
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(1), 3; doi: 10.35995/jci04010003
Received: 18 Oct 2022 / Accepted: 5 Apr 2024 / Published: 29 Apr 2024
Australia has not been immune from patterns of recruitment, attacks and foreign fighters harbouring the ideology of Islamist-jihadism. This paper draws on sociological data from a nationwide survey of 1034 Muslim Australians to analyse the way in which pathways to knowledge exist for Muslim Australians in relation to interpretations of Islam and, importantly, the adoption of an Islamist or Militant interpretation. Islamist and Militant typologies will be examined to see if their sources of Islamic influence were different or the same in their belief formation compared with more moderate typologies. This paper will also examine those participants who indicated that the Quran should be read literally and analyse the overall religiosity of the various typologies, with the aim to get a sense of the connection between (moral/ethical) belief formation and daily ritual of Islamists and Militants. This paper finds that Muslim Australians categorised as Political Islamist and Militant are more likely to have been influenced by mainstream areas of Islamic knowledge and discourse, such as the Quran, hadith, ulema, and the mosque, whilst also interpreting the Quran literally and praying daily. These findings suggest a challenging path forward for counterterrorism and countering violent extremism policies and programs in Australia. Full article
Anti-Natalism and the Asymmetry
Christopher Belshaw 1 *
1 University of York, York, UK
* Corresponding author: christopher.belshaw@york.ac.uk
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(1), 5; doi: 10.35995/jci04010005
Received: 11 Aug 2023 / Accepted: 30 Mar 2024 / Published: 29 Apr 2024
What should we think about starting good lives? On one view starting such lives is required. On another this is forbidden. There’s a third view, occupying a middle position. And according to what Jeff McMahan calls the Asymmetry, starting such lives is permitted but not required. Most of us will incline to this third view, finding the first to be somewhat, the second highly controversial. But I argue that this middle position is untenable, and, further, that the first position is weaker, the second stronger than it initially appears. This isn’t, however, to support David Benatar’s well-known Anti-Natalist stance. I explain how our versions of this view differ, and show how mine is the one to favour. Of critical importance throughout is an appeal to personhood. Full article
The Ethics of No Platforming: Defending the Defense of Immoral Ideas on University Campuses
Michael Veber 1 *
1 East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 12; doi: 10.35995/jci04020012
Received: 2 Feb 2024 / Accepted: 6 Jul 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
A common justification for no platforming on university campuses contends that it is immoral to discuss and debate certain “problematic” points of view. The conventional line of response from campus free speech advocates denies this contention. This article offers an unconventional answer to the moral no platformer. I concede that it is immoral to publicly discuss and debate certain points of view. But I advocate doing it anyway. The argument appeals to the notion of admirable immorality and a traditional conception of what a university is. Full article
Liberal Education and the Left in Britain
Lindsay Paterson 1 *
1 Edinburgh University, School of Social and Political Science, 15a George Square, EH8 9LD;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 10; doi: 10.35995/jci04020010
Received: 23 Oct 2023 / Accepted: 8 Aug 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
Liberal education used to command wide political support in Britain. Social democrats and social liberals disagreed with conservatives on whether the best culture could be appreciated by everyone, and they disagreed, too, on whether the barriers to understanding it were mainly social and economic, but there was no dispute that education ought to aim to hand on the best that has been thought and said. That consensus has vanished since the 1960s. The dominant currents of thought on the left now reject any notion of a universal culture that might form the core of worthwhile learning. This paper considers why the British left supported liberal education, why they have moved away from it, and what the implications are for the future of education policy on the left. Full article
Enlightened Tribalism
Filipe Nobre Faria * , Jonathan Anomaly , Craig Willy
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 9; doi: 10.35995/jci04020009
Received: 3 Sep 2023 / Accepted: 4 Jul 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
Tribalism is often derided as a morally primitive form of human organization. But for most of human history, people organized themselves into tribes that facilitated collective action and provided their members with a sense of security and identity. In stark contrast, liberal cosmopolitans have promoted the ideal of the world community. They tend to diminish the moral importance of tribal attachments and instead claim that altruism should have a more universal scope. We argue that although tribalism can encourage needless conflict, it can also provide meaning, promote important virtues, and increase the long-run viability of human groups better than liberal cosmopolitanism. We call the view that we endorse “enlightened tribalism.” We end by identifying some of the problems tribalism can create, and distinguishing the kind of tribalism that leads groups of people to flourish from the kinds that lead to unnecessary suffering or self-destruction. Full article
Holocaust Perpetrators and Unjust Combatants
Spencer Case 1 *
1 Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, 43203, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 8; doi: 10.35995/jci04020008
Received: 1 Jan 2024 / Accepted: 6 Aug 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
There are compelling reasons to accept Revisionism in just war theory, i.e., the view, roughly, that combatants fighting on the unjust side of a war have no moral right to kill combatants fighting on the just side. This seems to imply that participating in an unjust war as an ordinary soldier is gravely immoral. Indeed, it’s hard to see why such soldiers aren’t the moral peers of the low-level Holocaust perpetrators who have been found guilty of many counts of aiding and abetting murder. This article explores the implications of Revisionism for the moral culpability and blameworthiness of unjust combatants. I argue that (i) some unjust combatants who respect the rules of war are as culpable, and may be just as blameworthy, as low-level Holocaust perpetrators; however, (ii) there remain good grounds for thinking that such perpetrators are often more blameworthy than ordinary unjust combatants even if Revisionism is true. Full article
Is Clinical Psychological Science Infected by Racism and White Supremacy?
Richard J McNally 1 *
1 Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 13; doi: 10.35995/jci04020013
Received: 27 Jun 2024 / Accepted: 19 Sep 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
The psychological clinical science paradigm holds that mental health problems should be treated with therapies having the strongest evidence for their efficacy. For the past several decades, clinical scientists have conducted randomized controlled trials identifying specific treatments that best alleviate symptoms of many psychological disorders, as confirmed by objective, reliable assessments. However, a growing number of psychologists, exemplified by Rodriguez-Seijas et al. (2024), argue that the paradigm fosters a racist, White supremacist subdiscipline. They urge clinical scientists to embrace an antiracist agenda by promoting equity (i.e., equal outcomes) for minority and majority groups in access to doctoral programs, publications in high-impact journals, faculty positions, and grants. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the arguments and evidence bearing on the claim that the paradigm is infected with racist, White supremacist ideology, and to defend the meritocratic standards that have underwritten the success of clinical science. Full article
The Female of the Species: Reply to Heartsilver
Alex Byrne 1 *
1 Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 11; doi: 10.35995/jci02010011
Received: 25 Jul 2021 / Accepted: 29 Mar 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
Maggie Heartsilver’s “Deflating Byrne’s ‘Are women adult human females?’” subjects the arguments and conclusion of “Are women…?” to a probing and comprehensive stress-test. The present paper responds to Heartsilver’s objections, and also discusses the significance of the proposition that trans women are women. Full article
Cognitive Creationism Compared to Young-Earth Creationism
Shuichi Tezuka (pseudonym) *
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1), 3; doi: 10.35995/jci01010003
Received: 19 May 2020 / Accepted: 14 Sep 2020 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
“Cognitive creationism” is a term for ideologically based rejection of concepts from differential psychology or behavioral genetics. Various authors have compared this practice to young-Earth creationism, but the parallels between the two have not previously been subjected to an in-depth comparison, which is conducted for the first time in this paper. Both views are based on a similar set of psychological needs, and both have developed epistemologically similar worldviews, which draw certain conclusions ahead of time and then interpret all evidence in light of these assumptions. This reversal of the scientific method leads both young-Earth creationists and cognitive creationists to reject large swaths of otherwise well-established research due to its potential to support conclusions they have chosen a priori to reject. Both views also tend to rely on nonparsimonious ad hoc explanations, which are usually not able to reliably predict any future results. The risks posed by cognitive creationism will be discussed, along with potential implications for science education. Full article
Ultimate Meaning: We Don’t Have It, We Can’t Get It, and We Should Be Very, Very Sad
Rivka Weinberg 1 *
1 Scripps College;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1), 4; doi: 10.35995/jci01010004
Received: 28 May 2020 / Accepted: 21 Oct 2020 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
Life is pointless. That’s not okay. I show that. I argue that a point is a valued end and that, as agents, it makes sense for us to want our efforts and enterprises to have a point. Valued ends provide justifying reasons for our acts, efforts, and projects. I further argue that ends lie separate from the acts and enterprises for which they provide a point. Since there can be no end external to one’s entire life since one’s life includes all of one’s ends, leading and living one’s life as a whole cannot have a point. Finally, I argue that since we live our lives and structure our living-a-human-life efforts both in parts and as a whole, it is fitting to be sad to recognize that leading and living a life is pointless. My discussion helps make sense of the literature that frequently talks around this topic but often does so vaguely and indirectly. Full article
The Epistemology of No Platforming: Defending the Defense of Stupid Ideas on University Campuses
Michael Veber 1 *
1 East Carolina University;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1), 6; doi: 10.35995/jci01010006
Received: 18 Sep 2020 / Accepted: 21 Mar 2021 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
No platforming is the practice of preventing or prohibiting someone from contributing to public discussion because that person advances what are—or are thought to be—objectionable views. Some of the most newsworthy cases of no platforming occur on university campuses. Despite what others have claimed, there are no good epistemic reasons for no platforming in that context. Full article
Who Cares? ―The COVID-19 Pandemic, Global Heating and the Future of Humanity1
Torbjörn Tännsjö 1 *
1 Stockholm University;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1), 1; doi: 10.35995/jci01010001
Received: 27 Apr 2020 / Accepted: 11 Dec 2020 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has engendered unprecedented drastic and costly measures to obviate the threat. Will something similar happen in relation to global heating? No, this is not likely. Mainly this has to do with a difference in the nature of collective action. Nation states protect their respective populations against the virus. With regard to global heating, we are facing the tragedy of the commons. No global government assumes responsibility for our common future. However, there may be another and further explanation lurking behind political inaction: many people, including our politicians, think that it does not matter if humanity goes extinct. It does matter, however. Strangely enough, the view that it matters is questioned by many important philosophers in the past and in the present, and it is hence controversial. Yet, it should be our common-sense stance to the problem. It is of the utmost importance that there will be sentient happy life on the globe for an indefinite time. Theoretically speaking, in order to recognize this, we need to accept some “total” view, implying what has been called the repugnant conclusion. Practically speaking, we should go to great length to rescue our human civilisation, even if this means that, for a while, we must endure all sorts of hardships such as a global enlightened despotism, or worse—a situation of life boat ethics. Full article
A Puzzle about Self-Sacrificing Altruism
Saul Smilansky 1 *
1 Department of Philosophy, University of Haifa, Haifa 3498838, Israel;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1), 7; doi: 10.35995/jci01010007
Received: 25 Sep 2020 / Accepted: 7 Mar 2021 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
I present a puzzle concerning individual self-sacrificing altruism (SSA) that, to the best of my knowledge, has not been considered before. I develop an argument that challenges the common sense attitudes towards self-sacrificial altruism in typical, paradigmatic cases. I consider SSA involving sacrificing one’s life for other human beings, focusing, for the sake of simplicity, on saving a single person. We have reasons to think that many paradigmatic acts of SSA may, on reflection, be irrational, that typical moral heroes are mistaken, that dispositional self-sacrificers should perhaps resist their good urges to keep saving people, and that the enchantments of heroism should regularly be resisted. Full article
Gender Muddle: Reply to Dembroff
Alex Byrne 1 *
1 Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1); doi: 10.35995/jci01010005
Received: 15 Sep 2020 / Accepted: 7 Mar 2021 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
Robin Dembroff’s “Escaping the natural attitude about gender” replies to my “Are women adult human females?”. This paper responds to Dembroff’s many criticisms of my arguments, as well as to the charge that “Are women...?” “fundamentally is an unscholarly attempt to vindicate a political slogan that is currently being used to undermine civic rights and respect for trans persons”. I argue that Dembroff’s criticisms fail without exception, and explain why the claims about my motives are baseless. Full article
In Defense of Direct Action
Ivar Hardman (pseudonym) *
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1), 2; doi: 10.35995/jci01010002
Received: 6 May 2020 / Accepted: 31 Mar 2021 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
There is widespread agreement that coercive force may be used to prevent people from seriously and wrongfully harming others. But what about when those others are non-human animals? Some militant animal rights activists endorse the use of violent coercion against those who would otherwise harm animals. In the philosophical literature on animal ethics, however, theirs is a stance that enjoys little direct support. I contend that such coercion is nevertheless prima facie morally permissible. I defend this contention by arguing (a) that from the point of view of common sense morality, it is prima facie permissible to use coercive force to prevent puppies from being wrongfully mutilated and (b) that this point clearly extends to other kinds of animals and to other kinds of seriously harmful practices. I then show that there is, as a result of (b), presumptive moral justification for some of the highly controversial instances of direct action undertaken by the Animal Liberation Front and similar groups of militant animal rights activists. I close by arguing that pragmatic considerations override most proposals to undertake direct action, even when the proposed actions are prima facie morally permissible. Indeed, I conclude that although the use of violent coercion to prevent harm to animals may occasionally be ultima facie permissible, its use is in tension with (and tends to undermine) the broader agenda of the animal rights movement. Full article
Black Pete, King Balthasar, and the New Orleans Zulus: Can Black Make-Up Traditions Ever Be Justified?
Bouke De Vries 1 *
1 Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies Umeå University;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1), 8; doi: 10.35995/jci01010008
Received: 21 Oct 2020 / Accepted: 25 Mar 2021 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
Wearing black make-up to impersonate black individuals has become highly controversial in many countries, even when it is part of long-standing cultural traditions. Prominent examples of such traditions include Saint Nicolas celebrations in the Netherlands (which feature a black character known as “Black Pete” who hands out candy to children), Epiphany parades in Spain (which feature impersonations of the biblical king Balthasar who is traditionally portrayed as black) and the annual Zulu parade in New Orleans (which features impersonations of South African Zulu warriors). In this article, I challenge the widely held view that black make-up traditions are categorically wrong. Specifically, I argue that these traditions can be morally vindicated if (i) the large majority of individuals who help to maintain them do not believe that they denigrate black people; (ii) the relevant traditions do not depict black people in denigrating ways; and (iii) the relevant traditions are not gratuitously offensive. While the Dutch Saint Nicholas tradition fails to satisfy these conditions, the New Orleans Zulu tradition is found to satisfy them, as is the Spanish Epiphany tradition in certain cases. I end by identifying another set of conditions under which black make-up traditions might be morally justified. Full article
Punishment and the Body
Christopher Belshaw 1 *
1 Honorary Fellow, Department of Philosophy, University of York;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1), 10; doi: 10.35995/jci01010010
Received: 23 Feb 2021 / Accepted: 21 Mar 2021 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
Suppose we accept that punishment can be legitimate. What form should it take? Many of us believe that it can be acceptable to fine or imprison someone, but that capital punishment, along with corporal punishment in its various manifestations, is wholly unacceptable. I suggest that it is hard to account for or justify this distinction. But granting that resistance to these latter forms is unlikely to be dislodged, and granting too that imprisonment in particular is hardly problem-free, it is worth considering whether there might be alternatives. And I argue here that we should consider enforced coma as a procedure having many advantages over the more familiar methods of delivering a penalty. Of course, there are disadvantages also. The aim isn’t to offer a detailed and practical solution to the problem of crime, but to explore some of the presumptions and principles involved in our thinking about punishment. Full article
A Quandary of Wokeness
M. Oreste Fiocco 1 *
1 Department of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 10; doi: 10.35995/jci02010010
Received: 16 Jun 2021 / Accepted: 31 Jan 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
Being woke, that is, being aware of the appalling injustices borne by many in American society because of certain identities or features and wanting to act to redress these injustices, seems to put one in a quandary: either one can accept a role in the struggle against injustice that seems obviously inefficacious or, if one insists on doing more, one must, it seems, engage in epistemic imperialism, thereby wronging some of those one is endeavoring to help. Full article
Figleaves Right and Left: A Case-Study of Viewpoint Diversity Applied to the Philosophy of Language
John Turri 1 *
1 University of Waterloo, Ontario, CA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 7; doi: 10.35995/jci02010007
Received: 3 Jun 2021 / Accepted: 13 Mar 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
This paper investigates a linguistic device that was only recently proposed, the figleaf, whose function is to prevent a bigoted statement from being interpreted as bigoted. Previous research on figleaves focused on examples of speech by conservative politicians, commentators, and their supporters. My main contributions here are coverage of figleaves across a wider range of the political spectrum and an enhanced taxonomy of figleaves, which can sharpen our theoretical understanding of the psychological and social mechanisms that facilitate bigoted speech. In light of important recent developments in the social and psychological sciences, this paper also illustrates some benefits of incorporating viewpoint diversity into philosophical research on controversial social and political topics. Full article
Alarm about Childhood Vaccinations: A Persistent Panic?
Brian Martin 1 *
1 University of Wollongong, Australia;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 6; doi: 10.35995/jci02010006
Received: 7 May 2021 / Accepted: 8 Mar 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
Some threats to the social order, such as crime, drugs and terrorism, give rise to ongoing alarms. To understand both the alarms and their persistence, it is useful to draw on two bodies of theory. Moral panic theory addresses alarms about groups or activities that transgress social norms, proposing several characteristic features, but does not explain why a moral panic would persist. Several concepts from studies of scientific controversies, including the lack of impact of new evidence, help to explain how a moral panic might continue indefinitely. To illustrate the combined use of moral panic and controversy theory, the case study of the alarm over unvaccinated children and criticisms of childhood vaccines is used. Persistent panics potentially have several negative consequences, especially for groups targeted as causing a danger. Full article
The Fatal Conceit: Swedish Education after Nazism
Gabriel Heller-Sahlgren 1 , Johan Wennström 2, *
1 Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) in Stockholm & London School of Economics;
2 Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) in Stockholm
* CCorresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 9; doi: 10.35995/jci02010009
Received: 16 Jun 2021 / Accepted: 31 Jan 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Sweden dismantled an education system that was strongly influenced by German, Neo-Humanist pedagogical principles in favor of a progressive, student-centered system. This article suggests this was in large part due to a fatal misinterpretation of the education policy on which Nazism was predicated. Contrary to scholarly and popular belief, Nazi schools were not characterized by discipline and run top-down by teachers. In fact, the Nazis encouraged a nationwide youth rebellion in schools. Many Nazi leaders had themselves experienced the belligerent, child-centered war pedagogy of 1914–1918 rather than a traditional German education. Yet, Swedish school reformers came to regard Neo-Humanism as a fulcrum of the Third Reich. The article suggests this mistake paved the way for a school system that inadvertently came to share certain traits with the true educational credo of Nazism and likely contributed to Sweden’s recent educational decline. Full article
Philosophical Reflections on “the Filthiest, Dirtiest, Nastiest Word in the English Language”1
Keith Burgess-Jackson 1 *
1 Department of Philosophy and Humanities, The University of Texas at Arlington; ,
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 4; doi: 10.35995/jci0201004
Received: 19 Jul 2021 / Accepted: 25 Feb 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
When, if ever, is it morally permissible to utter the word “joker”? (NB: The word “joker” is a placeholder for another word, the mere utterance of which certain people find unsettling or offensive. See the prolegomenon of this article for an explanation.) After drawing some relevant distinctions (such as that between use and mention), I provide counterexamples to two extreme theses: first, that it is always wrong (i.e., never morally permissible) to utter the word; and second, that it is never wrong (i.e., always morally permissible) to utter the word. It follows that it is sometimes right and sometimes wrong to utter the word. I then examine three plausible principles for distinguishing between those utterances of the word that are right and those that are wrong. Each principle, I maintain, succumbs to counterexamples. I therefore advocate (i) abandonment of a principled (monistic) approach to the matter and (ii) adoption, instead, of a non-principled (pluralistic) approach. The pluralistic approach that I develop is inspired by the work of William David Ross (1877–1971). Full article
Discounting Females, Denying Sex, and Disregarding Dangers from Self-ID—A Reply and a Defense of Open Debate
Callie H. Burt 1 *
1 Georgia State University, Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, Center for Research on Interpersonal Violence (CRIV), Georgia, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 15; doi: 10.35995/jci02010015
Received: 3 Aug 2021 / Accepted: 26 Feb 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
In this article, I reply to comments on my 2020 article “Scrutinizing the Equality Act,” where I express support for the aims of the US Equality Act—providing federal non-discrimination protections to LGBT+ individuals—but opposition to its form. As currently formulated, the US Equality Act would extend federal non-discrimination protections to LGBT+ individuals by redefining “sex” to “include sexual orientation and gender identity” and thereby eliminate sex-based provisions and the protected nature of women’s spaces. My article aimed to stimulate a more balanced discussion around gender self-identification policies that considers both females and transgender people. Here, I reply to published critiques with the goal of correcting misunderstandings and clarifying the complex, contested sociopolitical arguments presented in my article. Framing this issue within the broader creeping illiberal campaign of conformism and censorship in the academy, I, following others, emphasize the crucial role of open, critical dialogue in advancing science and promoting democracy. In that spirit, I echo calls for feminists and others to push back against censorship and engage with sensitive, controversial issues, including but not limited to deficiencies in the US Equality Act. Full article
The Perversion of Virtue―Causes and Consequences of Threats to Academic Freedom in the Contemporary University
Erika T. Hermanowicz , Joseph C. Hermanowicz *
1 University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA;
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(1), 9; doi: 10.35995/jci03010009
Received: 7 May 2022 / Accepted: 30 Mar 2023 / Published: 28 Apr 2023
The authors locate contemporary fissures in academic freedom in two interrelated macro-societal developments that intensified across the second half of the twentieth century: massification, involving the exponential expansion of higher education, and standardization, an isomorphism of structure and content in academic organization. The article develops a theoretic argument that the unfurling of higher education nationally and globally together with its sociocultural consistency creates a supranatural order endowed with unprecedented power centered in the core actors of universities. While these historical developments create for universities a dominant moral authority in the contemporary epoch, they also engender moralism—an evaluation of speech, writing, and behavior that venerates emotion. To illustrate the strategies of those who deploy moralism, a comparison is drawn between moralism’s contemporary instantiation in higher education and the early medieval Catholic church’s approach to perceived competitors. The comparison demonstrates that while displays of moralism in higher education may be comparatively new, their historical uses are well-worn. While massification and standardization have entailed individual and societal benefits, a rise of moralism obstructs the academic freedom on which institutions of higher education depend. Full article
“Men” and “Women” in Everyday English
Edward Jarvis 1 *
1 Author email:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 5; doi: 10.35995/jci02010005
Received: 25 Nov 2021 / Accepted: 11 Apr 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
What kind of distinction are the words “men” and “women” used to mark in everyday English—one of biological sex, social role, or something else, such as gender identity? Consensus on this question would clarify and thereby improve public discussions about the relative interests of transgender and cisgender people, where the same sentence can seem to some to state an obvious truth but to others a logical or metaphysical impossibility (“Transwomen are women” and “Some men have cervixes” are topical examples). It is with this in view that I report here the results of five recent surveys. Full article
The Pedophile as a Human Being: An Autoethnography for the Recognition of a Marginalized Sexual Orientation
Brecht Vaerwaeter (pseudonym) 1 *
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 3; doi: 10.35995/jci02010003
Received: 28 May 2021 / Accepted: 4 Apr 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
By the general public and in the media, pedophilia as a sexual orientation is systematically confused with sexual abuse of minors. Neurological research supports the idea that pedophilia is an innate sexual orientation, and that is how pedophiles, in the sense of ‘minor-attracted persons,’ experience it themselves. The stigma attached to pedophilia as a sexual orientation ensures that pedophiles live in emotional isolation and that young people with pedophilic feelings have nowhere to turn with their doubts and fears. However, pedophiles are not destined to abuse children, and more openness about living with pedophilia can actually prevent child sexual abuse. In this article, based on an autoethnography, I want to provide more insight into what it means to grow up and live with a pedophilic orientation, and I want to make a case for turning the pedophile into a human being again. Full article
Queer Theory and the Transition from Sex to Gender in English Prisons
Michael Biggs 1 *
1 Department of Sociology, University of Oxford;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 2; doi: 10.35995/jci02010002
Received: 23 Jul 2021 / Accepted: 6 Mar 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
Social theory describes and explains the world but can also transform it. The generative power of theory has been shown for disciplines that emulate natural sciences, like economics and psychiatry. I argue that queer theory has similar power, using the case of prison policy in England and Wales. The theory’s privileging of gender over sex helped to transform the criteria for incarcerating males in women’s prisons: from genital surgery to legal status, and then to gender identity. The implementation of queer theory enables us to unpack two distinct meanings of gender performance. The first is dramaturgical, where the individual gives off the appearance of femininity or masculinity through body modification, clothing, and gesture. The second meaning of performance is illocutionary, where the individual verbally declares themself to be man or woman. This case demonstrates the impact of queer theory on institutional policy and elite opinion, even under a Conservative government. Full article
Saudi Universities Rapid Escalation in Academic Ranking Systems: Implications and Challenges
Sakhr Alhuthali 1, * , Anwar A. Sayed 2
1 Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
2 Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, Taibah University, Madinah, Saudi Arabia;
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 8; doi: 10.35995/jci02010008
Received: 9 Nov 2021 / Accepted: 15 Apr 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
High scientific output has made two Saudi universities perform well in academic ranking systems. The improvement in university ranking is generally observed in other indicators such as the innovation index, the abundance of cutting-edge research, and the number and success of patents and startups. In this paper, the impact of research output of highly cited researchers at two Saudi public universities is investigated from different standpoints and compared with international examples. Many citation databases, ranking systems and international indicators have been used in this paper to thoroughly discuss the research and development landscape in Saudi Arabia. Saudi public universities have the greatest number of highly cited researchers who mostly have another international affiliation. The Saudi academic patent number has increased dramatically since 2014, with minimum improvement in the country’s innovation and startups performance. Many of the Saudi highly cited papers are scattered in the literature with neither a specific targeted field nor follow-up studies. The role of the Saudi universities in industrial collaboration, technology advancement and economic prosperity is less than expected considering the Saudi position on the international stage. Entrepreneurship, innovation and research commercialisation ought to be supported by more private and public initiatives. Transparency, critical thinking, and accountability are needed the most in Saudi academic institutes. Recommendations are given for improving the research culture and following the best practice. Full article
Replies to Critics
Rivka Weinberg 1 *
1 Professor of Philosophy, Scripps College, Claremont;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 14; doi: 10.35995/jci02010014
Received: 15 Mar 2022 / Accepted: 15 Mar 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
This article responds to the two replies, published in this issue, to my article “Ultimate Meaning: We Don’t Have It, We Can’t Get It, and We Should Be Very, Very Sad,” published in the first issue of this journal. In the first reply, Turp, Hollinshead, and Rowe present an internalist challenge to my account of value, and a relational conception of the self as a challenge to my premise that leading a life includes everything you do and aim at within the project, effort, or enterprise of living and leading a life. I respond to the internalist challenge by showing it does not succeed in inserting values into acts. I respond to the relational conception of the self by noting that, regardless of the nature of the self, the project of leading a life includes all the things you do and aim at within that project, effort, or enterprise. Thus, we can accept a relational account of the self and allow for other-regarding values but that does not change the location of our pursuit of those values: they remain located within the meta-project of leading a life, leaving the meta-project of leading and living a life with nowhere to reach for a point. In the second reply, Cowan argues against feeling sad about life’s pointlessness. In response, I argue that sad facts warrant sadness. I further argue that there are reasons other than happiness to value truth, including the very, very sad truth about the ultimate pointlessness of our lives. Full article
The Limits of Identity: Running Tuvel’s Argument the Other Way
Spencer Case 1 *
1 Bowling Green State University;
† This article was initially published under the pseudonym of K.Whittaker.
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(2), 5; doi: 10.35995/jci02020005
Received: 29 May 2022 / Accepted: 7 Oct 2022 / Published: 31 Oct 2022
Rebecca Tuvel provoked a firestorm by arguing that since we should accept trans* self-identification, we should accept transracial identification as well. This paper defends Tuvel’s conditional claim (if trans* acceptance, then transracial acceptance) but draws a different conclusion. I argue that reasoning similar to Tuvel’s establishes that people who identify as something other than human, and people who identify as physically disabled though their bodies aren’t impaired, plausibly also deserve recognition. This reductio ad absurdum of her reasoning should lead us to doubt whether we must embrace trans* self-identification as fully as self-described trans* allies claim that we must. This shouldn’t be construed to mean that trans* people, or members of any of these other groups, deserve anything less than respectful treatment and compassion as moral persons. Full article
The Meat Eater Problem
Michael Plant 1 *
1 Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford and the Happier Lives Institute;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(2), 2; doi: 10.35995/jci02020002
Received: 18 Feb 2021 / Accepted: 9 Sep 2022 / Published: 31 Oct 2022
Here are two commonly held moral views. First, we must save strangers’ lives, at least if we can do so easily: you would be required to rescue a child drowning in a pond even if it will ruin your expensive suit. Second, it is wrong to eat meat because of the suffering caused to animals in factory farms. Many accept both simultaneously—Peter Singer is the pre-eminent example. I point out that these two beliefs are in a sharp and seemingly unrecognised tension and may even be incompatible. It seems universally accepted that doing or allowing a harm is permissible—and may even be required—when it is the lesser evil. I argue that, if meat eating is wrong on animal suffering grounds then, once we consider how much suffering might occur, it starts to seem plausible that saving strangers would be the greater evil than not rescuing them and is, therefore, not required after all. Given the uncertainties and subjective assessments here, reasonable people could substantially disagree. The surprising result is that a moral principle widely considered to be obviously true—we must rescue others—is not, on further reflection, obviously true and would be defensibly rejected by some. Some potential implications are discussed. Full article
Will Moralization of Science Lead to “Better” Science?
Yves Gingras 1 *
1 Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec à Montréal;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(2), 4; doi: 10.35995/jci02020004
Received: 29 May 2021 / Accepted: 5 Jul 2022 / Published: 31 Oct 2022
In the fall of 2018, The US National Science Foundation (NSF) implemented a new policy on sexual harassment. A few months later, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), took a further step in the fight against harassment by announcing that researchers accused of harassment, but not yet found guilty, could nonetheless be excluded from the lists of potential reviewers of submitted projects. We also observe a recent tendency to call for the retraction of published peer-reviewed results on the basis that their conclusions are considered to go against the moral convictions of some social groups, though the lack of validity of the results has not been proven. It is certainly a legitimate question to ask whether these kinds of policies and moral critiques, which directly link the practice of science to the moral behavior of the scientists in the larger society, do not initiate a profound transformation in the relations between science and society by adding to the usually implicit norms governing the scientific community a new form of moralization of the scientists themselves. We analyze these recent events in terms of a new process of moralization of science and ask whether these new rules of conduct may lead to doing better or more robust science. Full article
The Afterlife Dilemma: A Problem for the Christian Pro-Life Movement
Marlowe Kerring (pseudonym) 1 *
1 Author email:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(2), 3; doi: 10.35995/jci02020003
Received: 10 Jul 2021 / Accepted: 15 Sep 2022 / Published: 31 Oct 2022
Many “pro-life” or anti-abortion advocates are Christians who believe that (1) there exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect god who created our universe; (2) restricting abortion ought to be a top social and political priority; and (3) embryos and fetuses that die all go to hell or they all go to heaven. This paper seeks to establish that Christian pro-life advocates with these beliefs face the Afterlife Dilemma. On the one hand, if all embryos and fetuses that die go to hell, they need to abandon their belief in the morally perfect god of traditional Christianity. On the other hand, if all embryos and fetuses that die go to heaven, a plausible triage principle suggests that they must abandon their view that restricting abortions ought to be a top priority. Either way, this popular Christian pro-life view is untenable. The Afterlife Dilemma implies that many pro-life Christians must abandon some aspect of their current beliefs about God, the afterlife, or the comparative moral importance of abortion. Full article
Who Is a Woman: Sex, Gender and Policy Making
Daphna Joel 1, * , Cordelia Fine 2
1 School of Psychological Sciences and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel,
2 School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia,
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(2), 6; doi: 10.35995/jci02020006
Received: 7 Jul 2021 / Accepted: 11 Jul 2022 / Published: 31 Oct 2022
Heated debates are taking place over the question: Who is a woman? Many of these are over inclusion criteria for policies that seek to promote equality, safety and/or privacy for girls and women by excluding boys and men. Science cannot resolve these debates, but its concepts and data can offer useful insights and information for policy makers who have to make principled and workable policy decisions about inclusion criteria. To assist policy makers in this difficult task, we begin by reviewing three key concepts that are often misunderstood and conflated: sex, gender, and gender identity. We then review key issues that policy makers should consider: the purpose(s) of the specific policy and whether it relates to sex, gender, and/or gender identity, and the distributions of benefits and costs for all stakeholders. As these considerations sometimes point to a conflict of interests, we end with some suggestions for how such conflicts might be ameliorated. Although we do not offer solutions to these difficult policy decisions, we hope that this article will help reduce misunderstandings, and facilitate open discussion and good decision making in this contentious policy context. Full article
Against the Harm Argument for Censorship: On the Abuse of Psychology and the Dismissal of Rights
Uwe Steinhoff 1 *
1 Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(1), 4; doi: 10.35995/jci03010004
Received: 15 Jan 2022 / Accepted: 8 Feb 2023 / Published: 28 Apr 2023
Several recent arguments trying to justify further free speech restrictions by appealing to harms that are allegedly serious enough to warrant such restrictions regularly fail to provide sufficient empirical evidence and normative argument. The two recent arguments critically examined here confirm this picture. Ann E. Cudd tries to make all kinds of clearly protected free speech responsible for “trauma.” However, she misrepresents the psychological studies she relies on and her account legitimizes anti-speech violence on a massive scale, which renders it morally absurd. Melina Constantine Bell tries to combine John Stuart Mill and psychological studies to argue that sexist and racial jokes and slurs produce severe harm and should therefore be restricted. Yet the studies are flimsy and the picture of Mill unrecognizable. I will, then, address, as a corrective to the one-sidedness of those who warn against the alleged harms of free speech, the harms imposed by compelled speech, using the topical example of compelling people to use female pronouns for males who claim to be women. I show that this practice is abusive and wrongful. I conclude with a reminder about the nature of liberal democracy. Its raison d’être is not protection from harm per se but the safeguarding of freedom. There are no convincing reasons to further restrict or, especially, to compel speech, but every reason to defend free speech. Full article
Fitness-to-Practise: How UK Healthcare Regulators Cause Practitioner Deaths
Dominic Macqueen 1 *
1 Health Professionals Support Association, London, UK;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(1), 7; doi: 10.35995/jci03010007
Received: 11 May 2021 / Accepted: 21 Feb 2023 / Published: 28 Apr 2023
Cases of practitioner ill-health and suicide have been attributed to disciplinary proceedings carried out by healthcare regulators. The methods operated by regulatory bodies when investigating claims of practitioner wrongdoing exhibit judicial irregularities and raise significant ethical concerns. Revealing how and where regulators fail to execute their fitness-to-practise responsibilities constructively creates a starting point from which fairer and safer systems of regulatory interventions can be considered. This paper is an analysis of how the regulatory establishment administers fitness-to-practise procedures, and endeavours to identify how existing approaches cause harm and undermine the integrity of regulatory oversight. Full article
Deflating Byrne’s “Are Women Adult Human Females?”
Maggie Heartsilver (pseudonym) *
Controversial Ideas 2021, 1(1), 9; doi: 10.35995/jci01010009
Received: 8 Feb 2021 / Accepted: 6 Mar 2021 / Published: 25 Apr 2021
The primary aim of this paper is to show that Alex Byrne’s arguments in “Are Women Adult Human Females?” provide no reason to doubt the truth of the proposition that trans women are women. Byrne’s conclusion is that women are adult human females. However, it is safe to say that much of the interest in his article is driven by the assumption that it is a short step from that conclusion to the further conclusion that trans women are not women. If Byrne is understood to be defending that further conclusion, however, then some of his arguments are dialectically ineffective. The others commit an evidential fallacy or rest on a false premise. Full article
Of Racist Philosophers and Ravens
Michael B. Gill 1 *
1 Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(1), 2; doi: 10.35995/jci03010002
Received: 17 Feb 2023 / Accepted: 3 Apr 2023 / Published: 28 Apr 2023
How can historians of philosophy justify spending the preponderance of their professional lives writing about historical philosophers who held racist views? I use the controversy over University of Edinburgh’s David Hume Tower as a jumping-off place for discussion of this issue. I argue that worthwhile philosophical ideas in historical philosophers can be conceptually isolated from their racist views. Full article
Non-Consensual Vaccination and Medical Harassment: Giving Vaccine Refusers Their Due1
Mihnea D. I. Capraru 1 *
1 HPRS, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(1), 8; doi: 10.35995/jci03010008
Received: 7 Nov 2021 / Accepted: 14 Mar 2023 / Published: 28 Apr 2023
This article argues that non-consensual vaccination is morally impermissible, for the same reasons for which sexual assault is not permissible. Likewise, mandatory vaccination is morally akin to sexual harassment, and therefore is not to be allowed. Full article
Other
The Dating Dupe―The Limits of Biosocially Unfriendly Sociology
Mark Horowitz 1 *
1 Seton Hall University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, South Orange, NJ 07079
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2023, 3(2), 7; doi: 10.35995/jci03020007
Received: 20 Aug 2021 / Accepted: 6 Aug 2023 / Published: 31 Oct 2023
Curington, Lundquist, and Lin’s book, The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance, demonstrates the limits of a moralizing sociological approach to courting behavior shorn of biosocial insight. In this essay, I summarize the book’s central findings and claims regarding the roots of systematic, racially exclusionary patterns in online dating. I question the adequacy of their social constructionist, power analytic explanation of such patterns; and I suggest additional interpretations from a multidimensional, biosocial perspective. I argue that reducing dating discrimination to “racism,” based on a totally constructed view of romantic desire, is both scientifically and politically shortsighted in today’s polarized ideological environment. Full article
On What Matters for Obligations to Refugees
Bradley Hillier-Smith 1 *
1 School of Philosophical, Anthropological & Film Studies, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9AJ, UK
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 19; doi: 10.35995/jci04020019
Received: 21 Oct 2024 / Accepted: 22 Oct 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
Rindermann et al.’s article concludes that certain refugees may have a lower IQ and as a result may not provide as significant an economic contribution to host states compared to the average citizen, and so may be an economic cost. This commentary first casts doubt on this conclusion. It then, and most importantly, demonstrates that even if this conclusion were true, it would be irrelevant insofar as it would have no moral or legal significance in mitigating or defeating obligations towards refugees. The commentary shows that any normative view that IQ and economic contributions can mitigate or defeat obligations to provide protection has unacceptable implications. The commentary then demonstrates that legal and moral obligations to refugees are in no part contingent on IQ and economic contributions and to suppose otherwise would simply represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature, grounds, and weight of obligations towards refugees. Hence, supposed IQ or economic contributions are entirely irrelevant to, and cannot undermine the strength of, refugees’ claims to protection nor states’ obligations to provide it. Full article
Controversy Requires Competence: Comment on Rindermann et al. (2024)
Eric Turkheimer 1, * , K Paige Harden 2, *
1 University of Virginia
2 University of Texas at Austin
* Corresponding author: (E.T.); (K.P.H.)
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 15; doi: 10.35995/jci04020015
Received: 18 Apr 2024 / Accepted: 6 Aug 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
Rindermann, Klauk, and Thompson (2024) purport to give evidence regarding the determinants of intelligence test scores among refugees who have immigrated to Germany from different countries of origin, and they speculate these intelligence test score differences have negative implications for future economic development in Germany. We describe critical flaws in their measurement, statistical analysis, and interpretation of individual- and country-level differences among the immigrant participants, particularly regarding the authors’ specious reference to “evolutionary ancestry.” We contrast their pseudoscientific approach with valid scientific methods. Human intelligence and human evolution are controversial areas of scientific inquiry that require the highest levels of scientific rigor and editorial discretion, which are absent here. Full article
Thou Shalt Not Create; But If Thou Dost, Thou Shalt Kill? A Comment on Belshaw
Jeff McMahan 1 *
1 Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, Radcliffe Humanities, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG, UK;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(1), 6; doi: 10.35995/jci04010006
Received: 19 Apr 2024 / Accepted: 20 Apr 2024 / Published: 29 Apr 2024
In his article “Anti-Natalism and the Asymmetry” in this issue, Christopher Belshaw defends the common-sense view that, while there is a reason not to cause individuals to exist whose lives would not be worth living, there is no reason to cause individuals to exist just because their lives would be worth living. But the reasons why these claims are true, he argues, also imply that it is wrong to cause individuals to exist even if their lives would be worth living. I argue that the moral asymmetry between intrinsic goods and intrinsic evils that is the basis of his view is too strong, and that a more defensible view includes a recognition that there is a moral reason to cause well-off individuals to exist, though it is less strong than the reason not to cause an equivalently badly-off individual to exist, and that this weaker asymmetry supports the view that procreation is generally permissible. Full article
A Response to McMahan
Christopher Belshaw 1 *
1 University of York
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(1), 7; doi: 10.35995/jci04010007
Received: 24 Apr 2024 / Accepted: 25 Apr 2024 / Published: 29 Apr 2024
In ‘Anti-Natalism and the Asymmetry’ I argue that the claim, starting good lives is permitted but not required, ultimately proves untenable. The inevitable bad parts of a life give reasons against starting, but the good parts give no reasons for. So don’t start, and if started, end. Jeff McMahan thinks this good/bad asymmetry is way too radical, and finds much to fault with my argument. Unsurprisingly I agree with some but not all of what he has to say. We agree, for example, that the concerns of persons to live on generally far outstrip those of babies and animals. We disagree about there being always some reason to start good lives. Full article
Obesity, Stigma, and Responsibility: Should the Concept of Agency be Abandoned?
Jay J. Duckworth 1 *
1 Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 11; doi: 10.35995/jci04020011
Received: 6 Jul 2023 / Accepted: 6 Aug 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
Appeals to individual agency and responsibility are increasingly viewed as antithetical to the goals of reducing stigma towards overweight and obesity and are sometimes even framed as anathema to civil discussion in academia. The current paper argues that this is a naïve view of agency and responsibility and, contrary to helping prevent or reduce stigma, removing these concepts from our conversations around obesity may instead worsen outcomes for those most at risk. This paper provides background for what follows and an introduction to the topic, before detailing and responding to the most common arguments for the futility of agency: from subconscious processes; from biological determinism; from free will; from obesity as a disease; and from framing and stigma. It then considers the impact on research of this proposed framing / perspective. The final section considers three key shifts in conceptualisation which I believe are necessary to highlight the importance of agency in weight management, whilst also providing the best care possible to patients and society at large. The proposed conceptual shifts are: agency is necessary but often not sufficient as it is constrained; diseases are not created equal; and there are multiple pathways to obesity. Acknowledging these fundamental realities can help us avoid the schism currently developing in researchers’ and clinicians’ conceptions of overweight and obesity. Full article
Don’t Worry, Be Happy: The Gettability of Ultimate Meaning
Michael-John Turp * , Brylea Hollinshead , Stephen Rowe
1 Department of Philosophy, University of Canterbury, New Zealand; (B.H.); (S.R.)
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 12; doi: 10.35995/jci02010012
Received: 22 Oct 2021 / Accepted: 7 Mar 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
Rivka Weinberg advances an error theory of ultimate meaning with three parts: (1) a conceptual analysis, (2) the claim that the extension of the concept is empty, and (3) a proposed fitting response, namely being very, very sad. Weinberg’s conceptual analysis of ultimate meaning involves two features that jointly make it metaphysically impossible, namely (i) the separateness of activities and valued ends, and (ii) the bounded nature of human lives. Both are open to serious challenges. We offer an internalist alternative to (i) and a relational alternative to (ii). We then draw out implications for (2) and conclude with reasons to be cheerful about the prospects of a meaningful life. Full article
Intelligence and Immigration
Christopher Heath Wellman 1 *
1 Department of Philosophy, Washington University in St. Louis
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2024, 4(2), 14; doi: 10.35995/jci04020014
Received: 3 Jul 2024 / Accepted: 15 Aug 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
The relative intelligence of prospective migrants likely does little to move the needle on the central issue in the ethics of immigration, namely, whether states are morally entitled to forcibly exclude outsiders. Even so, I argue that varying levels of intelligence may be relevant to a number of theoretically interesting and practically pressing issues. In particular, such variations may in some cases (1) affect the number of refugees a country is obligated to accept, (2) be relevant to the advisability of encouraging refugees to resettle rather than attempting to help them where they are, and (3) have implications for relational egalitarians who are especially concerned with inequalities among fellow citizens. Full article
Life Is Pointless—Good Point...and How Do You Feel about That?
Nelson Cowan 1 *
1 Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Missouri, USA;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 13; doi: 10.35995/jci02010013
Received: 23 May 2021 / Accepted: 24 Feb 2022 / Published: 29 Apr 2022
This essay is in response to R. Weinberg, whose title well-summarizes the article: “Ultimate Meaning: We Don’t Have It, We Can’t Get It, and We Should Be Very, Very Sad.” This response accepts the idea that life is pointless but argues against the non sequitur that we should be very, very sad. There is a question as to whether “should” means that being sad is the appropriate thing to do, or whether it is a prediction about what will happen if people understand the pointlessness of life. Either way, from the perspective of cognitive psychology, clearly the implied causal path from thought to feeling does not always hold; considerable evidence suggests that, often, causation goes the other way around, that feelings influence thoughts. A person’s feeling sad or depressed might increase the likelihood that the person will conclude that life is pointless, or that the person will worry about it. Nobody has proven that the pointlessness of existence is incompatible with satisfaction in one’s life, or that not feeling sad means one is overlooking the pointlessness of life, or that feeling sad is more appropriate or better in some way. In sum, I wish people happiness and urge them to try to construct a meaning in their life. Full article