Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03020006
Authors: Kate M. Phelan Holly Lawford-Smith
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03020001
Authors: Alan Sokal
I critically analyze the reasoning in Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s article “Making Black women scientists under white empiricism: The racialization of epistemology in physics”.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03020003
Authors: Raja Halwani
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03020005
Authors: Fira Bensto (pseudonym)
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03020007
Authors: Mark Horowitz
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03020004
Authors: F. K. Knights
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03020002
Authors: Pamela L. Caughie
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.”
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03010009
Authors: Erika T. Hermanowicz Joseph C. Hermanowicz
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03010004
Authors: Uwe Steinhoff
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03010007
Authors: Dominic Macqueen
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03010005
Authors: Alex Byrne
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03010002
Authors: Michael B. Gill
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03010008
Authors: Mihnea D. I. Capraru
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03010006
Authors: Bouke de Vries
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03010003
Authors: Susanna Flavia Boxall Becky Cox-White
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03010010
Authors: J. Cohn
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci03010001
Authors: D. Abbot A. Bikfalvi A.L. Bleske-Rechek W. Bodmer P. Boghossian C.M. Carvalho J. Ciccolini J.A. Coyne J. Gauss P.M.W. Gill S. Jitomirskaya L. Jussim A.I. Krylov G.C. Loury L. Maroja J.H. McWhorter S. Moosavi P. Nayna Schwerdtle J. Pearl M.A. Quintanilla-Tornel H.F. Schaefer III P.R. Schreiner P. Schwerdtfeger D. Shechtman M. Shifman J. Tanzman B.L. Trout A. Warshel J.D. West
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02020006
Authors: Daphna Joel Cordelia Fine
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02020003
Authors: Marlowe Kerring
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02020007
Authors: Jeff McMahan Francesca Minerva Peter Singer
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02020004
Authors: Yves Gingras
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02020001
Authors: David Benatar
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02020002
Authors: Michael Plant
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02020005
Authors: K. Whittaker (pseudonym)
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010014
Authors: Rivka Weinberg
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010001
Authors: Jeff McMahan Francesca Minerva Peter Singer
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010010
Authors: M. Oreste Fiocco
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010013
Authors: Nelson Cowan
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010007
Authors: John Turri
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010006
Authors: Brian Martin
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010009
Authors: Gabriel Heller-Sahlgren Johan Wennström
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010012
Authors: Michael-John Turp Brylea Hollinshead Stephen Rowe
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci0201004
Authors: Keith Burgess-Jackson
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).
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010011
Authors: Alex Byrne
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010005
Authors: Edward Jarvis
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010003
Authors: Brecht Vaerwaeter (pseudonym)
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010002
Authors: Michael Biggs
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010008
Authors: Sakhr Alhuthali Anwar A. Sayed
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci02010015
Authors: Callie H. Burt
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010003
Authors: Shuichi Tezuka
“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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010004
Authors: Rivka Weinberg
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010006
Authors: Michael Veber
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010001
Authors: Torbjörn Tännsjö
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010007
Authors: Saul Smilansky
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010005
Authors: Alex Byrne
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010002
Authors: Ivar Hardman
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010008
Authors: Bouke De Vries
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010010
Authors: Christopher Belshaw
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.
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010011
Authors: Jeff McMahan Francesca Minerva Peter Singer
]]>Journal of Controversial Ideas doi: 10.35995/jci01010009
Authors: Maggie Heartsilver
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.
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