Journal of Controversial Ideas

After describing the Genocide Convention, this paper first considers how the Counterfactual Test might help in determining whether an act was committed with genocidal intent even when defensive military action was also involved. It then considers a problem with the Counterfactual Test and how one might avoid that problem. Finally, it shows how recent philosophical work on the relation between intention and moral and legal permissibility can bear on the correctness of the Genocide Convention itself. If what it argues is correct, more attention should be paid to the soundness of the Genocide Convention itself than to how to meet the requirements for applying it (e.g., how to identify the presence of a genocidal intention). Full article

Objective: To stimulate debate as to whether gender affirming care is a governmental policy imposed upon psychiatrists in the early decades of the 21st century. Conclusion: Gender affirming care (GAC) is a highly controversial treatment approach for minors with gender distress. GAC possesses several unique features that potentially mark it as a political movement rather than a health intervention, including: its availability according to government policy rather than research evidence, clinicians being under perceived pressure to implement GAC, the required use of visual symbols and language to signal allegiance to the model in the workplace, and the involvement of activist organisations in guiding its implementation in health services. GAC aligns with historical examples of the politicisation of psychiatry in providing a sanitising cover for governments to enact an unpopular political agenda without appearing to rely upon overt forms of authoritarianism. Disguising GAC as a psychiatric treatment successfully stymied public debate by suggesting that psychiatrists have a degree of medical expertise regarding gender distress that the public lacks. Clinician dissidents to GAC face social pressures and fear risks to their employment and medical registration. Two recent Family Court judgments in Australia further demonstrate the mechanisms by which GAC is held in place by activist clinicians supported by a governmental agenda. Full article

Following Martha Nussbaum’s influential work, it is widely assumed that objectification, mainly sexual objectification, often includes what she calls “denial of autonomy” and “denial of subjectivity.” The purpose of my paper is to offer a critical examination of this assumption. I start with a distinction between two notions of denial, epistemic and performative. I then argue that when applied to the sexual gaze – the paradigmatic case of objectification – neither of these notions can make sense of the claim that objectification means, entails or leads to a denial of women’s autonomy or subjectivity. Full article

Contemporary English and Singapore law is extremely limited in its circumscription of various acts committed against a cadaver, only individuating two offences that can be committed against a corpse. The first is that of corpse desecration. The second is that of necrophilia. Given this limited scope of criminalization, there is a wide range of acts which might putatively be done to a corpse which escapes the spectre of criminality. This paper will demonstrate that cannibalism is, with certain constraints, legally permissible in both England and Singapore. It will be further argued that the cannibalism of corpses is morally permissible and should therefore continue to remain legally so in both jurisdictions. Kantian theory, particularly Kant’s conception of personhood, as well as Matthew Kramer’s version of the interest theory of rights will be utilized to demonstrate cannibalism’s moral permissibility. Finally, this paper will obviate certain communitarian objections to the continued legal permissibility of cannibalism. Full article

In “Intelligence of refugees in Germany”, we (^{Rindermann et al., 2024}) proposed both a main and a secondary claim: 1. The average IQ scores for refugees in Germany is between 85 and 88. 2. An analysis of possible causes of these results within the refugee sample (i.e., differences within the group) revealed correlations with individual and country-of-origin average educational levels, with wealth, and with the background factors of culture and ancestry. In the same issue in which our article was published, the Journal of Controversial Ideas published critical commentaries on the article. The IQ scores were not criticized, but questions were raised about how this result can be explained and whether the correct methods were used. For example, the selection of indicators for genetic ancestry (formerly referred to as “evolution”) was criticized. If other indicators (genetic distances to South Africa or Ethiopia) are chosen, the results remain robust (for individual BOMAT-IQ r = .29 vs. .22/.28, for country level r = .67 vs. .57/.77). It was claimed that a factor analysis with two items to determine a g-factor would be incorrect. I disagree; in my view, the method is valid, but it offers no advantage over simple averaging. It was also said that the path model showed warnings and therefore produced erroneous results. This was due to the fact that too many paths were estimated relative to the number of countries. If one variable and its paths are removed, the pattern of results remains largely robust for the others (but the direct effect for country IQ on individual IQ increases from β_CA = .36 to β_CA = .79). Commentaries also argued that the intelligence level of refugees is not a sound reason against helping them. We did not claim that it is. However, we point out in this response that the legitimate interests and rights of the local population must also be taken into account. The burdens and sacrifices that migration entails for host societies must be recognized, acknowledged and included in an ethical evaluation. Full article

Responding to an article by ^{Rindermann et al.} (²⁰²⁴), which reports that refugees in Germany, on average, have significantly lower intelligence than the German host population, Bradley Hillier-Smith has argued that such cognitive disparities – if they exist – are irrelevant to states’ moral duties toward refugees. This article challenges his position. It further contends that even if we adopt a cosmopolitan perspective that denies states the right to prioritize the interests of their own populations, it is not clear that states in the Global North are morally required – or even permitted – to admit large numbers of relatively low-IQ refugees from the Global South. This, I show, is especially true given that assistance could instead take the form of supporting their relocation to a safe country within the region. Full article

Jeff McMahan has recently argued that Israel’s current military campaign in Gaza constitutes an unjust war on the grounds that it fails to satisfy the requirements of proportionality and necessity. His case rests on a comparative moral calculus: the harm inflicted on Palestinian civilians is judged excessive in relation to the number of Israeli lives saved, even when granting special weight to the lives of one’s compatriots. However, his account is marked by several analytical limitations. His treatment of associative duties is reductive, grounding their moral force exclusively in co-nationality and neglecting thicker accounts of collective responsibility. He also adopts a narrow conception of benefit, focused entirely on immediate lives saved, while bracketing other morally salient goods such as long-term security or deterrence. His account of civilian liability is similarly narrow in scope, relying on prior electoral support while disregarding broader forms of collective entanglement. Finally, his critique of necessity relies on counterfactuals and general trends – such as civilian harm and cycles of retaliation – that, if applied universally, would challenge the justice of nearly all wars. These limitations significantly compromise McMahan’s analysis and render his conclusion – that Israel’s military campaign fails the just war criteria of proportionality and necessity – unpersuasive. Full article

This article defends the claims of an earlier article (“Proportionality and Necessity in Israel’s Invasion of Gaza, 2023–2024”) against objections advanced by Simon Lucas in “Proportionality and Necessity in Israel’s Invasion of Gaza: A Reply to McMahan.” It defends earlier arguments and develops new arguments to show that Israel’s war in Gaza between October 7, 2023, and late October 2025 has egregiously violated two moral principles that govern both the resort to war and continuation of war. These principles require that war be proportionate and necessary. Among the claims defended here are that Lucas’s collectivist conception of war and his appeals to principles of reciprocity are deeply implausible. Full article

Weiss’s paper argues that repatriation laws prevent further research and new scientific knowledge, particularly in anthropology. For Weiss and others, these laws are unscientific. In this commentary, I offer a brief defence of repatriation laws. I argue that these laws prevent further significant historical harms and trauma that can result from research on Native American remains and that researchers ought to embrace such laws. Furthermore, I suggest we have reason to be sceptical about Weiss’s argument. Full article

In recent years, the scientific community and its publications have come under scrutiny due to scandals involving the “publish or perish” culture, the dissemination of fabricated data, the emergence of paper mills, fraudulent peer review and the prevalence of low-quality publications. While various issues such as these have been highlighted in the literature, the role of the editor(s) in potential problematic or unethical situations has received only limited attention, especially the topic of editor–author conflicts – particularly cases where editors previously co-authored with one of the authors they are supposed to be evaluating – receives relatively little to no attention. Yet, recently a massive retraction of 43 papers involving potentially unethical editorial work and a very specific editor–author conflict reached headlines, indicating the importance of addressing this. Full article