The Conversation

On April 20, 2020, a group of philosophers officially began accepting article submissions for the Journal of Controversial Ideas, an open-access and peer-reviewed journal designed to promote academic freedom. It offers “a forum for careful, rigorous, unpolemical [sic] discussion of issues that are widely considered controversial, in the sense that certain views about them might be regarded by many people as morally, socially, or ideologically objectionable or offensive.”

One of its co-founders, Francesca Minerva, reportedly received death threats and struggled to secure employment due to an article she published on the permissibility of newborn infanticide. Minerva noted that many of her colleagues conducting climate change research also received death threats, insults, and hostility from the public. If academic freedom “has an instrumental value in order to get closer to the truth,” Minerva said, “we should offer this opportunity of a platform for ideas that are very good, or very important, but also controversial.”

Historically, philosophy has generated countless unpopular views, from the idea that we’re all brains-in-a-vat, to radical skepticism about moral truths, and misanthropic antinatalism (roughly, the belief that it’s ‘better never to have been born’). In juggling these difficult and varied problems, however, philosophical explorations have never remained mere dogmas. Controversial ideas have been either ruthlessly challenged, or largely accepted by the mainstream, but hardly silenced.

Moral duties have been traditionally framed in reference to individuals, not institutions. Large bureaucracies such as corporations, states, and universities tend to take the separation of ethics and politics for granted. After all, the dominant intellectual framework for decision-makers at the highest levels of these institutions is an amoral calculation of what actions best serve the institution’s ends. Morality is often pushed aside in favor of popular support and self-interest.

Through this lens, viable courses of action estop moral dilemmas, for ethical directives are irrelevant to our deliberation of practical, real-world problems. But if so, is there no place for ethics in politics? And if not, can familiar moral duties to rescue (i.e. Singer’s drowning child) be extended to businesses, civic leaders, and universities in a world ravaged by COVID-19?

One line of emerging political realist thought contends that moral slogans such as “dignity,” “fairness,” and “duties to rescue” are merely fashionable cover-ups for political aspirations. When applied to institutions, what we call “morality” is a mere byproduct of rationalizing our self-interested convictions. Skeptics thus tend to construe moral thinking as confused, subjective, over-demanding, or irrelevant with respect to political decision-making. As such, corporate social responsibility and business ethics are commonly regarded as mere public relations stunts instead of legitimate normative guardrails. Realpolitik considerations on the front burner often trump thoughtful moral reflection.

Often smuggled into modern introductory courses in normative ethics, the “trolley problem” is an infamous thought experiment that originated in the writings of philosopher Philippa R. Foot. A simple rundown — no pun intended — of the moral dilemma is as follows. Fatefully, you are the driver of a runaway tram that will strike and kill five people unless you redirect it onto another track where it will kill only one workman. Morally speaking, what ought you do?

Another version of the trolley problem takes place in the surgery room. Imagine that you are a doctor who can kill a healthy patient to obtain his body parts and save several other patients from dying. Should you kill the healthy patient or spare him? What is the right answer, if any?

The trolley problem and its variations concern problems of moral justification. What sorts of justificatory moral principles — be they consequentialist or deontological — yield the verdicts that appear to satisfy our moral commitments? How ought we choose among a number of competing moral principles?

Since its inception in 1912, “Milk’s Favorite Cookie” has been around for over a hundred years, dominating CVS store shelves, and serving as the go-to snack for comp meetings, social gatherings, and late-night study sessions. The Oreo cookie has come in glossy blue packaging, in limited editions and countless varieties, with thick and thin stuffings, with flavors like birthday cake and lemon twist, and with bright colors of all sorts.

Despite its enticing packaging and crunchy savoriness, the vegan two-wafered cookie has given rise to heated debates between friends and family members, angry Redditors, YouTube commenters, and banterful Crimson Editorial editors. Each person has their own way of answering the question, “What is the right way to eat an Oreo?”

When properties such as bestness, properness, correctness, or rightness float into this question, in virtue of declaring that there is some golden standard way to eat an Oreo, we are making a normative statement. We hold claim to a higher, singular truth. Any deviation from this ideal pinpoint is often taken to be wrong or misguided, and to be discouraged, mocked, or rejected.

If you visit an art museum today, chances are you will find throngs of visitors huddled around some famous oil painting or a provocative piece of sculpture, taking pictures of it with their smartphones or posing with their buddies for selfies to post online.

There is nothing inherently wrong about documenting one’s visit to an art museum by photographing an artwork one found to be particularly memorable. But many visitors today seem more interested in taking photos of a cool-looking Miró, or smiling with their friends for a social media post with a Monet, than in standing back to contemplate and enjoy the artwork for its own sake.

For one, the rise of museum photography reflects a change in our attitudes toward the exhibition of art. Rather than considering the enjoyment and experience of art as an end in itself, art has merely become a means through which we broadcast our tastes, our values, and our personal lives to the world. This is noticeably the case with the advent of social media. An Instagram post of a Botticelli fresco or a Picasso mural says as much about one’s love of Western art as it does about one’s tastes and one’s social class. It reflects the ability to appreciate and partake in what is considered “refined” and “cultured,” as opposed to what is kitsch and commercial.

You may have come across something like the following phrase in a physics textbook: “Assume the flying sheep is perfectly spherical.” Though this is an unrealistic stipulation — for sheep don’t fly nor are they spherical — this hypothetical helps us develop a clearer understanding of the physical laws of motion while keeping all other variables constant.

Beyond the confines of a physics textbook, ideal theorizing manifests itself in all realms of public discourse. A historical chain of thinkers — from Plato to Rawls — have sided with idealism over realism in thinking hard about philosophical questions. Their inquiries begin to sound like something along the lines of: “What best principles would fully informed, impartial, and rational agents in an ideal society reach when deliberating about matters of morality or justice?”

Ideal theorizing happens as we sit back in the reclusive perches of the philosophers’ armchair, distancing ourselves from the world as it really is. We depart from realism in its strictest sense. Heads in the clouds, we toy around with high-level thought experiments replete with ‘what-ifs,’ whiting out real-life barriers and feasibility constraints. Everything is easily solved.