SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the journal-of-stupid-ideas-no-one-wants-to-take-responsibility-for dept.
The Journal of Controversial Ideas is already, well, controversial. Here's a founder's defense.
News broke last week that philosophers Jeff McMahan, Peter Singer, and Francesca Minerva are planning to start a publication called the Journal of Controversial Ideas, an interdisciplinary academic outlet where scholars will be allowed to present arguments and findings pseudonymously, without fear of damaging their reputation.
Almost immediately, the journal was cast as another volley in the wars over free speech and political correctness on college campuses. Critics mocked it as an attempt by white, privileged academics (while Minerva is a postdoc, Singer and McMahan are both among the most prominent applied ethicists in philosophy) to smuggle reactionary and bigoted views that academics would not feel comfortable airing under their own names. Not helping matters was McMahan's declaration to a reporter that he would be open to publishing an article defending eugenics, if its arguments were of sufficient quality.
"Essentially, it is a safe space, one where authors do not have to deal with feedback or criticism from those at the sharp end of their 'controversial' ideas," Nesrine Malik warned of the journal in a Guardian column. "It is publishing without the responsibility that comes along with that."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday November 24 2018, @02:16AM (2 children)
Oh, and by the way, before you judge the editors too harshly when I mention words like "infanticide," here's a case brought up by one of them -- anencephlic [wikipedia.org] infants, i.e., those born often with large parts of their brain missing and often the head not closed properly. In some countries, parents of such babies have made a legal argument to allow donation of the organs of their infants before natural death occurs, since in many cases allowing natural death to occur will result in permanent damage to the organs making them no longer viable for transplant.
This is an infant that has no chance of survival beyond a few days. Often such infants have no higher brain function. Is it permissible to remove the organs and thereby kill the infant in order to save the lives of others?
These are complex moral and logical arguments for many people. Some of the philosophers here (particularly Singer) push the infanticide question a lot further into really controversial territory. But I just wanted to bring up one case where many people at least have a moment of questioning about the possible morality/legality of infanticide, to give a sense of what these editors are trying to do -- i.e., push nuances of moral theories rather than the typical public gut-reaction of "He proposed infanticide! Burn the witch!"
(Score: 1) by deimtee on Sunday November 25 2018, @12:19AM (1 child)
Followed by: Is it permissible to intentionally create such infants in order to harvest their organs?
What if you do it in a mechanical system where you can direct/prune the growth of cells such that you only grow a liver and a few supporting blood vessels? What about growing just a pair of kidneys? Or a heart? What if it turns out that it is easier and results in better organs if you grow the liver, kidneys, and heart together in the one tank? And works even better if you grow a layer of skin around them which can then be used for burn victims?
I think the stuff in the tank is icky but ok. Intentionally creating anencephlic infants is not, but it is going to be hard to draw the line if it does turn out that whole systems are easier than single organs.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday November 25 2018, @03:08AM
So it's not all White Supremacy, but "Live Organ Transplants" [youtube.com], a la Monty Python?
There was another aristarchus submission [soylentnews.org] that would have gone well with this, an interview with the founding editor of Quillette [wikipedia.org].
More of an issue of tracking the Controversial Ideas of the Dark Enlightenment [wikipedia.org] and Heterodox Academy. [heterodoxacademy.org] They are being identified, ridiculed, mocked, and defrocked and de-platformed. That can only mean one of two things.