Controversial Ideas Research Articles

Policy diffusion across political ideologies: explaining Denmark’s desire to externalise asylum

In 2021, the Danish Social Democratic government tabled a bill allowing asylum seekers to be transferred to another country to process claims and provide protection. Witnessing a Social Democratic government embracing this highly controversial idea, even though less than a handful of right-wing governments outside Europe had previously outsourced asylum, is puzzling. Policy diffusion theory is used to explain the underlying mechanism and analyse the justification strategies. In the face of public attention focused on the refugee protection crisis between 2014 and 2016, the Social Democrats embraced the idea of externalising asylum in order to be recognised as responsive problem solvers. Essentially, they employed three strategies to justify the policy and to mask its origin and its inconsistency with the party’s ideology: (1) referring to policy advisors as the original source of the idea; (2) reframing externalisation as a humanitarian project; and (3) shifting the narrative about Social Democratic identity.

Addressing Issue of Fast-Tracking in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship Training: Expanding Access or Undermining Competence?

Fast-tracking is the option for residents to pursue fellowship training in place of their final residency year. It is currently permissible to fast-track into a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship, but this remains a controversial idea for other psychiatry subspecialties. In 2022, the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (ACLP) featured a plenary session debate about the pros and cons of fast-tracking. Here, the authors present some of the information discussed at that session and highlight the potential benefits and pitfalls of fast-tracking into consultation-liaison (C-L) psychiatry.

‘We Fall Asleep and Never Wake Again’: Lucretius in James Thomson’s The City of Dreadful Night

The influence of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura ( On the Nature of Things) on Victorian poetry was considerable. Various poets from Matthew Arnold to Alfred Tennyson praised or criticised Lucretius’ ideas, especially during the debate on religion and the origin of humanity sparked off by Darwin’s theory of evolution. However, no poet of the Victorian era was impacted by Lucretius’ poetry more than James Thomson (‘B. V.’), whose The City of Dreadful Night (1874) has striking parallels with De Rerum Natura. Even though Thomson acknowledged such similarities, scholars have not analysed the intertextual relations between De Rerum Natura and The City of Dreadful Night. My article demonstrates that Thomson shared not only Lucretius’ ideas on religion, death, and the impossibility of the afterlife, but also his concept of a goddess as a symbol of creativity. My analysis also indicates that Thomson borrowed certain images from Lucretius and shared his belief in the power of poetry to convey controversial ideas.

Embodied cognition and the imaging of bio-pathologies: the question of experiential primacy in detecting diagnostic phenomena.

This article investigates the origins of the experiences involved in the diagnostics (detection and normative evaluation) of biological entities in image-based medical praxis. Our specific research aim presupposes a vast discussion regarding the origins of knowledge in general, but is narrowed down to the alternatives of anthropomorphism and biomorphism. Accordingly, in the subsequent chapters we will make an attempt to investigate and illustrate what holds the diagnostic experiential situation together-biological regularities, manifestation via movement, conscious synthesis, causal categories, or something else. We argue that as long as knowledge originates out of practices, a promising way forward is to oscillate between the prominent although controversial ideas of the history of philosophy and observations of concrete human practices, such as, in our chosen example, image-based medical diagnostics of biological pathologies. Although a number of thinkers are involved in the discussion, Aristotle and Husserl are most important here as the representatives of historical paradigms on the matter. The body in this research was not taken solely as the physical entity (Körper) but rather as a transcendental, constitutive structure where diagnostic and biological processes synchronize in teleological movement (Leib). However, philosophical speculations are illustrated by actual radiograms, the interpretation of which brings us back to the aforementioned question of primacy regarding cognition.

Soundness of Female Teacher’s Dress Code Policy in Sri Lanka

Clothing plays a crucial role in any society as an indicator to reflects the personality, culture, subcultures, religions, occupations, and moral values of individuals. The debate between formal and informal dress code in labor market is being a serious deliberation to many scholars. Especially, teachers are subjected to such discussions, because a teacher is considered to be a role model to students. In addition, the dress of teachers may have different implications than other professions. Since, the dress code replicates the set of principles in an organization comprising with the professionalism, such policies should be more important and proactive. Recently, different parties in Sri Lanka confronted with controversial ideas regarding female teacher’s dress code. However, the existing policies were not reformed and not considerably measured the relationship between job performance and employee attire by relevant authorities in Sri Lanka. Thus, to examine the soundness of prevailing dress code policy, the study is surveyed the positive and negative impacts of job performance that female teachers encounter due to dress code policy in Sri Lanka. Further, the study identified certain best practices that could imply to modernize the existing traditional dress code policies. The study was carried out as a qualitative study using in-depth interviews with individuals and group discussions. Fifteen participants were selected as the sample based on judgmental sampling method while thematic analysis was used to analyze the collected data. Based on the results of interviews, three themes were discussed as the outcomes of the study including effect of attire on professionalism, school culture and professional attire, and the challenges of wearing professional attire. The study emphasized the importance of adjusting existing dress code policy for female teachers in Sri Lanka by adhering the challenges on job performance by the attire.

Objects as Agents (Some Comments on O.L. Gubarev’s Response)

This article builds on the earlier discussion about the actor traits associated with North Germanic weapons. The historical theories and evidence used by O.L. Gubarev to support his approach are analyzed. It is argued that he seems to echo the historiographical tradition relying on oversimplified a priori assertions, rather than a comprehensive analysis of the concept of “living” things in certain cultures. In his polemical response, he misinterpreted some historical sources and the views of other researchers, while also presenting his own controversial ideas as undeniable facts. In conclusion, it is suggested that the beliefs in the ability of inanimate things to have person-like qualities and play an actual social role, the distinction between living and non-living nature, as well as the practice of attributing souls to non-living entities, should be regarded as separate problems that are not clearly related in all cultures.

Longing for the Sonderweg

The highly controversial idea of Sonderweg, a special path to modernity, is frequently invoked to depict the history of Germany in the twentieth century. Initially claimed by nationalists as an exceptionalism proudly opposed to the development of both France and the United Kingdom, the German Sonderweg became a stigma after 1945, the mark of the wrong turn that had led to National Socialism. Beyond these debates, the thought remains that, under the shadow of this supposedly unique destiny, Germany was a volcano of aesthetic and intellectual creativity. This article analyzes the mental and cultural inversion produced by the end of the Cold War and the birth of a new “Berlin Republic.” From 1990 on, German politics and society tenaciously pursued a project of “normalcy” that consolidated both its democracy and its economy by establishing Berlin leadership in Europe. But this spectacular accomplishment also meant intellectual dryness and a memorial “wisdom” combined with a conservative “constitutional patriotism.” This inverted Faustian fate—conformist and mediocre prosperity instead of evil genius—is the transitory aftermath of a century of fire and blood.

Wissenschaftsfreiheit, Moralische Kritik und die Kosten des Irrtums

AbstractThis article attempts to do justice to two conflicting positions in current public debates. On the one hand, it defends a strong version of scientific freedom, according to which science should be free, not only from external obstacles and pressures but also from criticism that is based on reasons “of the wrong kind.” The only admissible criterion in debates about scientific claims, I argue, is whether there is sufficient evidence for their truth. Furthermore, I accept the anti-moralistic view that (non-)conformity with moral ideals is never itself evidence. On the other hand, the article nevertheless argues that there is a possibility of legitimate moral criticism of moral claims. This argument relies on the popular (if controversial) idea that there is pragmatic encroachment – specifically, the idea that the standard of sufficiency for evidence is in part determined by pragmatic factors like the costs of error. This opens up the door for a certain type of legitimate moral criticism. For the costs that determine a standard of sufficiency for epistemic justification can also plausibly count as morally significant. There is thus a con-contingent connection between epistemic and moral defects of certain scientific claims. The resulting view is applied to concrete debates, most importantly about race, genetics and IQ.

Hertz's legacy in Tractarian metaphysics1

AbstractThe influence of Heinrich Hertz's The Principles of Mechanics on Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus has been studied for decades, but it has never become a mainstream topic in the Wittgensteinian literature. This paper focusses on Tractarian notions of objects, elementary facts and elementary sentences and discusses their similarities with Hertz's concepts of mass, its constituents and their mechanistic images. As the paper demonstrates, the Hertzian context provides some fruitful interpretational leads concerning several controversial ideas endorsed by early Wittgenstein, namely propositional analysis, logical independence of elementary facts, logical independence of elementary sentences, and modalities.

Sedition: The Spread of Controversial Literature and Ideas in France and Scotland, c.1550–1610, ed. John O’Brien and Marc Schachter

Sedition: The Spread of Controversial Literature and Ideas in France and Scotland, c.1550–1610, ed. John O’Brien and Marc Schachter

Redefining liberal arts education in the twenty-first century

Redefining liberal arts education in the twenty-first century

Familiarity Breeds Trust? The Relationship between Dating App Use and Trust in Dating Algorithms via Algorithm Awareness and Critical Algorithm Perceptions

Previous studies have suggested that dating app use can foster acceptance of the controversial idea of algorithm matchmaking. However, an integrated framework to explain this relationship is lacking. To address this gap, this study proposes a familiarity-breeds-trust hypothesis, which suggests that dating app use can increase trust in dating algorithms by raising algorithm awareness and enhancing perceived agency. To test this hypothesis, the current work employed an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design. Study 1 interviewed 19 dating app users and identified four types of critical algorithm perceptions that reflected perceived threats to user agency. Study 2 surveyed 371 users of Tantan—a mainstream Chinese dating app that resembles Tinder—and found a positive relationship between Tantan use and trust in dating algorithms. Additionally, Tantan use was positively related to algorithm awareness, which was negatively related to critical algorithm perceptions. Furthermore, critical algorithm perceptions negatively predicted trust in dating algorithms. The findings provide support for the familiarity-breeds-trust hypothesis. Theoretical implications for future human-algorithm interaction studies and practical suggestions are also discussed.

Tribute to Ernie Gould

Tribute to Ernie Gould

Scale Type Revisited: Some Misconceptions, Misinterpretations, and Recommendations

Stevens’s classification of scales into nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio types is among the most controversial yet resilient ideas in psychological and educational measurement. In this essay, I challenge the notion that scale type is essential for the development of measures in these fields. I highlight how the concept of scale type, and of interval-level measurement in particular, is variously interpreted by many researchers. These (often unstated) differences in perspectives lead to confusion about what evidence is appropriate to demonstrate interval-level measurement, as well as the implications of scale type for research in practice. I then borrow from contemporary ideas in the philosophy of measurement to demonstrate that scale type can only be established in the context of well-developed theory and through experimentation. I conclude that current notions of scale type are of limited use, and that scale type ought to occupy a lesser role in psychometric discourse and pedagogy.

Herman Witkin and the Rise and Fall of the Black Learning Style Idea, 1960–2003

Background/Context: Historical studies of this volatile period in educational history (1960–2003 tend to focus on educational policy and/or curriculum, but rarely address changes in learning theory. Numerous historical studies have traced how psychologists, psychometricians, policymakers, and social scientists have dismissed the intellectual potential of Black students over the course of the 20th century, but these studies have completely overlooked the controversial Black learning style idea and how the idea interacted with the educational and racial discourses of the period. Purpose: This intellectual history traces the rise and fall of the controversial idea that there was a Black learning style. Research Design: Hollinger (1985) defines intellectual history succinctly as the “discourse of intellectuals” (p. 131). Often described as thinking rather than thought, an intellectual history focuses on contingencies, contradictions, and inconsistencies in a discourse; contextualizes the discourse in evolving historical, political, and social contexts; and explores how these changing contexts affect the development of the ideas. Conclusions: The Black learning style and cultural mismatch theories both emerged from the research of psychologist Herman Witkin in the 1950s. The idea was further developed by Rosalie Cohen, Asa Hilliard III, and Janice Hale in the 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1990s, many scholars considered the Black learning style idea to be dangerous and stopped directly referencing it. Despite its eventual rejection, the Black learning style idea inspired many lines of inquiry about the ways that race, culture, and ethnicity impact learning that are still being pursued today. This intellectual history traces the origins, emergence, and fall of the idea that Black students had a different learning and/or cognitive style that clashed with that of White teachers, standardized testing, and American schools.

IMMIGRANT TIKTOKERS DECOLONIZING ALGORITHMIC VISIBILITY

Immigration is deeply rooted in colonial structures that define who migrates and where, through a hierarchized perspective of the representations, knowledge, and ideas. It is possible to extrapolate these societal requirements to the digital space of social media platforms, where a combination of human and algorithmic moderation systems determine what is available, visible, and viral. Thus, colonial structures of dominance are perpetuated through coded biases and algorithmized oppression systems. The internal functioning of these moderation infrastructures is obscure, although we can glimpse at them through the contents and discourse of creators who describe their experiences with the platform, its algorithm, and the moderation policies that shape and affect their content creation practices. In this paper, we illustrate the different vernacular and platformed practices of immigrant content creators who portray the ways in which they negotiate their visibility with TikTok and its algorithmic system. The examples were extracted from a larger study that comprises 57 Latin American immigrant tiktokers who reside in the US and Spain. We use the concept of algorithmic (in)visibility as the basis for the study. The initial findings suggest that these creators deploy platformed practices such as the (re)use of audio tracks for visibility and protest; the use of TikTok vernaculars such as humor and sarcasm to convey controversial ideas; and partial deplatforming to protest the blockage of their profiles on TikTok. These practices provide insights about the decolonial negotiation of algorithmic (in)visibility taking place on social media platforms today.

The selective advantage of representing correctly

AbstractHere is a widespread but controversial idea: those animals who represent correctly are likely to be selected over those who misrepresent. While various versions of this claim have been traditionally endorsed by the vast majority of philosophers of mind, recently, it has been argued that this is just plainly wrong. My aim in this paper is to argue for an intermediate position: that the correctness of some but not all representations is indeed selectively advantageous. It is selectively advantageous to have correct representations that are directly involved in bringing about and guiding the organism's action. I start with the standard objection to the claim that it is selectively advantageous to represent correctly, the ‘better safe than sorry’ argument gand then generalize it with the help of Peter Godfrey Smith's distinction between Cartesian and Jamesian reliability and the trade‐off between them. This generalized argument rules out a positive answer to our question at least as far as the vast majority of our representational apparatus is concerned. But this argument fails to apply in the case of the correctness of a special kind of representation, one that is directly involved in bringing about, and in guiding, actions. We can still maintain that it is selectively advantageous to have a reliable mechanism for producing representations of this kind.

Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century by Kaysha Corinealdi (review)

Reviewed by: Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century by Kaysha Corinealdi Claire Alarid (bio) A Review of Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century by Kaysha Corinealdi Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century by Kaysha Corinealdi is a much-anticipated and crucial dive into the history of Afro-Caribbean diasporic communities, which White and Western academia often ignore or misrepresent. Corinealdi, a historian of modern empires, migration, gender, and activism in the Americas at Emerson College, delivers a powerful reading to challenge the narrative of Afro-Caribbeans and people of African descent as perpetual outsiders. By considering how Afro-Caribbean Panamanians helped construct their communities and the wider isthmus through activism, internationalism, and vision, Corinealdi dispels the myth of passive or reactionary participation, which targets communities of African descent across the globe, including in Panama. Corinealdi organizes her history both chronologically and thematically, using critical historical events to situate the larger themes and ideas the Afro-Caribbean diaspora has shaped in Panama and, later, the United States. Her first chapter, an introduction dedicated to the foundations of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in Panama and the constructs which helped drive their activism, contains the bulk of Corinealdi's theoretical approach to this subject. Importantly, she outlines the opposing view that Panama was not the center of U.S. empire-making. Rather, it was an "inherently Iberian space" and a country intent on protecting itself from '"undesirable" and helpless Black foreigners (Corinealdi 2022, 3). Corinealdi argues otherwise, focusing on Afro-Caribbeans in Panama (and elsewhere) as producers of knowledge and active participants in their history, not passive bystanders "merely at the service of imperial and national structures" (Corinealdi 2022, 20). Corinealdi thus uplifts and promotes Black internationalism and multiculturalism, a vision for economic and political upward mobility, and Black enterprises that actively shaped the diaspora and the larger Panamanian culture. Chapter one, "Panama as Diaspora: Documenting Afro-Caribbean Panamanian Histories, 1928–1936," focuses on the Panama Tribune, a newspaper unique in its centrality as a source of current events and ideological vision for Afro-Caribbeans in Panama. The Tribune, Corinealdi argues, was a source of world-building that appealed to the working class owing to its candid discussions on immigration policy, discrimination, education, and labor through a critical and aspirational lens (Corinealdi 2022, 29). Important to Corinealdi's discussion is the established male-dominated leadership in the Black press internationally and the way the Tribune subverted this norm through a women's [End Page 123] section. In this section, writers like Linda Smart Chubb could freely discuss issues of interest to the diaspora and the role of women, who had long been erased as key contributors to the community and continued to experience exclusion (Corinealdi 2022, 33). By providing examples of the few women contributors with significant and often controversial ideas, many of which faced severe criticism, Corinealdi highlights that even within oppressed groups, some continue to face marginalization. Gender inequality within the diaspora received little recognition in the community, raising questions about the role of the patriarchy in shaping Afro-Caribbean Panamanian history. In this chapter, Corinealdi adds subtle commentary which feels poignant and relevant, musing about the opinions and feelings of the women mentioned without overstepping the limits of the historical record. Notably, she also focuses on the Tribune's merits and flaws, adding a refreshing nuance that neither oversimplifies nor overly complicates the diaspora and its actions. Corinealdi additionally emphasizes the international role of the paper, which connected local and national issues such as new immigration and citizenship laws to transnational and anti-imperial diasporic communities, asserting Panama as a place of inspiration, reflection, activism, and entrepreneurship valuable to Afro-Caribbean and Black communities globally (Corinealdi 2022, 38). In chronicling the history of the Tribune, Corinealdi simultaneously provides a look at the history of Panama, at the time entrenched in the passage of racist immigration laws aimed at non-Spanish speaking members of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. As Corinealdi provides context for the Panama Canal Zone, a territory legally controlled by the United States, and Western imperial influence that helped shape these policies, she decenters...

Implementing an antibiotic cycle program to reduce antimicrobial resistance while optimizing antibiotic usage: a sobering experience from a tertiary care facility in northern Mumbai

Background: The increase of antimicrobial resistance and the scarcity of new broad-spectrum antibiotics is a major challenge. Antibiotic cycling is one tactic that increases antibiotic homogeneity to the greatest extent possible and can aid in controlling resistance pattern, but this approach has not undergone a thorough evaluation. The study’s objective was to examine the effects of an antibiotic cycling strategy on the antimicrobial susceptibility profile by avoiding and alternately using beta lactam/beta lactamase inhibitors over a period of many years. Methods: During the four-year trial period, from January 2018 to December 2021, an antibiotic cycling protocol was applied for indoor patients. Piperacillin/tazobactam and cefoperazone/sulbactam were alternately rotated and withheld for the full year. Using the hospital’s antibiogram as a guide, antibiotics were chosen for cycling. Data obtained from positive clinical cultures were used for preparing antibiogram. Results: The general susceptibility profile of the most prevalent species remained stable or showed a minor increase in sensitivity. While piperacillin/tazobactam susceptibility failed to approach statistical significance, the antibiogram for cefoperazone/sulbactam indicated a 4% increase in susceptibility with a shift to the left of the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). Conclusions: Antibiotic cycling is a controversial idea, yet it can be a successful technique to achieve either stability or a continuous decrease in resistance to a chosen antibiotic. Additionally, for meaningful outcomes, the antibiotic selected and the length of cycling must be in accordance with the hospital’s antibiogram.

Religion in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: A Guide to Aztec and Catholic Beliefs and Practices

Cheryl Claassen and Laura Ammon have produced a wonderful encyclopedia with an introductory study about religion in New Spain during the first century of colonization. The work is accessible, divided into 118 alphabetically organized entries that are each broken into sections for fifteenth-century Mexico, fifteenth-century Spain, and sixteenth-century Mexico. The topics chosen include the more obvious (such as human sacrifice and omens), but some of the most exciting entries discuss less predictable themes (such as the color blue or bees).Though many readers may want to immediately turn to the reference section, they would miss the skillful narrative summary of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as a thoughtful analysis of the historiography on religion in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Mexico and Spain. For instance, Claassen and Ammon are influenced by David Chidester's definition of religion as a sphere of “the transcendent, the sacred, the ultimate,” through which humans attempt to understand “what it means to be human” (p. 1). Their study of the Aztecs was greatly influenced by Davíd Carrasco's work on religiosity and ceremonial life, which focuses on the activities and institutions meant to constantly reinforce the Indigenous people's relationship with what they considered sacred (p. 2). For the study of the Spanish, they rely on Walter Mignolo's work on how scholarship has generally viewed early modern Catholicism as obscure and cultlike, producing primarily negative portrayals of the church, and Stafford Poole's work on Spain's unique situation as a site of convivencia where religious worldviews coexisted as a complex network of relationships (p. 3). Finally, Claassen and Ammon are influenced by how Poole's and Mignolo's work on the Catholic Church in Spain shows how there was a strong basis of flexibility in the Catholic Church that ultimately allowed for a new mestizo/Creole religiosity in sixteenth-century Mexico. Claassen and Ammon rely on Gruzinski's work on mestizo/Creole religiosity to understand much of this process while also acknowledging that it is not the authors' responsibility to judge what is “a valid expression of Christianity” and what is not (p. 5). The rest of the introduction is a brief but well-written and informative summary of the history of religion and religious institutions in both Mesoamerica and Spain and how they began to intertwine during the first century of Spanish colonialism.Claassen and Ammon's most valuable contribution is the alphabetically organized section on key terms, which comprises the majority of the work. This resource is useful to both students and scholars due to its organization as a reference work. This is not only useful for the unfamiliar but especially important for how we understand Catholicism, which has changed and adapted a number of traditions over the last 500 years. The book will be very useful for teachers to direct their students to, since one of the more challenging issues in teaching twenty-first-century students is just how much has changed in the Catholic worldview and practices since the sixteenth century. In fact, continual change in how humans interact with nature plays an important role in why Claassen and Ammon wrote and organized the book as they did: “We believe that the keyword approach lays bare the creative blending of modern Catholicism in Mexico, a blending greatly facilitated by the shared organization of religious practice into cults. These cults are fading away in the 21st century as modern life is increasingly experienced in cities, away from nature, and in non-agricultural pursuits” (p. 64).However, there are a number of small issues with Religion in Sixteenth-Century Mexico that will require readers to cross-check the information made available. Sometimes the secondary sources that Claassen and Ammon rely on are themselves the subject of debate, and those debates do not always appear clearly in some of the entries. For instance, in the discussion of the precolonial Aztec concept of the soul, and specifically the term yolia, the authors accept that scholarship on the Aztec soul is established fact. However, recent scholarship challenges the basis of some of these long-accepted arguments. For instance, Justyna Olko and Julia Madajczak argue that yolia is actually a neologism created in the early colonial period and not a precolonial Indigenous belief as Claassen and Ammon present it. More clarity on some of the debates surrounding complicated and controversial ideas such as this would have been a welcome addition to this impressive work.Ultimately, this work is an extremely useful resource for scholars and students of Mexico during the colonial period and beyond. Both scholars and students will find themselves frequently looking at this work for reference as an accessible starting point in what is the complicated and controversial topic of religion in the first century of colonization in Mexico.