2025 KEYNOTES

 

MARY GRAHAM

METAPHYSICAL IDENTITY: TIME FOR AN AUSTRALIAN PHILOSOPHY? 

Colonialism is a thousand years old, starting from the Crusades (1100-1300) when Christian Europe tried to take the Holy Land from Muslim rule. Despite failing those wars, European colonialism came to dominate other countries further afield and has continued in different forms to the present day. 

The ancient Aboriginal system came from a long-term experiment in human order making. The activity of order-making requires elements that come under the general heading of social, political, and spiritual design. The elements are Coherence, Proportionality, and Predictability (CPP), which emerged out of the creation, life process, reflection, and development of two collective life experiences - relationalism and survivalism. Through CPP, the development of the Metaphysical Identity begins. 

Regional consensus-based decision making was based on a deliberate process of creating a collective, civilisational culture i.e., metaphysical identity, whereby members of a group begin to understand the multiplicity of beings, values, obligations and duties, particularly through the concept of beginning, that explains the existence of the universe – The Dreaming. 

All the learned requirements of maturity, of being mature adults emerge out of relationalism and reflectivity, further, we, the autonomous beings learn that land looks after us, it grows us up, we look after land, this leads to a reciprocal, relational connection underpinned by a conscience. The first instance of what an Australian metaphysical identity is and further, could be.

Being a metaphysical identity, that is, being fully, completely and reflectively human or proper humanness, is a skill that must be learned, i.e., acquiring a proficiency in being an ethical human being with a functioning conscience. The difficulty of acquiring and maintaining this skill is that it’s a choice of the autonomous being. Learning and maintaining autonomous regard and the stewardship system helps in strengthening and stabilising community.

What if Australia had its own philosophy? If Australia began exploring what its metaphysical identity could be, then, maybe, a philosophy will emerge too.

Mary Graham is a Kombumerri person (Gold Coast) through her father’s heritage and affiliated with Wakka Wakka (South Burnett) through her mother’s people.

Mary has worked across several government agencies, community organisations and universities and is a lecturer with The University of Queensland, teaching Aboriginal history, politics and comparative philosophy.  She has also lectured nationally on these subjects, and developed and implemented ‘Aboriginal Perspective’s’, ‘Aboriginal Approaches to Knowledge’ and at the post-graduation level ‘Aboriginal Politics’ into university curricula.

polsis.uq.edu.au/profile/2235/mary-graham

JOHN HEIL

GRASPING AT GA_PS

Few philosophers nowadays doubt the existence and significance of a persistent ‘explanatory gap’ in our understanding of the nature of conscious experiences and their  relation to the material world. Contemporary concerns about the explanatory gap have  their roots in Saul Kripke’s 1972 argument against the mind–brain identity theory: if a is  identical with b, then there is no world at which a fails to be identical with b; as  Descartes showed, however, it is conceivable for minds to exist in the absence of  material bodies; so, Kripke concluded, minds cannot be identified with material bodies or their parts. In 1983 Joseph Levine argued that, although Kripke’s original argument  falls short of establishing that minds are distinct from material bodies, the argument has  an epistemological counterpart. The disparate character of conscious qualities and  qualities of material bodies creates an impeneratrable barrier to our understanding how  the mental could be identified with the physical. This, and other, expressly  epistemological arguments have subsequently been deployed in the service of the  metaphysical thesis originally defended by Kripke: the mental cannot be identified with  the material. This paper critically examines the widely invoked practice of drawing  metaphysical conclusions from epistemological premises.  

John Heil is listed among the 50 Most Influential Living Philosophers. He works primarily in metaphysics and philosophy of mind and has teaching interests in metaphysics, logic, philosophy of mind, and early modern philosophy.  

philosophy.wustl.edu/people/john-heil-faha

MICHELLE LIU

AD HOC CONCEPTS, VERBAL DISPUTES AND PHILOSOPHY

Word meanings are flexible. A speaker often uses a word to communicate what linguists call an “ad hoc concept” – an occasion-specific meaning – that is different from the word’s stable encoded meaning, and the hearer can usually construct the intended ad hoc concept through pragmatic inference. Appreciating this linguistic insight can shed significant light on a wide range of issues in both philosophical and public discourse. In this paper, I explore how the notion of ad hoc concepts can provide a framework for understanding the phenomenon of verbal disputes. Crucially, I distinguish between two kinds of communicative failures that frequently occur in verbal disputes – “failures to latch on” and “failures to adopt”. I will analyse the cognitive-linguistic mechanisms underpinning these failures and draw implications with respect to verbal disputes in philosophy, focusing on the dispute on free will.  

Michelle Liu works on various topics in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and aesthetics. In philosophy of language, she works on polysemy and language comprehension. In philosophy of mind, she is interested in the nature of consciousness and the intuition of dualism.

research.monash.edu/en/persons/michelle-liu

x.com/michelleybliu

CATHERINE MILLS

PHILOSOPHY IN THE TIME OF IMPACT

Universities have undergone seismic changes in the past several decades, both in Australia and internationally. Some of these changes continue to have significant implications for the discipline of philosophy and its place in the contemporary university. I focus on one of these, namely the impact agenda that emerged in the UK and Australia and has been embedded in research management policies and practice over the past 20 years. This agenda proffers an instrumental understanding of academic research, which is primarily valued for its capacity to contribute to economic growth, social cohesion and nation-building. Aligning with this agenda, an increasing number of philosophers are now involved in research programs that engage with industry organisations, communities and other stakeholders to address challenges faced by them. I refer to this as 'impact philosophy'.

Through reflecting on impact philosophy, I argue that the broader discipline of philosophy faces a dilemma. On the one hand, if it underestimates and/or rejects the significance of the impact agenda, it may become irrelevant to the contemporary university; on the other hand, if it embraces the impact agenda, it may lose a sense of itself as a discipline. As a proponent of impact philosophy, I conclude by highlighting the need to clarify the 'rare and valuable' contribution that philosophy - as philosophy - can make within the time of impact.

Catherine Mills' research addresses ethical, social and regulatory issues that emerge around biomedical and technology innovation in human reproduction, particularly from the point of view of gender and social inequality.

research.monash.edu/en/persons/catherine-mills

x.com/reprotechethics

ELLIE RIPLEY

VAGUENESS AND NONCLASSICAL PROBABILITIES 

Thinking in terms of probabilities can give us a valuable lens on uses of vague language. In particular, it holds out the promise of bringing formally-tractable theories closer to empirical observations about how speakers actually use vague language. However, most existing applications of probability to vague language assume a classical approach to probability. This may be fine as a first approximation, but does not deal well with certain observed phenomena that have been used to motivate formal treatments of vague language based on nonclassical logics. Here I have in mind some phenomena around what have been called "borderline contradictions". In particular, speakers seem relatively happy to agree, of a borderline case of "tall" (for example), that they are both tall and not tall; but speakers are also resistant, in such cases, to agree that such a person is tall, or that they are not tall. These phenomena have been used to motivate three-valued non-probabilistic theories of vague language.

In this talk, try to bring these approaches together, in a way that hopefully achieves some of the virtues of both probabilistic and nonclassical approaches. I give an outline of some of the reasons probabilistic approaches to vague language seem promising and enlightening. Then I turn to borderline contradictions, arguing that classical probabilities are not well-suited for understanding this phenomenon. Finally, I make steps towards a theory of nonclassical probabilities that (I hope) can achieve the goods of existing probabilistic theories of vagueness, while fitting with a plausible approach to borderline contradictions.

Ellie Ripley is a member of the philosophy department at Monash University. Her research focuses on languages, logics, and the relations between them.  

negation.rocks

research.monash.edu/en/persons/ellie-ripley

ADRIAN WALSH

IS METHOD POLITICAL? EMPIRICISM, SCIENTISM, AND NORMATIVE CRITIQUES OF METHODOLOGICAL PRACTICE IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

What role should empirical methods play in political philosophy? What might be the merits of employing social science methods to address the fundamental questions political philosophers explore, such as what makes the state politically legitimate or what is the nature of a good society? A useful point of comparison here is political science. Although political science and political philosophy are closely adjacent disciplines, political scientists typically make far greater use of empirical methods. Moreover, many political scientists are highly critical of what they see as the unacceptable aprioristic methods employed by great deal of contemporary political philosophy. Such criticisms are, however, highly contentious and contested. Many political philosophers are opposed, on primarily normative political grounds, to such moves that they regard as embodying the methodological vice of “scientism”. What should we think? Might there be specifically political reasons for rejecting some methodological practices? Might there also be straightforward philosophical grounds for objecting to strong empiricist programs of reform? In this talk, I shall begin by considering the disagreement between the Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School on whether philosophy should model itself on the natural sciences before providing a defence of the thought that when investigating the normative questions that lie at the heart of political philosophy, non-empirical philosophical speculation has a significant role to play. In the final section, I shall briefly outline some reasons why this methodological stance matters politically.

Adrian Walsh is Professor in Philosophy and Political Theory - at the University of New England. He is known for his expertise on political philosophy, philosophy of economics and applied ethics. Walsh is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Philosophy.  

une.edu.au/staff-profiles/hass/awalsh

STEPHEN HETHERINGTON

NOT KNOWING, NOT KNOWING  -  2025 AAP PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

Gettierism (as I call it) has been part of epistemology since 1963 – often actively investigated and refined, at times ignored, yet always agreed to be correct in its most basic claim. Which claim is that? Gettierists take for granted that Edmund Gettier disproved knowledge’s definability as an epistemically well-justified true belief. He did so with two tales, each about an epistemic agent Smith, who – we readily agree  – had a well justified true belief that failed to be knowledge: we know that Smith did not know. We do so, even when not agreeing with each other on why he did so.

Or might we fail to have even such minimal knowledge of Smith’s not knowing? That basic Gettieristic view of his epistemic plight has long functioned as a methodologically foundational element within philosophical attempts to uncover knowing’s nature. But should it do so? This paper approaches that question from two directions. And the stakes are surprisingly high. What epistemological knowledge, if any, has underwritten philosophy’s Gettieristic attempts to describe knowledge’s nature fully and fairly?

I begin by constructing a meta-Gettier tale. The moral of it is simple: we should be able to think of ourselves and other epistemologists as afflicted – given the past few decades of post-Gettier aporia – in much the same way as, supposedly, Smith was afflicted within the first of those 1963 tales. If Smith was Gettiered, then so are those epistemologists – that multitude – who regard him as being so: if he fails to know, so do they. Their failure is meta-epistemic, though: they fail to know that he fails to know.

Then I explain one way in which that meta-epistemic failure arises. Epistemologists fall foul of a simple Platonic moral when striving to explain how Smith (or anyone else, when Gettiered in like manner) fails to know. I draw partly upon the idea of what Rachel Barney calls Platonic qua predication. My explanation will not depend on hearkening back to Plato. But should the fact that it can be formulated in such ancient terms be chastening for any resolutely contemporary epistemologist who maintains that some, even if slight, genuine progress in understanding knowledge’s nature was made by Gettier?

Where do those failures leave Gettierism? Ungrounded? Unexplained? Non-explanatory? Perhaps so. Should we grieve for that potential loss? I hope not. Might it encourage us to explore fresh ways of conceiving of knowing’s nature? Could we do this while no longer holding ourselves answerable to Gettierism’s being correct in its most basic claim? I hope so.

Stephen Hetherington is an Australian analytic philosopher specialising in epistemology and metaphysics. He is an emeritus professor in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales, a prolific author, and served as editor-in-chief of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy from 2013 to 2022.  

unsw.edu.au/staff/stephen-hetherington

x.com/StephenHetheri5