AAP 2026 CONFERENCE: Full Schedule

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8:30am NZST

Check-in Desk Day 4

Wednesday July 8, 2026 8:30am - 9:00am NZST

MSB Foyer

Check-in Desk open.

Wednesday July 8, 2026 8:30am - 9:00am NZST
MSB Foyer

9:00am NZST

The Systemic Stance

Wednesday July 8, 2026 9:00am - 10:25am NZST

PWC

This talk will give an overview of a book I’m writing, which is called The Systemic Stance: Culpability and Obligation Under Structural Injustice. The book starts from the fact that injustices resulting from social systems are difficult to pin on anyone. Given this, who has responsibility for these injustices? The book’s two-part answer comes from a perspective I call ‘the systemic stance.’ This is a stance agents can (and, I suggest, should) take when confronted with unjust systems that are made of agents but are not themselves agents.
When we adopt the systemic stance, we target our indignation, resentment, anger, and rage at the system itself. This is the first part of my two-part answer: negative reactive attitudes concerning systemic injustice fittingly target the social system taken as a whole. This conclusion contradicts a tidal wave of work in moral psychology and moral philosophy from the last sixty years, building on P.F. Strawson. I’ll give some arguments for this conclusion.
The second part of my two-part answer concerns moral obligations. Although social systems can be targets of reactive attitudes (or so I claim), they cannot make decisions, so they are not fitting bearers of moral obligations. So, the second part of my two-part answer can be summarised: moral obligations concerning systemic injustice are held by agents, starting from where those agents are in the system. These obligations call upon their bearers to pull the levers the system makes available to them, doing something I call ‘contextual care.’ I’ll explain what I mean by this.

Chair

Liezl van Zyl

Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato │ University of Waikato

Speakers

Stephanie Collins

Monash University

Winner of the 2025 AAP Annette Baier PrizeStephanie Collins is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Monash University. Her work focuses on collective responsibility, collective agency, care ethics, and other topics in moral, social, and political philosophy. stephaniecollin... Read More →

Wednesday July 8, 2026 9:00am - 10:25am NZST
PWC

KEYNOTE

10:30am NZST

Morning Break

Wednesday July 8, 2026 10:30am - 10:55am NZST

MSB Foyer

Wednesday July 8, 2026 10:30am - 10:55am NZST
MSB Foyer

Breaks

11:00am NZST

Active Joy: A Spinozist Philosophical Foundation for Serious Leisure

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST

N3.01

This paper argues that Spinoza’s concept of active joy provides a philosophical grounding for contemporary theory of serious leisure. For Spinoza, active joy is a sustained increase in our power of acting, achieved through activities rooted in understanding, autonomy, and rational self‑cultivation. This paper cites empirical evidence from the current leisure studies scholarship and explains how such joy emerges when we engage in practices that systematically expand our capacities and align with our conatus. The term “serious leisure”, defined as the committed, skill‑based, identity‑forming pursuit of a chosen activity, mirrors this structure. Both frameworks emphasise disciplined engagement and the transformation of ordinary pursuits into personal flourishing.
By interpreting serious leisure through Spinoza’s lens, this paper shows how amateurism, volunteerism and hobbies generate active joy by enhancing competence, agency, and social embeddedness. The paper also illustrates that Spinoza’s philosophy clarifies why serious leisure contributes to resilience and wellbeing. Consequently, the sustained engagement in serious leisure embodies a Spinozist pathway toward freedom, where joy emerges from the rational understanding of our potential within a structured yet intrinsically rewarding domain of activity.

Speakers

Yazdan Mansourian

Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
N3.01

Critical Thinking, Remote

11:00am NZST

Bostrom's Transhumanism: Misunderstanding the Human

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST

MSB1.36 & 37

Transhumanism advances the view that enhancing human cognitive and physical capacities through technological means constitutes the primary route to the greatest good. On this view, the current human condition is deficient and inefficient, and should be optimised, re-engineered, or even transcended into a “posthuman” status to achieve flourishing.
I critically analyse Nick Bostrom’s transhumanist framework, focusing in particular on three key ideas: his characterisation of the human as a rational, isolated, and disembodied agent; of limits as constraints to be overcome; and of flourishing as the maximisation of capacities and subjective wellbeing alongside the minimisation of effort and suffering. I argue that this individualistic and reductionist account of the human, limits, and flourishing is inconsistent with ecological and scientific understandings of human nature.
Drawing on ecological, system, and relational approaches – including embodied cognition, complex systems theory, and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s relational ontology – I present an alternative view of humans as embodied, situated, and relational beings, constituted through dynamic interactions with ecological and evolutionary processes. From this perspective, limits are not merely constraints, but constitutive conditions of flourishing.

Speakers

Sara Campolonghi

MRes student, Macquarie University

I am an early career researcher with a PhD in Health and a Master's in Clinical and Community Psychology. I am currently undertaking a Master of Research in Philosophy at Macquarie University with a project on Transhumanism and human enhancement, particularly the work of Nick Bostrom... Read More →

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.36 & 37

Ethics, In Person

11:00am NZST

When Your AI Partner Won't Please You

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST

MSB1.01

Will my AI partner really give me the pleasure I expect? Or am I just deceiving myself? While Kaczmarek (2024) looks at human-AI relationships through the lens of self-deception, I offer an alternative, but possibly complementary view. This draws on Plato's idea of false pleasure. This talk re-visits Plato's Philebus an often overlooked, and somewhat peculiar text, which categorises varieties of false pleasure. While there have been debates in the literature in the past about whether pleasure can be false, this seems to have fallen out of favour these days. This talk intends to revive the discussion of false pleasure in light of AI relationships and self-deception (Kaczmarek, 2024). We don’t need to commit ourselves to the idea of whether it is indeed a false pleasure, but the idea of false pleasure provides on way of explicating the concerns or unease people have. I conclude by offering a modest extension to the varieties of false pleasure.

Speakers

Declan Humphreys

University of the Sunshine Coast

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.01

Ethics, In Person

11:00am NZST

Artwork as a Form of Indigenous Philosophical Communication

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST

MSB1.02

This paper presents the artwork that was commissioned to represent my Doctoral thesis; "Reimagining Aboriginality: Deconstructing "Race", Aboriginality, And Other Colonial Myths". In this paper, I reflect on the inclusion of my artwork in my doctoral thesis as a core component of philosophical communication to the communities that are directly impacted by our philosophical work.
The artwork was developed through an ongoing process of conversation and collaboration with a Wiradjuri artist; the artwork reflects a deliberate attempt at decolonisation - a strategy meant to subvert the traditional Western academic template that has long dictated how knowledge is presented and legitimised in the academy.
I will discuss the question of what counts as philosophical work, and argue that incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing is an integral part of a wider effort to make space for Indigenous epistemologies within philosophy.

Speakers

Taylor-Jai McAlister

Research Fellow / Clinical Psychologist, Macquarie University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.02

Indigenous Philosophy, In Person

11:00am NZST

What is Time?

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST

MSB1.03

What is time? We suggest we have failed to answer this question in the way it needs to be answered. We go on to offer an answer: time is the great enabler, it makes causation and change possible. We explain what that means, and demonstrate it by applying it to a range of cases.

Speakers

Sam Baron

University of Melbourne

I am professor of philosophy at the University of Melbourne. My research focuses on the metaphysics and epistemology of science.

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.03

Metaphysics, In Person

11:00am NZST

What is Cancer? A Pluralist Approach to Classifying Cancer as a Disease

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST

MSB1.20

Is cancer one disease or many diseases? There are many ways to classify cancers: based on where they originate in the body, whether or not they involve solid tumors, and many other features. Plutynski (2018) challenges the presupposition of this question and argues that there is no single correct answer. She illustrates that the variety of classifications comes from different epistemic aims (such as diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, or understanding) and argues for a pragmatic pluralist stance. Building on Plutynski’s account, I discuss the question of whether cancer is one disease or many diseases as follows: Cancer's heterogeneity can be understood in different ways; for example, it may be a single heterogeneous disease with multiple manifestations or many fundamentally different diseases. In medicine, we differentiate diseases because they matter for diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment. I argue that for identifying cases that clinically matter as different cancer diseases (or a single disease), (1) we should clarify what we mean when we use the ambiguous term ‘cancer’, for example, whether it refers to cancer cells or a state of disease, (2) it should be clear what cancer is as a ‘disease’ and what makes cancer a disease, and (3) we should understand how we can utilize the plurality of classifications in identifying and differentiating cases with clinical importance as different diseases. Drawing on insights from the disease entity and dispositional models of disease (Benjamin Smart, 2025), I propose a hybrid model for understanding cancer that clarifies the contributions of different classification targets in identifying cases of disease.

Speakers

Hiva Sharebiani

PhD student, Waipapa Taumata Rau │ University of Auckland

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.20

Philosophy of Biology, In Person

11:00am NZST

Beyond Imagination: The Absent Object and Non-Sense of the Mental

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST

MSB1.05

Imagination is an intriguing faculty of our mind. Its objects often do not exist in the external world but entirely within the mental, such as the “golden mountain.” However, there are limits to imagination when paradoxical concepts such as the “round square” are examined. Such concepts disclose the logical contradiction away from possible worlds and locate themselves in the impossible, also referred to as non-sense. But as Wittgenstein suggests, even non-sense can retain meaning in certain contexts, through language games or philosophical play. This paper will examine the limits of imagination by exploring the objects of imagination and their non-sense, often reflected in language. Further, the study will compare the philosophical non-sense to the psychoanalytical non-sense. By aligning the philosophical concern of the impossible with Lacan’s interpretation of the unconscious, this study contends that non-sense, when viewed through the functioning of the unconscious, becomes intelligible and does not mark an epistemic failure rather unravels the unconscious meaning that resists representation. Thus, letting the logical limits of thought serve as a pathway to its meaning, suggesting that non-sense can itself be meaningful.

Speakers

Zeenia Bhat

Mahindra University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.05

Philosophy of Mind, Remote

11:00am NZST

What's the 'Good' in Children as a Public Good?

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST

MSB1.15

My aim in this paper is to reframe, by appeal to specificity, just what we are talking about when we talk of children as public goods: the possibility of some future option set size. This framing highlights a distinction between (a) that which parents produce via their children and (b) that which children produce, which is a distinction critical to any account of justice in which responsibility plays a role. This framing also highlights a crucial truth about liberal theories of justice (or perhaps any theory in which option sets play a role): if a theory remains indifferent about the size of future option sets, that theory has no resources to say parents produce anything of either value or disvalue. What this all entails is vital to any argument about ‘how much’ compensation parents ought to receive (or even, in reverse, non-parents ought to receive) for having and raising children: only when we know the target option set size or range of option set sizes that are permissible within a theory of justice can we derive ‘how much’ compensation is owed.

Speakers

Alexander Forbes

Monash University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.15

Political Philosophy, In Person

11:00am NZST

Accounting for the Stickiness of Conspiracy Theories

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST

MSB1.21

M. Giulia Napolitano describes belief in many conspiracy theories as exhibiting ‘extreme stickiness’. Advocates of these conspiracy theories can seem impervious to the influence of evidence that tells against their favoured theory. They fail to abandon belief when an impartial party would. Napolitano describes conspiracy theories as ‘self-insulated’ to help explain their stickiness. As she points out, many conspiracy theorists dismiss opponents of their favoured theory either as having been taken in by a ‘cover-up’ designed to mislead or as being participants in the conspiracy. A major concern about this explanation for stickiness is that the conspiracy theorists who appeal to either cover-up or participation to defend their favoured theory from refutation are appealing to auxiliary hypotheses to account for a discrepancy between theory and evidence and it is widely accepted – per the Duhem-Quine thesis – that theories are never straightforwardly refuted by evidence and that the process of adding auxiliary hypotheses to theories can go on indefinitely. If this explanation is to succeed, we need to identify relevant differences between appeals to cover-ups and participation in conspiracies on the one hand and appeals to regular auxiliary hypotheses on the other. Here I explore prospects for the identification of such differences.

Speakers

Steve Clarke

Charles Sturt University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.21

Social Epistemology, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Agentic AI without Machine Agency

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST

MSB1.36 & 37

Talk of “agentic AI” can illuminate real changes in technical delegation, but it can also move agency-talk toward artificial systems while human and institutional actors recede from view. This paper argues that responsible AI governance requires neither machine personhood nor metaphysical quietism, but fitting individuation: naming AI systems enough to govern, contest, authorize, and repair their uses without personifying them beyond warrant. On this account, AI systems are not autonomous moral agents, but socio-technical deployments through which judgment, authority, risk, and responsibility flow. The central question is therefore not simply “Is the AI an agent?” but “Where must judgment, contestability, and answerability be located for this deployment to remain governable?” I propose three adequacy tests: identity credentials sufficient for governance, delegation-with-answerability, and responsibility-flow mapping. These tests distinguish legitimate technical delegation from agency laundering, explanation theatre, and nominal human oversight. The result is a modest metaphysical account of AI: thick enough to locate responsibility, light enough to avoid machine mystification, and practical enough to guide institutional governance.

Speakers

Kenneth Howarth

Professor of Philosophy, Mercer County Community College

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37

Artificial Inteligence, Remote

12:00pm NZST

When, Why, and How Should We Lie to Our Friends?

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST

MSB1.01

For many, honesty is a key tenant of friendship. We trust our friends to ‘give it to us straight’, to ‘keep it real’. We often like to believe that we can be our truest selves around our friends. But how reasonable is it to expect total candor from our friends? Might it sometimes be more acceptable to lie to preserve our friends’ feelings or interests? Are lies told to our friends, in a way, worse than lies told to non-friends?
I explore various categories of lies - lies by omission, lies by commission, and lies by misrepresentation. I present two categories of potential justification for lying to a friend - internalist justification, reasons motivated by the friend’s interest, and externalist justification, reasons extraneous to the friend’s interest.
Ultimately, I argue that all lies, regardless of content or justification, should be broadly considered unacceptable, but that our decisions about whether to lie to a friend or, alternately, our response to being lied to by a friend can and should be motivated by the features of the lie.

Speakers

Grace Sasagi

Monash University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.01

Ethics, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Beyond Relationality: Country as Warrant in Aboriginal Epistemology

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST

MSB1.02

Relationality is a significant theme across Western and non-Western frameworks, and its ‘relational turn’ has been a genuine achievement in dislodging atomistic, substance-based thinking. Yet even in radical formulations (e.g., Buber’s I-Thou and Whitehead’s process philosophy), relational ontology commonly presupposes participants that precede relation. This ‘participant presupposition’ reveals a deeper problem: relationality is not only a metaphysics but also a validity regime - it privileges what can be represented as relations between terms, and therefore misrecognises Aboriginal epistemological validity when its warrant is enacted rather than abstracted.
This paper reframes the issue by arguing that Aboriginal epistemological validity is constructed performatively through lawful enactment on/with Country, as exemplified in Songlines and ceremonial practice. Rather than opposing ‘verb’ to ‘noun’ as a familiar Western binary, I argue that Aboriginal knowledge-transfer trains an integrated capacity to hold action, place, law, story, and entity together in one enacted intelligence - where Country, protocol, and obligation are not ‘context’ but warrant. The paper closes by outlining what philosophy (and HDR evaluation practices) must become if Aboriginal knowledges are to be received without validity-destroying translation, including in contemporary debates about representing Indigenous knowledge in AI.

Speakers

Blake Stockton

Director for Indigenous Education, University of Queensland

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.02

Indigenous Philosophy, Remote

12:00pm NZST

Constructing Moral Inequality

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST

MSB1.03

In ‘Constructing Moral Equality’ (2022) I argued that we can productively think of the human as a social, rather than a natural, kind; and furthermore, that being constructed as human entails being constructed as a moral equal. In this paper I argue that I was wrong (at least in part). Armed with a more nuanced social metaphysical framework, I explore the possibility that while one of the mechanisms through which the human is constructed confers a formal equality of status on all members of the kind, other mechanisms simultaneously constitute some people as inferior.

Speakers

Suzy Killmister

Monash University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.03

Metaphysics, In Person

12:00pm NZST

A Puzzle about Partner Choice

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST

MSB1.20

This paper poses a puzzle about partner choice. On one hand, an actor appears to exert causal control over its partner’s phenotype through partner choice; on the other hand, the partner’s phenotype seems largely determined by its genotype, leaving little room for the actor’s influence. I argue that this puzzle arises from adopting different causal models with different variable choices—an actor-centred model and an index-fixed model. The former is standard in social evolution theory, while the latter is my proposed alternative. I show that the puzzle has a distinctive philosophical character by interpreting it as a variant of Frege’s puzzle, rooted in ambiguity about how to represent “the partner’s phenotype” as a causal variable. I then challenge the actor-centred model on three pragmatic grounds: first, it is difficult to extend beyond a single focal individual; second, it conflates partner choice with partner control; and third, it diverges from modelling practices in economics. I conclude that the index‑fixed model offers a better representation of partner choice, and I urge reconsideration of the actor‑centred perspective in social evolution theory.

Speakers

Kangqiao Wang

PhD candidate, Macquarie University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.20

Philosophy of Biology, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Brain Simulation and the Implementation Challenge for Mind Uploading

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST

MSB1.05

Whole-brain simulation seems to support mind uploading if computational functionalism about consciousness is true. Implementationists deny this: a digital brain model running on a computer may represent rather than implement consciousness-relevant computation. Dung and Kersten (2025) argue that such constraints cannot be general conditions on computational implementation, since mainstream theories imply that ordinary computers implement computations, whereas implementationist constraints would rule out such systems. I argue that this response moves too quickly. Implementationist constraints are, in fact, substantively equivalent to constraints in mainstream theories of physical computation: computational structure must be borne by objective mechanistic, causal, or dynamical processes. Strictly applied, these theories may not license high-level software implementation. They distinguish low-level physical/digital computations from the looser sense in which computer science says machines “implement” programs. On this reading, implementationists can deny that ordinary computers implement the high-level computation described by a brain model, without denying that they implement some lower-level computation. This does not refute mind uploading. Rather, it clarifies its hardest challenge: computationalist defenders of simulated consciousness must explain how that possibility remains open while taking seriously the prima facie appeal of implementationist theories that privilege objective physical processes.

Speakers

Tonghao Liu

University of New South Wales

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.05

Philosophy of Mind, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Consciousness in Evolution: Making Monadic Panpsychism More Credulous

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST

N3.01

Panpsychism, the view that phenomenal consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality, gained significant attention in the recent decades as a potentially better alternative to physicalism or substance dualism. However, panpsychism runs into a serious problem—the combination problem—according to which the multiplicity of microphenomenally conscious particles somehow combine into a macrophenomenal consciousness that we have. Very recently, Kadic (2024) proposed a version of panpsychism which he calls monadic panpsychism. This version comes in two main varieties: dynamic version and global version. The former states that microphenomenally conscious particles stand in causal relations such that they make one particle macrophenomenally conscious. The latter states that the same causal process makes all particles conscious. In both cases, macrophenomenal consciousness is explained by avoiding all of the problems that hunt its alternatives. In this paper, I explore monadic panpsychism by raising objections and solving them in its favor. To solve all objections I appeal to the theory of evolution. The first objection is the incredulous stare problem according to which both versions of monadic panpsychism have a low prior probability. I argue that evolution could in principle either produce an organism which contains a single macrophenomenal particle, or an organism which contains a large totality of macrophenomenal particles. Given that to be the case, we should increase our credences about both versions of monadic panpsychism. Also, monadic panpsychism and evolution are similar in a sense that they contain elements of apparent arbitrariness in their theories. The second problem is the selection problem against the dynamic version in particular: why is this particle dominant but not some other one? I respond that evolution could select for a mechanism which randomly chooses particles to be dominant, even though, I admit that there are residual questions that cannot be answered even by evolution. Lastly, I compare two versions of monadic panpsychism in general and I conclude that we should: (i) increase our credences in both versions of monadic panpsychism, and that (ii) we might favor the global version over the dynamic version so far.

Speakers

Tarik Tijanovic

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
N3.01

Philosophy of Mind, Remote

12:00pm NZST

A Critical Evaluation of the Global Peace Index

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST

MSB1.15

Peace is a nebulous concept in political discourse. The Global Peace Index offers a solution by providing an empirically led measurement of peace informed by Johan Galtung’s (1930-2024) typology of violence. This typology is structured around personal and structural violence. The paper presents that this expansion of the concept of violence is philosophically unwarranted and leads to conceptual inflation that undermines clarity in both normative and empirical contexts. Specifically, I argue that violence should be restricted to personal violence, where so-called structural violence does not meet the conceptual criteria for violence. This claim shall be substantiated through a critical evaluation of the Global Peace Index, exploring the philosophical concepts behind violence such as intent and moral luck. I offer the view that the structures supporting violence ought to be deinstitutionalised, while critiquing the coherence of treating such societal structures as instances of violence themselves. Narrowing the scope of the typology of violence preserves the moral urgency of addressing structural influence without distorting the concept of violence. This view accommodates empirical tools for assessing peacefulness like the Global Peace Index, while also drawing stricter epistemological boundaries around how we can measure peace.

Speakers

Cooper Cook-Wiss

University of Sydney

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.15

Political Philosophy, In Person

12:00pm NZST

How Generalism about Conspiracy Theories Misleads

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST

MSB1.21

There is an ongoing debate in the philosophy of conspiracy theories between “particularists” and their “generalists” critics. Particularists express concern that the label “conspiracy theory” is used to dismiss theories prematurely. In response, generalists often frame their position as merely indicating a defeasible “prima facie skepticism” toward conspiracy theories, that is, a view about what to think about a conspiracy theory prior to considering its particular merits. Keith Harris, for example, argues for this type of generalist attitude regarding “counter-authority” conspiracy theories. We argue that this framing of generalism is misleading because it is considerably weaker than it presents itself as being. It can’t be this weak and also justify the dismissive attitude that generalists encourage, as Harris does explicitly. Indeed, an analysis of Harris’s own distinction between “Strong Particularism” and “Weak Particularism” can help us see that generalists accounts cannot be both true and telling. For true versions are not telling, and telling versions are not true.

Speakers

M R. X. Dentith

Beijing Normal University

M R. X. Dentith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the International Center for Philosophy at Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai. Their chief research interests concern the epistemic analysis of conspiracy theories, rumours, fake news, and the epistemology of secrecy. In 2014... Read More →

Charles Pigden

Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago

Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.21

Social Epistemology, In Person

1:00pm NZST

Lunch

Wednesday July 8, 2026 1:00pm - 1:55pm NZST

Breaks

2:00pm NZST

AI Ambiguity and the Contagion of Disrespect

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST

MSB1.36 & 37

Many think that we should respect humans and not AIs. This paper shows that this approach runs into trouble in “ambiguous spaces,” where we can’t tell whether someone is an AI. We can either extend respect to ambiguous agents, or withhold respect from them. Either approach comes with significant costs. We call this dilemma the contagion of disrespect. Extending respect ties our hands, and incentivizes people to deploy ambiguous AIs against us. Withholding respect risks blocking some humans from respect, and risks creating spirals of disrespect.

Speakers

Brandon Yip

Singapore Management University

Hi there, I’m Brandon Yip. I’m an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Lee Kong Chian Fellow at the Singapore Management University. My research covers a range of interconnected questions in moral psychology, epistemology, and meta-ethics, with an eye to how these connect with... Read More →

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37

Artificial Inteligence, Remote

2:00pm NZST

Human Thinking in an AI Age: An Aesthetic-Dialectical Response

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST

N3.01

Debates about Generative AI often focus on empirical claims concerning cognitive enhancement or decline. This paper argues that the deeper issue is aesthetic. AI reshapes the form, tempo, and structural movement of reflective thought. Drawing on multi-modal critical thinking framework (Gilbert, 1994) and a conception of improvisational thinking as the aesthetic mode of dialectical engagement (Yazici, 2025), I defend a middle-way position. Generative AI threatens thinking only when engaged passively, encouraging aesthetic flattening through premature closure and conceptual smoothness. When approached through an improvisational stance, however, AI-generated outputs become material for reinterpretation, resistance, and creative transformation. The impact of AI on human thought is therefore not technologically determined but dependent on the aesthetic posture of the thinker. The philosophical task in an AI age is to cultivate forms of engagement that preserve the open-ended, self-revising thus improvisational ways of thinking.

Speakers

Furkan Yazici

Volunteer, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato │ University of Waikato

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
N3.01

Critical Thinking, In Person

2:00pm NZST

Taking Risks for Others

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST

MSB1.01

Some of your choices are primarily guided by the interests of others: for example, which charities to give to or which political policies to vote for. How should you evaluate the options when they involve risk—when you don’t know how the world will turn out? I argue for a tight connection between the problem of making a risky choice for another person and the problem of distributing benefits and burdens across people. This yields a schema for a principle governing risk-taking for others, both when you know a person’s attitude toward risk and when you do not. I detail several ways to fill in this schema, including my preferred view. The result is a unified framework for thinking about what we owe to others in cases of risk.

Speakers

Lara Buchak

Professor, Princeton University

Interested in decision theory, social choice theory, formal epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of religion.

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.01

Ethics, In Person

2:00pm NZST

Reframing Animal Ethics through Indigenous and Epic Wisdom

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST

MSB1.02

“Who is truly human—the one who reasons, or the one who recognizes kinship in all life?” This paper rethinks animal ethics by moving beyond dominant Western frameworks such as Sentientism and Biocentrism, which evaluate moral worth through anthropocentric criteria like sentience or biological life. Such models, while influential, neglect relational forms of moral engagement central to non-Western thought. Drawing on Indian Adivasi philosophies—particularly the Gond and Santhal traditions—this study foregrounds a worldview in which humans, animals, and forests exist as interdependent members of a shared moral community. Animals, here are treated as ancestral kin, their protection ensured through ritual, taboos, and negotiated reciprocity. This relational orientation resonates with Mahabharata’s account of Yudhishthira, whose loyalty to a dog surpasses the promise of celestial reward, extending moral concern beyond human boundaries. By integrating epic scripture with Adivasi philosophy, the paper proposes a relational animal ethics that centres co-existence, humility, and attentiveness. It positions interspecies relationships—not rational mastery—as the foundation of ethical life. Such an approach offers a transformative alternative to the alienation of the Anthropocene, framing morality as an ongoing negotiation of kinship with the more-than-human world, where ethical life emerges through care, respect, and shared becoming.

Speakers

Priya Gupta

PhD Candidate and Senior Research Fellow, Department of Philosophy, University of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

Priya Gupta is Senior Research Fellow pursuing PhD Research from the Department of Philosophy, University of Lucknow. Her graduation is from Miranda House and post graduation is from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her area of research pertains to Ethics of Animal Use. Through her research... Read More →

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.02

Indigenous Philosophy, Remote

2:00pm NZST

Constituted Group Agents

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST

MSB1.03

It is generally accepted that agency requires materiality, since action must originate somewhere. In group agents, this implies that they are agential material objects rather than hovering, mind-like entities (Hess 2025). I argue that the material existence of group agents can be best explained by a Baker-style constitution relation (2000) between a group and its members, which is strictly non-mereological.
First, I argue against Collins (2023) that her mereological account of group agents cannot successfully explain the relation between a group and its members because it fails to meet the non-transitivity desiderata of group agents. I subsequently show how this critique can be generalized to all mereological proposals (Hawley 2017; Hansson Wahlberg 2014).
Secondly, I argue that the existing constitution accounts of group agents either fail to identify the correct material object from which the action of a group originates (Epstein 2015; Hindriks 2013; Uzquiano 2004) or account for it through mereological views of constitution (Harris 2020), which run into the same aforementioned problem.
I conclude that a strictly non-mereological constitution account of the material existence of group agents is the most explanatorily successful since it is the only proposal that can meet the non-transitivity desideratum of group agents.

Speakers

Carolina Berrutti

University of Vienna

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.03

Metaphysics, Remote

2:00pm NZST

What Do Selectional Explanations Explain? The Neander/Sober Debate Revisited

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST

MSB1.20

Can natural selection explain why an individual has a particular trait, or can it only explain the prevalence of that trait in a population to which that individual belongs? In the late 1980s and 1990s Karen Neander and Elliot Sober debated this topic at length, Neander defending the former view and Sober the latter. The exchange was inconclusive, but much recent work in the philosophy of biology assumes that Sober was right. Here I revisit the Neander/Sober debate and consider its implications for current issues in the philosophy of biology.

Speakers

Justine Kingsbury

Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato │ University of Waikato

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.20

Philosophy of Biology, In Person

2:00pm NZST

The Presentness of Pain: Why We Cannot Remember a Sting

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST

MSB1.05

Does the qualitative "sting" of past pain inevitably elude our mnemonic grasp? This paper argues that the qualitative character of pain is best understood as a measure of presentness. Building on Montero’s observation that pain is inherently "occurrent," I propose an interpretation wherein occurrent states denote strictly "new" sensations. I evaluate the work of Coninx and de Brigard, who suggest that episodic memory can involve genuine sensory re-experiencing of past pain. I contend, however, that these sensations are not retrieved qualitative states but are instead novel, "new" pains triggered by the present act of recollection. By analyzing de Brigard’s account of permissible pain recollection alongside recent neuropsychological findings, I demonstrate that these sensations fail to escape characterization as occurrent, present states. I conclude that pain is phenomenologically indexed to the "now"; to "remember" the feeling of pain is not to travel back in time, but to generate a new qualitative state in the present. This suggests that the very nature of pain serves as a biological and experiential marker of temporal presence.

Speakers

Hao Wei Koo

PhD student, Nanyang Technological University Singapore

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.05

Philosophy of Mind, In Person

2:00pm NZST

Something is Wrong with Extremism

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST

MSB1.15

Thinkers in the political extremism literature, most notably Steve Clarke (2019), David Coady (2024), and Morgan Luck (2025), have recently argued there is nothing wrong with extremism qua extremism. I advance two connected lines of argument against this view. First, that these arguments rely on a fundamentally flawed conceptualisation of extremism that conflates it with the concept of extremeness. The concepts of extremism and extremeness can be separated at the semantic, personal, and ideological level, and insisting on their connection generates deeply counterintuitive extremism-categorisations. Second, I put forth a necessary feature of extremism that can ground the wrongness of extremism qua extremism. I call this feature (Morally) Unjustified Political Violence (UPV): extremist ideologies and their believers- extremists- consider successful purported moral justifications for political violence which actually fail. After clarifying political violence and the nature of the justification-failure, I argue that UPV is extensionally adequate and identifies wrongs with extremism qua extremism.

Speakers

Meredith Ross-James

University of Oxford

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.15

Political Philosophy, In Person

2:00pm NZST

An Account Degenerating Myth

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST

MSB1.21

When analysing social and political beliefs we often do so from their relationship to the truth. We evaluate the claims made by figures like Donald Trump based on whether or not they're accurate, and in doing so assume that relation to the truth is central to their power. Hidden within these practices is the assumption that the way people relate to the world around them is empirical in nature. That in disproving them, we strip them of some credence or believability. However, if previous US elections are anything to go by, this simply isn't true.
This talk proposes the idea of a degenerating myth; the narrative epistemological counterpart to Lakatos's degenerating research program. Following the line of Bruno Latour and Mary Midgley, I argue that much of the way humans understand the world is narrative in nature, rather empirical or rational. Consequently, when analysing these narratives we should assess them according to their own function, rather than equating them to the function of scientific research programs, which as I argue, we often do.
To account for this difference in epistemological function, I propose a criteria for identifying degenerating myths, an evaluative framework not reliant on truth or external accuracy.

Speakers

Ciara Foley

Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago

Wednesday July 8, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.21

Social Epistemology, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Childhood Practical Reason and Dependency in the Age of GenAI

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST

MSB1.36 & 37

The use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) by children demands critical examination over whether and how the technology affects their cognitive development. Given the growing empirical research showing the impacts of GenAI on human cognition, this paper aims to philosophically examine the threats that this technology may pose to children’s development as practical reasoners, given the importance of childhood and adolescence in developing this central capability. This paper first outlines and justifies the use of the Capabilities Approach and the particular focus on the central capability of practical reason. I then explore empirical research which shows that GenAI may put downward pressure on children’s ability to reach the necessary threshold for practical reason. I then argue that, due to the pressures it places on this capability, if children are unable to reach the necessary threshold for practical reason due to cognitive offloading and delegation to GenAI, they may be at risk of becoming dependent on GenAI tools and the corporations that control them. Such dependency would raise two important critiques of the adoption of GenAI in childhood and education: first, prudential critiques where the agent’s own interests are undermined; second, political critiques where unjust social forces are reinforced and exacerbated.

Speakers

Siavosh Sahebi

Macquarie University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37

Artificial Inteligence, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Critical Reasoning of Early Greek Thinkers: Concepts of Creation

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST

N3.01

The rise of critical thinking in Greece’s early philosophy can be traced back to the earliest written literature of ancient Greece, with the works of the epic poets Hesiod and Homer. Critical thinking was not just limited to the logical philosophies of Plato and Aristotle of the classical age, nor with interpretation to the sixth century BCE natural philosophers’ empirical observations and theories. Through a comparative analysis of the themes and structures surrounding concepts of creation in the myths of Greece’s epic poems, with the theories of the early Presocratic natural philosophers, this paper proposes to pinpoint when ancient Greece’s formal critical reasoning began. It argues the Presocratic philosophers were the transition point from mythological thinking of Greece’s archaic age to the scientific reasoning of Greece’s classical age. However, the earlier epic poetry also employed this critical reasoning, which makes it Greece’s earliest instance of recorded critical reasoning. Both mediums of epic poetry and natural philosophy used critical reasoning to explain natural phenomena and justify human existence. Thus the early Greek thinkers employed critical reasoning in what were early quasi-scientific explanations for what they observed around them that were based on empirical observation and practice combined with logic and reasoning.

Speakers

Louise Fuller

PhD Candidate, University of Queensland

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
N3.01

Critical Thinking, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Conceptual Pluralism and the Umbrella Problem: A Case Study of Feldman's Two Visions of Welfare

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST

MSB1.01

In his 2019 paper Two Visions of Welfare, Fred Feldman defends Attitudinal Hedonism about welfare by positing a conceptually pluralist account of welfare. Feldman argues that there are two concepts of welfare: Pure Welfare Narrowly Conceived and Enhanced Welfare Broadly Conceived. In this talk I appraise Feldman’s move to pluralism and his subsequent account of welfare. I proceed in four parts. First, I introduce the idea of moves (such as ‘going pluralist’), how moves might come about, and the benefits that we can get by employing them. Next, I introduce Feldman’s use of a move to conceptual pluralism. Then, I argue that Feldman’s attempt merely collapses into a case of conceptual gerrymandering, a case of artificially shifting the bounds of a concept to rule out one’s less-preferred theories of that concept on conceptual grounds. Finally, I argue that we can learn at least two things from Feldman’s unsuccessful move to pluralism. First, there is a problem that all conceptual pluralist accounts will face: the umbrella problem. Second, there is a plausible solve for the umbrella problem in the case of the concept of welfare: a move to functionalism.

Speakers

Joseph Burke V

Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.01

Ethics, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Reconciliation as a Philosophical Project

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST

MSB1.02

This panel brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous members of the Australasian Association of Philosophy’s Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) Working Group to reflect on the establishment of the upcoming RAP, the role of reconciliation within philosophy as a discipline, and the possibilities and challenges of institutional and intellectual change. Drawing on the perspectives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous philosophers working on this project, the panel explores reconciliation and how we can engage in it as a structural practice.
The session will discuss the process of developing the AAP RAP and the questions that continue to emerge throughout this work: What does reconciliation mean within a discipline historically shaped by colonial institutions and Eurocentric intellectual traditions? What might genuine reconciliation look like within teaching, research, governance, mentoring and the disciplinary culture of philosophy?
The panel aims to contribute to broader conversations around the future of philosophy in Australasia by examining reconciliation as both a practical and philosophical project.

Speakers

Taylor-Jai McAlister

Research Fellow / Clinical Psychologist, Macquarie University

Kaz Bland

University of Western Australia

Director, Eurekamp Oz!; Ethics Project Coordinator, Constable Care Foundation; Coordinator, WA Philosothon

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.02

Indigenous Philosophy, In Person

3:00pm NZST

A Neo-Carnapian Approach to the Problem of Empty Names

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST

MSB1.03

Beginning from Rudolf Carnap’s well known thesis that ontological commitment is internal to linguistic frameworks, I argue that this view can be considerably enriched by exploring the varied, and sometimes complex, relations between frameworks. In this paper, I set out the basic features of these relations between frameworks – a relativity of frameworks. Those features are illustrated by showing how they apply to two of the most debated issues in metaphysics and their related semantics: the status of fictional objects and the analysis of true negative existence statements.

Speakers

Michael Gilchrist

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.03

Metaphysics, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Biological Function Across Domains: Polysemy and Explanatory Fit

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST

MSB1.20

The concept of biological function has been a persistent source of debate in the philosophy of biology. This is driven in part by attempts to develop a unified account of function that can be applied across diverse biological disciplines. I suggest that such attempts may motivate the extension of particular accounts of function into unsuitable domains. At the same time, adherence to a single account risks paying inadequate attention to how the concept is currently being deployed within specific fields. I use the function debate within the philosophy of psychiatry to explore how prior explanatory commitments can motivate preferences for particular theories, resulting in poor explanatory fit. Instead, I argue that function can be understood as scientifically polysemous, whereby different subdisciplines may use the concept to refer to different properties or processes that are salient within that domain. I suggest that such variation can be legitimate when anchored to the epistemic and pragmatic goals of the field in question. Finally, I explore how the framework provided by a patchwork concept might help constrain the legitimate use of the function concept across different scientific contexts (Haueis, 2024).

Speakers

Sam Bennett

Waipapa Taumata Rau │ University of Auckland

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.20

Philosophy of Biology, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Defending Phenomenological Theories of Pleasure from the Isolability Requirement

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST

MSB1.05

Phenomenological theories of pleasure, according to which pleasures are constituted by a common phenomenal quality, face the seemingly intractable heterogeneity problem: that pleasures feel too phenomenally heterogeneous to be constituted by a common phenomenal quality. First, I argue that the heterogeneity problem is forceful mainly due to the isolatability requirement, according to which the pleasure-making quality, if phenomenal, must also be isolatable. Second, I argue that we should reject the isolatability requirement as it assumes that the pleasure-making quality is sufficiently sensation-like. Third, I argue that phenomenological theories, of both the distinctive feeling and hedonic tone kinds, have the resources necessary to reject the isolatability requirement. Finally, I conclude that without the isolatability requirement, the heterogeneity problem loses much of its force against phenomenological theories, and phenomenological theories become as plausible, if not more plausible than its chief rival, attitudinal theories.

Speakers

Jolly Cheong

Masters Research Scholar, National University of Singapore

Hi, I’m Jolly! My primary research concerns the nature of pleasure. I’m currently working on defending a commonsensical view of pleasure’s nature, phenomenological theories of pleasure, according to which pleasure is essentially a feeling. I’ll be presenting this research... Read More →

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.05

Philosophy of Mind, In Person

3:00pm NZST

On Political Gaslighting

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST

MSB1.15

This paper develops a conception of gaslighting that is absent from popular accounts in the literature, namely, political gaslighting. This conception explains an epistemic injustice inflicted upon an audience by a politician, focusing on value assessments. I will argue that gaslighting is an apt description of the political manipulation that tactfully undermines an audience's epistemic self-trust, in the face of arguments that such manipulation could be explained through other already developed notions, like bald-faced lying or brainwashing. I suggest that a politician’s position of power hands them the capacity to disconcert the audience by repeatedly instilling doubt into the psyches of citizens that their values are expressed in policies they support, until epistemic autonomy is diminished. Political gaslighting is increasingly popular in the post-truth era, and understanding how its effective will help clarify what resistance to gaslighting could look like.

Speakers

Jess Fea

Volunteer, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato │ University of Waikato

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.15

Political Philosophy, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Rebuilding the Good Epistemic Bubble

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST

MSB1.21

Epistemic bubbles present an interesting challenge for epistemologists. On the one hand, there seems to be something troubling about epistemic bubbles such that, were we to find ourselves in one, then we should leave the bubble as it will likely have bad epistemic consequences. On the other hand, the structure of an epistemic bubble does not necessitate that they have bad epistemic consequences and, sometimes, they can have good epistemic consequences when they increase the inhabitants’ access to true information. The question that this paper pursues is how, if at all, can we access the epistemic benefits of a good epistemic bubble?
To address this question, I advance three arguments. First, I argue that a recent impossibility argument claiming that one can never be justified in remaining in a good epistemic bubble (Sheeks 2023), fails. Second, I outline the conditions required to harness a good epistemic bubble in simplified circumstances. Third, while necessarily speculative, I argue that these conditions could be practically realised with the assistance of institutional supports. Collectively, these arguments provide a schema that could enable agents to access the epistemic benefits of good bubbles.

Speakers

Will Cailes

University of Arizona

Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.21

Social Epistemology, In Person

4:00pm NZST

Afternoon Break

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:00pm - 4:25pm NZST

MSB Foyer

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:00pm - 4:25pm NZST
MSB Foyer

Breaks

4:30pm NZST

Critical Thinking as a Regulator of Tolerance

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST

N3.01

Tolerance is firmly established in political, religious, and legal contexts, yet in the sphere of belief its boundaries remain undefined. In matters of opinion, no legal obligation requires individuals to justify or defend their claims. For that reason, the task of setting limits falls to critical thinking. It safeguards the conditions under which knowledge can be distinguished from mere opinion and responsible judgment from arbitrary assertion. An epistemic community endures only where practices of verification, argumentation, and reason-giving are preserved. Institutions do not think or tolerate on their own, but they shape the environment in which justification is either encouraged or replaced by unchecked expression.
Tolerance should be understood as a starting assumption rather than a final value. It reflects a willingness to acknowledge the existence of the other. Critical thinking, however, asks a further question: is a given position genuinely different, grounded in a distinct but coherent conceptual framework, or is it simply false within a shared one? What is truly other may resist direct comparison and require broader criteria of evaluation. What is false demands critical rejection. Failing to distinguish between these cases erodes standards of judgment. The spread of fake information makes this risk visible. The problem is not openness to difference, but the elevation of error to the status of a legitimate alternative.

Speakers

Nadiia Kozachenko

Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
N3.01

Critical Thinking, Remote

4:30pm NZST

Internally Conflicted Group Agents: Against the Coherence Condition

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST

MSB1.20

In this talk, I argue that holding conflicting sets of norms does not constitute a pathological breakdown of group agency.
Prominent accounts of group agency assume a demanding coherence condition: groups are taken to require a unified point of view, where persistent internal contradiction is treated as a breakdown of agency (List & Pettit 2011; Collins 2019). Yet in ordinary practice, groups are still regarded as agents despite incoherence and ongoing conflict causing tensions for views that emphasize coherence as central to agency attribution.
I argue that existing theories overlook a key phenomenon: internal interference. Once interference originating from within the group is taken seriously, these accounts lack the resources to explain how contradictory groups can continue to act as agents and how to distribute responsibility.
The argument proceeds in three steps. First, it examines group-level programming, including List and Pettit’s idea of “arranging things non-causally” (2011). Second, drawing on Rachar’s distinction (2024), it analyzes implicit programming as norms that guide behavior without explicit endorsement and may constitute a group’s effective program. Third, it highlights that recent responsibility-focused approaches (de Haan & Collins 2024) neglect internally generated interference. This reveals a structural gap in current accounts.

Speakers

Alicia M. Wach

University of Vienna

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.20

Ethics, Remote

4:30pm NZST

The Refutation of Ontological Nihilism

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST

MSB1.03

Ontological nihilism is a philosophical position that denies the existence of anything. The central concept of this position is nothingness. The origins of ontological nihilism can be found in the Old Testament, in the book of Genesis: God created the world from nothing. I argue that ontological nihilism is contradictory and cannot be true. I will try to prove that nothingness is a fiction and that being is everywhere, because nothingness does not exist. The fictional concept of nothingness arises when existence is separated from being. Then existence is nothing because it arises and disappears. But disappearing does not mean becoming nothing, and arising does not mean arising from nothing. Being contains arising, becoming, and disappearing, which do not exist separately from it. When we say that “God created the world out of nothing,” we mean that God existed before the world and created it out of nothing, that is, out of non-being. Now, let us consider the rephrased biblical statement: “God-being creates being out of non-being.” This statement is contradictory. God, as the very equivalent of being, can only create being from being, that is, from what is, and not from what is not, that is, from non-being.

Speakers

Ihor Karivets

Head of Philosophy Chair, Lviv Polytechnic National University

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.03

Metaphysics, Remote

4:30pm NZST

Consciousness Does Not Have Boundaries

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST

MSB1.05

The boundary problem is a component of the hard problem of consciousness. Whereas the binding problem is concerned with what unifies different experiential components (e.g. sights and sounds) within a co-conscious whole, the boundary problem is concerned with what puts an end to unification—what prevents my experience from ‘spilling over’ and incorporating your experience, say.
Many inventive solutions to the boundary problem have been offered, e.g. phenomenal bonding relations in panpsychism, and topological segmentations in EM-field theories of consciousness. But, whatever their merits, there hasn't been much serious questioning as to whether experience does, in fact, have boundaries. I’d like to advance a deflationary account which denies boundaries. I take analogous views in the metaphysics of time and personal identity as precedents. One upshot of this account is to dissolve the boundary problem, making the hard problem a bit easier in that respect.

Speakers

Nicholas Osborn

University of Tasmania

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.05

Philosophy of Mind, In Person

4:30pm NZST

Captured Vigilance: When "Doing Your Own Research" Becomes Dangerous

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST

MSB1.21

This paper challenges a familiar diagnosis of online misinformation: that citizens are misled because they are gullible, irrational, or insufficiently vigilant. Drawing on Mercier and Sperber’s argumentative theory of reason and Mercier’s account of epistemic vigilance, I argue that human beings possess real capacities for suspicion, source evaluation, coherence checking, and resistance to deception. In the age of AI-assisted disinformation, however, the problem is not the absence of vigilance, but its social and infrastructural vulnerability. Vigilance depends on socially supplied cues of trustworthiness, expertise, reputation, salience, and credibility.
I call the resulting failure captured vigilance. In AI-assisted and platform-mediated environments, users may become more suspicious, investigative, and committed to “doing their own research,” while their suspicion is redirected toward reliable institutions and their trust is routed toward pseudo-experts, in-group authorities, and identity-confirming sources. Conspiracy thinking illustrates the problem: vigilance is present, but organized within self-sealing trust environments where warrant is inverted, correction is absorbed as confirmation, and standing is redistributed according to loyalty and distrust.
The paper’s social-epistemological contribution is to show that vigilance is not merely an individual epistemic capacity, but an environmentally scaffolded practice vulnerable to capture under AI-assisted, platform-mediated conditions.

Speakers

Paul Curtis

Te Herenga Waka -- Victoria University of Wellington

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.21

Social Epistemology, In Person

4:30pm NZST

A Direct Argument for B-Series Fatalism

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST

MSB1.02

There has been concern that B-series eternalism could imply fatalism about future objects and events. That is, if B-series eternalism is true, then propositions concerning our future should not be considered differently from those concerning our past; they must have a definite truth value. This was exemplified by Russell’s account of Cambridge change. If a poker is hot at t1 and cold at t2, it will always be so. If all future propositions are true or false, our free will is threatened. In a similar fashion, van Inwagen’s direct argument threatens moral responsibility if determinism is true. This paper offers a construction of eternalist fatalism in a similar fashion, utilising the same structure of Van Inwagen’s argument. I will start by introducing the B-series and eternalism, before explaining the direct argument and resistances to its validity. I will then formulate a similar argument for fatalism using eternalism, overcoming the charge that the B-series does not entail necessary future truths, therefore it does not imply fatalism. I shall conclude with the conditional that if eternalism is true, fatalism is true, whilst remaining neutral on whether this should be used in a modus ponens or a modus tollens.

Speakers

Zak Parsons

Graduate Student, University of St Andrews

Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.02

Truth, Remote

6:00pm NZST

Better Thinking, Better Decisions: Critical Thinking for Public & Professional Leadership

Wednesday July 8, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm NZST

MSB 1.36

Better Thinking, Better Decisions: Critical Thinking for Public and Professional Leadership, a free hybrid public panel presented by the Australasian Association of Philosophy in partnership with the University of Waikato.The panel will bring together leaders from policing, education, climate advocacy, philosophy and the creative sector to discuss how critical thinking can strengthen judgement, leadership and decision-making in professional and public contexts.

Date: Wednesday 8 July 2026
Time: 6.00–7.30pm NZT / 4.00–5.30pm AEST
Registration: https://events.humanitix.com/better-thinking-better-decisions

Public Panel

Deb Brown

University of Queensland

Deborah Brown is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and past President of the Australasian Association of Philosophy. Her research interests include philosophy of mind... Read More →

Jeremy Mayall

Creative Waikato / Toi Waikato

CEO of Creative Waikato / Toi WaikatoJeremy is an advocate for arts, culture and creativity and the role that they play as an essential part of community wellbeing.He is a composer, musician, artist, producer and researcher who is committed to making the world a more interesting place.Born... Read More →

Kirsten Berkhout

University of Queensland

Co-founder of the Young Independents ProjectKirsten Berkhout is a philosophy graduate from the University of Queensland who is passionate about sharing the power of philosophy for a better world. She is co-founder of the Young Independents Project - an Australian not-for-profit working... Read More →

Shane Holmes

Queensland Police Service

Acting Assistant Commissioner, Queensland Police Service, AustraliaShane Holmes joined the Queensland Police Service (QPS) in 1990. He performed the majority of his service on the Gold Coast as a Detective within the Criminal Investigation Branch and then later returned to uniform... Read More →

Sharon Amos

Park Ridge State High School

Executive Principal | Instructional Leader | Leadership CoachSharon Amos is an accomplished educational leader, executive principal, leadership coach, and former corporate executive with more than 27 years of experience across education, business, leadership development, and organisational... Read More →

Wednesday July 8, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm NZST
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