In this presentation I critically examine some of the moral implications of delaying aggressive climate mitigation in favour of future reliance on carbon dioxide removal technologies to meet internationally agreed climate goals by the end of the century. I argue that delaying emissions reductions violates basic human rights among members of the current generation, including the right to life, health, and subsistence. This adds to a growing list of reasons to favour responses to climate change that include immediate, deep, and rapid emissions reductions over responses that do not.
Wednesday July 8, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am AEST Steele-206
This paper examines whether Analects 14.31 supports the view that trust ought to function as a default normative stance. Through a comparative analysis of interpretations by Du Haitao, Lv Mingxuan, and Liu Xuehan, the study identifies three competing models of Confucian trust: default obligation, virtue-conditioned posture, and cultivation-based achievement. It argues that Analects 14.31 does not prescribe unconditional trust but instead embeds trust within a virtue-ethical framework that prioritizes moral discernment (xian jue) and sustained self-cultivation (gongfu). Drawing on this structure, the paper offers a Confucian critique of contemporary trust theories, especially those advocating structural or voluntarist models. In doing so, it proposes a virtue-based alternative rooted in agent-sensitive ethical responsiveness.
Wednesday July 8, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm AEST Steele-206
This paper explores whether Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia might be understood not as the highest good, but as one level within a nested hierarchy of flourishing. I consider the possibility that 'good' functions less as an indefinable property and more as a fundamental orientation—akin to 'north' on a moral compass—that emerges at three interconnected levels: biological continuity, individual flourishing, and civilizational advancement.
Drawing primarily on Aristotelian virtue ethics, I examine how each level might provide necessary conditions for the next while being transformed by what emerges from it. The paper investigates whether this framework could illuminate the relationship between biological nature and ethical life without reducing one to the other. In particular, I explore how virtues might cascade through these levels, taking different forms while serving interconnected purposes. Rather than claiming to resolve long standing metaethical puzzles, this paper offers a preliminary sketch of how individual eudaimonia might serve as a bridge between biological imperatives and societal flourishing.
Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm AEST Steele-206
Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (2018) describes a conceptualisation of social media as clearly morally objectionable. Lanier’s call is ultimately to delete social media accounts or abstain from participation. Participation perpetuates its dangers, but to what extent are individual users morally responsible for their social media accounts? This paper explores that question through a three-fold theory of responsibility. The first two aspects of this theory apply Robin Zheng’s framework of accountability and attributability (2016) to the problem of social media as proposed by Lanier. Then the third aspect looks at the element of necessity and how it hinders the practise of moral responsibility when it comes to the use of and participation in social media. Although social media evidently has moral harms, not everyone has the capability to refrain from using it without significantly impairing other aspects of their life. In order to promote an effective change to social media and the Internet, the disparity between the levels of responsibility amongst individuals must be taken into account.
Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm AEST GCI-275 HYBRID
Friendship is a central relationship in our lives, and exploring the nature of friendship has been of significant philosophical interest. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle claims that “nobody would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other good things.” Aristotle accounts for three types of friendship. His account has since been reworked and built upon by numerous philosophers. The nature of the parent-child relationship has also been significantly explored by philosophers. However, analysis of parents and children as friends has been much less prevalent. While the ‘Friendship Model’ of filial obligations presupposes that parents and children can be friends, few philosophers have grappled with whether parents and children can become friends. In light of this deficit, our aim is to consider what constitutes a friendship, and whether parents and adult children can ever satisfy those conditions. Joseph Kupfer and Laurence Thomas both argue that parents and children cannot satisfy the conditions for friendship. We will argue that while not all parents and children can fit the conditions of friendship, some can.
Wednesday July 8, 2026 5:30pm - 6:25pm AEST Steele-2373 Staff House Rd, St Lucia QLD 4067, Australia
