Name: The Systemic Stance
Start: 2026-07-08T09:00:00+1200
End: 2026-07-08T10:25:00+1200

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

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

AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Liezl van Zyl

Stephanie Collins

Get help with the event

AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Liezl van Zyl

Stephanie Collins

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