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Tuesday, July 7
 

8:30am NZST

Check-in Desk Day 3
Tuesday July 7, 2026 8:30am - 9:00am NZST
MSB Foyer
Check-in Desk open.
Tuesday July 7, 2026 8:30am - 9:00am NZST
MSB Foyer

9:00am NZST

Truth and History
Tuesday July 7, 2026 9:00am - 10:25am NZST
PWC
As authoritarians intuitively grasp, if you control what people know about the past, you better control the future. George Orwell once raised an even more radical claim: that if you control the present, you control the past itself. This talk examines this claim by sketching an account of historical truth that partially validates Orwell’s thought—and also helps us understand why the truth about...
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Chair
avatar for Joe Ulatowski

Joe Ulatowski

Conference Organiser, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato │ University of Waikato

Speakers
avatar for Michael Lynch

Michael Lynch

University of Connecticut
KEYNOTE
Michael Lynch is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Provost Professor of the Humanities at the University of Connecticut.  His books have been translated into a dozen languages and include On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It, The Internet of Us: Knowing Mor... Read More →
Tuesday July 7, 2026 9:00am - 10:25am NZST
PWC
  KEYNOTE, In Person

10:30am NZST

Morning Break
Tuesday July 7, 2026 10:30am - 10:55am NZST
MSB Foyer

Tuesday July 7, 2026 10:30am - 10:55am NZST
MSB Foyer
  Breaks

11:00am NZST

CLAUDE LOAB and I (AM)
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.20
When existential and religious choices are made under uncertainty, complexity and entanglement are likely to follow (De Cruz, 2021, p. 2). This is especially true at the intersection of generative AI (GAI), philosophy, neuroscience, and theology. If, as some argue, AI has become a new kind of entity — an 'autosapiens' that is adaptive (it learns), amiable (it befriends), and arcane (it...
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Speakers
avatar for Carlos Raimundo

Carlos Raimundo

Adjunct Research Fellow, Charles Sturt University
Dr Carlos A. Raimundo is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture (ACC&C), part of Charles Sturt University, Australia. A physician, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and international educator, his work explores the intersection of philosophy... Read More →
avatar for Nikolai Blaskow

Nikolai Blaskow

Adjunct Research Fellow, Charles Sturt University
Dr Nikolai Blaskow is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture (ACC&C), part of Charles Sturt University, Australia. He holds a PhD in Philosophy and Religion from Bangor University, Wales, where his doctoral research examined the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche... Read More →
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.20
  Artificial Inteligence, Remote

11:00am NZST

The Generation of Justification: Testimony and Memory
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
This paper explores the debate between transmissive and generative views of testimony. According to the generation view, testimony can generate knowledge even when neither the testifier nor the testimonial chain previously possessed that knowledge. While this view has been extensively developed since Lackey’s seminal work, Wright (2016) argues that the central issue in the...
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Speakers
SS

Sui Shimizu

Hokkaido University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
  Epistemology, In Person

11:00am NZST

The Environmental Ethics of Overpopulation
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
N3.01
 Using Trevor Hedberg’s consequentialist argument for population control, I consider some historical and modern arguments against such control, and suggest responses that address those concerns. In particular, I will argue that economic concerns and anti-colonialist anxieties are misguided. Despite this and even with the best adaptive policies, the world’s environment and climate cannot...
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Speakers
avatar for Catherine McDonald

Catherine McDonald

Retired, Monash University
Started out interesting in Bioethics and the Ethics of War. Now I'm interested in Environmental Ethics. (I'm interested in AI only if to the degree that I can't tolerate spruikers)
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
N3.01
  Ethics, In Person

11:00am NZST

Contrasting Defences of Gender Equality: Hobbes and Cavendish
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.02
Hobbes has an unwavering account of gender equality. This is so on two counts. The first count is based on a physiological account of species equality influenced by the work of Harvey. Insofar as biology is destiny, women as bearers and rearers of children have the first experience of dominion. The second count asserts that even if inequality is natural, the dictates of reason enjoin a moral...
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Speakers
avatar for Diane Zetlin

Diane Zetlin

University of Queensland

Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.02
  Feminist Philosophy, Remote

11:00am NZST

A Property Theory of Natural Laws
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.03
Under one conception of philosophy, we are to seek the truth under the guidance of logical reasoning. Nothing is more fundamental to that kind of philosophy than entailment—except perhaps a handful of core concepts like being and nonbeing, sameness and difference. Here, we explore a theory that grounds entailment in the being and nonbeing of properties. In a nutshell: we understand...
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Speakers
avatar for John Bigelow

John Bigelow

emeritus professor, Monash University
I had an academic career as a Philosopher and have now retired as an Emeritus Professor at Monash University, Clayton Campus, Victoria, Australia 3800.    I have a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge, England, and a PhD in English from Monash University, Australia... Read More →
avatar for Martin Leckey

Martin Leckey

Honorary fellow in HPS, University of Melbourne
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.03
  Metaphysics, In Person

11:00am NZST

A Hyperinferentialist Account of Active Inference
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.05
An inferentialist semantics — one that claims that the meaning of a judgement is determined by its role in reasoning — faces the problem of how to account for the seemingly noninferential transition from the perceptual to the conceptual. Robert Brandom characterises his response to this problem as ‘strong inferentialism’, claiming that in certain contexts the meaning of a judgement can be...
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Speakers
JM

Joe Melling

PhD Candidate, Monash University
I am a PhD candidate at the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (M3CS). My research focuses on the philosophy of predictive processing and active inference theories.  My current work engages with the classical pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce to argue for... Read More →
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.05
  Philosophy of Mind, In Person

11:00am NZST

Kaitiakitanga and Climate Activism
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.15
This paper examines the Māori stewardship framework of kaitiakitanga as a philosophical basis for climate activism. Based on current work carried out with Indigenous philosopher Krushil Watene, funded by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga and Waipapa Taumata Rau, I explore whether kaitiakitanga generates normative obligations that extend beyond permitting climate action to requiring it. The talk...
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Speakers
avatar for Marco Grix

Marco Grix

Waipapa Taumata Rau │ University of Auckland
Convenor - AAP Community Committee
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.15
  Political Philosophy, In Person

11:00am NZST

(The?) Truth
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.21
Truth is mysterious. Some have identified it with God, some with Goodness and some with Being. Some have claimed there is no such thing and others that that claim is self-refuting. Truth  borders on paradox: if there is no Truth are there truths and is that the claim that there could b none one of them? Some have claimed that if there is a World there is a totality of truths and others that...
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Speakers
avatar for Calvin Normore

Calvin Normore

UCLA/McGill/ University of Queensland
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.21
  Truth, In Person

12:00pm NZST

On AI Agents, Outliers, and Exceptionalism(s)
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
Much of the recent academic debate in the philosophy of AI revolves around a deceptively simple question: are AI tools only as good as their datasets? Existing discussions, however, tend to focus on improving the quality or quantity of training data, thereby underestimating a more subtle issue: how do AI agents handle outlier cases? This paper examines the ‘majoritarian drift’ – the tendency...
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Speakers
AZ

Alexey Zhavoronkov

Senior Lecturer, Taylor's University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
  Artificial Inteligence, Remote

12:00pm NZST

Interspecies Population Ethics
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
N3.01
An increasing number of prominent ethicists (McMahahn, Nussbaum) and effective altruists are advocating for 'wild animal suffering interventionism’ (WASI): that humanity has a strong duty to intervene into natural ecosystems to ameliorate wild animal suffering not caused by humans. Fulfilling this project requires intergenerational governance of all animal populations on earth and the...
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Speakers
avatar for James Curtin

James Curtin

Monash University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
N3.01
  Bioethics, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Group Evidence Without Belief: Internal Tensions in Lackey's Account
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
In discussions of social epistemology, Jennifer Lackey (2021) argues that ‘a significant percentage of a group’s operative members who believe that p’ is a necessary condition for ‘a group believes that p.’ Meanwhile, with respect to group evidence, she maintains that, in certain cases, evidence possessed by a minority of members can constitute group evidence. However, in ordinary...
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Speakers
avatar for Hao-Pu Kang

Hao-Pu Kang

National Chung Cheng University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
  Epistemology, In Person

12:00pm NZST

In Defense of the Suicidal: A Response to Kant
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.01
Immanuel Kant’s (2002) stance on suicide as an act of “debasing of humanity in one’s person” has sparked debates. There is discussion on (1) the sense in which suicide is a violation of the universalizability principle and the humanity formula and (2) Kant’s unclear and imprecise discussion on suicide. However, literature regarding the supposed inconsistency of Kant’s stance on suicide...
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Speakers
avatar for Keisha Christle Abog

Keisha Christle Abog

Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of the Philippines Los Baños
Assistant Professor, University of the Philippines Los Baños
Research Interests: Philosophy for Children, Philosophy of Childhood, Kantian Ethics, Philosophy of Education, Philosophy of Humor
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.01
  Ethics, Remote

12:00pm NZST

Illusory Empowerment within Patriarchal Social Arrangements
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
I extend Kate Manne’s account of misogyny by theorizing the rewards and forms of valorization offered to women who accept patriarchal social arrangements as a sustaining branch of patriarchal social order. Manne briefly notes that such rewards warrant critical attention, but she does not theorize their structural function. Contemporary discourse increasingly frames the pursuit of these rewards...
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Speakers
DC
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
  Feminist Philosophy, Remote

12:00pm NZST

Whose Transmisogyny is it Anyway?
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
Will trans philosophy be sufficient for trans women’s liberation? And if not, what interventions are required? To explore this, I will be critically evaluating Talia Mae Bettcher’s Beyond Personhood (2025) in order to argue that a generalised account of trans oppression fails to give us the tools required to understand trans women’s specific...
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Speakers
avatar for Rosalind Silver

Rosalind Silver

Monash University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
  Feminist Philosophy, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Locative and Mereological Coincidence: Beyond the Monism/Pluralism Taxonomy
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
Cases of coincidence, the paradigmatic example being the statue and the lump of clay, involve purported property differences that motivate the claim that there are numerically distinct coincident objects. These cases are philosophically important insofar as they put pressure on a range of interconnected questions and intuitions about material objects and their individuation, persistence...
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Speakers
avatar for Jordan Lee-Tory

Jordan Lee-Tory

University of Sydney
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
  Metaphysics, In Person

12:00pm NZST

From Daimōn to Phantasma: The Archaeology of "Knowing" as a Science
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
Lucretius thought of his teaching as being "of high matters". The same can be said of Plato's, whose dialogues, as J. N. Findlay said, "point beyond themselves [and] if one does not go beyond, one cannot understand them." Beyond Plato's dialogues we find a deep epistemological fabric that weaves the intellect (the mind) into a complex architecture of knowledge. Plato's luminescent column is, as we...
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Speakers
FB

Fabio Bucci

Independent Researcher
Independent Researcher (AU / FR) in Philosophy and History with a background in Fine Arts and Architecture.
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
  Philosophy of Mind, Remote

12:00pm NZST

Garment Upon Garment: Language and Truth in the Encyclopédie
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
In Language Animal and Cosmic Connections, Charles Taylor advances a theory of constitutive-expressive language. Taylor argues that this model developed in the 1790s, following Johann Herder’s theorisation of Besonnenheit ("reflective-awareness") in his Ursprung der Sprache ("Origin of Language") (1772) essay. Despite Herder’s dominant influence, Taylor names his theory after three...
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Speakers
SC
Tuesday July 7, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
  Truth, Remote

1:00pm NZST

Lunch
Tuesday July 7, 2026 1:00pm - 1:55pm NZST

Tuesday July 7, 2026 1:00pm - 1:55pm NZST
  Breaks

2:00pm NZST

Temporal Human Creativity and the Limits of AI Art
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
This paper examines the role of fine arts in shaping temporal consciousness within a technology-mediated environment, particularly amid the rise of AI-generated art. Insights from Watsuji Tetsurô and Imamichi Tomonobu have already presented a reaction to the significance of temporality and aesthetic experience in their discussions on technology and the ethics of post-structural alterity. However,...
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Speakers
avatar for Kevin Xavier Roque

Kevin Xavier Roque

Ateneo de Manila University
Kevin Xavier Roque is an instructor at Ateneo de Manila University. His research interests include philosophical aesthetics, historical and contemporary East Asian philosophy, systematic ethics, and philosophy of religion. He has a particular engagement with the Kyoto School of Philosophy... Read More →
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
  Artificial Inteligence, In Person

2:00pm NZST

Pleasure, Pain, and Hedonism: Some Current Issues
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
N3.01
This paper outlines and assesses current arguments for and against the ethical hedonist claim that pleasure is the only good, and that pain is the only bad. It outlines and appraises some recent moves in ‘heterogeneity’ arguments against hedonism, and some moves in recent arguments for hedonism that appeal to an experience requirement or a resonance requirement. It also analyses contest...
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Speakers
avatar for Andrew Moore

Andrew Moore

Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
N3.01
  Ethics, In Person

2:00pm NZST

Procreative Asymmetry, Non-Identity, and Consistency
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.01
According to procreative asymmetry, there is a reason not to create a miserable life not worth living, whereas there is no reason to create a life worth living for its own sake. Although this idea is plausible, it is difficult to account for within a standard consequentialist framework based on population axiology. This paper proposes a new formal framework that extends consequentialism and argues...
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Speakers
TN

Takayuki Nakamura

Kyoto University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.01
  Ethics, In Person

2:00pm NZST

From Inner Light to Feminist Praxis: Catherine West
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
This paper argues that the Quaker concept of the Inner Light provides a neglected but powerful feminist account of moral authority—one that challenges both hierarchical epistemologies and the privatization of ethical life. Drawing on the political praxis of Catherine West, the paper reconceptualizes the Inner Light as a feminist moral epistemology grounded in relational responsiveness rather...
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Speakers
avatar for Hyung Jin An

Hyung Jin An

University of Delhi
Hyung Jin An achieved BA Buddhist Studies degree from Dongguk University (2020), MA Philosophy degree from Hindu College, Delhi University (2022). Now currently researching East Asian Pure Land Buddhism and Hindu Bhakti philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Delhi University... Read More →
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
  Feminist Philosophy, Remote

2:00pm NZST

Do Not Pull Apart Explanation from Grounding!
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
Metaphysical foundationalists hold that grounding has an explanatory role and that this role can be fulfilled only if there are fundamental entities. Accordingly, anti-foundationalist views face a charge of explanatory failure: without a fundamental level, certain explanatory demands go unmet. Recently, Cameron (2022) has challenged the assumption that grounding is inherently explanatory. If this...
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Speakers
avatar for Tarun Thapar

Tarun Thapar

University of Illinois
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
  Metaphysics, In Person

2:00pm NZST

What Determines the Content of Our Imaginings?
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
When we try to imagine something and we form a mental image, there is indeed something that we imagine. But what settles the issue of what we are imagining? One possibility is that we imagine whatever we were trying to imagine by forming our mental image. This view respects the intuition that we have privileged access to the contents of our mental states. But it is in tension with the possibility...
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Speakers
avatar for Jordi Fernández

Jordi Fernández

Adelaide University

Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
  Philosophy of Mind, In Person

2:00pm NZST

Structural Injustice and Duties of Superintendence
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
This paper develops a revised account of political responsibility for structural injustice. Building on and revising Iris Marion Young’s influential theory of “political responsibility,” it argues that responsibilities regarding structural injustice are best understood as duties of superintendence: duties to monitor, evaluate, and manage the functioning of social systems in light of the...
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Speakers
MR

Matheson Russell

Waipapa Taumata Rau │ University of Auckland
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
  Political Philosophy, In Person

2:00pm NZST

Virtue Signalling in the Classroom
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
Recent survey data (Romm & Waldman 2025) suggests that university students often project ideological alignment with their professors and classmates in order to succeed socially and academically. In other words, university students virtue signal in the classroom. In this paper, I set out to answer three questions: (1) What is classroom virtue signalling? (2) What are the impacts of classroom virtue...
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Speakers
avatar for William Tuckwell

William Tuckwell

Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
I am a Lecturer in philosophy at Charles Sturt University (CSU). Before becoming a lecturer, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Future of the Professions Research Group at CSU. Prior to joining CSU I was a Society for Applied Philosophy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the... Read More →
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
  Social Epistemology, In Person

2:00pm NZST

On Russell's So-Called Truth Primitivism
Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
According to Truth Primitivism, truth is an unanalysable concept or property. Proponents of the view, especially Jamin Asay, have argued that the GE Moore and Bertrand Russell were early adopters of primitivism until they both abandoned the view in favour of the correspondence theory because neither one of them were able to reconcile how a proposition as a state of affairs could be false if truth...
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Speakers
avatar for Joe Ulatowski

Joe Ulatowski

Conference Organiser, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato │ University of Waikato

Tuesday July 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
  Truth, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Against Computational Functionalism about Consciousness
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
Philosophers endorsing Computational Functionalism (CF) have argued we should afford AI systems moral consideration in virtue of their possessing (or possibly possessing) conscious states. I argue we have no good reason to think CF is true, and good reason to think it isn’t. I distinguish three versions of Computational Functionalism and give arguments against each. Identity CF says the property...
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Speakers
LP

Luke Pistol

Stanford University

Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
  Artificial Inteligence, Remote

3:00pm NZST

Harm Reduction in Non-Suicidal Self Harm
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.01
"A clinician suggests to a person who physically injures themselves without suicidal intent to use red ink instead to simulate the injury without causing physical harm."Debates about harm reduction in non-suicidal self-harm (NSSH) usually focus on questions of safety, proportionality, and autonomy from a third-person perspective concerned with outcomes and professional responsibilities. Harm...
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Speakers
avatar for Snita Ahir-Knight

Snita Ahir-Knight

Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago
Snita (she/her) is the Programme Lead for the lived experience education and research programme World of Difference | He Ao Whakatoihara kore within the Department of Psychological Medicine, Wellington. She was previously a visiting research scholar in philosophy and a teaching fellow... Read More →
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.01
  Bioethics, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Habitual Critique: Between Nature and Spirit
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
Lacanian critical theory provides invaluable resources for social critique, but must always do so by negotiating between its account of “constitutive” and “constituted” alienation – between the unavoidable forms of alienation involved in entering into socio-linguistic life, and the historical forms of alienation which arise due to particular social conditions. Theorising this connection...
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Speakers
avatar for Melvin Kivinen

Melvin Kivinen

Australian Catholic University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
  Continental Philosophy, Remote

3:00pm NZST

Depending on Others: Towards a Unified Understanding of Virtuous Belief Formation
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
N3.01
In virtue ethics and virtue epistemology, someone’s exercise of “intellectual” virtues such as open-mindedness, curiosity, and intellectual humility is understood as key to responsible and knowledge-conducive belief formation. “Moral” virtues such as generosity, courage, and kindness are largely treated as distinct and separate from their intellectual counterparts. However, recognition...
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Speakers
MD

Melanie Dillon-Smith

University of New England
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
N3.01
  Ethics, In Person

3:00pm NZST

A Path Out: Considering Trans Ideal Theory and Ideal Trans Theory
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
This talk looks at the tensions between ideal and non-ideal theory through the lens of trans and feminist philosophy.On the one hand, it seems important to visualise liberatory futures: what are we fighting for? On the other hand, it can seem pointless to build pristine abstract theories when the debris of the present is choking us: what can we do from here? Utopianism doesn't put a roof over...
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Speakers
SA

Simone Anders

Monash University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
  Feminist Philosophy, In Person

3:00pm NZST

All Talk, No Traction: Abstracta, Explanation, and Ontological Commitment
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
Explanatory appeals to abstract ‘objects’ (numbers, moral values/principles, possible worlds etc…) are ubiquitous in philosophy, science, and everyday reasoning. Cicadas emerge in prime-number cycles because of number-theoretic advantages, lying is wrong because it violates the categorical imperative, Celtic FC would have won yesterday’s match had the referee been unbiased. Many...
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Speakers
avatar for Alex McQuibban

Alex McQuibban

University of St Andrews/University of Stirling

Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
  Metaphysics, Remote

3:00pm NZST

Are Dreams Epistemically Relevant? From Scepticism to Dream Engineering
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
The question of how dreams can offer personal guidance and solutions has ignited the interest of humankind for thousands of years. Nonetheless, dreams have often been considered epistemically irrelevant or even deceptive, becoming the target of sceptical debates. Burgeoning research on the function of dreaming for memory integration as well as the development of dream engineering techniques aimed...
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Speakers
avatar for Gaia Mizzon

Gaia Mizzon

Monash University

Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
  Philosophy of Mind, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Justifying a Republican Theory of Transitional Justice
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
Transitional justice is traditionally associated with democratic consolidation, yet this relationship is empirically contingent rather than guaranteed. Canada consolidated democracy without transitional justice, while Chad failed to democratize despite it. Moreover, transitional mechanisms can be double-edged, sometimes reinforcing illiberal regimes rather than dismantling them. These...
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Speakers
avatar for Chunlin Liu

Chunlin Liu

Associate professor, Chang Jung Christian University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
  Political Philosophy, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Can Truth Subvert the Inference Barriers?
Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
Long ago I tried to rescue No-Ought-From-Is from Prior’s counterexamples by reformulating it as the thesis that you can’t get a non-vacuous Ought from an Is. But (replies Nelson) once we help ourselves to the notion of truth we can construct logically valid arguments from non-moral premises to (non-vacuous) moral conclusions. Is Nelson’s counterexample logically valid? This depends on the...
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Speakers
CP

Charles Pigden

Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago

Tuesday July 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
  Truth, In Person

4:00pm NZST

Afternoon Break
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:00pm - 4:25pm NZST
MSB Foyer

Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:00pm - 4:25pm NZST
MSB Foyer
  Breaks

4:30pm NZST

Anxiety, Dying Authentically and Digital Duplicates for Palliative Care
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.20
It has recently been suggested that large language models (LLMs) fine-tuned on the corpus of text from palliative care patients could be used to alleviate their distress by completing projects or relationships that would otherwise be cut short by their deaths. For example, a fine-tuned LLM could be used to complete the novel of a dying author. I contest the alleged benefits of this technology by...
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Speakers
ZD

Zachary Daus

Monash University

Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.20
  Artificial Inteligence, Remote

4:30pm NZST

Epistemic Reasons Always Lose
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
Can practical reasons ever override epistemic reasons for belief — and if so, how should the two be weighed against each other? Existing accounts of how to weigh epistemic and practical reasons face serious problems: the combinational problem of how to combine permissive and prohibitive balancing, accusations of being ad hoc, and the inability to provide usable advice. Additionally, existing...
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Speakers
avatar for Danielle Lawrence

Danielle Lawrence

Volunteer, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato │ University of Waikato

Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
  Epistemology

4:30pm NZST

On the Special Omission Question
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.03
In this paper, I address the Special Omission Question (SOQ): under what conditions does a disjunction count as an omission? If omissions are events essentially specified as non-occurrences, then their conditions of occurrence can be formulated as disjunctions of overly varied disjuncts. This suggests that omissions are disjunctive events. For example, one might say that the universe omits to...
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Speakers
HP

Huang Ping-Wei

National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan

Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.03
  Metaphysics, In Person

4:30pm NZST

What Makes a Sport a Sport? On Folk Intuitions about Rules and Movement in Sport
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.01
Huizinga (1950) argued for a conceptual overlap between sport, games, and play. Others, like McIntyre (1981), contended that sport was a socially established cooperative activity. Still others maintained that the definitiveness of sport lies in the exemplification of specific criteria, such as competitiveness (Krein, 2014; 2015). No one has asked non-specialists about their views despite that they...
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Speakers
avatar for Joe Ulatowski

Joe Ulatowski

Conference Organiser, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato │ University of Waikato

avatar for Michael Hemmingsen

Michael Hemmingsen

Tunghai University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.01
  Other, In Person

4:30pm NZST

Experiencing Inner Awareness
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.05
Many philosophers claim that a special inner awareness persists in the background of all our conscious states. However, various attempts to gather phenomenological evidence for this view have yielded conflicting results. The dominant alternative strategy involves considerations of a more theoretical nature, such as appealing to inner awareness as the best explanation for things like memory,...
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Speakers
avatar for Darryl Mathieson

Darryl Mathieson

PhD Student, Australian National University
I am a fourth year PhD student and Associate Lecturer at ANU, where I am supervised by Victoria McGeer, Frank Jackson, and Daniel Stoljar. My main area of specialization is the philosophy of mind, and more specifically on various issues about consciousness and self-consciousness... Read More →
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.05
  Philosophy of Mind, In Person

4:30pm NZST

Intending and Settling Practical Questions
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
N3.01
Proponents of the “inquisitive theory of mind” argue that intentions are among the attitudes which are question sensitive. Understood this way, to form an intention is to settle on an answer to a ‘practical questions,’ a question about what to do. But what is an answer to a practical question, and what is it to “settle” on one answer over others? In this paper I argue...
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Speakers
avatar for Annelisa O'Neal

Annelisa O'Neal

PhD student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
N3.01
  Philosophy of Mind, In Person

4:30pm NZST

Trusting God is Not Like Trusting Your Spouse
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.15
Faith is often defended not as blind belief, but as trust in God after belief that God exists has already been formed. On this view, trusting God is analogous to trusting a spouse, friend, doctor, or pilot. This paper challenges that analogy.I argue that even if God’s existence is granted, trust in God’s present guidance differs from ordinary interpersonal trust in three respects.First,...
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Speakers
avatar for Jared Brandon
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.15
  Philosophy of Religion, In Person

4:30pm NZST

Explanatory Pluralism and the Epistemic Status of Spiritual Frameworks in Psychiatric Knowledge
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.02
This paper argues that explanatory pluralism provides the most defensible framework for governing psychiatric knowledge, and that the continued privileging of biomedical monism requires philosophical justification it has not adequately received. I contend that psychiatric phenomena are ontologically complex in ways that resist reduction to any single explanatory scheme, and that the systematic...
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Speakers
avatar for Gemma Lucy Smart

Gemma Lucy Smart

PhD Candidate, University of Sydney
Gemma Lucy Smart is a PhD candidate in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney, where she researches the history of mental health self-help, consumer activism, and Mad Pride's relationship to the disability and neurodiversity movements. She is a senior lived... Read More →
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.02
  Social Epistemology, In Person

4:30pm NZST

A Market Failure in the Attention Economy
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.21
The attention economy is often blamed for the severe deterioration of credible, high-quality content on social media. This is a bit perplexing. I give my attention to some platforms in exchange for some entertaining content. The exchange itself seems perfectly innocuous, sounds like a textbook win-win situation. Where did everything go wrong?Contrary to public opinion, I argue that the credibility...
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Speakers
JC

Jovy Chan

Postdoc, Stanford University
Tuesday July 7, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.21
  Truth, Remote

6:30pm NZST

Women in Philosophy - Get Together
Tuesday July 7, 2026 6:30pm - 9:30pm NZST
Boulder Co.
Join us for an informal Women in Philosophy get-together at Boulder Co in Hamilton. Come along for a chat and a drink, stay for a bite to eat, or have a go at climbing. The venue has a café and bar, and attendees are very welcome to join socially without climbing. For those who would like to climb, the cost is NZD $20 per person, plus NZD $5 for shoe hire. There is no cost for those attending...
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Tuesday July 7, 2026 6:30pm - 9:30pm NZST
Boulder Co.
  SOCIAL
 
Wednesday, July 8
 

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...
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Chair
avatar for Liezl van Zyl

Liezl van Zyl

Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato │ University of Waikato

Speakers
avatar for Stephanie Collins

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Yazdan Mansourian

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Sara Campolonghi

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Declan Humphreys

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Taylor-Jai McAlister

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
avatar for Sam Baron

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...
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Speakers
HS

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,...
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Speakers
ZB

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Alexander Forbes

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Steve Clarke

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Kenneth Howarth

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...
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Speakers
GS

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...
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Speakers
BS

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Suzy Killmister

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Kangqiao Wang

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...
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Speakers
TL

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...
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Speakers
avatar for 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...
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Speakers
CC

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...
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Speakers
avatar for M R. X. Dentith

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 →
CP

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

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,...
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Speakers
BY

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Furkan Yazici

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Lara Buchak

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Priya Gupta

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Carolina Berrutti

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Justine Kingsbury

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...
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Speakers
HW

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Meredith Ross-James

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....
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Speakers
CF

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...
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Speakers
SS

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...
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Speakers
LF

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...
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Speakers
JB

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Taylor-Jai McAlister

Taylor-Jai McAlister

Research Fellow / Clinical Psychologist, Macquarie University
avatar for Kaz Bland

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...
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Speakers
MG
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...
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Speakers
SB

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Jolly Cheong

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Jess Fea

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Will Cailes

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Nadiia Kozachenko

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Alicia M. Wach

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Ihor Karivets

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Nicholas Osborn

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...
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Speakers
PC

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Zak Parsons

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,...
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Public Panel
avatar for Deb Brown

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 →
avatar for Jeremy Mayall

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 →
avatar for Kirsten Berkhout

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 →
avatar for Shane Holmes

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 →
avatar for Sharon Amos

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
MSB 1.36
 
Thursday, July 9
 

8:30am NZST

Check-in Desk Day 5
Thursday July 9, 2026 8:30am - 9:00am NZST
MSB Foyer
Check-in Desk open
Thursday July 9, 2026 8:30am - 9:00am NZST
MSB Foyer

9:00am NZST

Agentic Ai: The New Cartesian Theatre
Thursday July 9, 2026 9:00am - 10:25am NZST
PWC
This analysis identifies the designation "Agentic AI" as a syntactic architecture of institutional immunity. We treat the term not as an ontological classification, but as a governing picture that restructures the landscape of corporate accountability. The institution deploys the grammar of "Agency" to construct a "New Cartesian Theatre"—a space where the statistical model occupies the seat of...
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Chair
avatar for Michael Hemmingsen

Michael Hemmingsen

Tunghai University
Speakers
avatar for Inês Hipólito

Inês Hipólito

Macquarie University
Inês Hipólito is a lecturer of Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence at Macquarie University. researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/ines-hipolitoineshipolito.com  x.com/ineshipolito... Read More →
Thursday July 9, 2026 9:00am - 10:25am NZST
PWC
  KEYNOTE

10:30am NZST

Morning Break
Thursday July 9, 2026 10:30am - 10:55am NZST
MSB Foyer
Morning Break
Thursday July 9, 2026 10:30am - 10:55am NZST
MSB Foyer
  Breaks

11:00am NZST

Cognitive Value of Fiction in Relation to Perspectival Imagination
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.20
This paper defends the cognitive value of art by analyzing the role of perspectival imagination in the appreciation of fictional narratives. Against the anti-cognitivist challenge posed by Peter Lamarque(2006) that cognitive value is irrelevant to artistic value, I argue that perspectival imagination is both essential to the practice of appreciating fictional narratives and a source of genuine...
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Speakers
avatar for Su-An Do

Su-An Do

Department of Aesthetics, Seoul National University
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.20
  Aesthetics, In Person

11:00am NZST

Adversarial examples and AI-based knowledge
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.21
This talk investigates the following two questions: Q1. Under what conditions do human AI-based beliefs qualify as knowledge? Q2. Do the seemingly crazy errors that AI systems sometimes make pose a threat to human AI-based beliefs qualifying as knowledge? The discussion of Q1 and Q2 is set against the background of a stock of examples of AI errors, including adversarial examples drawn from the...
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Speakers
avatar for Nikolaj JJL Pedersen

Nikolaj JJL Pedersen

Yonsei University

Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.21
  Artificial Inteligence, In Person

11:00am NZST

Phenomenology of Disability and the Doctor/Patient Relationship
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
In her book, Illness, Havi Carel writes of her own experience, “I quickly learned that when doctors ask ‘How are you?’ they mean ‘How is your body?’” (Illness 48). While this mismatch between the use of ‘you’ here might be excused by most as a mundane confusion of language, this dual role of the self, as both bodily and social, revealed through the doctor/patient...
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Speakers
MV

Mikel Van Dyken

University of Queensland
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
  Continental Philosophy, In Person

11:00am NZST

Conspiracy Theories: Particularism vs Generalism vs Anti-Generalism
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.05
In the increasingly interdisciplinary study of conspiracy theories - conspiracy theory theory - there is a debate (at least in philosophy) between generalism (the view that there is something generally wrong about conspiracy theories) and particularism (the view that conspiracy theories ought to be assessed on their relative merits, and thus no assumption can be made about their warrant sans some...
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Speakers
avatar for Steve Clarke

Steve Clarke

Charles Sturt University
avatar for M R. X. Dentith

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 →
CP

Charles Pigden

Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago

Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.05
  Epistemology, In Person

11:00am NZST

Forgiveness and the Purpose of Rememberance
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.01
Victims of wrongdoing are frequently encouraged to forgive in order to move forward in peace. Victims who keep reminding the perpetrators of the past wrongdoing might be accused of not having forgiven at all. Arguably, real healing will be achieved by victims who let bygones be bygones, who forgive and forget. However, victims of extreme wrongdoing are also regularly encouraged to participate in...
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Speakers
avatar for Luke Russell

Luke Russell

Professor, University of Sydney
I work on forgiveness, evil, moral emotions, virtue and vice.
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.01
  Ethics, In Person

11:00am NZST

Religious Fictionalism: A Ritualistic Approach
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.15
One major approach to religious fictionalism is to highlight the moral benefits of religious practices, i.e., to argue that even non-doxastic acceptance of the content of religious claims may help practitioners with their moral growth, moral sensibility, moral motivation, and so on (cf. Eshleman 2005; Le Poidevin 2019, 2023; Jay 2014, Leng 2023). In this paper, I argue that this approach fails....
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Speakers
FK

Fang-Ru Kuo

National Taiwan Normal University
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.15
  Philosophy of Religion, In Person

11:00am NZST

Worthless Science: Against the Equivalence of Pursuits
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.02
Despite the recent interest surge in the topic of pursuitworthiness within philosophy of science, Philip Kitcher's claim that science is, by its very nature, a significant pursuit has yet to be challenged within the literature. I argue in favor of the relevance of the category of worthless science, by establishing that it is irreducible to non-pursuitworthiness in the...
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Speakers
avatar for Luca Molinari

Luca Molinari

PhD Student, Nanyang Technological University
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
MSB1.02
  Philosophy of Science, In Person

11:00am NZST

Epistemic Errors in Prosocial Behaviour-Promoting Virtual Reality and Associated Moral Wrongs
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
N3.01
Prosocial behaviour-promoting virtual reality (PBP-VR) experiences often claim to foster empathy and understanding by allowing users to virtually embody members of marginalised groups. In this talk, I argue that PBP-VR can also produce distinctive epistemic errors that generate morally problematic forms of social understanding. I identify and analyse two such errors: synecdoche epistemic...
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Speakers
avatar for Eliana Horn

Eliana Horn

Monash Univesity
Hello all,

I am awaiting examination on my doctoral thesis which looks at prosocial behaviour promoting virtual reality. I ask: what can we plausibly know about others' experiences through virtual embodiment, and is acquiring this knowledge ethically desirable in the first place?
... Read More →
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST
N3.01
  Social Epistemology, Remote

12:00pm NZST

Imagining New Narratives: Documentary Film, Trauma, and Affective Justice
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
I show that documentary film, and art more broadly, can function as a vehicle for both epistemic and affective justice in contexts of psychological trauma. The central claim is that trauma often persists not only because of the initial harm suffered, but because survivors are denied the epistemic and emotional resources necessary to process that harm. Through the imaginative reshaping of...
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Speakers
GH
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
  Aesthetics, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Revisiting Scientific Realism: Lessons from Explainable AI
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
According to scientific realists, the success of a scientific theory provides strong evidence that it is (approximately) true (Putnam, 1975). In response, antirealists argue that the theories we have are successful because they are survivors of a selection process where unsuccessful theories are rejected, so truth is not necessary to explain success (van Fraassen 1980). This paper argues that the...
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Speakers
YP

Yunus Prasetya

National University of Singapore
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
  Artificial Inteligence, In Person

12:00pm NZST

What Does It Mean To Be 'Always Ready'?
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
Since the 1980s, and especially into the 1990s, the phrase “always already” came to be used well beyond its specialised context in Continental Philosophy, becoming ubiquitous in a range of academic disciplines within the general orbit of poststructuralism, and loosely in connection with the legacy of Heidegger’s Being and Time. In this paper, I want to do three things: (i) trace the...
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Speakers
LM

Leah McGarrity

Australian Catholic University
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
  Continental Philosophy, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Doubt Aversion Theory
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
N3.01
How does wishful thinking (the ‘desirability bias’) work? Existing theories (e.g., cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, psychological immune theory) struggle to adequately explain this phenomenon, so I apply theory construction methodology and standard critical thinking tools to improve on them. I find that wishful thinkers accurately perceive that attaining self-serving beliefs will...
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Speakers
avatar for Ted Hennicke

Ted Hennicke

University of Queensland
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
N3.01
  Critical Thinking, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Irrationality is in the Job Description: Why Epistemic Role Norms Imply the Permissibility of Trade-Offs
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
An agent makes an epistemic trade-off when she forms a belief, that is prima facie irrational, to achieve some larger epistemic good (such as the attainment of a more valuable belief). Most epistemologists contend that trade-offs are impermissible; however, I argue that examples of permissible trade-offs can be found in a recognizable phenomenon in social epistemology: the adoption of...
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Speakers
avatar for Levi Smith

Levi Smith

University of Colorado Boulder
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
  Epistemology, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Death and Lament: A Deprivationist Argument Against Lamenting Death
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.01
A widely accepted view about the badness of death is the Deprivation Account (DA), according to which death is bad for the person who dies because it deprives them of future goods. A natural idea for DA proponents is that we should lament our death if and only if, and to the extent that, it is bad for us—a view called the Nothing Bad, Nothing to Lament Assumption (NBNL). However, Travis...
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Speakers
avatar for Ryota Ishihara

Ryota Ishihara

PhD Candidate, Kyoto University
I am a PhD candidate at Kyoto University, Japan. I am working mainly on the philosophy of death, the philosophy of harm, and animal ethics.
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.01
  Ethics, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Hermeneutic Religious Fictionalism: A Defence
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
Religious fictionalism is roughly the view that our engagement with religious discourse, ritual and practise involves pretense. According to the fictionalist, religious talk does not involve assertion and religious thought does not involve belief. When we say things like ‘God is good’, we are merely expressing something like a make-belief that God is good (and perhaps inviting others to do the...
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Speakers
avatar for Stuart Brock

Stuart Brock

Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago

Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
  Philosophy of Religion, In Person

12:00pm NZST

Gaston Bachelard's Non-Kantian Philosophy of Science in the Philosophy of No
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
Gaston Bachelard has received increasing interest in analytic philosophy (Massimiliano Simons and Matteo Vagelli, 2021; Brenner, 2015; Chimisso, 2024), yet it remains controversial whether Bachelard simply develops the neo-Kantian philosophy of science (Tiles, 1984; Guo, 2019; Panero, 2021) or breaks with this tradition to establish a novel approach (Souto, 2022). In this paper, I argue, through a...
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Speakers
avatar for Jacob Ritz

Jacob Ritz

University of Queensland
Jacob Ritz is a casual academic in German and mathematics and a PhD student at the University of Queensland, where he studied German, French, and pure mathematics. His current research interests lie in nineteenth- and twentieth-century German and French metaphysics, particularly at... Read More →
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
  Philosophy of Science, Remote

12:00pm NZST

The Symmetry of Epistemic Resistance
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
Individuals and groups frequently resist well-evidenced claims while readily accepting others that are, on more objective examination, highly dubious or false. Philosophical analyses of this phenomenon tend to focus on right-wing or conservative predispositions, invoking mechanisms such as motivated reasoning, deference to unreliable authorities, and epistemic pollution by vested interests. These...
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Speakers
avatar for Russell Blackford

Russell Blackford

Conjoint Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Newcastle
I'm a philosopher (obviously), legal scholar, and literary critic, and a widely published essayist and commentator. I've enjoyed a career in academia, public policy management, and the legal profession, and since the 1980s, I've also built an international profile as a writer and... Read More →
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
  Truth, Remote

1:00pm NZST

Lunch
Thursday July 9, 2026 1:00pm - 1:55pm NZST

Thursday July 9, 2026 1:00pm - 1:55pm NZST
  Breaks

2:00pm NZST

Aesthetic Resonance and Imagined Community: Rethinking the Social Basis of Aesthetic Value
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
This paper argues that aesthetic value can arise from aesthetic resonance, a psychological experience of connection that generates an imagined aesthetic community. While Riggle (2024) locates aesthetic value in shared practices, this view struggles to account for solitary and cross-temporal experiences and risks treating them as merely instrumental.I propose that, in aesthetic experience,...
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Speakers
avatar for Kai Wang

Kai Wang

University of Sydney
I am currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Sydney. My primary research interests lie in aesthetics, analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of games.
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
  Aesthetics, In Person

2:00pm NZST

Outputs First: Rethinking Bullshit in Large Language Models
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
A fast-moving debate has emerged over whether LLMs are bullshitters in any significant sense. This talk develops an account of LLM bullshit that, in contrast to the most influential existing accounts, is entirely output-based.I begin with an overview of the best-known treatment of LLM bullshit, due to Hicks, Humphries, and Slater, along with some of the main critical reactions to their views. One...
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Speakers
avatar for Jeremy Wyatt

Jeremy Wyatt

Senior Lecturer, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato │ University of Waikato
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
  Artificial Inteligence, In Person

2:00pm NZST

The Double Bind of Self: Cultural Legacies that Affect Critical Thinking and Experience
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
N3.01
With global reports of substantial mental health issues, there is an imperative to take seriously the criticisms of the traditional Western paradigm that entails the predominant epistemological and ontological assumptions about mental health. In this paper we argue that the historical development of concepts and theories related to self have created deeply embedded cultural legacies that are based...
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Speakers
PS

Pru Steinerts

Lincoln University
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
N3.01
  Critical Thinking, In Person

2:00pm NZST

Some Varieties of Particularism
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
Recent work on the philosophy of conspiracy theory in Philosophy has largely consolidated around the thesis of Particularism. Particularists argue that we cannot make broad generalisations about the class of conspiracy theories. Instead, we have to assess particular instances of conspiracy theories on their merits. However, like many emerging consensus positions in philosophy, particularism is not...
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Speakers
avatar for M R. X. Dentith

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 →
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
  Epistemology, In Person

2:00pm NZST

A sympathetic response to skepticism about empathy
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
Empathy was introduced to philosophy as a solution to the problem of other minds skepticism, the doubt whether other minds exist at all, which arises from the Cartesian dualist picture of the mind as metaphysically hidden (Lipps 1907). Already in Lipps’s work, and from then on into contemporary philosophical discussion, empathy in its various forms is...
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Speakers
avatar for Talia Morag

Talia Morag

Australian Catholic University

Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
  Philosophy of Mind, Remote

2:00pm NZST

Thibodeau and the Horrendous Deeds Objection: A Reply
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
Jason Thibodeau has recently developed a revised version of the Horrendous Deeds Objection against Modified Divine Command Theory (MDCT). On his formulation, if God has “moral grounding power”—the capacity for a being’s commands to constitute moral obligations—then any omnipotent being would possess the same power. This purportedly allows for a possible world in which a...
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Speakers
MF
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
  Philosophy of Religion, In Person

2:00pm NZST

An Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Theoretical Parsimony
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
There is disagreement over why theoretical virtues are good for theories to have. On the one hand, they may be epistemic; they may be guides to the truth. On the other hand, they may be pragmatic; they merely facilitate inquiry. I present an evolutionary debunking argument against the view that parsimony is an epistemic theoretical virtue. Our disposition to prefer simpler theories over more...
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Speakers
JV

James Vlachoulis

Australian National University
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
  Philosophy of Science, Remote

2:00pm NZST

Discerning Truthfulness and the Fear of Betrayal
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
We extend trust to those we deem trustworthy.  Trustworthiness involves both a competence component and a motivation component. Insofar as we aim to trust only those who are trustworthy, we have reason not to extend our trust when the target is either incompetent or not properly motivated. However, of these two ways that trust can be violated, the latter tends to elicit much stronger reactive...
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Speakers
SG

Sanford Goldberg

Northwestern University

Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
  Truth, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Film and the Mode of Dream
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
I take it that in watching a film one is imaginatively presented with an as-if reality. In this talk I’d like to explore the idea that the mode of viewing a film is closely analogous to the imaginative mode of viewing a dream. I shall take up and extend Suzanne Langer’s suggestion in “A Note on the Film” that film is presented to the viewer in “the dream mode” by reflecting on the...
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Speakers
avatar for David Macarthur

David Macarthur

Professor of Philosophy, University of Sydney
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
  Aesthetics, Remote

3:00pm NZST

Pluralistic World Views, AI Adoption, and Trustworthy AI
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
The de facto situation regarding trustworthy AI is that the principles and supporting guidelines of are largely settled, from a pan-cultural perspective, and that if we build this trustworthy AI—all other things being equal—this will lead to greater AI adoption. There are some consequences that may be drawn by AI accelerationists from this. First, we don’t need to expend resources...
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Speakers
DW

Daniel Wilson

Waipapa Taumata Rau │ University of Auckland
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.21
  Artificial Inteligence, In Person

3:00pm NZST

The Misuse of Slippery Slope Arguments by VAD Opponents
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
N3.01
In this presentation, I critically evaluate the popular use of slippery slope arguments (SSAs) by opponents of Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD). I begin by evaluating different forms of SSA. I then identify recurrent methodological deficiencies appearing in SSAs opposing VAD, such as speculative causal chains of events, conflation of logical possibility with empirical probability, selective...
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Speakers
JM

Jessie McDonnell

Charles Sturt University

Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
N3.01
  Critical Thinking, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Contextualism, a Challenge from Experimental Philosophy
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
Keith DeRose's (1992, 2009, 2011) epistemic contextualism maintains that when S makes a knowledge attribution, the truth conditions of the statement "S knows that P" vary in a specific way depending on the context of S's assertion. This "specific way" is jointly determined by both epistemic and practical factors. In particular, the claim that stakes (as a practical factor) affect knowledge...
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Speakers
HC

Hsin Che Wang

National Chung Cheng University
Pre postgraduate of National Chung Cheng University

Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.05
  Epistemology, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Product Boycott: Morally Good Boycotts vs Morally Bad Boycotts
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.01
Product boycotts are a common feature of our political lives. Vegans avoid animal products, and many Americans boycott Tesla for political reasons. Boycotts are a central mechanism through which consumers attempt to hold firms morally accountable within market systems. Consequentialists defend consumer boycotts on the basis of their expected effects. Non-consequentialists, by contrast, defend...
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Speakers
RC

Ritam Chakraborty

University of Colorado, Boulder

Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.01
  Ethics, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Are Phenomenal Properties Dispositional?
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
In the field of metaphysics concerned with causal powers (powers ontology) a central debate concerns whether all properties are powers, or whether some properties are nonpowerful. Some philosophers argue that we need inert (nonpowerful) properties called categorical properties or qualities in order to avoid problematic regresses that emerge if we have a powers-only ontology. In this paper, I...
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Speakers
avatar for Cecilia Hunt

Cecilia Hunt

Associate Lecturer and PhD Candidate, University of Notre Dame Australia
I am a third year PhD candidate at the University of Notre Dame Australia. My research is in the metaphysics of powers and the philosophy of mind. Prior to my PhD I completed my undergraduate and Masters degree in Theology and Philosophy, respectively. I also teach at UNDA in the... Read More →
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.20
  Metaphysics, In Person

3:00pm NZST

Lucid Reflections: Moral Injury Turning the Earth
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
Metaphysical freedom, experienced as a state of lucidity, can allow for balanced change in our understanding of ecology as it creates opportunities for individuals to develop a dynamic moral mindset in line with our ever-changing relationship with nature and empower them to enact intentional change. Entering a state of lucidity, a state where we recognise our responsibility in creating our own...
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Speakers
avatar for Paige Maguire

Paige Maguire

PhD Student, University of Queensland
I am an eco-feminist and focus my research primarily on eco-revolution, Aboriginal dipomacy and relationality.
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.15
  Other, Remote

3:00pm NZST

Structuralism in Loop Quantum Gravity
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
I investigate the viability of ontic structural realism (OSR) in loop quantum gravity (LQG) (in both its canonical and covariant formulations). This is done through the introduction of two tests for the viability of OSR: the intrinsic properties test and the intrinsic identity test. A list of candidates for the fundamental structure of LQG is identified. The application of the aforementioned tests...
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Speakers
AM

Aiden Meyer

Phd student, University of Melbourne

Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.02
  Philosophy of Science, Remote

3:00pm NZST

Is Truth Correspondence, Coherence, Pragmatic Utility? - A Decision Procedure
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
The question whether truth is correspondence, coherence, pragmatic utility, or something else is a perennial philosophical question for which there has so far been no decision procedure. In this talk I propose a decision procedure for this question. The basis for this decision procedure is the consideration of what we lose and what we don’t lose when we lose truth in a “post-truth” crisis....
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Speakers
GS

Gila Sher

Professor, University of California, San Diego
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST
MSB1.03
  Truth, In Person

4:00pm NZST

Afternoon Break
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:00pm - 4:25pm NZST
MSB Foyer

Thursday July 9, 2026 4:00pm - 4:25pm NZST
MSB Foyer
  Breaks

4:30pm NZST

Taxonomically Transformative Technologies: AI, Conceptual Engineering, and Hermeneutical Impoverishment
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.21
Critics rightfully identify that AI models are biased against marginalised groups. These biases deteriorate our shared hermeneutical resources—the narratives, frameworks, and concepts that structure how we understand the world and ourselves—by reflecting and exacerbating existing oppressive narratives. However, this is not the only way that AI models are sources of hermeneutical...
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Speakers
LW

Lena Wang

University of Cambridge
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.21
  Artificial Inteligence, Remote

4:30pm NZST

Between Reason and Desire: Brandom on the Moral Valet
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
In this paper we propose a critical reading of Robert Brandom’s reading, in A Spirit of Trust, of the final eleven paragraphs of the Spirit chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, especially the crucial paragraph 665 – the discussion of the Kammerdiener, or “moral valet”.  We argue that Brandom significantly understates the role that desire plays in...
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Speakers
DL
avatar for Nicole Pepperell
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.36 & 37
  Continental Philosophy, In Person

4:30pm NZST

Deliberative Strategic Action
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
N3.01
Group deliberation is a discursive process whereby participants seek to reach understanding by exchanging considerations, aiming to build consensus for the purpose of action-coordination. My PhD thesis develops formal (mathematical) models to study the mechanics of group deliberation. In this talk, I first address the question of whether formal models are appropriate to study group deliberation in...
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Speakers
avatar for Michael Demetrius

Michael Demetrius

Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
N3.01
  Critical Thinking, In Person

4:30pm NZST

Accipere Aude: Autonomy, Illumination, and the Necessity of Epistemic Humility in Immanuel Kant and St Augustine
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.20
Contemporary interpretations of Immanuel Kant often present autonomy as one of the decisive achievements of modern philosophy. By grounding knowledge in the self-legislating use of reason, Kant sought to liberate humanity from intellectual immaturity and dogmatism. Yet his restriction of knowledge to the realm of phenomena also raises an enduring epistemological tension concerning the relation...
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Speakers
avatar for Justin Sean Luis Canaria

Justin Sean Luis Canaria

Graduate Student, Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas
Justin Sean Luis Canaria graduated with an A.B. in Philosophy (2023), Cum Laude, from the Immaculate Conception Major Seminary, Guiguinto, Bulacan.Currently, he is a College Instructor at Pasig Catholic College. He is also pursuing his M.A. in Philosophy at the Graduate School of... Read More →
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.20
  Epistemology, Remote

4:30pm NZST

Confidentiality, Assertion, and Finite Inquiry
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.05
Hearer-oriented etiological functionalism explains the epistemic norm of assertion by appeal to assertion’s characteristic epistemic function. On the version defended by Christoph Kelp and Mona Simion, assertion characteristically functions to generate testimonial knowledge in audiences, and an assertion is epistemically permissible when it is disposed to do so under normal conditions. The view...
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Speakers
avatar for Anish Seal

Anish Seal

Nanyang Technological University Singapore
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.05
  Epistemology, In Person

4:30pm NZST

Is there an obligation not to incentivise dishonesty?
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.01
People should be honest, but we know, or ought to know, that being honest is more demanding for some people, in some circumstances, than it is for others. Do we have a duty to avoid putting those people in those circumstances if we can? I argue that we do have that duty and that it is evident (even if not explicitly recognised) in some institutional arrangements (e.g., the  legal privilege...
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Speakers
avatar for Tim Dare

Tim Dare

University of Auckland

Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.01
  Ethics, In Person

4:30pm NZST

Mental Disorders, Symptom Networks, and Dispositions
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.02
On the Symptom Network Theory (SNT), a mental disorder is a network of symptoms, not an underlying condition that causes symptoms. The SNT offers an intriguing alternative to views that try to make mental disorder just like physical disorder, on the one side, and views that reject the whole idea of mental disorder, on the other. I suggest that there are counterexamples to the SNT: there can be...
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Speakers
SK

Simon Keller

Te Herenga Waka │ Victoria University of Wellington
I am presently working on the philosophy of mental health and disorder. I've previously written on topics in ethics, political philosophy, metaphysics, and the history of philosophy. I'm the author of The Limits of Loyalty and Partiality, and a co-author of The Ethics of Patrioti... Read More →
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.02
  Philosophy of Science, In Person

4:30pm NZST

Defending egalitarianism against merited hierarchy
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.15
Why are we moral equals, given how different we are?In Section I, I review what it means to reject fundamental moral equality and endorse moral hierarchy. I argue that the hierarchical challenge is more pressing than egalitarians concede, and that merited hierarchy is more attractive than egalitarians admit.In Section II, I consider the solution of proposing a 'range property' or threshold degree...
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Speakers
LR

Leo Rogers

University of Oxford

Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.15
  Political Philosophy, Remote

4:30pm NZST

Why Does Truth Seem Valuable?
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.03
This paper examines why we intuitively regard truth as valuable. Philosophical theories of truth are traditionally divided into normativism (e.g., coherence theory, pragmatism), which treat truth as a normative property, and non-normativism (e.g., correspondence theory, deflationism), which do not (Wrenn, 2023). While normativism can account for truth’s value directly, non-normativist theories...
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Speakers
TK

Tamaki Komada

Hokkaido University
Thursday July 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
MSB1.03
  Truth, In Person

7:00pm NZST

CONFERENCE DINNER 2026
Thursday July 9, 2026 7:00pm - 10:30pm NZST
Reggies
Join us for the Conference Dinner at Reggies, Made Mezzanine, to mark the final evening of the conference. The dinner is a chance to gather with colleagues, continue conversations from the week, and celebrate the close of the conference in a relaxed setting. Time: 7.00–11.00pm Location: Reggies, Made Mezzanine, 401 Grey Street, Hamilton Tickets: NZD $110 / NZD $75 Please note: This is an...
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Thursday July 9, 2026 7:00pm - 10:30pm NZST
Reggies
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