Schedule for Semester 1, 2025

25 February 2025

Melina Tsapos (Lund University)

What is Interesting about Conspiracy Theories?

A central debate in conspiracy theory research concerns how to conceptualize conspiracy theories in a way that advances our understanding of the phenomena and those who believe in them. This debate remains unresolved, with researchers adopting widely different positions: while some argue for a purely descriptive understanding, others seem strongly committed to the view that conspiracy theories are, or can be shown to be, inherently irrational. This paper reconstructs the controversy, arguing that it stems from two distinct scholarly motives: to attain objective knowledge of the phenomena in question versus to defend beliefs and norms that are part of the researcher’s own cultural context. By examining the epistemological and methodological challenges in this field, I highlight how competing frameworks—normative cultural biases versus objective scientific inquiry—shape our understanding of rational belief. When cultural biases influence research, they risk narrowing its scope and undermining the development of a comprehensive understanding of conspiracy theories. Ultimately, even proponents of normative cultural approaches can acknowledge that such perspectives fail to capture the full complexity and significance of these phenomena.

4 March 2025

Maciej Macelko (Macquarie University)

Advances in synthetic biology are giving humans unprecedented capabilities to engineer life. These include applications for manipulating ecosystems by deliberately causing the extinction of a pest species, engineering animals to cleanup pollution, and even functionally restoring extinct species. I’ll discuss some of these technologies, the actively debated ethical and social dilemmas regarding their use, and how I - as a practicing animal synthetic biologist - think about my responsibilities.

11 March 2025

Luara Ferraccioli (University of Sydney)

Commercial surrogacy as illegitimate work

Is surrogacy a form of legitimate work? Or does the nature of pregnancy and parenthood render surrogacy illegitimate? In this presentation I argue that the best strategy in defence of commercial surrogacy—which I call the “surrogacy-as-legitimate-work” strategy—relies on two implicit assumptions and that once we make them explicit, we are forced to see that commercial surrogacy inevitably leads to a conflict of core moral rights. As I hope to show, if commercial surrogacy is a type of work, it is work that cannot simultaneously protect the right of the surrogate mother to opt out and the right of the commissioning couple to exercise ultimate authority over the foetus.

18 March 2025

Marco Faccin (University of Antwerp)

Unearthing the cognitive ontology implicit in radically embodied cognitive science

[Note: this seminar will take place in the Moot Court on level 2 (Room 224).]

Every science has an ontology: a list of basic ingredients from which to “cook” scientific theories up. When it comes to (classical) cognitive science, this ontology consists of a number of computational and/or representational kinds, ideally mappable on neural kinds in some stable manner. Such an ontology is rife of cognitivist, internist assumptions - assumptions that “radically embodied” cognitive science contests. Which begs the question: what’s the ontology radically embodied cognitive science is based upon? Here, I will try to offer a descriptive answer to this question, trying to articulate the cognitive ontology implicit in radically embodied cognitive science. I will argue that the relevant cognitive kinds constituting this cognitive ontology are interaction- (rather than computation- or representation-) based, and that affordances are the most obvious and most widespread example. I will also argue that these kinds are typically expected to map onto certain relevant aspects of the agent-environment system in a systematic, though context-dependent, way. I will then show that such a cognitive ontology actually reflects some of the central experimental practices of radically embodied cognitive science, and evaluate such a cognitive ontology based on a number of desiderata a cognitive ontology is expected to satisfy.

25 March 2025

Jack Hume (UCL)

Doing Justice to Cultural Goods

[Note: this seminar will take place in the Moot Court on level 2 (Room 224).]

State support for art and heritage can be divisive. Cultural policies are criticised for being extravagant, for entrenching marginalisation, and for favouring particular activities e.g. artistic appreciation. These criticisms have piqued the interests of political philosophers. In one corner of the literature, we see liberals challenging the justifiability of cultural policies, and others responding to that challenge. Call this Question A: Are state cultural policies justified in general? In another corner of the literature, we find theorists exploring what role cultural policies can play in redressing injustices. Call this Question B: What should states be doing in the cultural sector to support oppressed groups and redress historical injustices? In this paper, I argue that an adequate response to Question A will incorporate insights from Question B. However, the current literature fails to do this. I begin to develop a more comprehensive approach, on which cultural agency forms the basis of cultural policy.

1 April 2025

Emily Hughes (Macquarie University)

Autism, subjectivity, and the ‘destruction of the symbolic universe’

In phenomenological psychopathology, Autism is thought to involve an impoverished sense one’s self as subject and a diminished capacity for configuring this subjectivity into a meaningful narrative structure. At the same time as being determined as ‘unnarratable’ however, Autism has nevertheless been defined by disability and queer theorists as a ‘narrative condition,’ where behavioural signs are signified deficient through stories of otherness. My first aim in this talk is to unpack the hermeneutical and testimonial injustices that continue to render Autistic people as unreliable narrators of their own experiences. My second aim is to consider how differently configured symbolic universes might give rise to differently configured experiences of oneself as subject.

8 April 2025

Lok-Chi Chan (National Taiwan University)

A New Galilean Physicalist Account of Ineffability

Ineffability is widely regarded as one of the key features of subjective phenomenal experience by both physicalists and non-physicalists: such experience, often conceptualized in terms of qualia, is not expressible in terms of public language, and thus scientific investigation can only target the objective, public aspects of the world and not such subjective aspects. Physicalists typically employ accounts under the umbrella term “phenomenal concept strategy” to explain this ineffability; yet, I argue that the resulting idea about the relationship between phenomenal and theoretical concepts is incomplete. Here, I propose a new account of phenomenal ineffability and phenomenal concepts that clarifies these issues while offering a deflationary reconstruction. Drawing on the Enlightenment distinction between primary, secondary, and tertiary qualities in a non-literal way, this account explains why certain phenomenal concepts remain untranslatable into theoretical concepts, and vice versa. This leads to some new understandings of both phenomenal consciousness and scientific thinking.

15 April 2025

[No meeting - Mid-semester break]

22 April 2025

[No meeting - Mid-semester break]

29 April 2025

Bryan Mukandi (Wollongong)

Critical Phenomenology as Dialectic of Technique and Tendency: an Africana reckoning

Recent years have seen growing calls for greater diversity within Philosophy. Proponents tend to accept as self-evident the benefit of studying texts written by a wider swathe of society and of working alongside a more diverse group of colleagues. Yet even among that group, those benefits are typically understood to be secondary to the ultimate, instrumental value of the discipline. Taking Critical Phenomenology as a case study, I intend to challenge the idea that the matter of who gets to philosophise is a secondary one. Drawing primarily on lessons from Africana philosophy, I will go on to make the case for a practice of philosophy anchored in the pursuit of common cause.

6 May 2025

Stephanie Sheintul (University of Adelaide)

Rights, Powers, and Paternalism

It is controversial when we are morally permitted to act for another’s good. Some suggest that we are rarely permitted to do so given that competent adults have a pro tanto claim right to be the only ones to act only or primarily for their good. Others suggest that people have a special moral power over their good such that they can exclude us from acting for their good when it would otherwise be permissible to do so. This paper has three aims. The first is to argue that competent adults more plausibly have a pro tanto claim right against others acting to promote their good for the reason that (a) they are unlikely to (or will not) deliberate, judge, or act in their best interests and/or that (b) their judgment or decision about what is valuable or in their best interests is mistaken and/or inferior to the acting agent’s. The second is to introduce a corollary moral power over our good which holds that we have the moral power to give others permission to act for our good when it would otherwise be impermissible for them to do so. The third is to sketch a novel rights-based anti-paternalist account.

13 May 2025

David Spurrett (KwaZulu-Natal University)

Epistemic Actions Revisited (or: I Actively Infer a Riot)

[Note: this seminar will take place on Zoom. Email Inês Hipólito for a link.]

Kirsh and Maglio’s (1994) paper “On distinguishing Epistemic from Pragmatic Action” contrasts ‘epistemic’ actions which have a primarily cognitive payoff, from ‘pragmatic’ ones which advance towards an established goal. They also argue that people demonstrably engage in epistemic actions. Their idea of ‘epistemic actions’ has featured in many defences of extended cognition and been developed and updated for use in talk of cognitive niche construction and in other ways. As originally introduced, besides having a cognitive payoff, epistemic actions have two distinguishing features, both stipulated rather than defended: First, agents do epistemic actions for themselves. Second, the effect of (successful) epistemic actions is beneficial. Subsequent work has generally retained both stipulations. In this talk I develop a generalized picture of epistemic actions that retains the idea that their main effect is cognitive but abandons the ‘DIY’ assumption to allow for both self-and other-directed epistemic actions and abandons the ‘beneficial’ assumption to allow for both beneficial and hostile epistemic actions. (That is hostile in the sense used by Kim Sterelny.) Andy Clark has recently argued that from a predictive processing perspective that accommodates active inference, pragmatic and epistemic actions are not ‘fundamentally distinct’. I take this on board as a constraint and explain how the categories of other-directed beneficial epistemic actions and of other-directed hostile epistemic actions can, at least informally, be accommodated as forms of active inference. The generalized framework suggests the further and perhaps surprising possibility of self-directed hostile epistemic actions. I explain why that needn’t be a ridiculous idea, and argue that cognitive self-sabotage is, subject to some conditions, a coherent possibility. Unlike the other additions I defend here, self-sabotage cannot straightforwardly be accommodated by the predictive processing/active inference perspective. In that case either we can’t have both, or we need to make changes to the predictive processing framework.

20 May 2025

Chris Cousens (University of Glasgow)

Large language models in large language games

When I receive an email making a promise, giving me an order, or offering me a job, have I in fact been promised, ordered, or offered? Until recently, we may have easily said ‘Yes!’… but AI is complicating things. As large language models capable of output mimicking human speech become widely available, we can no longer be as confident that the email (or other online communication) we receive has a human author. Traditional theories of speech acts—the things we do with words, including promises, orders, and offers—set great store in the intention of the speaker or the uptake of the audience. But neither, I will argue, are well-suited to explaining modern online speech. What to do about this? I’ll sketch out an alternative speech act theory, grounding the force of an utterance in the conversational score, rather than the minds of speakers and audiences. This, I hope, will better explain how we interact in the post-AI online landscape. It might also be useful for explaining offline speech acts. What to do about this? I’ll sketch out an alternative speech act theory, grounding the force of an utterance in the conversational score, rather than the minds of speakers and audiences. This, I hope, will better explain how we interact in the post-AI online landscape. It might also be useful for explaining offline speech acts.

27 May 2025

Miriam Schleifer-McCormick (University of Richmond)

Fine Attention, Broad Awareness: Avoiding the Cost of Ignorance

Is it sometimes valuable to diminish one’s awareness? An affirmative answer has been given in a number of recent discussions. First, it has been suggested that sometimes increased awareness is too painful to be of value. Georgi Gardiner, for example, has argued that a the kind of mental block found in self-deception can be the most rational response is cases of acquaintance rape. Second, some argue that there are cases where forgetting is what is needed to treat people with respect, or in order to forgive others when forgiveness is called for. Finally, it may seem that intellectual humility demands that we diminish awareness of our intellectual capacities. I argue that in all these cases, what is being suggested is that we not place or heighten our attention on certain events, memories or capacities. But awareness and attention differ. Once this distinction is made, I argue that diminishing one’s awareness is never good.

3 June 2025

Doug McConnell (Macquarie University)

Self-Narrative, Diachronic Stability, and Self-Governance: A Defence of the Ethical Narrativity Thesis

There have been several attempts to defend the Ethical Narrativity Thesis (ENT), that is, the claim that people ought to develop and live according to a self-narrative because it is essential to living well or flourishing. Existing arguments for the ENT have several weaknesses, some rely on an excessively narrow view of flourishing, one sets the threshold for self-narrative so low that the concept is rendered trivial, others only promote a limited ENT whereby self-narratives enable valuable kinds of emotional experience but don’t influence agency. I put forward a novel argument for the ENT that avoids these weaknesses. I claim that self-narratives provide a powerful and irreplicable means of diachronically stabilising intentions because they are ideally suited to anticipating, constructing, and shaping our perspectives over time. As such, self-narration is a valuable tool for achieving self-governance. My view entails that people who don’t self-narrate are relatively vulnerable to failures of self-governance due to temptation and the cognitive burden of deliberation. Self-governance is a necessary (but insufficient) condition for flourishing so people who self-narrate will, ceteris paribus, flourish more than those who do not.