MICHAEL LYNCH

TRUTH AND HISTORY

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 history is so vital to a democratic way of life. 

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 More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data, True to Life (Editor’s Choice, the New York Times Sunday Book Review) and Know-it-All Society, (winner of the 2019 George Orwell Award). Lynch’s work has been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nature, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and many other publications worldwide.  

michael-lynch.philosophy.uconn.edu

STEPHANIE COLLINS

THE SYSTEMIC STANCE

This talk will give an overview of a book I’m writing, which is called The Systemic Stance: Culpability and Obligation Under Structural Injustice. The book starts from the fact that injustices resulting from social systems are difficult to pin on anyone. Given this, who has responsibility for these injustices? The book’s two-part answer comes from a perspective I call ‘the systemic stance.’ This is a stance agents can (and, I suggest, should) take when confronted with unjust systems that are made of agents but are not themselves agents.

When we adopt the systemic stance, we target our indignation, resentment, anger, and rage at the system itself. This is the first part of my two-part answer: negative reactive attitudes concerning systemic injustice fittingly target the social system taken as a whole. This conclusion contradicts a tidal wave of work in moral psychology and moral philosophy from the last sixty years, building on P.F. Strawson. I’ll give some arguments for this conclusion.

The second part of my two-part answer concerns moral obligations. Although social systems can be targets of reactive attitudes (or so I claim), they cannot make decisions, so they are not fitting bearers of moral obligations. So, the second part of my two-part answer can be summarised: moral obligations concerning systemic injustice are held by agents, starting from where those agents are in the system. These obligations call upon their bearers to pull the levers the system makes available to them, doing something I call ‘contextual care.’ I’ll explain what I mean by this.

Stephanie 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.  

stephaniecollins.xyz

INÊS HIPÓLITO

Inês Hipólito is a lecturer of Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence at Macquarie University. 

researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/ines-hipolito

ineshipolito.com  x.com/ineshipolito

NATHAN REW

Nathan Rew is a Papua New Guinean/Pākehā activist and academic, and a lecturer of Indigenous Studies in Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao – the Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato.

profiles.waikato.ac.nz/nathan.rew

JOHN SUTTON

2026 AAP PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

John Sutton is a cognitive philosopher working on memory and skill. He is the Leverhulme International Professor at the University of Stirling, Director of the Centre for Sciences of Place and Memory and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Macquarie University.

johnsutton.net