AAP 2025 CONFERENCE

PHILOSOPHY IN THE TIME OF IMPACT
Universities have undergone seismic changes in the past several decades, both in Australia and internationally. Some of these changes continue to have significant implications for the discipline of philosophy and its place in the contemporary university. I focus on one of these, namely the impact agenda that emerged in the UK and Australia and has been embedded in research management policies and practice over the past 20 years. This agenda proffers an instrumental understanding of academic research, which is primarily valued for its capacity to contribute to economic growth, social cohesion and nation-building. Aligning with this agenda, an increasing number of philosophers are now involved in research programs that engage with industry organisations, communities and other stakeholders to address challenges faced by them. I refer to this as 'impact philosophy'.
Through reflecting on impact philosophy, I argue that the broader discipline of philosophy faces a dilemma. On the one hand, if it underestimates and/or rejects the significance of the impact agenda, it may become irrelevant to the contemporary university; on the other hand, if it embraces the impact agenda, it may lose a sense of itself as a discipline. As a proponent of impact philosophy, I conclude by highlighting the need to clarify the 'rare and valuable' contribution that philosophy - as philosophy - can make within the time of impact.
Catherine Mills' research addresses ethical, social and regulatory issues that emerge around biomedical and technology innovation in human reproduction, particularly from the point of view of gender and social inequality.

NOT KNOWING, NOT KNOWING  -  2025 AAP PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Gettierism (as I call it) has been part of epistemology since 1963 – often actively investigated and refined, at times ignored, yet always agreed to be correct in its most basic claim. Which claim is that? Gettierists take for granted that Edmund Gettier disproved knowledge’s definability as an epistemically well-justified true belief. He did so with two tales, each about an epistemic agent Smith, who – we readily agree – had a well justified true belief that failed to be knowledge: we know that Smith did not know. We do so, even when not agreeing with each other on why he did so.
Or might we fail to have even such minimal knowledge of Smith’s not knowing? That basic Gettieristic view of his epistemic plight has long functioned as a methodologically foundational element within philosophical attempts to uncover knowing’s nature. But should it do so? This paper approaches that question from two directions. And the stakes are surprisingly high. What epistemological knowledge, if any, has underwritten philosophy’s Gettieristic attempts to describe knowledge’s nature fully and fairly?
I begin by constructing a meta-Gettier tale. The moral of it is simple: we should be able to think of ourselves and other epistemologists as afflicted – given the past few decades of post-Gettier aporia – in much the same way as, supposedly, Smith was afflicted within the first of those 1963 tales. If Smith was Gettiered, then so are those epistemologists – that multitude – who regard him as being so: if he fails to know, so do they. Their failure is meta-epistemic, though: they fail to know that he fails to know.

Then I explain one way in which that meta-epistemic failure arises. Epistemologists fall foul of a simple Platonic moral when striving to explain how Smith (or anyone else, when Gettiered in like manner) fails to know. I draw partly upon the idea of what Rachel Barney calls Platonic qua predication. My explanation will not depend on hearkening back to Plato. But should the fact that it can be formulated in such ancient terms be chastening for any resolutely contemporary epistemologist who maintains that some, even if slight, genuine progress in understanding knowledge’s nature was made by Gettier?
Where do those failures leave Gettierism? Ungrounded? Unexplained? Non-explanatory? Perhaps so. Should we grieve for that potential loss? I hope not. Might it encourage us to explore fresh ways of conceiving of knowing’s nature? Could we do this while no longer holding ourselves answerable to Gettierism’s being correct in its most basic claim? I hope so.