 Oh hi. Welcome to Tom Meeting Television. I'm here joined today by Patrick Standin, lecturer in philosophy at St. Michael's College and we're going to talk about Public Philosophy Week. Welcome Patrick. Thank you, thank you. So tell me, yeah great thanks. Tell me a little bit about what Public Philosophy Week is. I think it's just passed but it's been around for a few years. Is that right? Yes, it has. Yeah. Yeah, Public Philosophy as its practice locally is a venture of several philosophy departments from local colleges Middlebury, UVM, St. Michael's and professors of philosophy and public intellectuals essentially take philosophy out of the formal academic setting and bring it into pubs and libraries and places of public access to share philosophy and the love of knowledge and to talk about ideas and to engage in conversation about any number of issues. It's really the calendar of events and topics that is offered every year is amazing. Tyler Doggett, a professor of philosophy, is really our local champion for public philosophy. It's part of a larger movement that really came out of England in a way of bringing philosophy out of the formal academic environment and philosophy in many ways is a birthright for every human that we're all capable of thinking and we all have that wonder, that curiosity to know and learn. So it sort of builds on that notion and it's essential part of philosophy that probably was ignored for much of the 20th century because of the specialization of academic philosophy but philosophy has always been part of the public, part of societies, part of communities, you know, socrates of course was a man of the marketplace who would go around asking questions of everyone. So, you know, in that sense it's an attempt to sort of just put philosophy back where it belongs, not in the, you know, the classroom. It certainly belongs there but not exclusively so but let's philosophy come out and engage ideas in the real world. Outside of public philosophy, so when I think of philosophy, I think of like books, abstract thinking, old guys, dead white males, right? Well, yeah, so like philosophy, the study of knowledge, the study of learning, the study of... Yeah, and I think that that estimation of philosophy stems from what has been going on in the 20th century where philosophy became a very specialized and arcane discipline that was only the province of a few really intelligent people and these people of course because of the particular quirky nature and privileges of the 20th century were almost always white, almost always wealthy, almost always male. Who are the people that come to mind? In that sense, I'm thinking of, you know, a lot of analytical philosophers out of the British and American tradition. So, Bertrand Russell, AJ Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, these are the big names of 20th century philosophy that nobody knows because they're working in such narrow areas of knowledge. You know, what is knowledge? And Bertrand Russell might be an exception then because he was a public intellectual. But philosophy prior to that and after that, and always during that time period, has had a presence in the public realm and just returning back to that is, in a way, its homecoming because philosophy comes from the streets. And we've seen different period throughout history. You know, you're thinking, I'm thinking particularly of ancient Athens when you had Socrates and Plato and Diogenes and Aristotle and Epicurus engaging public discourse and talking to politicians and average people. Throughout history, the French Revolution, the American Revolution conquered in the 1840s. The streets of Paris in the 1960s. Philosophy was public in those areas in those times. And it certainly is happening again. And there's a lot more of it. So I think taking it out of that, that realm and that realizing the philosophy is something for everyone. Yeah. Do you see, so public philosophy week, just back to that and you can bring up the webpage so folks can see that and see where you can go. There's no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about is one of the quotes on that. Do we see a place where do you see besides something like this where it's academics or community leaders bringing things out into the street? Do you see a kind of philosophy emerging from the milieu of like social media and TikTok and YouTube and the the ways that we're interacting now? Yeah, well, there's certainly, you know, using those as media to investigate ideas, to share information, to learn our vital parts and sort of the original reasons why we had the growth of social media. And and I think they still can be viable alternatives. And certainly coming up from you know, the wider audiences, there's a lot of ideas. I mean, there's a currency for engaging ideas about politics and economics and you know what, you know, and then looking even critically at what is social media. I was amazed at how when recently the state university system decided to empty their library of books. And it was that the the pushback came back from students and and they were saying, no, you know, we don't want any more social media. We want books. You know, and so, you know, you know, that's that's kind of this sort of verve and enthusiasm and independence of mind that, you know, philosophy strives to encourage and and then philosophy, you know, this this week, a dedicated week of thinkers and specialists and philosophers coming out of the classroom to share knowledge and to lead discussions and conversations, you know, is hopefully planting the seed for this growth where people will form study groups and get together and do pub philosophy and, you know, start start doing it on their own. Yeah. What was the what was the turnout like? It was good. It was good. You know, there are events all over Vermont and the the topics range. I mean, they go from, you know, food to community engagement to scroll through those if you want, Stephen, you can open that up. Yeah, it's amazing the the the richness and diversity and the breadth of what's being offered just in a small state like Vermont. And, you know, when you look at the calendar, it happens every year, usually toward the end of April and beginning of May and finding the calendar and looking and finding what's of interest to you. And I'm sure that there's going to be something that would spark your interest. So I'm curious. You mentioned the state library system removing the books, which was what do we call that? We would which the pushback was successful. It was not going to happen. But what in your experience is happening with philosophy in higher ed? Yeah, philosophy in higher ed is going through a growth period. We're seeing more students come to colleges and universities considering philosophy minors and majors. There's growth in the field. We see a great amount of success. We see a lot of interdisciplinary growth. Students are leaving philosophy programs graduating and going into a number of different fields. We see that you know, many CEOs and heads of businesses and industries are looking at philosophy majors as vital members of their teams because they can argue well, they can think clearly, they can write well, because there's just some of the skills you're going to get from philosophy and you can export those types of skills to any field. Of course, there's always the traditional fields where philosophers and philosophy students tend to shine and that's in law and medicine. Philosophy is the number one degree taken in law school. And I think it's the number one non science degree taken in medical schools as well. So, so you're finding philosophy. Why is that? What do you think what's behind that? I think what it is is philosophy requires you to read carefully to learn to think critically, to argue well, to speak well. And the result is that you can typically succeed in those arenas in that because of those skills. I feel like it has a real abstract quality as well to be able to like zoom out and look at something from a kind of global three dimensional landscape view. It is. It is. There's no doubt about that. But it's it's it's about, you know, taking that global perspective and coming back into the, you know, the the small two and going back and forth and moving into those. I mean, a vestige of that is that if you get a PhD in any subject today, whether it's in English literature or biochemistry, you're getting a doctorate of philosophy. And when you study a discipline thoroughly, you're looking at the foundations of that and the theoretical underpinnings of it. So that's the abstract aspect to it. But philosophy is also about just, you know, how do you live your life? You know, how do we invest power in the society who controls power? You know, what is art? What is beauty? What is the right thing to do? I mean, I think any engaged citizenry needs to be well informed and critically minded and thoughtful in philosophy is a discipline that can encourage that. I mean, one of the biggest problems that philosophy is facing in the Academy today is representation. And it's doing a great job bringing in more women philosophers, persons of color, people from different language groups and traditions and cultures. And and that's a wonderful welcome antidote to the large the dominance of the white male perspective of academic philosophy throughout the 20th century. Because certainly not just a Western concept. Oh, right. No, not at all. And in fact, quite the opposite, right? Because, you know, there's, you know, when you study a course in philosophy, you typically begin in the ancient Middle East and North Africa. And you're talking about cultures and traditions that are far removed from the modern world. Of course, the Western tradition did build on many of those. But it's wrongheaded to think that it moved in a linear past manner, because it it went, you know, perhaps the metaphor more useful be kind of a fractal pattern going in all different directions. And it's always governed by dialogue and conversation and argument. So, you know, there are Greek philosophers who are dialoguing with Buddhist philosophers. There were great contributions that are made by philosophers from Africa and Asia and native and indigenous traditions around the world. And, you know, philosophy today is becoming more open to those. And I think there's they're also looking at the limitations of the traditional Western analytical model, which certainly has its place, but is also needs to be complemented and supplemented. So we're going to get to your talk, but I just have one question. Is there like an original philosopher? Is there the first in your in? Is there somebody who's considered like the first philosopher? Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people turn to Socrates. Interesting. Socrates is not. Yeah, the most ancient philosophy. Right. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, in the Western tradition, and many sort of global philosophy, he's looked towards an ancient Turkish philosopher by the name of Thales, who grew up in the island of Militis on the in the Mediterranean. And he he questioned the mythopoetic worldview, the the idea that gods did everything. And he started to think about things. And the story goes that he had visited Egypt and had looked at the Egyptian astronomical records and discerned a pattern about eclipses. And when he came back home to Militis, he he told his friends that an eclipse is going to happen in a few weeks or something like that. And of course, his friends didn't believe him because they all saying, well, that's that would be the agency of the gods. And the eclipse did happen. And instead of, you know, perhaps in a sacrificing goats or sheep or whatever, they started to look and say, Well, you could rashly know these kinds of things. And I think that that is often seen as the origin of philosophy, at least as in an academic sense, because what you're doing is using human reasoning to try to figure things out. You know, all humans love to know a toddler. Yeah, that is exactly right. I in my philosophy classes, I start with a story. I tell my students to imagine a, you know, a dad putting his little, maybe a four or five year old daughter to bed on a cold winter's night. And, you know, and the daughter happens to look out her window and see the moon and asks her dad, you know, what is that? You know, and let's think dad's a smart guy. So he says, Oh, that's the moon. And, you know, anybody with a child is going to know what's going to happen next because the child says, Daddy, what's the moon? And, you know, daddy's probably going to be smart enough to say, Well, it's a large planetary body that goes around the earth. And, you know, then, of course, the child's going to say, You know, body, what's that? And then eventually, dad's going to say, Well, go to sleep, right? And I think what has happened to so many of us is that we've been in that position where we've been told to stop asking questions. And in a way, philosophers are still children, right? They've been able to keep that little spark, that insatiable curiosity alive, right? And then what philosophers love to do is we love to share that. You know, we were committed with bringing life back into the minds of people's, you know, the, you know, because the adult world, the larger world has probably told them to not ask questions and not rock the boat. And, and, and, and, you know, we try to get people to turn those that, you know, that fire inside them into a conflagration again. So philosophers are good for democracy. I think your talk, epistemic, epistemic injustices, philosophy and listening as social change. Yeah, a little bit about your presentation. That was my talk this year. And, and, and, and I have to point out that, you know, like so many other things, we took a, you know, a time off during the pandemic and now we're back. And, and so I look for us again next year. And my talk this year was on epistemic injustice. And epistemic injustice is a really important movement in philosophy pioneered by a number of women philosophers, including the British American philosopher Miranda Fricker, who should call it epistemic justice. Yeah, well, it is. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, what it is is essentially that when we think about an injustice done to a person, like a harm done to a person, we typically think about it in terms of physical harm, you know, you know, I, I do something to you and it hurts and you cry foul and you seek some kind of remedy. And that's a very limited way of thinking about it because a lot of harm that is done to people is done to their ideas, their mind and their knowledge. And when philosophers talk about knowledge, they're using the, the word epistemology or epistemic, which comes from the ancient Greek episteme, which means knowledge. And, and how epistemic justice and injustice works is when someone does a wrong to you as a knower. And, and that is a fundamental moral wrong, because what it does is it undermines you, diminishes you as a knower, and then it, it, it silences you and prevents you either sharing your perspective and your knowledge or continuing along your growth. And so the example that Miranda, Miranda Fricker uses in her, in her work is how, say in the 1940s and 50s, women were subject to sexual harassment in the, in the, in the world of employment, but they, they didn't have the concept for sexual harassment. So they might have just said, well, I don't, I feel uncomfortable about this, but I don't know why, or, you know, he's just trying to be, he's just flirting with me or something like that. And with the rise of feminism and the development of this particular concept of idea, we had this notion of sexual harassment, so a person could, could say it. So what would have happened in that world before those concepts were available, the woman who was being harassed, you know, and she might have kept silent, right? And so imagine, you know, she had an idea and she might be undermined by it, right? People wouldn't listen to her. And this happens all the time. It happens to, you know, people who are typically marginalized in a society. And that what that wrong is done is it undermines you as a knower, right? You're, you, the value of what you're saying and what you know is being diminished by someone who is claiming that, well, what you're saying doesn't matter or you can't mean it. So, you know, women during that time period, we're often said, well, you're being emotional, right? And, and, and what happens is that when you have the terms, the ideas, the knowledge to defend, and then you start to listen, then you're laying the groundwork for that knowledge to be shared. And you're, and you're essentially endorsing that person's position, right? And avoiding any kind of harm, right? So, you know, whenever, you know, we, you know, we don't listen to children or persons of color or persons with disabilities, you know, we say, well, that can't be the case. You don't know what you're talking about. You know, it's often going to undermine the knower, the person articulating that position. And so, what Miranda Fricker does is she suggests there's some ways that we can develop in our society to prevent that from happening by listening to the testimonies of those who are, are, are there to have and are offering their own epistemic or, or knowledge based experience. And so, what we learn... Epistemic means experience, meaning... Well, it really means knowledge. Yeah, yeah. But is it born of, born of seeing, knowing, I mean, born of what? Yeah, it's, it's born of your perspective, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's, you're being in the world, your engagement with the world. Yeah. And so, in, in that sense, you know, we, you know, there might be an absolute truth out there, but we all are looking at it from our own perspective, our own point of view. And so, your position becomes valuable because of the unique perspective that you have. And for someone to discount that perspective merely because of some identity that you've subscribed to becomes a case of epistemic injustice. So, epistemic injustice is usually, injustice is usually occurs is that you're going, your knowledge is discounted merely because you have an identity as a woman, as a person of color, as a person with disabilities, as a different language speaker. Think, for example, another example might be how we discount people who have certain accents, right? And, you know, conversely, we attach way too much importance to other kinds of accents, right? So, you know, an oxbridge accent, you know, the oxbridge, Cambridge, standard English, you know, whatever people say when they say it in that way, we attach more significance and importance to it. And those are biases, right? And so, becoming aware of those biases and trying to prevent them from happening will enable those people who might have something very important to say, and it might be very legitimate and important for that knowledge to become part of the social discourse to actually have and be heard. Yeah. So, you know, the importance of curiosity, the importance of seeking understanding when you're met with something that is contrary to your experience, your learned understanding experience. But I'm curious, in the current conversation on free speech, how this relates, because it's, you know, it gets, you know, we have, you know, here in Tom Meeting TV Studios, folks come in and, you know, for example, there was a program recently that where some folks were discussing issues around stickering in the community and free speech. But the words and language used to back up those political ideologies, the political way of thinking were really kind of hurtful and hateful and sort of ignorant. And so, in that ignorance is also born a discounting. In this case, it was a trans ignorance, you know, it was ignorance around the experience, the lived experience of trans people and hurtful and hateful. So, right, those three sort of things. And it begins to bring into question even just the very being of the studio that we're sitting in, which stands for free speech and yet harms members of our community. Right. And it, you know, it makes us sort of wrestle with the philosophies that underpin the work that we do here. I wonder if you have thoughts on that. Yeah. Well, and the wrestling is really good. Uh-huh. Right. Miranda Frick is a guide here, too, because she points out that, you know, some experiences are just illegitimate, right? That there's, you know, if you're, you know, your three-year-old or your five-year- old child's not going to be able to speak very eloquently about, you know, about how to fix the car or, you know, about a medical procedure or something like that. So, you know, there are ways of assessing, you know, the content of language and of knowledge, right? You know, if you have a severe pain in the head, you're not going to give your friend a scalpel and tell them to open it up. You're going to go to a doctor, hopefully. If your car's broken down, you're probably going to go to a certified mechanic. And what I think there's a tendency to do is to, while we should always be critical of authority, there is legitimate authority. And that happens in free speech, too, right? So, I think free speech is only free when it's not going to harm someone. And in a way, you always have to ask yourself, what are the reasons for you saying it? What are the effects of you saying it? Is what you're about to say going to make the world a better place? Is it going to build community? Is it going to enable a person to flourish? Or is it going to do the opposite? You know, and I think that kind of self-reflective stance, which is something that you would develop in philosophy and also just in lived experience, is something that's missing in current discourse. I mean, why do you feel it's important to put up a sign, a sticker, or make a claim that members of your community are telling you is hurtful? And in a way, when that happens, you're seeing an epistemic injustice because what the person is doing if they're putting up, say, a transphobic sticker, they're undermining the knowledge of the trans members of your community, right? And I think that that's a way of starting and you have to go through a process of self-reflection and ask yourself, well, you know, why are people being, you know, why do they view this as hurtful? And then that becomes a process of self-engagement because you're saying, you know, perhaps there's something about what I'm saying that is hurtful and is wrong. So do we bring in a component of, do we bring in a component of power and privilege here? You know, so I think about folks in the police forces who said, well, I feel hurt. That's why I want to say blue lives matter. I want to say black, you know, I want to say all lives matter because, you know, this, I feel hurt. I feel, you know, and you go like to listen to that. Is this one of those places where we talk about power and privilege in relationship to, and if we're getting too far off, you know, no, it certainly is. And, you know, and, you know, it's a universal platitude that all lives matter. And they do, but, you know, the exigency of the moment requires us to look at black lives because when our servicemen and women, our police officers, you know, go for a drive in the, you know, they don't have to wonder whether they're going to be pulled over and shot or, or, or harassed, right? They may feel uncomfortable and, and the discomfort might be something that comes with the position and, and they might be better people because of that, that process of discomfort that they're going to go through. But, you know, I, I, I think that wrestling with these kinds of ideas, these experiences are important. Listening, of course, but one can always disagree, too. And one can say, well, you, you have a position, but your position is being tempered by, you know, these other positions. I mean, I think that the early on in the debate over black lives matter, free speech and, and, and, and so forth, I think one of the things that, the examples that, that I thought was very helpful was the idea of, you know, if, if, if there's a fire burning in a house, you, you know, you're not going to put water on all the other houses that aren't burning, you're trying to put out the, the fire in the particular house that's burning. And that's the issue at hand that we have to work with, right? And, and that's what we're going to, I want to, I do want to talk a little bit about your role on the New Truth and Reconciliation Commission before we run out. Sure. Because we're about to, speaking about truth, we're about to get into the realm of whose truth is truth. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is, it's certainly, it's an outgrowth of my training in philosophy, my social advocacy, my work in epistemic injustice, but it's also, I teach disability studies and the philosophy of disability and, and medical ethics. And so it grows out of those concerns as well. And tell us about what's Act 128 and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Yeah. So the state recently passed a bill that created Vermont's First Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is charged with looking into the state sponsored injustices that have been visited upon citizens and marginalized groups in Vermont's history. And these include, of course, the first people here, the Abinaki, but also the French Canadians, French Indians, persons with disabilities, and others, and certainly members of the BIPOC community, we know now, of course, that while slavery was outlawed formally in the Constitution, it was still de facto practiced around throughout the 19th century. And so those wrongs that have been visited upon those individuals have created the historic inequities that lead to the institutional inequalities that we see today. And so the state issued an apology regarding the eugenics period in Vermont's history. And from that, and other discussions around looking at justice with Abinaki, with injustices done to our members of our Black and BIPOC communities, they're developed a long dialogue in the state legislature that culminated in the creation of this bill. And so three commissioners, myself, Mia Schultz and Melody McEnwalker have been chosen to lead the commission and we're tasked with staffing the commission and hiring an executive director, historical researcher, legal counsel and administrative assistants and interns to start doing the hard work of documenting these instances of abuse, both historic and more recent. With the goal of? The goal is to provide the legislature with recommendations on how to address and perhaps remedy and seek to begin the process of recovery and healing from these wrongs. What those recommendations look like at this point, we don't know because we have to go through the process of documenting and listening to those stories. And then from those stories and listening to those communities, we can see what they think would be appropriate in that sense. Certainly some degree of reparations or public apologies or even using this information to inform our educational curriculum at the school level may well be things that we might be offering. Of course, we're just going to make these recommendations. The legislature is not duty bound to follow them. And we've just begun. We've just begun the work. We're just a month ago. Exactly. Yeah. And what's been the response so far to that? It's been there's been a tremendous outpouring of support. There's been a lot of criticism which is expected to. We've been dialoguing with people from all over the globe, including members of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions out of Canada, Maine, Peru, South Africa, and points farther abroad who have been so helpful and forthcoming with offering advice and recommendations and their their wisdom on how to build a successful and efficient commission. And I think of the most some of the one of the most famous one was certainly after apartheid. Indeed. And that is that when you first cut your teeth and sort of the political realm is it? It certainly was for me. But yeah, UVM back in the 1980s and Shantytown. It's a really full circle to bring what you learned. It is a young person. It is. And it's you know, I was really fortunate in that after UVM I went to graduate school in Boston and I happened to be able to be there in the front row listening to Nelson Mandela right after he was freed from his imprisonment in Robben Island. Boston, Massachusetts actually was one of the first places he visited. And so that's a large component of my own story of intellectual growth. And so it does feel appropriate and and fitting in my story to be involved with this. And I here we have a philosopher involved in public politics and democracy. Indeed. It's exactly where you want to be. Yeah, exactly. It's that that that public realm to fit nicely. So yeah. And and I've also been heartened by just the outpouring of people from those communities that we're going to be looking at to they've provided information. And so it's just been a whirlwind of meeting stakeholders and persons. And it's been a very educational process. And hopefully as we go forward to choose our staff and you know, we'll continue this this this great important work. Yeah. Well, thanks for being here today. I think we just sort of have scratched the surface. There's so much more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And people can always reach out to me and my campus email and learn more about public philosophy or or contact Tyler Doggett at UVM. Yeah. We also have a public philosophy website. It's on social media as well. So we shared it. Great. Yeah. Shared it on the screen as well. Super. And there'll be another one next year. Indeed. They will cover some of those events. With whole new topics. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for watching, folks. We're going to wrap up now and thanks to Pat Trickstanden for coming in. You're welcome. And joining us and keep watching and keep thinking. Yes. Great.