 Yeah, so hello, I'm JJ Joaquin and welcome to philosophy and what matters where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view Now I guess for this episode needs no introduction. These views on the nature of mind and consciousness and on language and representation and on the grounds of morality have set the agenda for many academic philosophers today. In the philosophy of mind, his what Mary didn't know argument provides one of the clear clearest formulations of the knowledge argument against physicalism, the view that everything even our consciousness could be explained in physical terms. In the philosophy of language, he revive a kind of description view of language where words are our main source of information about the world. Finally, in moral philosophy He puts forward the realist view of moral functionalism, the view that moral property is not only supervene on descriptive natural properties. They are also identical with them. So to share his philosophical views on things that really matter, it is welcome Professor Frank Jackson, emeritus professor of philosophy at the Australian National University. So hello, Professor Jackson. Welcome. Thank you very much, JJ. Yeah, so before we start with your philosophical views, let's let's try to look at your philosophical background for us. So how did you get into philosophy? Well, my parents were both philosophers. So I heard quite a lot of philosophy around the kitchen table around the dining room table. Lots of philosophers visited our house and I heard more philosophy and it seemed like a very interesting and challenging subject. I read some Bertrand Russell and I guess from that point on I was hooked. I started life as a math physics student with a bit of philosophy on the side. As time passed, the bit of philosophy on the side became bigger and bigger and the maths and science became the side stuff. So I guess that's roughly how it turned out. The other thing to mention, I guess, is at a more personal level, when I became bigger and bigger, the philosophers seemed to have more fun than some of my mathematics fellow students. And I think to be quite honest, it was partly that I thought philosophy was a very exciting and interesting subject. And also I thought the philosophers are very exciting and interesting people to spend time with. Okay, so you would say that your parents actually bolded your interest in philosophy. So who else inspired you to pursue a career in professional academic philosophy? Well, before I went to university it was my parents and Russell. When I was doing that philosophy, as I say, on the side, so to speak, before it became the main part of my studies, I guess it was mainly David Armstrong's lectures. Everyone knows David Armstrong was a very, very good philosopher. He was also a very, very good teacher and he played a huge role. So you were in the University of Sydney or somewhere else? I was in Melbourne. He was in Melbourne before he went to Sydney. Okay, so aside from Armstrong, you have David Lewis perhaps? Well, this is later on. I was already part of the philosophy profession. That is, I was one of those people lucky enough to receive a salary for doing philosophy. That's good. All of us who are lucky enough to receive a salary for doing this wonderful subject feel blessed. So it was after that. But there are other factors as well. I had a one year position at Adelaide University where Jack Smart was and Michael Bradley was and Eddie Hughes. And I learned an awful lot from them. When I think back on my career, I actually think I've been incredibly lucky. I've had very interesting colleagues who have been good company and from whom I've learned an awful lot. And of course, then as you mentioned, David Lewis visited Australia on a very regular basis and I learned an enormous amount from him. Okay, so would you say that you have an overarching philosophical outlook? Because your works clearly indicate that there's a philosophy behind that philosophy. So how would you describe this philosophical outlook? I knew you were going to ask this question. I should have a beautifully prepared answer. But in a way, I don't remember I started life as a math science person. And one of the things I loved in mathematics for the problems. Okay, some problem which people found hard to solve. And you said, right, I'm going to have a good solving it. So one of the attractions of philosophy to me was it the problems. It's it. So I was more focused on the problems and overarching philosophical views. So really my work in philosophy has been driven by an interesting problems. Now there's background commitments, of course, which I guess one is mythological. I actually think philosophy is very hard. And the way to handle this is to try and be as clear as you possibly can. Try and avoid too much fancy footwork and try and own in on the really central issues. And one of the reasons that Lewis and Kripke are two of my philosophical heroes is that they both have a remarkable ability to address very difficult issues in a very easy to follow way. I mean, you may or may not always agree with what they're saying. But it's nearly always pretty straightforward to understand what they're saying. At the same time, they're looking at very difficult issues. So that's the methodological remark about the importance of clarity, I guess. The other thing I'd add is, I guess there's a sense in which I'm a Quinean. And what I mean by that is that this is partly Jack Smart's influence. I think we are rather small parts of an enormous thing spread out in space-time. A block universe view. And when we're doing metaphysics or philosophy of mind or ethics, what we're trying to do is find out the right location in this enormous four-dimensional structure for the bits that are to do with X or plane and so on. Yeah. So I read somewhere that your brand of doing philosophy has been labeled the Canberral plan. So what's the story behind this label? I think that label goes back to Hugh Price and Daniel Nolan, but I'm not certain. I'm not a big fan of these labels. Okay. I would prefer people addressed each issue on its merits. But roughly speaking, it's called the Canberral plan because people who like this way of looking at issues, a lot of them either live in Canberra or visited Canberra for various periods of time. But the driving thought really is a reluctance to accept the Suey generous. So some things are Suey generous. You can't analyze everything. But as a general rule, one tries to avoid the Suey generous. So to take a simple example, objects move. I'm sure you agree. Objects move. Yeah, we move. Someone of a sort of generally reductionist frame of mind says, yes, things move. And I'll tell you what motion is. X moves if and only if X occupies different places at different times. So I've then given you a kind of reductive account of what motion is. Not just one little example, but the Canberra plan is basically a name for being enthusiastic about providing reductive analysis. Okay. So speaking of reductive analysis, your book from metaphysics to ethics is subtitled a defense of conceptual analysis. So what do you mean by conceptual analysis here and what is its rule in philosophy? Let me give some examples. I've already said, I like problem focused things. So rather than giving a big overall account of a concept analysis, let me give some examples. 13 is a prime number. Now, what makes it the case that 13 is a prime number? Well, the wrong answer is that it's three numbers after 10. Okay, that's a bad answer. What's the right answer? The right answer is it's only divisible by itself and one. Yep. That's what you're doing. That's what you're doing new conceptual analysis. You're giving an account of what it takes to be in this case a prime number. I gave you an example a moment ago. What it takes to move the so-called adept theory. That's a conceptual analysis. One more example and then I'll stop for a sec. I'm a grandfather. What makes it the case that I'm a grandfather? You have great beard. That's the wrong answer. That's not sufficient. What makes it the case that I'm a grandfather is that I'm a father or someone who has children. So there you have three examples. So what's conceptual analysis about? It's in the business of trying to explain what it takes to be a so-and-so. Yeah. So this idea... It's wrong and philosophy. You say, well, isn't it natural for the loss of interest in the nature of motion? So the reason I put it this way is some people, of course, are very hostile to conceptual analysis. But what happens is they say conceptual analysis is. And then you get a 10 or maybe 30 page or 50 page article on what it is with various unfriendly remarks about what it is that they've generated. But that's the wrong way of looking at it, in my opinion. Concept analysis, as I said, is in the business of saying, what does it take to move? And surely that's a question we should all be interested in. And the idea theory is, in fact, an accountant. Right, right. So for you, conceptual analysis has an integral role in philosophy. But how does it relate to your overall philosophy? I mean, how does it affect my particular positions in various issues? Well, take an example. I'm a fan of the view that beliefs are states of the brain. Now, how could one defend you of that kind? Well, it wouldn't be a bad idea to spend a bit of time thinking about what it takes to be a belief. You see, that's a bit of conceptual analysis. What does it take to be a belief? And then you say, right, what does it take to be a belief? Well, here's a plausible way of thinking about it. What it takes to be a belief is to be a state that carries information about one's surroundings in such a way that you're able to achieve your desires. That's a hand waving sketch. I put some hand waves so you can see some hand waves on the screen. Now you can tackle the question as to whether beliefs are brain states. What it takes to be a belief is to be a state that plays a certain functional role. Then if brain states play those functional roles in brain states of beliefs. So that's just a simple example. And the reason I think conceptual analysis is so crucial is I don't see how else you could tackle this question. It seems to me just bizarre to say I will discuss whether or not beliefs can be brain states. But I'm not going to tell you what it takes to be a belief. That would be conceptual analysis. We mustn't do that, but that would be sort of, I think bizarre. Of course, you've got to address the question of what it takes to be a belief. You know, address sensibly the question is whether or not brain states might be beliefs. So it seems like it's not only the scientific conceptual analysis, but also you need to take into account the folk theory, so to speak. Well, yes, I mean, if you stand up as a representative, not of advanced theoretical physics or indeed a philosopher, you're standing up member of the folk and you want to say, I want to discuss whether free will is compatible with determinism. You better say something about what you mean by free will. If you're addressing the folk, then it's what the folk is conception of free will that matters. Of course, at the end of the day, you may well say, in fact, I do say this, that the folk conception of free will is actually a bit confused. It sounds a bit rude about the folk and generally I'm, I'm a fan of the folk, but also I shouldn't suggest the folk. The folk are pretty smart, I think, but I think on the topic of free will, they sort of get caught in the idea that there's something which is sort of not determinism and not random, but somehow genuinely libertarian. And I'm very suspicious of that. So there's what exercise is giving an account of the folk concept of free will and the right thing they will be to say, there's such thing as free will on that folk conception. And then you say, right, but can we find improvements on the folk concept, which will play the kind of role we want free will to play in our series, which the answer is yes. And basically, I think compatibleist theories are attempts to do that. But I think it's a mistake to say compatibleist nail the folk concept of free will. They don't. That is something near to the folk concept, which does the kind of job you want free will to do. When, for example, you're assigning pros and blame. Okay, what I've just said could have come straight out of the mouth of Jack Smart. That's JJC Smart on free will pros and blame. Yeah, I noticed. Now let's go back to your, your conception about the mind because you have famously shifted your position about the mind and consciousness. So you were a jewelist for a time, then a kind of physical is representation is now. But before we get into the reason for your changing your view, could you tell us about something about Mary? Well, let's talk a bit about Mary. Let's take a step back here. One of the things theorists do is they ask themselves, what sort of properties do I need to acknowledge to explain such and such a phenomenon? So we might be talking about planetary motion. And after this was say, okay, to explain planetary motion, we've got to take into account gravitational fields. The mass of the planets and so on and so forth. Or a plant scientist might say, what properties we need to appeal to to explain what makes plants grow. And then they tell this story. Now, in the same way, in the case of the mind, we can ask ourselves, what properties do we need to appeal to to explain mental states? What we're doing is perfectly sensible bit of theorizing like the astrophysics like the plant biologists except we're looking at the mind. And physicalism, in my view, is really a very simple idea. It says, look, the properties we need to acknowledge to give an account of the mind are basically the properties appeal to in the physical sciences, which I mean, physics, chemistry, neuroscience, biology, medicine. So the idea is you can tell a complete story about mental phenomenon with the sort of properties they appeal to. That's the basic thought. Now the Mary argument is a challenge to that idea. Because what happens in the Mary argument is you imagine someone whose information is entirely restricted to those sorts of properties. That's what the black and white room is all about. The black and white room is an artificial environment where Mary can find out everything there is to find out about the properties they talk about in physics, chemistry, neuroscience and so on. And then the challenge is, okay, she's got all that at her disposal. Can she predict and explain and understand color phenomena? And I think it's fair to say, although I now reject this intuition, it's a very powerful intuition that she can't possibly do it. There's some kind of, I mean, to borrow some and also raise explanatory gap in those terms. And one way of making this vivid, the sense that there's a gap, but one thing she can't explain is you imagine her leaving the room and saying, good heavens, I now know what it's like to, let's give red a rest, see yellow or see blue. So the knowledge argument or Mary argument is just a very vivid way. It's a thought experiment to bring out the intuitive sense that the soccer properties they talk about in physics, chemistry and so on, they're not enough. You need more properties. So that's the background. And of course, the reason I came to reject the Mary argument was that the original Mary paper, I defended an epiphenonomous view about the distinctive properties of phenomenal states. As I've sometimes said, I think that part of the paper where I defend epiphenonomism is one of those examples of it's a trance, the philosophical cleverness over common sense. A bad thing. So I came to think that you really have to take very seriously the idea that the qualia, the distinctive phenomenology of mental states in the case of seeing yellow and all that stuff, you've got to find a causal role for those properties. And the only way to find a causal role for those properties is in one way or another to identify them, the kind of properties talked about in physical sciences. So there has to be something wrong with the argument that that's, that's what happens. Yeah. So what made you change your mind? Well, just that thought that I said, you know, I can defend epiphenonomism, but as I said before, let's hold on to common sense. Okay. The distinctive phenomenology is playing a causal role. And we know enough about what kinds of properties blow causal roles to say that you can't think of these as extra properties. So you've somehow got to have a theory about the phenomenal nature of mental states, which fits them into a picture, which just has physical properties. But that's the challenge. And I think representationalism is the best way of handling that challenge. Okay. So before we get into your views about representationalism, I read the book, what the whole book by Dan soldier about the Mary argument. So it's this one, you're changing your positions. Yeah. Yeah. Brought about some debates within philosophers among philosophers. Yeah. Are you going to go on? So are you going to change your mind about this? Because I read somewhere that Dan soldier is pushing you on this one, on the Mary argument. You mean Dan soldier supposed to be convincing me that the Mary argument is not so bad after all? No, I think there's very little chance of that. No. Daniel is a very good philosopher. But I don't think he's going to bring me back into the fold. Okay. So representationalism, let's go to that idea. So representationalism is the view that our mental states are representational states. And those representational states could be explained in terms of brain states or neuropharmacological as you call them. So how does it relate to language, this representationalism idea? Oh, I thought you were going to ask me how does this representational idea handle phenomenal side of psychology? Yeah, which is the hard question. But actually, let's talk about the language question first. I belong to the same party as people like John Locke. Paul Gras and David Lewis and Jonathan Bennett and David Armstrong. By that party, I mean that the story about language as a system of representation as a complex structure for passing on information. That actually derives from the ability of minds to represent. So when you think about representation and reference, it actually starts with the mind. So mental states representational states, they represent the things of us and so. And you acquire language as a way of passing on information about how your mental states represent things to be. That's the picture you'll find, for example, in Locke. So the representationist picture of mind fits in very nicely with how language evolves to be itself a system of representation. It's a system of representation that you and I are using right now. Right. I'm telling you what I think. You're telling me what you think. Okay. So representation, we represent things using language. So things like the color of an apple or the color of the sun or whatever. So we represent that using language as well. Now, because I'm asking this question because in your 2010 book, Language Names and Information, you put forward a kind of view that revives the description theory of Russell contra Kripke's or so Kripke's main argument that well, language, at least proper names are rigid designators. So what's your argument or objection against Kripke's view? Well, let's divide the discussion up a little bit. One part of the discussion is what to say about proper names. Another part of the discussion is what to say about the view that there's a descriptive part of language. Okay. Now, the second bit, I'm afraid I think it's just common sense. Of course, language describes the world. When you watch TV, you know, towards the end, there's the bit where they tell you about the weather. What they do is they describe the weather using words. I think anyone who says I'm against the description theory of language, I just don't know what to say. Well, I don't know what to say. I say, you are describing your views about language and saying language doesn't describe. That's a remarkable achievement. But the word circle describes the shape of something. The word coal describes how it is outside right now, not where you are. You're somewhere hot and so it goes. So I just think the description view about language is non-negotiable. Of course, it's true. But I know some people object to what I'm saying, but I just... I just... I mean, everyone is descriptive about language when they want to find the nearest coffee shop on a hurry. Right, right. Whatever they may say in the philosophy seminar room. The difficult question is, okay, so parts of language are descriptive. Like the word coal is a descriptive part of language. The question is, which parts are descriptive? Now, are proper names descriptive or not? That's a different issue. And of course, the usual view is that Kripke's and I are going to descriptive view about proper names. Whereas people like myself and Kroon and Lewis and other people are sympathetic to a descriptive view about proper names. But although that's the usual way of parsing up the territory, I think people like myself agree with Kripke much more than people realize. So let me try and explain. Okay. The world is a very complicated place full of lots and lots of things and it can be rather important to separate them out sometimes. So that's why you put room numbers on office doors, isn't it? It's why streets get given names. I'm sure your university, the builders of your university have got lots of names on them or lots of numbers on them. It's the reason I've got a name is the reason you've got a name. So giving things distinctive marks is a matter of attaching distinctive structures to the various objects. Among those distinctive structures are proper names. Now, once we have structures, we then use these distinctive structures to pass on information. So you said at the beginning, I'm JJ and off you went. Now use that name to pass on information about what you're going to do. And again, the sentence Aristotle was a great philosopher passed on information about an object named in a certain way. Of course, the object wasn't named Aristotle. Whatever the Greek version was. So what I've been talking about is the informational role of proper names. They distinctive marks which are used to pass on information and you pass on information, of course, by forming causal chains, which reserve information. When you make a telephone call that carries information because of the causal connections and what happens at one end and what happens at the other. Okay, so that's the informational story about language. Doesn't it sound awfully like crypti? Yes, because it's actually. That's right. That's exactly. Why are we having this big fight? I'm saying, yes, attaching labels, using the labels to pass on information to causal chains. That's what proper names are all about. And that's what crypti was telling us. Now, many people who follow crypti argue strongly that this is a travesty of what I'm saying. Trying to force crypti into the script of this world. But I think this is no, I think we should be celebrating what crypti said. He put his finger on the key point, which actually, some of it's in Bitcoin sign actually. Like I talked about proper names being tags, but. So, I'm just at a bit of a loss about, I know that I'm literate to this camp and others on the nondescripted camp and the people in the nondescripted camp feel strongly that Krune and myself and so on are mistaken. I think we're actually seeing the same song, basically. The only difference seems to be sometimes people who see themselves as follow-on crypti insist the little story I told you about tags and information isn't common knowledge. But I'm afraid I think it's slightly bizarre. I think the folk know perfectly well about naming buildings. The way those names used to pass on information. As I said earlier, I'm rather admire of the folk as general rule, but they know all that. The difference between me and crypti is whether the folk know about the baptising and naming business and passing on information that cause all chains. If that's the difference, then of course the folk know that. We should all be descriptive in that sense. Okay. I think one argument that crypti gives for his view is that names are rigid designators, right? So the name Frank Jackson, I could identify Frank in all possible scenario or to use the philosophical jargon in all possible worlds. Now, unlike description, like the description, the generator of the merry argument. So that's not something that you could individuate Frank in all possible worlds because there could be a possible scenario where you did not create the merry argument. So I think that's the objection that crypti has against the descriptivist bit. So how would you, what's your reply? Well, I'll give the standard example. Sorry, the standard response. You're allowed to rigidify descriptions. That's right. That's a rigidified description refers to the same thing across all possible worlds. That's what you do. See, the advantage of this way of looking at it, I mean, take the famous Hesperus fossil example. I mean, we produce the sentence Hesperus is phosphorus as a way of restiving the world. The astronomers produce that sentence because they've got a view about how the world is actually about how the world above you and me is and they use the sentence to tell us about it. Now, they arrive at that sentence as a result of various observations, which basically tell them that the first star to appear, I should say planet, shouldn't I? The first planet to appear in the evening is the last planet to disappear in the morning. That's what they discovered, isn't it? We all know what was discovered that lies behind the sentence Hesperus phosphorus. So the sentence Hesperus phosphorus is telling us about what the world is like. We need to understand why it was a good sentence to produce on the basis of observations that the last planet to disappear in the morning is the very same planet as the first one to appear in the evening. But of course, that's contingent our posterior effect. So how do you get the sentence being necessarily true? And I think it is necessarily true. It reports how the world is, but it's based on contingent our posterior information. So here's a puzzle. How do you solve it? Well, rejuvenation solves it. You say we just rejuvenate we think of Hesperus and phosphorus as rejuvenate descriptions. So that's the story I like. Yeah, of course. Of course, many people don't like it. For example, it doesn't like it at all. Yeah, but I'm hearing Kripke and the way you explain your theory. So there's a initial baptism. There's this description that you attached to that one. Then there's a causal link with the name. And we're using that in our exchanges and in our communication. So when I say Scott Soames, it's referring to that guy who's against your view. Okay, so let me just ask you something about your views about moral philosophy. So you made significant contributions in moral philosophy, in particular in the technical field of meta. Okay, so your view has been dubbed moral functionalism. So what is this view all about and what's the motivation behind it? Let's talk about the motivation first. I sometimes describe this as the seminar room dinner party motivation. Let me explain what I mean by that. Think of what happens when people argue about moral theories. Maybe the seminar, maybe over the dinner table. Maybe it comes to that in Newspap columns. When they debate moral issues, three different things happen. They talk a lot about particular cases. So that, for example, if someone's defending utilitarianism, the people who don't like utilitarianism will describe lots and lots of cases where utilitarianism gives a verdict about what ought to be done they don't like. So for example, I say, look at your views, right? Sometimes it's perfectly okay to break your promises. Now, if you're utilitarian, come back. There was a general rule you should have keep promises because it has good consequences. But the anti-utilitarian says, look, let me describe the following example of promise breaking. Surely you agree with me that the right verdict about that is so. There's debate about particular cases. The other thing that happened is people have debates about interconnections between matters thought of in ethical terms. So someone says, perhaps against the utilitarian, if your theory is right, if A is morally better than B, you ought to do A. Even if doing A would involve an unbelievable amount of personal sacrifice. That's ridiculous. What you should say is, A is miscible, but not obligatory. That's a debate about interconnections between things thought of in moral terms, between moral goodness and badness and what you ought to do. And the final step in these discussions at dinner parties or frosty seminars, whatever, is someone declares that we ought to get more money to charity. And someone says, haven't noticed you giving very much money to charity lately? So what have I said? I've said there are three parts to debates in ethics. There's the part where you discuss particular examples, examples described in non-ethical terms, and then you debate what ethical levels they should get. There's the bit where you have transitions between things thought of in ethical terms, relationship between goodness and rightness, badness and wrongness, permissibility and obligation. And then there's the bit where you say, wouldn't be much point in having moral opinions if they had no effect on your behaviour. Okay, now you now know what moral function is. The first bit is what we call input clauses. The middle bits, the internal raw clauses. The last bit, the behaviour bit, that's the output clauses. And then the aim of the exercise is that let us find the properties which best explain those little stories I've told you. That's what moral function is. It's very much inspired by analytical functions and the philosophy of mine, but that's the idea. Okay, so let me try to get this particular view. So you're saying that there are three aspects of moral practice that we need to uncover or analyse. So the first aspect will be particular examples of actions that we say that's good or bad. Then the second aspect will be the relationship of the ethical concepts that we use, the rightness, goodness and so on. And the third one is how that translates into action or how it motivates behaviour. So your... That's exactly right. Okay, so the idea is moral functionalism is the view that let's look for the explanation of those three things. And whatever that explanation may be is that thing. Identify. Okay, so what's that thing for you? Well, when you're looking for... Essentially what you're looking for is a solution to the equation set by moral functionalism. Right. And of course, you know it won't be an ideal solution. You'll do the best you can. When you look for a solution, I think you should be driven by a commitment to what's usually called naturalism. Sometimes called destructivism. And that's partly for metaphysical reasons. When I was an undergraduate, I was a card-carrying Maury in an ethics. I thought, of course, being morally good and being morally right were quite... You know, I was convinced by the open question. Of course, these properties are quite different from the properties you pick out in descriptive, non-ethical terms. But as I got older and more metaphysically sensible, I realised that there's no such property. So I think you have to look for a property which can be described in descriptive or non-normative terms, just because the metaphysics tells you there aren't the other sorts of properties to find. And that's a common complaint people make about Maury in views and ethics. So that's one reason for being a naturalist. The other reason goes back to CD Broad. Broad said back in the 1950s, he said, when somebody's got an ethical property, it depends on non-ethical property. Ethical properties depend on non-ethical properties. He also said the non-ethical property the ethical property depends on is sufficient for the ethical property. So we get a two-way relationship. Now, what Broad rather was saying was very much what we say these days in terms of supervenants. But he was writing a bit before people talk commonly about supervenants. But basically that was Broad's idea. Now, I think when you have two properties that go that closely together, you should say there's one property. You don't have to. People describe examples from mathematics and logic where it's plausible that there are two different properties that go hand in hand. But I think in the case of the properties of events in the space-time world like actions and public policies and so on, the properties go hand in hand in this very close way. Then you should say there's actually one property picked out in different ways by different parts of language. So that's why you've got to be a naturalist. It's a metaphysical argument and the argument that comes back as I said from CD Broad, but the argument people often put in terms of supervenants and I put it in terms of supervenants myself in the past. Okay, so yeah, I'm getting the move. So you need to identify the thing from the best science that we have that could explain moral practices, moral behavior. But I'm just pushing you. So what's that thing that would explain our moral practices and moral behavior? Well, but let's pretend that Shelley Kagan is right. Shelley Kagan's marvelous book, The Limits of Morality, in which she attempts to convince people. We all know the arguments against utilitarianism. When you finished my book, you'll realize that they're actually not that good at all, as the book does. So let's suppose Kagan is right. He wins. What's going to happen? What's going to happen is we're going to be able to say if we identify being morally right with maximizing expectority, we can explain all you want to explain. Because what we'll explain is why promise keeping is right as a rule. And when you think carefully after your read Kagan's book or read Jack Smart on these topics, you'll say, yeah, that's right. We shouldn't actually regard promise keeping as completely obligatory. We should say it's by and large obligatory. And yes, that's exactly right. Because by and large, promise keeping does maximize utility. So tick that one off. Now let's take these objections to saying if A is better than B, and you've got a choice to A and B ought to do A when they're very demanding. I mean, basically, there's no sensible category of the permissible. It's obligatory to the best. None of this permissibility stuff. It's just straight out obligatory. And if you don't do what's obligatory, you've done the wrong thing. Don't say you've done something permissible. Then what you do is you look at that and say, OK, well, actually, yes, permissibility is pretty dodgy. What you might say is I've done the wrong thing. But you can give me a kind of excuse. So I'm not a superhero. But it wasn't true that it was permissible. I'm afraid I did the wrong thing. You can see why I'm not Superman or Superwoman. So don't be too hard on me. And then the output side, you can say, well, when people come to believe that an action does maximize happiness, they will, unless they're psychopaths, have at least some incarnation spirit willing to do it. Now, you've done it. So you've found the solution to those equations. Now, other people are different views about how to find the right solution to the equation. But that's how it would look if you thought Shelley Cagan had done the job in that book, The Limits of Humanity. OK. So I'm thinking, let's go back to the philosophy of mine, your position. And let's try to connect this with your ethics, because your book is from metaphysics to ethics. So wouldn't it boil down to just how the mind works, how the brain works, morality, that is? I could not explain morality in terms of the social behavior and social behavior in terms of the brain? Well, one thing you can do if you're more functionless is you can be sympathetic to people who take a leave of an evolutionary attitude toward ethics and evolved to do a job. Somehow the job they evolved to do was to make us work better in society. So I've got interests. You've got interests. Before moral concepts come into picture, I just pursue my interests. You pursue your interests. When moral concepts come into play, what happens is we start saying things like, well, yes, I would like so-and-so. But of course, I did promise to let you have so-and-so ahead of me. So OK, I'll step back and let you have so-and-so. We start thinking that way. So we start saying things like, well, I'd like so-and-so, but actually you ought to have so-and-so. So suddenly when we start thinking in terms of making judgments between competing interests for scarce resources, we start putting these in moral terms, fingers crossed, things go rather better than they do if we just throw bombs at each other. So that would be very much in the spirit of moral functionism because what you'd be doing is you'd be identifying the crucial steps which explain why various properties occupy the functional roles. And one of the functional roles, in fact, will be to promote cooperative behavior. So I think that's all part of the piece. Particularly, moral function is very much a naturalistic picture, it's nicely the sort of remarks you were making. OK, so finally, so you're one of the top philosophers that we have right now. So what's your advice to people who are currently struggling in their careers in academic philosophy? Is the career worth it? It's a wonderful subject. If you can get a career, grab it. The hard thing is particularly right at the moment because of COVID-19 and other factors. There's a normal shortage of jobs, of course. What can I say? Well, here's one thing I always say to graduate students. Without naming names, you should be aware that many people who are very well-known philosophers holding positions at very good universities had a terrible time finding their first job or indeed their second job. So it's worth it. That's one thing I say. Another thing I say is, again, without naming names, you'd be surprised how many very famous papers that set agendas got rejected a number of times by various journals. So don't get too disheartened. Just if you think you've got something good to say, keep on saying that you'll find a home for it. And again, don't be too desperative. But having said all that, of course, it's easy for me to say that because I was lucky enough to have very nice jobs in very good philosophy departments. And of course, I'm retired now. And when I got my first job, jobs are much easier to get than they are now, much, much easier. But I guess this is sort of remarks in support of perseverance. But there's one more thing I say to the graduate students is, it's a wonderful thing. Of course, get a job of possibly canon philosophy, but don't think if you end up without a job that your training of philosophy is no use to you. That's not true. The training of philosophy is a wonderful training for all sorts of other jobs. And in fact, in Canberra, which is where I mainly am, a whole lot of people who've done philosophy in Canberra have gone on to very successful careers in public administration, for example, public service. And they've drawn on their skills as philosophers to make themselves excellent writers of position papers and so on and so forth. So it's a wonderful training for things at large. But of course, one's first preference is to get a job of teaching philosophy, of course. So, yeah. So is this career worth it for you? Oh, yes. I was incredibly lucky. So I think we said right at the beginning, I'm one of the lucky people. Stanley Matthews, the famous soccer player, remarked that he was one of the lucky people. He got paid for doing something he loved doing. And I'm one of those lucky people who got paid for doing something they love doing. That's not to say that every day at work was wonderful. There are good days and bad days, but that's life. OK. So thanks, Professor Jackson, for indulging us with your time and for this great interview. Join me again for another episode of Philosophy and What Matters, where we talk about things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Thanks.