 Hello, I'm JJ Wachin and welcome to Philosophy and What Matters, where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Today's episode is about collective patience. In 1999, the US Department of Justice sued several tobacco companies for having misled the public about the risks of smoking. Now, the outcome of this landmark case. In 2006, the US Court of Appeals found big tobacco liable for fraudulently covering up the health risk associated with smoking and for marketing their products to children. Now, one thing to think about this litigation is the parties involved in it and the actions that they do. You have the US DOJ suing and holding big tobacco culpable for misleading the public about the hazards of smoking. But how can US DOJ and big tobacco do such intentional actions? Are they even capable of doing anything in the first place, let alone be culpable or responsible for any action? Now, to talk about the ontological status of these collective Asians and why it matters, we have Holly Lawford Smith, senior lecturer of political philosophy at the University of Melbourne and the author of Not In Their Name, our citizens culpable for their state's actions. Hello, Holly, welcome to Philosophy and What Matters. Hi, thank you. Thanks for having me. Okay, so before getting into our main topic, let's first discuss your philosophical background. So how did you get started in philosophy? I was actually doing a fashion design degree in Dunedin in New Zealand. So I had like plenty of stuff to do, like creative with your hands-wise, but I was feeling a bit bored intellectually. So I actually enrolled in just some, I think I was just doing two, maybe two papers a semester or something in the lunch breaks of the design school. And one of the papers I took at random was a ethics paper from the philosophy department. I got totally hooked, like I really liked the lectures. I liked the, I don't know what you call that, just like the constant state of chaos where you think, oh, that seems impressive. And then you come back the next week and the lecturers like, all of that doesn't work for the following reasons. It's really persuaded by that. And then the next week. Yeah, I really loved it. And I wrote an essay and it got a really high grade, which I think probably, you know, as lecturers, we always wonder how significant that is. And at least for me, I was like, ah, here's something I must be really good at. I went from there. I just really loved it and kept taking more papers and eventually changed my whole like course of study so that I was majoring in philosophy. Yeah, that's interesting. So you went to fashion school, design school, then you went to an ethics lecture. Now you are a philosopher. So who influenced you in your political thing, in your philosophy and thinking about philosophy? Well, the department at Otago was really great. It was quite a small and close department, maybe eight or so lecturers at the time. And the undergrads, I remember being very welcome and involved even in the staff seminar. So I remember going to the weekly seminars when I was about second or third year, I think. And you know, understanding nothing. Like I remember Colin Chain giving a talk about mathematical Placianism, maybe it was. And like he seemed really puzzled by how you could get a bunch of bananas and know that there were five. And I just remember sitting there like, what are they talking about? I think because there was this real culture of like people being together and you sort of see how it's done and learn how to do it. And you have really supportive mentors and lots of encouragement. I don't know. So maybe there weren't really anyone in particular. It was just a really great department and very supportive. Yeah, so and you went to the Australian National University for your PhD. Yeah, yep. I did my undergrad in my honours and my master's at Otago and then I applied to ANU for PhD and then ended up over there, which was also great. Like, I know you've spent time there as well and we're both fans of many of the staff. So that was another just really great, very collegial, very supportive atmosphere and just like loads going on. I remember when I was thinking about which department to go to and kind of getting advice from people. Josh Parsons at the time called the ANU Philosophy Heaven. Reading groups and talks and then there's dinner after the talk and then there's Friday drinks where you still talk about philosophy. It's like all philosophy all the time. If you don't love philosophy, it probably sounds terrible, but it's great. So you get that full immersion experience of just thinking and talking about that stuff for three and a half years nonstop. So 24 seven philosophy, right? Yeah. Or a whole week doing just philosophy. Then you went to the University of Sheffield for a job. Yeah, that was my first permanent job. So I had a couple of short postdocs at ANU and so kind of hung around there for a little bit after I submitted my thesis. And then yeah, my first proper job was in Sheffield. So I moved there for, I think it was about four, four, four and a half years. Yeah. And I don't think I was a perfect fit for the UK, maybe, or maybe like smaller town. I just, I always just felt like a bit of a weirdo and like a bit of a, I don't know, just culturally it just didn't feel like a great fit. So I was getting a little bit itchy after about four years and then just got really lucky timing wise. I think I was back at the ANU doing like a research visit. I got an email from someone at Melbourne like, oh, hey, is there any chance you're open to moving back? And I was like, yes, so open. So yeah, that all just seemed to like work out miraculously well. Okay, but what led you to specialize in political philosophy? I actually think that was a bit of a conveyor belt thing as can sometimes happen in philosophy, you know, you take one thing and then you get a bit interested in that and you, I don't know, you kind of just go from there. So I it's not like I took a lot of political philosophy and undergrad and knew that I really loved it. So I did an honors dissertation on like science fiction and whether science fiction books are thought experiments. So that's not really political philosophy that's kind of methodology. And then I did a master's thesis on like toleration so kind of, I guess that's in a sense classical liberal theory political philosophy. I had a methodology PhD. I don't really even know how that happened. I remember being really interested in auto implies can. But then somehow ended up writing this thesis that was really like just trying to make sense of what it even is for something to be a feasibility constraint. I don't have any good narrative in my mind of like why the hell that topic really I don't think. Yeah, no particular reason and I think a lot of what I do is actually applied ethics. But I'm somehow called senior lecturer in political philosophy. I don't know. I don't know if I have a good story about why I think I devil and a lot of things and just somehow that's the name of my job. Yeah, yeah, because your book, let's go to your book, not in their name are citizens culpable for their state's action is a political philosophy book. It's kind of political. Well, it's political philosophy mixed up with social ontology, I guess, and then so you can sort of you have a lot of latitude in that space I think because you can, you can care more about the metaphysics and get really into like what is a group intention, or you can get into the what are the legal implications of groups doing bad things together or what's the ethics of being a member of a group and then being responsible for what other people do. So there's like a lot of space I think to keep dabbling but but I agree like a lot of my focus there was on the state and like how citizens relate to what their states do, but it was sort of also secretly smuggling in quite a lot of just like, yeah. Okay, so your approach to this book. Yes, you have mentioned is to use social ontology to answer some social and political issues, but what is social ontology first. Yeah, so I think about social ontology as like the bridge between metaphysics and ethics. So you have kind of what I would call like straight or classical ontology as part of metaphysics which is just all these questions about what exists. What kinds of things there are but it tends to focus on material stuff. And there tends to be a lot of discussion about levels, like higher order and lower order stuff like are they just atoms or the smallest, smallest things or are they like medium size dry goods as what I was like to say like the tables in the chairs and that if you keep going up from there and you get to individuals you can also get to clusters of individuals and I think that's where it becomes social rather than just a question of what exists in the purely material sense. So social ontology is like the, the social aspects of groups of individuals together so like all sorts of groups like teams, sports teams, churches, institutions, the state, supra national entities, and then also like social stuff that we kind of construct or create together so things like the law or money or institutions, stuff where there's some sense in which they're like made out of our beliefs, social beliefs, and I think the reason I say that the social ontology is a kind of bridge between metaphysics and ethics is that as soon as you have these questions about individuals together, or what individuals beliefs together create, you get all these interesting ethical, legal political questions straight away because of course you then have intentions and you have control and you have ability to do otherwise. So all the, like moral questions come out of that like how do we do wrong together, or, you know, maybe we constructed, you know, femininity, for example, it's like a social construction but then, but if it's a social construction that oppresses some people then we might want to talk about whether we can construct it differently or deconstruct it so all these ethical questions kind of follow immediately but I'm teaching a course at the moment called the metaphysics of ethics and I often use social ontology in that middle position so it's like you can do straight metaphysics and then you can like bridge it through something something like a corporation like you did at the start of this discussion right you talked about big tobacco, so it's like you can tell that story and then you get to all these questions like do we sue them like who's who's the Betty. Yeah, so that's kind of how I think about it. No. Okay, so I like the picture here so social ontology is like a bridge, as you call it from metaphysics to ethics something like Frank Jackson's book. But here's the idea. So there are different ontological accounts of what collective Asians are. Can you tell us some of these accounts and what's your preferred account. Sure. So, yeah, I guess as in any philosophical area there's like competing accounts of things on offer. So this is in the area where we're interested in clusters of individuals acting together, or potentially having shared kind of beliefs or intentions into their action. I sort of the way that I like tend to approach this question is to like organize the various accounts on offer in terms of whether they make it like easy or hard for a group to count as a collective agent, if that makes sense. So, when they talked about this for the purposes of the book, I just kind of segregated a bunch of different accounts into like really weak, moderate, and strong. And so the strong accounts were like, it's really hard to count as a group. If we think about groups that way. So, I think it's a Christian list and Philip Pettit for example have a really strong account where they require that to count for a group of individuals to count as a collective agent, which they think about as something like having a mind of its own. So really being something that's like an individual in some meaningful sense. They want the group to meet a bunch of conditions. And then I'll talk about soon, but also be capable of being autonomous and rational, which is like, because they have a lot of discussion about ways in which groups can kind of contradict themselves over time and then be what we would call a rational if we saw if we saw it in individuals. So that's like a really, I think, strong. And I think overly strong way of thinking about what it takes to be a group. And there's some reflective equilibrium necessary here because if you're too stringent about what it takes you're going to get very few groups. But if you need groups in order to think about collective culpability, you want to be like, going back and forth a bit figuring out like, don't be too lenient because then you just let everything in, but maybe be a bit lenient so that at least it's not only the two people painting a house together. Right. Yeah. Yeah, so I kind of, I think that's a bit too strong. And then on the other side, there's accounts that I think are probably a bit too weak. So Christopher Cooks, for example, has an account where it's sort of more about what any individual contributor, how they think about their actions. So for example, say, I just decided that I'm not going to buy switch hop t shirts. But the way I see my action is like, I, I don't buy, say I buy like an expensive organic bamboo t shirt and I can see that as a contribution to our collective project of boycotting sweatshops. And then for him I think that's actually enough like all of us with this particular kind of intention, we see our actions in a particular way, we could be conceived as, in some sense, like weak, weak sort of a collective. I mean, I don't think he thinks it's weak. I think he just thinks that's the right account. But I think that's too weak, right, because then anyone anywhere can just sort of opt in like the group doesn't have any control over its membership. I mean, maybe the most useful parallel there is just something like a social movement. So if you just think of like, you know, any prominent movement at the moment like the the me to movement or black lives matter. People can get a sense of what's going on there but then you've just got some like weirdo in their living room who decides they want to be part of that thing too and then they just, I don't know. So I feel like quits his account will allow anyone can just decide that their action is a contribution to this collective event and then somehow the rest of the group is like on the hook for what this will decide to do even if they really act badly or whatever. So I think that's too permissive and then I sort of think there's a there's a just right somehow story in the middle which is like moderate accounts, and they're going to tend to have something like having a decision procedure that makes you capable of acting at a time on the basis of group intentions or beliefs like that's very, very rough. But that's adapted from people like Michael Bratman or Margaret Gilbert, but turning their accounts into something that's more agent like and more like more singular I guess is the important thing to say because they tend to think about collectives as plurals and I tend to think about collectives as singular entities that are just like individuals in some way. So that's how I see the kind of landscape of different accounts. And then of course there's all more complicated things to say about exactly how each one works but I'm sure they don't matter here. So it's a really strong like a petted account which it's like social collectives are more like emergent things right in that sense. So it's over and above the individuals that compose it. Like on the strongest version for them. Like the group would really have to have a mind of its own like it has to be capable of coming up with decisions that just that aren't the same as any of the members decisions. It's a lot like you really have to have a strong procedure in place to be able to achieve that like they talk about things like, you know, if an electorate makes one decision one year, and then the next year they decide something that completely contradicts that they would want it to be the case that somehow the group can resolve that tension like it can flag that there was a irrationality and then do something to bring its beliefs into, into consistency. So it's like, it's a lot right. That's too demanding. Then you can do that. Okay, so there's the other side which is weak in your sense that anyone could be part of the group. So if I participate in the Black Lives movement, or me to movement, I'm already part of the group, and you're saying that that's too weak because, anyone, or any group would apply as a collective Asian. Yeah, I think it's too weak. Yeah, in your account, you have the Goldilocks. Let's call it that. So I read somewhere that you're, you're prescribing for conditions for collective Asian. So you have, yeah, you mentioned it, you have a decision procedure for the group. You have a unifying procedure, a unifying thing. So you, you refer to the group as one thing as a singular thing. You also have a persistence condition requirement. What is that about? Yeah, this has been like a source of much disagreement between me and you know the rest of the social technology gang. Interesting question, right, which is like, what's the difference between joint action, which is like a one off thing, and then being, being an agent, like having agency, I think agency must persist over time right so it wouldn't be enough just for people to have some constellation of intentions that made them capable of doing one thing together. If they just did one thing and then dissolved. I don't think, I mean, one thing you could say is, yeah, that's just a really quick agent. Like a human just like pops into existence does one job and then dies. And so you could think that if you think that, then then I'm wrong and then you don't need persistence. But I think the more sensible view is like, if it's going to be an agent at all, it's going to have to be capable of action over time, and sort of formulating intentions and beliefs and making decisions in a way that So I think it can't just be a one off thing, it's got to be like multiple actions over some period, but then you get all these weird but like how long is long enough like if a group forms and it does. I mean I was in a lot like a lobby type group last year and we probably lasted two months, you know so we formed, we lobbied, and then we died. I mean I think that was agent for a while right because there was a small group that had all the right sorts of procedures and intentions and deliberative stuff in place. But it was quick so it was like, you know, I guess if you had a baby and the baby didn't live for very long or something like you can have short lived humans that you can't have like one time one action. Because this is like, I'm having this discussion at the moment with one of my co-authors, she's trying to figure out how to think about like dormancy in collective agents so it's like if you have a corporation and the way the corporation acts is through its members. What do you do when everyone's off the clock, you know, so it's like, is that a corporate agent where it's like alive for four hours a day and then it's like dead for a while and then it's like, you know, so there are these questions. It's kind of silly but it's like to persist 24 hours a day or can we come up with some alternative story about the persistence of agency in the case of the collectives where it doesn't have to be continuous. And so then if you get this like dotted line, rather than a continuous line like we have for individuals, like how does that change our conception of agency so I think there are all these kind of complicated questions about should we always be using the individual as human as ruled out or do we just think about corporate agency differently and then and then if one office if we can all agree that one off actions is too short, how much is enough like just at least two. But I think I'm pretty confident that like more than just one action is required. That's interesting because you could apply some sort of metaphysical theory here so you have like temporal parts view and the rest of persisting metaphysics of persistence theories. You have another condition that is in terms of membership. One thing about that is that you could be a member of one group and a member of another group but that does not really go against you being a member of a group or what is that condition all about. Yeah, I think this, I mean this is an idea that my group Gilbert had earlier, although, again, she's sort of thinking about groups in this pluralities way I think rather than the singular collective agent way. But the thought was just if we really think what's important is the structure of the shared intentions or shared beliefs in the way that those feed into action, then it's possible that you can get two groups that have the same material conditions. And so there is like me, you, because we can be the people who do interviews together group and then also the Australasian Association of Philosophy Committee or something. So it's like, because all this psychologized stuff is the stuff that matters for making a group exist or not. You can have overlap in the material stuff, which means you can also have overlap in the location. So the two groups can be located in the same place at the same time which would seem to violate some of the more classical metaphysical requirements so it's a bit weird. I think it's probably right. And so I can be a member of many different groups, so long as I meet the conditions for counting as the member like I voluntarily chosen to be a part of that group or I intend for its procedures to bear on my decision making in a particular way. There's no limit to how many groups I can be a member of, although I will start getting conflicts in my obligations, like, because if I'm pulled in six directions by six different groups and there's no settling like who do I owe my primary allegiance to the you get some difficult ethical questions there I think. Okay, so let's go there let's go to the problem about culpability and responsibility. So here's a two prong question, how do we ascribe responsibility and culpability to collective patients, and how should we do it. Yeah, good questions. I don't know if we do it in the same way in the in in every place and maybe I haven't thought about that enough because as philosophers go. We don't tend to be that good at facts. So off the cuff, I would say, we tend to look for higher up scapegoats. I don't know if that sounds right to you. That we tend to kind of look for the CEOs and the people who had the decision making power at the top of a corporation or an institution or the public service. And I don't know if that's because we really have a folk view that that is the person who deserves it, or if just it's really complicated to try to hold, you know, maybe it's the sort of pragmatic thing like wow you can't really put all the employees on the hook or you can't really, you know, like that's all too hard so at least we'll just do this symbolic thing. Yeah, so I think that's that's probably what we do do maybe it's a bit different the less organized the group is. So I can imagine for smaller groups like if you think about things like mafia gangs or mobs or yeah just you know get like gangs like groups of friends that just go out being violent and there's just four of them. And I guess in cases like that we might be more inclined to be egalitarian about it and just think like everyone that was involved as responsible, but I think for large complicated institutional agents that have a hierarchy we do tend to sort of like pin it on the top person. And second part was how we should wasn't it. Yes. Yeah, so I guess I've thought most about the state and less about other organizations like churches or teams or universities or whatever, although I think probably roughly the same model would would generalize. The thing that I was most concerned about in this in the case of the state was whether or not to like include the citizens or the people as part of this entity where I was thinking about it being responsible so like step one as always. Is there a collective agent here, or only some kind of less organized messy cluster of people. If it's messy them are only able to really think about responsibility in terms of individuals. If there's a collective agent, then we can sort of ascribe culpability at the level of the group so we can really say, you know it was the Australian state that did this terrible thing or it was this particular tobacco company that's responsible for all this death or disease. And then there's this further question after that, once you attribute culpability to a collective agent. In what way, may you, or must you distribute that responsibility among the individual members who make it up. So in the book, I defend a step one, a citizen's part of the state no step two, is there anything in the vicinity of the state without the citizens that is a collective agent. Yes, it's the extended governance structure which is going to be like the whole public service, all the elected officials the army, the police, and so on and so on. So you have this big structure I did the numbers at some point but I haven't read it in a while so I don't know what they are maybe some couple of hundred thousand employees in the Australian case. So that's the structure it is a collective agent. And then I defended something like a hierarchical distribution. So everyone in that group gets some share of responsibility for what the collective did in the cases where that was bad. But people who have a higher up in the organizational hierarchy get more. And that was supposed to be just sort of responsive to this thought which I think is probably what we have in the case where we just pin it on the CEO. Locally, that like people who are higher up in a structure, they have more downward authority to like delegate and control what the organization does. So you want it to be that the higher up you go, the more responsibility people have. But I also thought it was important to acknowledge that corporations, states, collectives in general, they are able to act and achieve their ends through their individual members. So we are whenever we're like, you know, acting as the Australian state as an MP or a public servant or we put on our, you know, we work for Vodafone and we put on our Vodafone polo shirt or whatever. You know, we are enacting the the collectives ends. And so that's important as well. But it's interesting because it does lead to all these other complicated problems about, you know, one problem, which I don't really think I took up in the book but but I have some other papers on was like, it just looks weird that someone can like say you've got your four people that we talked about earlier, and then they do a crime. Then that's if that counts as a collective agent, it will be culpable for what it does, but now say like you quit and decide you want to do something else now and some other person joins. Now, if the you're out and this new person is in. And that just looks kind of counterintuitive. But it also looks counterintuitive. If we say, while it's always you and the other three, even once you've disbanded because that just looks like we were never actually taking seriously this thought that it was a singular collective agent and it is culpable. It looks like we were always just pinning it to the individual members and then we go back to this plurals view that some other people had so yeah there are these like, there's like weirdness no matter what you do I think. Okay, so we are part of different collective agents. So our family, our locale, our university, our state. So are we culpable and responsible for what these collective agents are doing. Yeah, so I think I think I yeah as I mentioned earlier I think you can be a member of multiple collective agents so in principle it's possible that you end up with a lot of culpability. I think there's interesting questions about which of the groups you just mentioned would count as a collective agent. So if I'm right or roughly right about you know what are the right accounts like it's only the moderate ones. And then we held up each of these kinds of groups you mentioned. I don't think family would count for example or some people's. Yeah, I think it matters whether the group that you're a part of you had the choice to voluntarily sign up to it. So your membership, I think in general your membership has to be voluntary if you're going to be ascribed culpability. So I think there are probably lots of family units where they, you know, through the enthusiasm of their joint planning and decision making and things they do together. You can read voluntaryness off it right they could have opted out but they didn't. So there are definitely going to be some family units that function like highly organized collective agents. They're receptive to each other's preferences and so on and so on. So some will count and some will not. And then things like local for example like, I think probably Melbourne or I don't know even like the my postcode or something like those are not going to count. But maybe there's a complicated discussion to be had about like local vote, you know, like local council elections and stuff but it will be a similar discussion then I had in the book about whether just voting in an election once every four years at the state level is enough to you which I don't think it is. I think probably the university is that there'll be a parallel question about whether. So like in the case of the state where I really obsessed for a lot of the book about whether the citizens are in. I think it'll be the same for the university with the students. Like, are the students part of the university or is the university just like the staff, the people on the payroll, the big decision makers, maybe the shareholders, I don't know so there'll be a question there about who counts and then it's like if your staff then you're definitely in but if you're just a student maybe not. Yeah, so I think plausibly a lot of things were involved in our collective agents. And so we have these multiple routes to culpability. Through them, definitely our workplaces, probably our, if we have any organized hobbies like we're in sports teams and things like that. Yeah, and then I don't know what the practical upshot is really, maybe it's just like be warned you might get a slice of the pie of culpability at some point. If it turns out your group was doing some shitty thing and no one was, you know what I mean like you didn't have the right procedure to safeguard against it or it might mean that you should be a bit more vigilant about what those groups are doing and do the best you can to make sure they don't like so there'll be some practical implications like that I think the more you find yourself a member of. It seems like we are responsible as well, right for what the group is doing. Is that the story here so for example, because I'm part of the university and my university oppresses women so I'm partly responsible for that, because I'm allowing it. Is that the story here. Yeah, I think that's like a it's just a sort of colloquial intuition that we have like I certainly have an intuition if you're part of it, you're responsible. I think some of this stuff in social ontology gives us the resources to be like well hang on a minute let's just check like, you know, maybe it turns out your university. Like it's just completely un receptive to stuff for example, so that I think that could happen it could turn out like who really gets any say in the decision procedure. Interesting question like some would have a really weak account. Where like, you know a corporation has a what do they call them those like boxes where you can drop suggestions. Someone might think that that's that's a shocking. Yeah, so like that. You might think that they have like a voice in the decision procedure is just being able to make a suggestion, but say it turned out you wanted something stronger than that like it really had to be that. If you dissented as a result and getting other people on board. I can imagine a case where a university just didn't meet those conditions right and then maybe almost all the staff are off the hook and the only people who would count as a collective agent there are like the the VC and the VCs cronies right. And that just kind of depends but I think in any sort of open, fairly democratic, like what I hope universities are like, then I think you would as a staff member be on the hook. Yeah. Okay, so what can you say about what's going on in the US now. United States the Trump Biden election. I don't know if I can say anything. No, so I'm thinking our citizens responsible for what the turnout and the elections may be. So that's a perspective. So we have a democratic society like the US you you participate through elections. And if the winner is someone bad. Is it the responsibility of the citizen, our citizens culpable here. And my view, no. Because I just, I don't think that I don't think citizens end up being members of the state in a meaningful enough way. Because I don't think in a representative democracy just being allowed to cast a vote among a very limited set of options once every four years or whatever it is in your country is sufficient to counting like on any of these views as like participating or being involved in the right way in the decision procedure. I think there is probably still a separate question. The question's a good one and for a moral philosopher separate of whether there's like collective agency there. I think you could just say, um, it's a, it's one of this class of problems where a lot of us can cause a good or bad outcome from acting right. And so it's just like the, all of our emissions create climate change and all of our little bits of rubbish create pollution and, and, you know, all of us voting creates an electoral outcome. I would tend to conceptualize it in that camp though so it's more like, do I have an individual obligation to vote when I know it won't make a difference or to not emit greenhouse gases when I know it won't make a difference but I know that if we all did it it will be great. I've been quite interested in that class of problems. And I think there are some interesting attempted solutions to those problems, but I also would tend to think about them separately like and like what is your obligation when it comes to an election like that. I think that's going to be a separate question from whether once the election outcome is achieved and it's a terrible one. Are you part of an agent that then like elected Trump again and then is on the hook for all this really bad stuff like I think my view will say no. I think the reason to reject might be right because maybe you think, for fuck's sake, like if those people are responsible, who's responsible. I clearly did something. It's a joint action I think I just think that one off joint action is not sufficient to collective agency. Okay, so that's for prospective actions how about retrospective actions about reparation or something like the sins of our fathers and mothers. Okay, so in the case of Australia you have an issue about indigenous or aboriginal is reparation. So, are we still responsible, the present generation for all those things that happened in the past. Yeah, this is so this is really good you're pushing me because it's like my, my like moral intuitions are like definitely right like I want to say, of course in the election case we should vote for the non asshole candidate. And of course, like as white Australians or, yeah, descendants of colonists, we have responsibilities for historical injustice, but I think my view produces the answer. No, we don't. Okay, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think that precludes like there's a little bit in the book where I like having set aside citizens being culpable for what their states do from the inside. I would talk about separately as individuals, what responsibilities might they have. So what responsibilities do we have as individuals, given the ways that we might be involved or implicated or able to make a difference relative to those responsibilities. So there are still interesting questions like, you could try to say, I have benefited as an individual from historical injustice in that I am more likely to tell a story about like, like, light skin privilege for people would be one way to tell it or like, if you have the right dialect, or, you know, class background or whatever, you might be able to access certain sorts of social networks or privileges or. So I think there's still lots you can say but you just kind of have to say it individualistically like I am a beneficiary, or I have certain things that I could do to make it more likely that that we realize the good. You can still say things morally. Yeah, they're not going to be things to do with like being a member of a of a collective that itself did something wrong. Yeah, so I like that distinction here so the state is responsible culpable but not the individual or the citizen here. Okay, so on a more personal note, what's your advice for those who want to get into professional philosophy. That's a good question. God, it's hard to give advice during a pandemic isn't it because it's like I'm already feeling so worried for my PhD students at the moment like what a terrible time to be emerging from a grad program and looking for work. So God I don't even know if someone came to me and was like I'm thinking about starting a PhD. Yeah, I guess I would tell them, I would try to find out if it one of their reasons like if their reasons are that they just love philosophy like we presumably do, then it's, it's a good in itself right just to get to do a PhD and have all this time to think and it's a time in your life that you won't have once you start working whatever that work is so I would say go ahead but if they said, I just really see this as vocational I would only do it if I knew I would be pretty certain to get a job. I think I'd maybe advise against it right because it's just such an obsession market and, and the way that the pandemic is going to change teaching like being able to get more teaching done online and get these superstars from Harvard to give your lectures as a guest you know like, I don't know what's going to happen to the land universities and jobs. But do you think that a career in philosophy. Yeah, so do you think that a career in philosophy is worth it. I mean I think it's amazing. I think it's like, I mean what a privileged job right I often think that like there's some bad bits every now and then like you have to do marking and stuff. And most of the jobs you can get, you're not teaching all the time like your, it might be really in terms of time even if you're teaching in every semester it's probably not more than half the year. And the kind of luxury of just getting to read books you're interested in and papers and just learn stuff and talk to really smart grad students and like I don't know as a lifestyle I think it's an amazing job it's just like A if you have the temperament for that like not everyone finds that stuff great for certain people that think that's that's wonderful. And then just yeah if it's reasonably likely given our circumstances now that that you can get a career it might just be that we've been the last lucky ones for a while I don't know. That maybe sounds a bit pessimistic but that that would be my my worry. Okay so would you say that your career is worth it so far. I like I'm so happy for sure it's an amazing I mean yeah it's an amazing job. I really really really love philosophy and yeah I've met so many interesting people and I guess it's a bit boring at the moment in the sense that part of the fun was all the traveling to a really cool conference and meeting some new people and getting heaps of feedback on your ideas and so feeling really like everything's turning over all the time and it's really stimulating and exciting and at the moment it's more like just sitting in your house the whole time locked in. But you get a lot of read and think but you don't necessarily get all the feedback and interaction that makes it a bit more fast and exciting. And also, I guess it's like a separate to the pandemic but in the last couple of years I've gotten involved in much more controversial philosophy. And so that's been quite different as an experience as well. Before that it was just like, you give a paper lots of feedback. That's the end whereas now it's like, you give a paper, there's an organized protest outside yelling about you. And then people call you a bigger online and like so. Yeah, like maybe it'll also more relaxing again in two years when I have a different project. But yeah, I wouldn't give it up if I if I didn't have to. It's great. Okay, so I won't get into that stuff here in this. Okay, so on that note, you agree. Hello, sorry. Sorry, I talked over you what I just wanted to know what about you do you do you agree about the career thing. Yeah, for now, of course, you can't say what's going to happen given the pandemic but the career. Yeah, of course. I'm meeting you guys at the end you here on casting. And now we're doing philosophy online. It's terrific. It's a terrific job. But is it sustainable at this time. I'm not sure. Okay, so on that note, thanks again for sharing your time with us Holly. So join me again for another episode of philosophy and what matters where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Thank you.