My submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs

I have sent a submission to this committee, which is currently inquiring into the Australian government's package of Bills to introduce federal legislation on religious discrimination. The Committee has gradually been publishing submissions here - it looks as if they are publishing all submissions received from organizations and a selection of those received from individuals. My submission, if you care to broach it, is number 180.

At the time I wrote the document, I had read a large number of submissions to the parallel inquiry by a different parliamentary committee (see my own submission here) plus a smaller number of the submissions to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. Since then, as more submissions have been published, I've read most of them and have learned a few points that might have made me change some things if I'd had the benefit of reading all the other submissions first.

For example, I was unaware when I put in my submission that the legislative package provides for a review of the legislation two years after it comes into force. Given that, my recommendation that there be a review of the legislation three years after it comes into force, in order to consider how it is operating in practice, looks a bit silly. Oh well.

I have also seen some useful commentary on whether section 12 of the main Bill achieves its purpose of overriding certain state legislation, or whether it is drafted in such a way that it looks more like an attempt to amend the state legislation (for more, see submission number 31 by Professor Anne Twomey). The latter, or anything like it, is not something that the federal parliament can do. Arguably, the section should be modified so that it more clearly provides rights that then prevail over the state legislation. This is a technical issue in Australian constitutional law, but I think Professor Nicholas Aroney (see submission number 145) has probably been correct to respond by providing some alternative wording for the section.

It also looks as if I was wrong in thinking that, in the kinds of circumstances that have allegedly been arising, "no Muslims" policies adopted by shops and restaurants are likely already unlawful under federal law. There is relatively recent legal authority that seems to settle this issue the other way. But in any event, my recommendation did not rely on this one way or the other, as you'll see if you make it to the end. I recommended that these allegations be investigated and, if needed, specifically addressed to ensure that there are laws to prohibit such abuses even where there are no state laws that currently apply.

Otherwise, at this stage, I think the submission - all 22,000 words of it - is solid, especially for something that I wrote very quickly over the Christmas/New Year break.

I support provisions that will lessen some legal restrictions on speech that either advocates or criticizes religious views. I think that much of the opposition to this is far-fetched and illiberal. Much of it is based on misconceptions. More generally, however, I don't support the enactment of this comprehensive legislative package at this point of time. I am open to argument on many of the issues, but those issues, and the draft statutes themselves, are highly complex, and I don't see any immediate prospect of getting them "right" and in a form that will achieve a wide measure of community acceptance. Much of what is in them, as well as much that is not dealt with, needs much more extensive academic, political, and community debate.

Part of the problem, as I emphasize in my submission, is that religion is not like race or sex. Religious beliefs are highly controversial and highly motivating. In a sense, religions are more like political ideologies than like races. Each religion purports to be the true one, and the right to proclaim your religious beliefs and insist they are true is an important aspect of religious freedom. There should be room for vigorous public discussion of religion and religions, including their advocacy and also including views that challenge to them

While religious freedom is important, this is a freedom from religious persecutions and impositions by means of state power. It is also a freedom that includes freedom of religious speech and association, which in turn implies some ability to discriminate in order to preserve a group of like-minded people. It also implies an ability to engage in public debates about religion that might become disrespectful, uncivil, immoderate, and even hurtful. In short, there is a tension between religious freedom (including freedom from religion) and protection from religious discrimination. While I have ideas about how that tension should be resolved in various situations, this is something on which it's going to be extremely difficult to obtain either an obviously correct answer or a social consensus within a liberal democracy.

Some parties seem to think that an anti-discrimination statute dealing with religion could simply use existing Australian statutes, such as those prohibiting racial discrimination and sex discrimination, as a template. I disagree. I think that idea shows a failure of understanding in respect of religion and/or a failure to take the phenomenon of religion seriously. Any such simple approach could have far-reaching effects on freedom of association and freedom of speech.

I'll be watching developments closely and will doubtless have more to say about them from time to time.

New paper on radical enhancement: "Destiny and Desire"

A new paper from me on radical enhancement: "Destiny Destiny and Desire: How To Think About Radical Enhancement." This is published in the Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies (the former Journal of Evolution and Technology, now under the editorship of Mark Walker).

For more on the same theme - though the article covers a fair bit of different ground - you can see my latest book, At the Dawn of a Great Transition: The Question of Radical Enhancement.

Audiobook of Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination

An audiobook version of Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination: Visions, Minds, Ethics is now available. Check it out if interested. 

The book is read by John Lescault, who is an excellent actor with a beautiful speaking voice, and he took great trouble to get everything right. In my dealings with him I was impressed by his work methods and work ethic. Thanks, John! I'm sure the end result will be great.

This version of Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination is now arguably the most definitive one, as it corrects a handful or so of small errors in the print versions.

A couple of interviews

A couple of recent interviews.

1. This one is with American philosopher Dan Kaufman, and we discuss my newest book, The Tyranny of Opinion, with more general discussion of call-out/cancel culture, identity politics, political polarization, and a bit about experience to date with COVID-19 and attempts to contain it. If you're at all interested in the issues discussed in The Tyranny of Opinion you'll probably find the back-and-forth between us worthwhile.

2. The second is with Jordan C. Myers from the Plato's Cave podcast. Listen here, or you can go here for a version on YouTube. It's a wide-ranging discussion about the idea, value, and social role of philosophy, though mainly focused on my co-edited book (with Damien Broderick) Philosophy's Future: The Problem of Philosophical Progress. The book has a new paperback edition, by the way, so you can now buy it (or get your library to) at an affordable price. A lot of work went into the book, and we ended up with an extraordinarily strong set of contributors, so please consider at least checking it out if you're at all interested in philosophy.

My submission to the current government consultation (in Australia) on religious freedom

[I'm posting this version here, even though it's possible my submission will among those published on the A-G's Department site. This is a better version, in any event, as the form we were required to use deleted some aspects of format, such as bold and italic text, in a way that could cause confusion. Edit: I've also now corrected one very minor typo.]

TO: Human Rights Unit

Integrity Law Branch
Integrity and Security Division
Attorney-General’s Department
3–5 National Circuit
Barton, ACT 2600

FROM: Dr Russell Blackford

30 Birchgrove Drive
Wallsend, NSW 2287

E-mail: russellblackford@bigpond.com

Phone: [redacted]

Consultation regarding Religious Freedom Bills

Introduction

1. I refer to the current public consultation relating to the government’s proposed “Religious Freedom Bills” – in particular, the exposure draft of the Religious Discrimination Bill 2019 – and thank you for the opportunity to make this submission.

2. I am an academic philosopher with a special interest in philosophy and public policy, including issues relating to secular government, freedom of religion, and other traditional civil and political liberties such as freedom of speech. I have published widely on these topics. In particular, my published books include Freedom of Religion and the Secular State (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). In short, I am an academic expert on the topic of secular government and religious freedom. I am currently Conjoint Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Newcastle, though I do not, of course, purport to represent the views of the university.

3. Although I have long retired from this area of employment, I was for many years a prominent industrial advocate working in the federal jurisdiction. For over four years, from 1994 to 1998, I held the position of Executive Director of the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association, for which I have an entry in Who’s Who in Australia. I also worked for a period as a workplace relations lawyer with Phillips Fox Lawyers (as it then was) in Melbourne, with the title “consultant”. I keep abreast of developments in workplace relations and employment law, and in anti-discrimination law, and I retain considerable expertise in these fields.

4. My main reaction to the exposure draft of the Religious Discrimination Bill, and the associated documents, is that this is, in its totality, a very complex legislative package. It reflects a large number of policy and drafting decisions that have had little public airing to date. If enacted, the proposed legislation will interact with existing Commonwealth and State legislation in ways that are not entirely predictable. For this reason, the current timeframe, requiring public responses to the exposure draft by 2 October 2019, is very short for what is required, and I respectfully suggest that it be extended for a significant period to allow for adequate consideration and public discussion.

Religious freedom

5. The proposed legislative package is headed “Religious Freedom Bills”, and it has been said by the government to enhance religious freedom in Australia. However, little of the package relates to religious freedom in the strict sense. That is, the proposed legislation does not (generally) introduce new restrictions on the ability of governments to impose their preferred religious doctrines and practices, or to engage in religious persecutions. To avoid confusion, the term “religious freedom” or “freedom of religion” should be reserved for this area of liberty from the exercise of overweening government power. Australians currently enjoy surprisingly little protection of their religious freedom in this sense, but nor is there any crisis of religious freedom.

6. Although section 116 of the Australian Constitution confers some protection of religious freedom, it is limited and relatively weak when compared to that enjoyed in, for example, the United States of America. In particular, s.116 applies only to actions at the Commonwealth level of government. Furthermore, s.116’s prohibition of legislation “for establishing any religion” has been interpreted narrowly by the High Court (far more narrowly than the similarly-worded Establishment Clause in the US Bill of Rights, as interpreted by the US Supreme Court).

7. I support the idea of an inquiry to identify what might be done to strengthen religious freedom in Australia. However, the proposed package does little to expand or reinforce Australians’ protection from action by governments to impose religious doctrines and practices, or to engage in religious persecutions. One arguable exception is section 41 of the draft Bill, which, among other things, limits the ability of State governments to restrict religious speech or speech that criticises religion. Overall, however, the package consists of a new set of provisions relating to something conceptually different, i.e. discrimination in employment, and in various other specified areas, on the ground of religion. Its centrepiece is an anti-discrimination statute, not a protection against the power of the state.

The legislative package

8. The main effect of the package will be to provide for a set of protections against religious discrimination where equivalent protections do not already exist under State law. To the best of my understanding, no fully equivalent protections currently exist under the laws of New South Wales or South Australia. Taken as a whole, then, the  package fills a gap in providing protections that have no full equivalent under the laws of two states. In itself, this seems like a reasonable initiative. However, the draft legislation is complex, and it would, if enacted, interact in complex ways with existing laws at Commonwealth and State levels. It is clearly intended to override some State legislation, relying on section 109 of the Australian Constitution, which is unusual, if not unprecedented, for Commonwealth anti-discrimination statutes. This may be justified, but it merits public discussion.

9. Section 10 of the exposure draft is a core innovation, and it will undoubtedly be controversial. This section confers on non-commercial religious bodies a sweeping immunity from other provisions of the Bill. The immunity conferred by s.10 appears to be considerably broader than the defence against claims of unlawful termination of employment set out in s.772(2)(a) and s.772(2)(b) of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). That being so, public discussion is needed to settle whether a provision along the lines of s.772(2)(a) and s.772(2)(b) might be adequate. Such a provision could extend beyond termination of employment to specify certain other actions by a non-commercial religious body, such as a decision not to recruit or promote an individual.

10. For example, the Roman Catholic Church could undoubtedly establish that being male is an inherent requirement of the job of being a Catholic priest, in keeping with the church’s theological doctrines. In other cases, a non-commercial religious body could argue that a discriminatory recruitment decision was conducted in good faith to avoid injury to the religious susceptibilities of adherents of the relevant religion. I question whether even this latter defence is needed in addition to the “inherent requirements” defence. For example, it could probably be established that an individual employed specifically to teach Catholic morality to school students must not openly flout Catholic morality in his or her own life. I.e. an appearance of personal conformity to Catholic morality is arguably an inherent requirement of such a job. That said, I acknowledge that the “religious susceptibilities” defence already exists in s.772 of the Fair Work Act. It is not, in itself, an innovation.

11. Finally, in respect of s.10, it is important and commendable that this does not confer any licence to discriminate upon primarily commercial bodies. It is crucial to hold the line that such bodies ought not be permitted, in the name of religious freedom, to discriminate on grounds such as sex or sexuality.

12. Much of the current drafting is overly complex in ways that will produce, rather than reduce, uncertainty of interpretation and complexity of litigation. For example, the current s.8 is lengthy and complex, and its method of dealing with terminations of employment for expressions of religious belief currently seems very indirect and complicated.

13. One worrying provision in s.8 is the reference to “unjustifiable financial hardship”, in s.8(3). An employer should not be able to complicate and prolong litigation by raising an issue of unjustifiable financial hardship arising from an employee’s lawful statement of religious or anti-religious belief, made outside the workplace. This is a recipe for sponsors, organised lobby groups, and others to apply economic coercion to employers to pressure them to fire employees for making unpopular religious, or anti-religious, statements. If anything, the government should be looking for ways of protecting employees from the effects of such kinds of coercion aimed at their employers. This method of targeting individuals’ jobs and careers has become a significant social mischief: it currently extends far beyond economic coercion in reaction to unpopular religious views.

Definitions

14. Many of the terms used in the exposure draft are undefined, or otherwise left unclear or open to criticism. There appears, in particular, to be no definition of the central terms “religion” and “religious”. Here, perhaps, it would help to refer to some of the concepts discussed in Church of the New Faith v. Commissioner of Pay-Roll Tax (Vic) (1983) 154 CLR 120.

15. I am concerned about the definition of statement of belief. First, the definition requires that such a statement be made in good faith, but the courts have shown in other areas of the law that “good faith” is now likely to require something more than subjective sincerity, such as some kind of balance, moderation, or due diligence about a statement’s truth and its possible consequences. All that should be required at this point of the legislation, however, is subjective sincerity (which can be presumed until rebutted). A sincere statement of religious (or anti-religious) belief does not become something else merely because it is immoderate, thoughtless, or reckless.

16. Furthermore, there should be no requirement, as per the proposed definition, that a (religious) statement of belief be such as “may reasonably be regarded as being in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of the religion”. Although something like this might be a sufficient condition for a statement to count as a statement of religious belief, it should not be a necessary condition. If a statement is inherently religious (as with statements about supernatural beings, past miracles, prophesied supernatural events, and what sorts of conduct are sinful or count against salvation in the afterlife), and if it is expressed sincerely, that should be sufficient for it to count as a (religious) statement of belief. A court should not enter into any further inquiry as to whether such a statement can or cannot be reasonably regarded as falling within a religion’s teachings. That amounts to an inquiry into religious orthodoxy, something that courts in other jurisdictions have rightly avoided.

17. Part (b) of the definition of statement of belief, relating to non-religious statements of belief, is open to numerous doubts about its meaning, and I am not at all clear what statements would or would not fall within this definition. E.g., it is required that the statement be “about religion”. It is not clear whether this would include (as it should) a sincere, even if immoderate, statement that is critical of a specific religion, such as Christianity, or of a specific religious doctrine, such as the Christian doctrine of sacrificial atonement or the Islamic doctrine that Muhammad was Allah’s final and definitive prophet.

18. I am also concerned about the current references – in sections 8 and 41 – to statements of religious belief not receiving various protections if they are “malicious” or if they “harass, vilify, or incite hatred or violence”. On one hand, individuals should not be able to escape disciplinary action by employers, or actions under anti-discrimination law, for defamatory comments, invasions of others’ privacy such as revenge porn, severe or repeated personal abuse, campaigns of dehumanising and possibly genocidal propaganda, sexually harassing conduct, and so on, which the individuals concerned might then seek to excuse as expressions of religious belief. Religion should not provide a free pass for these kinds of high-impact and harmful speech. On the other hand, the relevant terms used for this purpose in the exposure draft, particularly the word “vilify”, are not defined, and this will inevitably create problems for State and federal courts attempting to interpret the legislation.

19. Unfortunately, some religions sincerely regard other religions as not merely false but actually demonic. Some religions see themselves as engaged in a cosmic struggle of good versus evil against other religions and/or against unbelief. Unfortunately again, some religions sincerely regard essentially harmless activities, such as consensual gay or lesbian sex, as sinful and conducive to eternal damnation. While all these doctrines are socially unfortunate, their expression has not traditionally been unlawful – and this toleration of harsh doctrines is favoured by policy considerations. (Briefly, religions with harsh doctrines are more likely to “soften” over time if they are tolerated than if their adherents experience what they interpret as persecution.)

20. Without a definition of the word “vilify”, each of the doctrines mentioned in paragraph 19 above could be described as, in a sense, vilifying some demographic group. Thus, the word “vilify” could be given a broader meaning than appears to be the government’s purpose. More thought is needed as to exactly what statements of belief are protected, and how the limits of the protection can best be expressed and defined. The courts are entitled to the clearest possible guidance when they are called upon to interpret and apply the legislation.

21. One possible approach would be to abandon much of the current wording and focus on public speech that either (a) explicitly calls for violence against a demographic group or (b) could reasonably be understood as preparing the ground for violence against a demographic group by employing seriously dehumanising language (examples would include referring to members of the group as rats, cockroaches, or vermin). This would not deal with the full range of high-impact speech mentioned in paragraph 19, but most examples of objectionable speech in these categories could not plausibly be justified as statements of belief within the meaning of the draft Bill.

22. Given all these complexities and difficulties, definitional and otherwise, I respectfully submit that it is not possible to assess the draft legislation adequately in the short timeframe provided, i.e. by 2 October 2019. I suggest that the period for public consultation be extended significantly. It appears that there is no great urgency about putting such legislation in place at the Commonwealth level. If there is any urgency arising from recent and current events, it is, rather, in clarifying and strengthening certain employment rights contained in the Fair Work Act. I now turn to that statute, and particularly to the litigation that has been commenced under its provisions by the prominent footballer Mr Israel Folau.

The Folau litigation and its implications

23. Mr Folau was dismissed from the employment of Rugby Australia for a social media statement in which he paraphrased certain verses from Christian scriptures. These verses identify individuals who engage in homosexual acts as sinners, and hence as people who will be condemned to damnation in the afterlife, unless they repent and seek God’s forgiveness. In making such a statement, Mr Folau seemingly breached a provision in his employer’s code of conduct that forbids condemning people for their sexuality. Further, Rugby Australia evidently argues (with some plausibility) that its code of conduct was incorporated into Mr Folau’s contract of employment, and thus it was entitled to fire him for serious breach of a contractual term. At the same time, however, the alleged breach undoubtedly took the form of a public statement of certain of Mr Folau’s sincerely held religious beliefs. It is not possible to tease apart the alleged breach of contract and the expression of religious beliefs; they were one and the same action.

24. Section 772 of the Fair Work Act states:

(1) An employer must not terminate an employee’s employment for one or more of the following reasons, or for reasons including one or more of the following reasons:

[…]

             (f) race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental disability, marital status, family or carer’s responsibilities, pregnancy, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin […].

It is likely that termination on the ground of religion includes, as with Mr Folau’s case, termination for an employee’s public expression of his or her religious beliefs. Prima facie, therefore, it follows that Rugby Australia breached s.772 by terminating Mr Folau’s employment for the reason that it did.

25. Rugby Australia may argue that it did not terminate Mr Folau’s employment for his expression of his religious beliefs, but for breaching its disciplinary code. The relevant provision of the disciplinary code, however, had precisely the effect of prohibiting Mr Folau from public expression of certain of his religious beliefs (in this case, beliefs about sin and about what conduct conduces to spiritual damnation). It is likely that an employer cannot rely on its disciplinary code in such circumstances, even if the code was incorporated as a term in the contract of employment. That is, an employer cannot avoid the requirements of s.772 either by unilateral action in imposing a disciplinary code on its employees or by including the code in employment contracts. To put this last point in another way, employers cannot use their bargaining positions to contract out of their statutory obligations under s.772. Nor can employees successfully contract out of their rights under that section.

26. Rugby Australia may also rely on the defence that Mr Folau’s obligation to comply with the relevant provision of the disciplinary code was an inherent requirement of his job. However, this argument should not succeed. While compliance with such a provision might be an inherent requirement of the job of a senior executive, or perhaps a public relations manager, employed by Rugby Australia, it is clearly not an inherent requirement of the job of an individual footballer. The obvious presumption is that individual footballers – much like individual plumbers, individual checkout staff, or individuals in any other corner of the labour market – have widely diverse ideas on matters of sin and damnation, religion in general, and related moral issues, and that when they express these ideas publicly they thereby in no way represent or implicate their employers.

27. It appears, then, that Mr Folau is on strong legal and policy ground in taking action against Rugby Australia under s.772. If he ultimately loses his case, it will likely reveal some technical deficiency in the Fair Work Act as it currently stands, and as interpreted by the courts. If any such deficiency emerges as a result of the legal proceedings, this might, indeed, justify some amendment to the Act. At the moment, however, no such deficiency is apparent. It is more than possible that Mr Folau will win his case and establish a helpful precedent for many other employees who wish to assert their employment rights. That being so, the parliament should await the conclusion of the current Folau litigation, which may eventually go all the way to the High Court, before it considers whether it is necessary to amend the Act in any way.

28. Any deficiencies in, or related to, s.772 of the Fair Work Act might also apply to some other statutory grounds of unlawful termination of employment, in addition to termination on the ground of religion. Most obviously, any such deficiencies are likely to affect the prohibition of termination of employment on the ground of political opinion. Once the Folau litigation has concluded, the parliament might need to review the Act to ensure that it is adequate in protecting employees’ expression of all kinds of religious, political, moral, philosophical, and similar views. In particular, it might become desirable to clarify that employers cannot contract out of an obligation not to fire employees for expression of their views on such matters (unless silence about such matters, or the expression only of very anodyne or cautious opinions about them, is genuinely and objectively an inherent requirement of a particular job). As a general proposition, employers should not be able to fire employees merely for their expression of religious, political, moral, philosophical, and similar opinions, especially if they are expressed outside of the workplace.

29. In this respect, I refer to the termination of employment of Mr Scott McIntyre by the Special Broadcasting Service in 2015, after he expressed certain controversial views regarding Anzac Day, the original Anzacs, and Australia’s record of involvement in war. Mr McIntyre commenced litigation for an alleged breach of s.772 of the Fair Work Act, on the ground that his employment had been terminated because of his expression of political opinion. Because the case was settled, the courts did not have an opportunity to interpret the Act or consider the effect of any disciplinary code that might have applied to Mr McIntyre’s employment. Nonetheless, the case highlights the possibility of employees being fired for public expressions of political and similar opinions, despite what appear to be clear words in the Act.

30. Once more, it is not yet apparent that the Fair Work Act is deficient in any way. Nonetheless, its operation needs to be kept under review to ensure that employers are not able to avoid their obligations by relying on any deficiencies in drafting or on judicial interpretations that limit the effect of s.772’s seemingly clear words. In any event, it would be worth considering a modification of s.772 to give the broadest constitutionally legitimate protection, within the employer/employee relationship, of the full range of religious, political, moral, philosophical, and similar speech. To avoid duplication of effort, however, I again suggest that this await the conclusion of the ongoing Folau litigation.

Conclusion

31. I have given earnest consideration to the draft legislative package, but its drafting has raised numerous concerns in my mind. In many cases, I was not clear what concrete results were envisaged or intended. I am open to modifying my views as set out in this submission, or to developing them further. However, this would have to follow from well-informed discussion of the concepts and approaches in the package.

32. Religion is a very complex phenomenon, and it is extraordinarily difficult to take into account the wide variety of religious belief and practice when drafting legislation that seeks to regulate religious discrimination and (in the case of s.41) to provide a partial codification of free religious expression. Such an exercise needs time and thought. Proposals should be considered by people with varied life experience and academic expertise, and they must be tested against a wide range of possible situations that could arise. Once again, significantly more time is needed for public discussion. Hence, I suggest an additional period of at least six months beyond the current deadline of 2 October.

Yours sincerely,

Russell Blackford

19 September 2019

New op-ed piece published by Arc Digital - "Philosophy Is Not Ideology"

This op-ed piece, "Philosophy Is Not Ideology", was published on 21 June 2019, over on the Arc Digital site. Check it out!

Sample:

Except in the discipline’s most technical areas, however — areas such as formal logic and the philosophical study of semantics — disputes among philosophers seldom converge on anything like a stable consensus. These disputes run into problems of ambiguous, conflicting, and incomplete evidence, conceptual confusion, and a diversity of bedrock assumptions, intuitions, and values. It is therefore typical, rather than unusual, for philosophers to maintain opposed ideas even after honest and strenuous efforts to find common ground. This is well known within the discipline, and in the past, such considerations have obtained far more consensus from philosophers than any suggested answers to big philosophical questions. Thus, philosophy’s tolerant disciplinary norms reflect the practicalities of philosophical inquiry.

The point of the article is not, however, to claim that all is well within the discipline of philosophy. On the contrary, it expresses concern about internal challenges to philosophy's disciplinary norm of fearless, open inquiry. Having examined a couple of cases of this, including the Tuvel affair, I conclude on a worried note:

In the past, philosophy has survived, and maintained its integrity, in the face of external pressures, including hostility from church and state. It is not clear, however, that philosophy as an academic discipline can survive the tactics of ideologues working from within.

(Edit: Link updated 28 June 2021.) 

Australian Book Review reviews THE TYRANNY OF OPINION

The Tyranny of Opinion is Australian Book Review's book of the week this week, highlighted in its electronic newsletter. The journal has published the book review, by Ceridwen Spark, online. This is a wonderful review, and I couldn't be more pleased.

The review concludes: "Blackford’s book exemplifies how things might be if only we would all stop shouting at one another and learn to listen."

I'm expecting to see some more reviews soon. I know that there are reviews forthcoming in the immediate future from Quillette and Free Inquiry.

Interview on Wikizilla site

I've done an interview on the Wikizilla site (a site devoted to giant movie monsters, including Kong) about my 2005 novel Kong Reborn. We get into lots of interesting issues about the 1933 King Kong movie, Skull Island, the big gorilla, the characters in the movie and my novel, the craft of writing this sort of fiction, etc. Check it out!

Latest on The Tyranny of Opinion

The Tyranny of Opinion was officially published a week ago, on 18 October 2018 (though with a copyright date of 2019 if you want to cite it). You can buy it from all the usual places, including Amazon, Amazon Australia, and Amazon UK.

It's available in a number of formats including Kindle and an affordable paperback edition. I hope to see it receive some publicity in the next few days and weeks, in the sense of attracting reviews and discussion. Meanwhile, here are some relevant links.

First, an article that I wrote for Areo magazine entitled "How did we become post-liberal?" This covers some of the same general territory as The Tyranny of Opinion, although there is little overlap. The article somewhat assumes the contemporary situation described in the book and asks how we got into it. The two should be seen as complementary, while sharing much the same style and view of the world. If you like the article, you'll love the book! One merit of the article is that it offers some explanation of why Americans use the word "liberal" in a different way from the rest of the world (look to the 1930s).

Second, the first review of The Tyranny of Opinion so far, by Russell A. Whitehouse (no, this is not me under a pseudonym despite the similarity of names). This is a favourable review, so I'll take it! My main worry with the review - the only worry of much substance - is that I don't see the book as about "political correctness" or "P.C. culture." Let me explain this briefly. My criticism of ideological purity policing on the Left is an important aspect of the book, but I also have much to say about authoritarianism and censorship from the Right. In my opinion, the Right has historically been, and in some ways still is, generally worse than the Left in disrespecting individual freedoms and especially freedom of speech and expression. Nonetheless, I am very concerned at the way the contemporary Left so often censors and harms its own. Therefore, I do call for an end to left-wing purity policing. I'd like to see the Left return to liberalism (i.e. to an emphasis on individual liberty & free speech) on social issues and to a focus on the problems and anxieties of people from the rural and industrial working classes. All of this fertile political territory has increasingly been abdicated for conservatives and right-wing populists to take over.

Third, an interview about the book with the aforementioned Russell Whitehouse. In this interview, I take up the issue of political correctness, an expression that I distance myself from in the book, and the wider problem of political and social conformity (the book's topic). The interviewer raises various statistical issues with me, relating to some of the book's claims, and I give my answers. More generally, you might appreciate discussion of certain issues that are not specifically covered in The Tyranny of Opinion, but are certainly relevant the same political and cultural environment.

The Tyranny of Opinion - cover art

Here is the cover for my forthcoming book, The Tyranny of Opinion: Conformity and the Future of Liberalism. Amazon is currently showing the book as available from 18 October 2018, but I'll deliver updates to that as needed.

Black Panther review

(Note: mild spoilers in what follows. There is nothing that people who are interested in Black Panther won't already know.)

First, I completely enjoyed Black Panther. I thought it had almost the look and feel of a Star Wars movie - rather than a typical superhero movie - with its depiction of dynastic struggle, shaky and shifting alliances, and advanced weaponry and transportation, all set mainly in a series of vast, visually stunning landscapes and high-technology cityscapes.

The evident theme, as so often in science fiction movies and superhero movies, relates to the use of power - in this case technological power - whether to protect yourself, to help others, or to overcome and oppress others. The latter might be motivated by personal ambition or by political zealotry.

Science fiction and related genres return to this again and again. Indeed, the justifiable and unjustifiable uses of great power provide the key theme of these genres. That is so all the way back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and it's as true of the work of H.G. Wells as the work of E.E. "Doc" Smith.

For X-Men fans, the main antagonists of Black Panther had something of a Xavier-versus-Magneto vibe in what they, respectively, sought to do with the extraordinary power available to them. At all times, they acted against a familiar background of ongoing injustice on a very large scale.

(All X-Men fans know that Xavier and Magneto are themselves often interpreted, with just a touch of revisionism, as analogues for someone like Martin Luther King vs someone more radical like Malcolm X ... or the Black Panthers if it comes to that. Note, however, that the Black Panther Party came into existence some three years after the creation of the X-Men, and a few months after the creation of the Black Panther as a Marvel character. Its founders were inspired by, among things, the writings of Malcolm X.)

T'Challa, the Black Panther, was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in mid-1966, and there was some controversy at the time. It was a big deal, back then, for Marvel to create a black superhero. It made a strong political statement in the circumstances of the mid-60s, though some questioned why he had to be an African king, not a more grounded African American character, such as the later Luke Cage (who dates from the 1970s).

Similar questions will doubtless be raised this time, and they'll merit discussion. Meanwhile, Black Panther is an interesting and spectacular movie with large, perennial, themes about power, large-scale injustice, and political zealotry, themes that inevitably speak of, and to - even as they are by no means confined to - American race relations.

What do I mean by that? In current circumstances, and for the foreseeable future, any production from Hollywood that deals with the themes of power, large-scale injustice, and political zealotry will be open to interpretation as at least allegorizing American race relations, and as addressing them in some way. Race need not be thematically explicit, as it is in Black Panther. Thus, the mutants of the X-Men mythos, including the current TV show The Gifted, are, in part, stand-ins for persecuted people of colour.

At the same time, the themes of power, large-scale injustice, and resulting political zealotry are not confined to racial issues. It follows that a movie such as Black Panther can reference specifically racial issues, yet have a resonance far beyond those issues. It thus connects with the rich legacy of narrative, especially SF narrative, that engages with questions about the responsible uses of power.

Back in Newcastle!

I'm back! I had a great week-long trip to Melbourne, and managed to catch up with lots of dear friends (no need to list to them - they know who they are). Jenny and I seem to have brought back some Melbourne weather, dammit; and as the afternoon goes on today, a sniffle that I had on the road is turning into a nasty cold. I think I might have to take this evening off. But - oh well! - it was great to see so many of my best buddies. Pity I couldn't have stayed a bit longer and caught up with even more friends and colleagues, but you can't do everything. Onward!

Introducing myself ... and philosophy

[This article was originally published on The Conversation on June 9, 2015. It was my attempt on the Cogito blog to introduce myself to its audience. I'm republishing it here for folks who might have missed it at the time. The "book about fundamental moral theory" that I was working on has been published in the interim as The Mystery of Moral Authority. Read the original article.]


Before we go too far, allow me to introduce myself to the readers of Cogito (and more generally, of The Conversation). Before I even get to that… let me say that I am pleased and proud to have been invited to join this multi-author blog, which features a diverse group of Australian philosophers with established public profiles. I expect to see provocative contributions on a wide range of issues.

A bit about me

A little about myself, then. First, so you can put a face to the name, I’m providing a photo, courtesy of Embiggen Books. Second, you can find my website here, including an academic CV.

I grew up in Newcastle, NSW, where I returned a few years ago after three decades in Melbourne. Over those decades, I had a somewhat tortuous career that involved periods in academia, the Australian Public Service, industrial relations (particularly courtroom advocacy), and legal practice. I am now a Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle, while devoting most of my time to writing books and editing the Journal of Evolution and Technology. This editorial, published in 2008 when I was based at Monash University and had only recently taken over as editor-in-chief at JET, sets out something of my vision for the journal.

My personal blog, Metamagician and the Hellfire Club, can be found here, and you can follow my Twitter feed: @Metamagician. I’m also a frequent contributor to Free Inquiry, New Philosopher, and The Philosophers' Magazine.

My work

My work often involves sceptical scrutiny of social institutions that claim the authority to tell us how to live our lives: notably religion, political ideology, morality, and the law. I defend philosophical atheism, secular government, political liberalism of a kind familiar to readers of (say) John Stuart Mill or Joel Feinberg, and a form of moral scepticism that understands morality as a pragmatically useful form of social technology that is often (indeed, somewhat pervasively) regarded as something more.

As a taste of my views on the so-called “scientific skeptic” movement, which I support, you might like to check out this blog post, where I distinguish between scepticism and denialism. (This movement is, of course, not sceptical about science but about pseudoscientific and supernatural claims.)

I am currently working on a book about fundamental moral theory, another about the presentation of moral issues within science fiction, and an edited collection (with co-editor Damien Broderick) on the problem of philosophical progress. I’m also working on articles and talks about moral error theory and its implications, bioethics without a concept of sanctity, the intellectual relationship between Nietzsche and the contemporary transhumanist movement, and the vexed concept of “scientism”.

Philosophy and public debate

In this introductory post, I don’t plan to set out any particularly sophisticated or complete views on the role of philosophy. As a first approximation only (and with a hat tip to Graham Oppy), I understand philosophy as reason-based, intellectually honest and rigorous investigation of deep questions that produce much existential anxiety while defying any empirical solution. Those questions relate, for example, to the possible existence of God and/or an afterlife, free will, the authority or otherwise of morality, and the foundations of inquiry itself: i.e., to questions of what should count (either in general or in specific domains) as a cogent argument or as good evidence for a proposition.

I don’t see any sharp dividing line between philosophy and other fields of inquiry, including the sciences. Although I can’t argue the case in this introductory post, I think philosophers should draw upon well-established empirical findings from the sciences and from the other humanities - such as various areas of historical and textual scholarship - while making our best attempts at conceptual clarification of massively confused issues. In some cases, a successful outcome of philosophical inquiry might be the founding of a new field of empirical study (whether or not it should, strictly speaking, be called a “science”). Indeed (though again, I can’t argue for such a large claim today), I believe that we are now well-placed to integrate moral philosophy with other sub-disciplines from the sciences and humanities that study the phenomenon of morality. Our generation has an opportunity to create an expanded and more empirical (or broadly scientific) discipline of moral philosophy or moral science.

These questions are all inherently fascinating and of obvious public interest. I wholeheartedly urge other philosophers to engage with them publicly. Furthermore, I think that philosophers have a role in commenting on more specific moral, political, and cultural controversies. With our commitment to intellectual rigour and to high standards of logic and evidence, we can comment in ways that contrast with the tribalism, propaganda, and polemics that characterise so much contemporary debate on hot-button topics.

We do, of course, inevitably have our biases and prior assumptions, but at least we can be aware of such things as formal and informal logical fallacies, reliance on deeply contested assumptions, motivated reasoning, the dangers of emotional manipulation, group polarisation, and information cascades, and other factors that distort inquiry and debate. When we’re at our best - and difficult though it may be - we approach our opponents and their views with charity, looking for whatever truth or wisdom may be found in their viewpoints.

Our own contributions will never be perfect in their standards of rationality. As philosophers, we may, however, be able to offer fresh perspectives on difficult issues. We can strive for at least some detachment from the rival views of the usual moral and political tribes. That’s an ideal, of course, and I realise in advance that I will not model it flawlessly. Nonetheless, it’s an ideal that I recommend and that I’ll aim for as well as I can in the posts to follow.

Saturday self-promotion - "The Supposed Rights of the Fetus"

This piece, "The Supposed Rights of the Fetus", was first published by Quadrant in 2002. (It received some minor pushback there, since it challenged the views held by many people in the magazine's largely socially conservative audience.) I argued that a human fetus does not have rights - such as a right to life - but please note that the idea was to examine what I took to be the philosophically strongest arguments for a view contrary to mine. In the article, I attempt to represent the opposed arguments fairly and to show in an analytical, rather than polemical, way why they leave me unpersuaded.

"The Supposed Rights of the Fetus" can also be seen as a precursor to my "Stem-cell research on other worlds" article published a few years later by the Journal of Medical Ethics. The overall approaches are consistent, but there is not a lot of overlap. I see the two articles as complementary rather than as one subsuming the other.

A Tale of Two Tribes (on tribalism, morality, the role of philosophy, the meaning of liberalism, and the problem of free will)

Hey folks, I did a long interview with Steven Gonder from the Mediasplainers podcast. We talked about moral-political tribalism, the role of philsophy as an academic discipline or profession, left-wing authoritarians (and the cultural Left's retreat from values that it once prized such as science and reason, freedom of thought and discussion, and sexual liberation); the meaning of liberalism (and why I think left-wing authoritarians should not be referred to as liberals); the concept of "objective morality" (which led to some debate and confusion about the meaning of the word "objective"); and the ongoing issue of whether human beings have free will (whatever "free will" even means!).

A recurrent theme was the slipperiness of language, and I emphasized toward the end the way that ordinary language can be complex in its literal semantic content but even more so in what it pragmatically, non-literally conveys. Tiresome and alienating as it may be for some, philosophers are rightly committed to analysing the vagueness, ambiguity, and frequent incoherence of the language of ordinary people when they talk about large issues that cause them anxiety: issues such as whether or not human beings have free will.

I can never bear to listen to the sound of my own voice in these sorts of recorded discussions, but there's no reason why you can't check it out.

Jenny Blackford and Russell Blackford - power couple!

Okay, my title for this post is a bit facetious, but a couple of nice photos.

Jenny Blackford reading at a recent Poetry at the Pub gig in Newcastle, NSW (reading "Sweet Intertidal Flesh", which won first place in the poetry contest held by the 2016 Connemara Mussel Festival in Ireland). Photo by Martin Kent.

And Russell Blackford, speaking at TAM, in Las Vegas, back in 2013. A great convention that I treasure in my memory. Photo by Jerry Coyne.

An interview on philosophy of religion (at The Philotoric, from a couple of years ago)

This interview was conducted with Matt Marasco for his "The Philotoric" blog.

Sample:

The Philotoric: You were on the brink of becoming an evangelical leader and now you write books on atheism – what happened?

Russell Blackford: I suppose I was already an evangelical leader in a small way, in that I was the Vice-President of the Evangelical Union at my university (the University of Newcastle, here in Australia). Who knows what might have beckoned beyond that? I wouldn’t necessarily have ended up in the priesthood or anything like that, but still… The trouble at the time was that I “had doubts” – as we used to say – and they ultimately defeated my attempts to put them to rest. I could not make any Christian account of the world add up, and by the time my tenure as EU Vice-President was over I’d eventually abandoned any Christian belief. I didn’t make a fuss about it, but I dropped out of evangelical activities and concentrated on other aspects of my life. I had no ill-feeling toward my Christian friends, who were kind and good people; it was just that I, personally, could no longer honestly believe in the Abrahamic God, the Incarnation, the doctrine of sacrificial atonement, or any other Christian doctrines, including specifically Christian moral ideals. This makes it all sound simple, but it most certainly wasn’t. I was going through months of doubt and worry about the truth of my religion, it was a psychologically agonising period.

Those events were many years ago now, back in the 1970s when I was an undergraduate student. It wasn’t until 2009 that I co-edited a book about atheism (with Udo Schuklenk) – 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. Much had happened in my life and in the wider world during those 30+ years, and many things converged to encourage me to address the issue of atheism – and the pretensions of religion – in a more formal, public way. One aspect was my sense of the growing political influence of religion, even in Western countries where traditional religious belief is steadily declining. Worse, much of that influence comes from especially reactionary and authoritarian varieties of religious faith.

Joel Marks on The Mystery of Moral Authority

I have an Amazon review by Joel Marks of The Mystery of Moral Authority. Marks "gets" and likes the book, so check out what he has to say.

Marks concludes: "'The Mystery of Moral Authority' covers a wide range of material in a very short space, and does so clearly, adequately, and fairly. Anyone in a hurry looking to learn about moral skepticism, or even moral theory more generally, would do well to pick up this book."

Weekly self-promotion - on The Moral Landscape

This week, I'm promoting my lengthy and searching review, from 2010, of The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. If you have an interest in moral theory, including metaethics, check it out. My positive views on these topics are developed at some length in my latest book, The Mystery of Moral Authority, but writing a long review of Harris's book, explaining what I saw as its problems, cetainly assisted in clarifying my thoughts.

Much of the review is negative in the sense of raising doubts rather than developing a positive case of my own, but it is not a negative review in the sense of claiming that Harris has produced a bad book or one that doesn't merit an audience (I'm as surprised at the number of people who absolutely loathe The Moral Landscape as at the number who embrace it fairly uncritically). Negative in one sense or not, the review does, partly by implication, sketch a general thesis about moral theory. To see how I developed the full thesis, five or six years later, there's The Mystery of Moral Authority if you're interested.

My Academia.edu page revisited

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've recently built myself a page at Academia.edu. This will bring together a fair bit of information about the academic side of my working life, including a detailed CV and a good selection of my work - with a bias toward older and and/or more obscure pieces.

Do feel free to check it out. Some highlights are:

1. "Science and the Sea of Faith" - previously published only in an obscure small-press publication in Australia.

2. "Should we fear death? Epicurean and modern arguments" - again, previously published only in a fairly obscure collection. I argue that there is a rational basis to fear death, though not as much as we actually do. Check it out for more detail.

3. "Mutants, Cyborgs, AI & Androids" - published in Meanjin in 2004. Meanjin is a well-known literary journal in Australia, but is not so well known elsewhere. Includes some wrestling with ideas about what it is to be human, whether human beings have a particular moral worth - compared to, say, artificial intelligences - and so on.

4. "Anthropomorphic Superbeings and Future Human Societies" - although I've delivered this paper orally, it hasn't previously been published.

5. "How free is the will? Sam Harris misses his mark" - this piece, which responds to Sam Harris's small book on free will (though it's much more than a book review), was originally published on the ABC Religion and Ethics Portal. The version I've uploaded is slightly longer than the previously published version, with some text from my original manuscript restored. There are also some other small tweaks. This is my definitive version.

In all, I've uploaded 18 papers so far, but the above pieces especially make it worthwhile in that they are not readily available to most readers (unlike, for example, articles in the Journal of Medical Ethics). I obviously consider them all to be solid work (or I wouldn't be making them more readily available), even if my interests and emphases have changed a bit since some of them were written.