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Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne
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International Truth-Telling Solutions: Beyond Dhoombak Goobgoowana
Nov
11
3:00pm
Conference or Symposium
About this event
In recent years public institutions from across the world have launched truth telling initiatives, uncovering histories of race science and the industrial accumulation and global trade in associated collections, of participation in slavery and its justification, and the vanguard role of public institutions in colonial expansion.
These are difficult stories that raise pressing questions about the concept of race and its application in public spheres, about the institutions that have supported these endeavours, and about discriminatory visions of ‘public’ and the use of public funding. In Australia, the landmark 2024 publication of Dhoombak Goobgoowana: a History of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne, vol. 1 Truth makes new inroads into this field, tracing for the first time the colonial entanglements of a leading international university.
Local innovations here in Victoria, such as the Yoorrook Justice Commission, the First Peoples Assembly, and the Treaty Authority, offer lessons about the translation of truth-telling from research to application. There is need to maintain the energy of recent years, to draw on the lessons from truth telling projects from separate jurisdictions, but most importantly, to generate shared principles that can produce concrete actions.
This symposium brings together leading figures from the fields of history, health, education, legal reform, land justice, and cultural revitalisation to address the practical applications and implications of truth-telling for public institutions and policy makers. The questions that will be addressed include:
- What opportunities and challenges do truth telling commissions present, and how do they relate to treaty processes? Can truth telling foster agreement?
- What new approaches to historical practice are needed to support truth telling? How does truth telling change public understandings of history?
- How can truth telling redefine approaches to science, medicine, education and law? What practical changes does truth telling demand?
This symposium is one part of the University of Melbourne’s broader commitment to truth-telling. This commitment is coordinated through the University Truth and Justice Project, which you can learn more about here.
Pip Pattison Oration: Alison Gopnik
Nov
11
6:00pm
Public Lecture
A common model of AI suggests that there is a single measure of intelligence, often called AGI, and that AI systems are agents who can possess more or less of this intelligence. Cognitive science, in contrast, suggests that there are multiple forms of intelligence and that these intelligences trade-off against each other and have a distinctive developmental profile and evolutionary history.
Exploitation, the pursuit of goals, resources and utilities, is characteristic of adult cognition. Alison argues however, that two very different kinds of cognition characterize childhood and elderhood. Childhood is characterised by exploration. In particular, children seek out information about the world. However, forgoing reward for exploration requires support and nurturance from others – it requires care and teaching. Care and teaching are particularly characteristic of elders and the intelligence of care has a distinctive structure – it involves empowering others – giving them the resources they need to be effective.
The combination of these different kinds of intelligence across the course of a life explains human success, and this has important implications for AI.
Pip Pattison Oration
The Pip Pattison Oration is named after Professor Pip Pattison AO, a quantitative psychologist who pioneered the use of mathematical and statistical models for social networks and network processes. Pip became a lecturer in the University of Melbourne’s Department of Psychology in 1977 while she was completing her PhD, and later held many leadership roles including President of the Academic Board, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Learning and Teaching) and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic). Most importantly Pip has had an enormously positive influence upon her colleagues and students throughout her career and is without question one of the most respected and most loved psychologists, mathematical or otherwise. Pip is known for making her niche area of mathematical psychology relevant to many outside the field who previously didn’t even know it existed. Speakers invited to deliver an oration are chosen with this broad appeal in mind.
