This paper explores early Australasian philosophy in some detail. Two approaches have dominated Western philosophy in Australia: idealism and materialism. Idealism was prevalent between the 1880s and the 1930s, but dissipated thereafter. Idealism in Australia often reflected Kantian themes, but it also reflected the revival of interest in Hegel through the work of ‘absolute idealists’ such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Henry Jones. A number of the early New Zealand philosophers were also educated in the idealist tradition (...) and were influential in their communities, but produced relatively little. In Australia, materialism gained prominence through the work of John Anderson, who arrived in Australia in 1927, and continues to be influential. John Anderson had been a student of Henry Jones, who might therefore be said to have influenced both main strands of Australian philosophical thought. (shrink)

A polemical account of Australian philosophy up to 2003, emphasising its unique aspects (such as commitment to realism) and the connections between philosophers' views and their lives. Topics include early idealism, the dominance of John Anderson in Sydney, the Orr case, Catholic scholasticism, Melbourne Wittgensteinianism, philosophy of science, the Sydney disturbances of the 1970s, Francofeminism, environmental philosophy, the philosophy of law and Mabo, ethics and Peter Singer. Realist theories especially praised are David Armstrong's on universals, David Stove's on logical probability (...) and the ethical realism of Rai Gaita and Catholic philosophers. In addition to strict philosophy, the book treats non-religious moral traditions to train virtue, such as Freemasonry, civics education and the Greek and Roman classics. (shrink)

In many recent discussions of the morality of actions where both good and bad consequences foreseeably ensue, the moral significance of the distinction between intended and foreseen consequences is rejected. This distinction is thought to bear on the moral status of actions by those who support the Doctrine of Double Effect. According to this doctrine, roughly speaking, to perform an action intending to bring about a particular bad effect as a means to some commensurate good end is impermissible, while performing (...) an action where one intends only this good end and merely foresees the bad as an unintended sideeffect may be permissible. Consequentialists argue that this is a distinction which makes no moral difference to the evaluation of the initial act in the two cases, given that the overall consequences are the same in each case. In this paper we aim to show that a standard consequentialist line of argument against the moral relevance of the intention/foresight distinction fails. Consequentialists commonly reject the moral relevance of this distinction on the grounds that there is no asymmetry in moral responsibility between intending and foreseeing evil. We argue that even if this claim about moral responsibility is correct, it does not entail, as many Consequentialists believe, that there is no moral asymmetry between acts of intended and foreseen evil. We go on to argue that those consequentialists who do concede the moral relevance of the intention/foresight distinction at the level of agent evaluations cannot consistently make such a concession, and that such a position is in any case untenable, because it entails a complete severance of important conceptual connections between act and agent evaluations. (shrink)