This paper argues for a physicalistic interpretation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein's general conception of world and language analysis is interpreted and exemplified in relation to the historical background of the psychophysical analysis of sense data and, in particular, color analysis. Three of his main principles of analysis—the principle of independence, the context principle and the principle of atomism—are interpreted and justified on the background of physicalism. From his proof of color exclusion in the Tractatus, it is shown that Wittgenstein (...) had a detailed conception of how philosophy should fulfil the task of distinguishing between sense and nonsense using physicalistic presuppositions. (shrink)

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)

ABSTRACT A (not the) history of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy is presented in a series of snapshots, some of them with 360° angles, taken at ten-year intervals from the time of its foundation to the time of writing. Attention is paid to influences on the AJP ranging from the social and political to the individual, from the financial to the technical, from the historical to the geographical, and to how these influences are (or are not) reflected in its contents (...) and appearance. (shrink)

Recent work of Gustav Bergmann develops an ontological framework within which an account of relations has been sketched out. The approach is a kind of new logical atomism which has some of the features of an Aristotelian hylomorphism (of sorts). It recognizes a number of categories and groups of a hylomorphic kind, chiefly “determinates” and “subdeterminates”--the latter only indirectly or implicitly. Winsome though it is, the approach is flawed by certain difficulties it gives rise to, among them inability to speak (...) of subdeterminates and failure of a relation to be had by a referent towards a relatum. Instead of having a sense, a relation is conceived of as a determinate which enters an arrangement whose existence and nature are not properly accounted for. Finally, Bergmann’s Ideal Language is assayed and shown not to be as useful philosophically in itself as he takes it to be. (shrink)