School
Australian realism
Overview
Australian realism, also called Australian materialism, is a school of philosophy that flourished in the first half of the 20th century in several universities in Australia including the Australian National University, the University of Adelaide, and the University of Sydney, and whose central claim, as stated by leading theorist John Anderson, was that "whatever exists … is real, that is to say it is a spatial and temporal situation or occurrence that is on the same level of reality as anything else that exists". Coupled with this was Anderson's idea that "every fact (which includes every “object”) is a complex situation: there are no simples, no atomic facts, no objects which cannot be, as it were, expanded into facts." Prominent players included Anderson, David Malet Armstrong, J. L. Mackie, Ullin Place, J. J. C. Smart, and David Stove. The label "Australian realist" was conferred on acolytes of Anderson by A. J. Baker in 1986, to mixed approval from those realist philosophers who happened to be Australian. David Malet Armstrong "suggested, half-seriously, that 'the strong sunlight and harsh brown landscape of Australia force reality upon us'".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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I will now speak of a strange doctrine, which is regarded by many as the crown of philosophy. They affirm that all things come into being either by art or nature or chance, and that the greater things are done by nature and chance, and the lesser things by art, which receiving from nature the greater creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are termed works of art. Their meaning is that fire…
Plato, Laws
States what Australian realism is; the author is tied to Australian realism in the knowledge graph.
Thus idealists deny the existence of matter as something intrinsically different from mind, though they do not deny that our sense-data are signs of something which exists independently of our private sensations. In the following chapter we shall consider briefly the reasons--in my opinion fallacious--which idealists advance in favour of their theory.
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
States what Australian realism is.
Modern philosophy, like ancient, begins with very simple conceptions. It is almost wholly a reflection on self. It might be described as a quickening into life of old words and notions latent in the semi-barbarous Latin, and putting a new meaning into them.
Plato, Meno
The author is tied to Australian realism in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Australian realism
Related ideas
- Gilbert Ryle
- David Stove
- Philosophical realism
- Philosophy
- David Malet Armstrong
- Nominalism
- Platonism
- Ontology
- Plato
- John Anderson (philosopher)
- J. L. Mackie
- Australian National University
- Thales of Miletus
- University of Sydney
- J. J. C. Smart
- Australia
- John Passmore
- Aristotelian realist philosophy of mathematics
- James Franklin (philosopher)
- Ullin Place
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.