l. THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF EPISTEMOLOGY There is a philosophical issue that surely precedes all other possible questions. It concerns the very possibility of our thinking about some thing to some purpose. Short of this no philosophy, theory or research would be possible. But it is not immediately clear that we are assured that what purports to be effective thought, and cognition is such in reality. What guarantee is there for instance that when one is under the impression that one is thinking that "the cat is on the mat" it is in fact the case that one is thinking this? One could not be...

Franz Brentano 1 was an important philosopher, but for a long time his importance was under-estimated. At least in the English speaking countries, he came to be remembered best as the initiator of a philoso phical position which he in fact abandoned for good and sufficient 2 reasons. His ultimate and most important contributions passed almost unnoticed. Even such a well-informed and well-prepared book as Passmore's IOO Years of Philosophy (Duckworth, I957), is open to the same comment; Passmore concentrated his attention on the early Brentano, because he regarded his influence on the British...

Stanislaw Lesniewski (1886-1939) was one of the leading Polish logicians and founders of the Warsaw School of Logic whose membership included, beside himself, Jan Lukasiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbinski, Alfred Tarski, and many others. In his lifetime LeSniewski published only a few hundred pages. He produced many important results in many areas of mathematics; these stood in various relations to each other, and to materials produced by others, and, in time, created more and more editorial problems. Very many were left unpublished at the time of his death. Then in 1944 in the fire of Warsaw the...

Section 1 One of the big problems facing us is the need to plan for the betterment and improvement of society. In any status quo there are many unsatisfactory moments and experience shows that with changing conditions, even those elements of our communal structure that work well will often get out of step and become a problem. We need then to introduce devices both to alleviate present troubles and, if possible, to anticipate future ones. On the whole, it might appear to the untutored eye that the matter is relatively simple. For instance, if we keep increasing prices of commodities without...

Philosophy flourished in Australia after the war. There was spectacular growth in both the number of departments and the number of philosophers. On top of this philosophy spread beyond the philosophy departments.
Serious studies, and interest in philosophy is now common in faculties as diverse as law, science and education. Neither is this development merely quantitative, the Australian researcher has come of age and contributes widely to international debates. At least one movement originated in Australia.
This makes the study of philosophy in Australia timely, evidenced by the...

Scholars from all the continents have written articles to celebrate the 70th birthday of Jan Srzednicki, a thinker still at the height of his powers. Srzednicki's scientific work alternates between problems of Austrian and German philosophy and questions of political philosophy. The papers published in this volume discuss topics of general philosophy, in the clear and deep style both of Srzednicki's own philosophical work and of the authors investigated in his writings (mainly Brentano and the Polish tradition of analytic philosophy).