The Departmental Meeting...

The Matter at Hand
As departmental secretary to the university’s department of philosophy it fell to me to make a record of the discussion at the recent academic committee meeting. And what a meeting it was! The main item for discussion that day was “the matter at hand”. And this is how things unfolded...
Professor Moore: “I now think it is time to turn to the matter at hand”.
“I object to that!” offered Professor Bradley, more sharply than was normal on these occasions, “There is no ‘matter’ to be ‘at hand’ if by ‘matter’ you intend to refer to some underlying substrate in which sensible properties might inhere. I might give you a ‘hand’ but there is no ‘matter’ to place next to it. Or underneath it. Or anywhere else. And any ‘hand’ that I might concede would be, in any case, part of the inclusive Whole and not to be individuated separately”.
My colleagues appeared restless at this. For Professor Bradley had a point: if we could not agree on the existence of matter then it followed a fortiori that there could be no matter at hand and that further discussion was therefore useless. Luckily Professor Ayer, his thoughts no doubt on a later assignation, was keen to move things along...
Professor Ayer: “We can accept, following Hume, that to talk of ‘matter’ in this way is to talk literal nonsense. There can be no discussion of the ‘matter at hand’ since any proposition in which this term features will be neither analytic nor verifiable. We might however, following Russell, agree to refer instead to the ‘logical construction out of sense data at hand’. Discussion could then proceed in a way that preserves both clarity and an appropriate level of rigour. We can, if you like (and following me) resume discussion of the matter at hand in a way that is analogous to discussion of other minds....” there were nods of assent at this and for a moment it looked as if the day had been saved. But then Professor Ayer not for the first time overreached himself: “...and anyway time is marching on”.
At this there was a sharp intake of breath: we all knew what was coming.
“I would ask you to retract that Sir!” thundered Professor McTaggart “I have on a number of occasions demonstrated that time does not even exist and yet you insist not merely on its existence but further ascribe to it such causal powers as would allow it to “march on”. Time does not “march on”. It does not even pass. I did not come here to be presented by you Sir with an obvious conflation of the A-series with the B-series. Were there such a thing as time you would be wasting mine Sir”.
At this the idealists all sided with Professor McTaggart and insisted that Professor Ayer’s temporal provocation precluded further discussion. The empiricists continued to insist that their objections amounted to mere recalcitrance. Professor Wittgenstein urged that everyone be quiet and, as head of department, Professor Moore appealed in vain for some common sense. It fell to the department’s token Kantian, Professor Strawson, to forge a precarious truce.
Discussion of the matter at hand was in the end deferred until the next meeting of the academic committee where it appears on the agenda as Item 3: “the logical-construction-from-sense-data-at-hand-in-a-way-that-is-ontologically-and-metaphysically-neutral”.