New Essays on Thomas Reid

Patrick Rysiew, Patrick Rysiew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317509554
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Thomas Reid (1710-96) was a contemporary of both David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and a central figure in the Scottish School of Common Sense. Until recently, his work has been largely neglected, and often misunderstood. Like Kant, Reid cited Hume's Treatise as the main spur to his own philosophical work. In Reid's case, this led him to challenge 'the theory of ideas', which he saw as the cornerstone of Hume's (and many other philosophers') theories. For those familiar with Reid's work, it is clear that its significance extends well beyond his challenging the theory of ideas.

The variety of topics which this book covers attests to the richness and variety of Reid's philosophical contributions, and the persisting relevance of his work to contemporary philosophical debates. The work included in this book, by leading figures in Reid scholarship, deals with aspects of Reid's views on topics ranging from perception, to epistemology, to ethics and meta-ethics, through to language, mind, and metaphysics. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

Introduction

Thomas Reid (1710–1796) was a contemporary of both Hume and Kant. Like Kant, Reid cited Hume’s Treatise as the main spur to his own philosophical work. In Reid’s case, this led him to challenge ‘the theory of ideas’, which he saw as the cornerstone of Hume’s (and many other philosophers’) theories. Indeed, late in his life Reid wrote, in a letter to James Gregory, that,

“…there is some merit in what you are pleased to call my Philosophy; but I think it lies chiefly in having called in question the common theory of Ideas, or Images of things in the mind being the only objects of thought…”¹

For those familiar with Reid’s work, it is clear that its significance extends well beyond his challenging the theory of ideas. The present collection of papers attests to the richness and variety of Reid’s philosophical contributions, and the persisting relevance of his work to contemporary philosophical debates. The original papers included here deal with aspects on Reid’s views on topics ranging from perception, to epistemology, to ethics and meta-ethics, through to language, mind, and metaphysics.

The first trio of papers collected here addresses aspects of Reid’s views on perception. Among the chief errors of previous theories of perception, according to Reid, was a failure to attend to the distinction between sensation and perception. The former have no objects distinct from themselves, according to Reid; but sensation is a normal part of the total perceptual act, which does take a presently existing external thing as its object. In his article, Todd Buras defends this type of ‘dual component’ theory against recent criticisms that have been made by A.D. Smith. Responding to Smith’s criticisms, Buras argues, attests to the resilience, originality, and significance of Reid’s theory. Lorne Falkenstein has a rather less sanguine assessment of the easy response Reid appears to offer to Hume’s ‘table argument’ on behalf of the theory of ideas. According to Falkenstein, while Reid has shown that arguments from perceptual relativity do not tell against the view that our perceptions are caused by external objects, Hume’s reflections on the role of color sensations in our perception of primary qualities undermine the case for direct realism of the sort Reid wished to defend. Color sensations are also at center stage in Giovanni Grandi’s paper. Grandi carefully considers Reid’s claim that our color sensations are neither extended nor arranged in figured patterns. Following John Fearn (1768–1837), Grandi suggests that Reid’s views here may have been driven by his views about the immaterial soul.

Perception looms large as well in Rebecca Copenhaver’s paper. Here, however, the focus is on whether there is a moral sense, according to Reid, and one which strongly parallels what Reid has said about our capacities to perceive both (non-moral) objectual qualities, and aesthetic properties. According to Copenhaver, the answer is an unqualified ‘yes’. While Copenhaver is concerned with the manner of our acquaintance with moral features of the world, Terence Cuneo and Esther Kroecker consider aspects of Reid’s views on moral thought and theory. Cuneo’s paper addresses the question of how we should conceive of the role played by the ‘first principles of morals’ that Reid articulates. Certain passages in Reid suggest that they are supposed to serve as foundational evidential grounds for other (moral) propositions. Cuneo finds this suggestion problematic, and argues that the first principles of morals, or an adherence to them, are better thought of as being somehow constitutive of moral thought, albeit in such a way that moral realism is not compromised. Kroecker, meanwhile, is concerned with the role played by ‘animal motives’ (hunger, a desire for esteem, etc.) in our moral thought and development. Kroecker argues that Reid’s view is a hybrid of sentimentalist and rationalist ideas: while animal motives, and the feelings associated with them, do not ground moral judgments, in their proper extent and directed towards their natural objects, they help us to live well and are guides to virtue.

The next cluster of papers deal with Reid’s epistemological views. Common sense, of course, figures centrally in Reid’s philosophy. However, some of the things Reid says about common sense and common sense beliefs have struck various people, both historical and contemporary, as problematic. John Greco discusses the latter criticisms, and suggests that they can be addressed by clearly distinguishing between two different types of priority that common sense beliefs are supposed to enjoy. Keith Lehrer and Patrick Rysiew are also concerned with common sense in its epistemological guise. But their focus is on Reid’s ‘First Principles of Contingent Truths’. Lehrer seeks to clarify the manner of these principles’ justification, their evidence, and how the latter is both empirical and opposed to ‘externalist’ epistemological theories. The resulting view, according to Lehrer, combines elements of foundationalism, coherentism, fallibilism and nominalism. Rysiew’s paper addresses the interpretive difficulty posed, in particular, by Reid’s first principle #7 – ‘That the natural faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious’ (FP#7). Rysiew offers a novel account of why this principle is needed, and why it is (as Reid says) special, even though it’s often taken simply to summarize some of the principles that precede it. Rounding out this group of papers is Nicholas Wolterstorff’s discussion of the anti-rationalistic theme running through Reid’s philosophical views. Given Reid’s central place in the Scottish Enlightenment, that there is such a strand in his thought might sound paradoxical. As Wolterstorff explains, however, Reid’s account of the etiology of certain beliefs, his response to the sceptic, and his conception of the philosopher’s role, do all involve a marked downgrading of the importance of reason, understood as essentially involving ratiocinative processes.

The final group of papers addresses Reid’s views on mind, language, and metaphysics. According to Reid, the active and intellectual powers – the powers of will and powers of understanding – are always conjoined in practice. Laurent Jaffro addresses the question of whose intelligence is implied by an individual’s exercise of his/her intellectual powers, given that much of our intellectual activity is not up to us. Answering this question, Jaffro argues, brings Reid’s theistic beliefs to the fore. A significant part of Reid’s alternative to ‘the theory of ideas’ was his suggestion that we regard various operations (e.g. perception, language use) as involving the interpretation of ‘signs’. Some of those signs, according to Reid, comprise a ‘natural language’, one that is prior to any ‘artificial’ language (such as English, or Japanese) that humans might invent. John Turri critically examines the latter claim, and places Reid’s views on language within the broader context of Noam Chomsky’s enormously influential linguistic theory. Lastly, René van Woudenberg seeks to clarify and defend Reid’s ‘design principle’, which states, ‘That design and intelligence in the cause may be inferred, with certainty, from marks or signs of it in the effect.’ While the thinking embodied in this principle has come under fire from both historical and contemporary figures, van Woudenberg argues that the real controversy concerns whether and when we do detect marks of design in nature. Van Woudenberg scouts the possibility that disagreements about the principle itself will persist, and considers Reid’s views on the likely causes of such enduring disagreement. The latter, Van Woudenberg suggests, constitute a distinctively Reidian contribution to the current literature on the epistemology of disagreement.

Patrick Rysiew

Note

1.   Wood, Paul (ed.) 2002. The Correspondence of Thomas Reid. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 210.

PERCEPTION
Reidian Dual Component Theory defended

Todd Buras

Department of Philosophy, Baylor University, Waco, TX

For Reid perception, broadly speaking, was a complex of two very different mental states. Calling such views dual component theory, A. D. Smith questions whether any such theory, and whether Reid’s version in particular, is a viable theory of perception. The aim of this paper is to defend Reidian Dual Component Theory from Smith’s critique. Answering Smith’s critique reveals the depth and resilience of Reid’s approach to perception, highlighting specifically the continued interest of his thought about the relationship between sensation and perception, the nature of illusion, the immediacy of perception, and the content of perceptual belief.

1.

Reid’s thought has been the subject of some of the best one-liners in the history of philosophy. Upon reading a portion of Reid’s Inquiry, Hume wryly wished that ‘the Parsons would confine themselves to their old occupation of worrying one another and leave philosophers alone to argue with temper, moderation and good manners’ (Wood 1986, 416). Kant surely pleased a very different sensibility with his fierce chiding of the appeal to common sense as a ‘convenient way to be obstinate and defiant without any insight.’ ‘[S]een in the light of day,’ he jeers, ‘this is nothing but an appeal to the judgment of the crowd—applause at which the philosopher blushes but the popular charlatan struts and triumphs’ (2004, 66). James Mackintosh thankfully preserved Thomas Brown’s barbed estimation of Reid’s contribution: ‘Reid bawled out, We must believe an outer world; but added in a whisper, We can give no reason for our belief. Hume cries out, We can give no reason for such a belief; and whispers, I own we cannot get rid of it’ (1837, 346; quoted in Grave 1960, 109). Joseph Priestley hit closest to home, quipping that Reid’s account of the mind required ‘such a number of independent, arbitrary, and instinctive principles that the very enumeration of them is really tiresome’ (1978, 5–6).

These epigrams make it clear enough that Reid’s ideas have not always persuaded, but not exactly why. Reid has had his champions, not all of whom have been a credit to his legacy;¹ and there certainly have been piecemeal criticisms, often embedded in sympathetic reconstructions.² But carefully argued refutations of Reid’s central ideas are surprisingly hard to find.

A. D. Smith’s engagement of Reid in The Problem of Perception is, arguably, the high-point of this rare genre. Smith’s project brings him into direct confrontation with Reid’s account of perception, which, after thoughtful examination, he rejects as philosophically untenable. Those interested not simply in understanding Reid’s views but in advocating for their abiding significance must confront Smith’s critique. The purpose of this paper is to do so. My aim is to demonstrate that Reid’s understanding of perception is sufficiently resourceful to parry all of Smith’s attacks.

2.

One response Reidians will not be able to make is that Smith’s criticisms rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of his account of perception. To the contrary, Smith’s understanding of Reid’s views is well-informed and deeply illuminating.

Smith engages Reid in search of an adequate direct realist response to arguments from illusion. In illusions we seem to be immediately aware of something that has a feature the mind-independent objects in the vicinity lack. The immediate objects of illusions thus seem to be something other than mind-independent physical objects. Given the similarity between perception and illusions, it is implausible to think the two have different immediate objects. Therefore something other than mind-independent physical objects seem to be the immediate objects of perception as well; or direct realism seems false (2002, 22–27).

Direct realists have challenged each step of such arguments. For reasons space does not permit us to address, Smith thinks the only promising response is to develop an account of perception that distinguishes it clearly from ‘perceptual sensation,’ which it has in common with matching illusions. Differentiating perception from mere sensation, then, is the central project for direct realism, according to Smith (2002, 66).

Enter Reid. Reid undertook the same project for different reasons. The tendency of philosophers to ‘confound’ sensation and perception – to treat these operations as if they were the same – was Reid’s diagnosis of the deepest errors of his opponents (1997, 167; 2002, 210–211). For Reid an adequate theory of perception begins with a clear distinction between sensation and perception – a distinction he delineated as follows.

Sensations are feelings, simple affections of the mind. A sensation and the feeling of it are one and the same thing, for Reid. He distinguishes sensations from all other mental states in terms of their objects. Sensations, he says, are acts of the mind that have no objects distinct from themselves (2002, 36). He distinguishes sensations from one another with respect to their qualitative character (2002, 193–200).

Thanks to the principles of the constitution of our nature, sensations occur as a result of the stimulation of our sense organs. Similar principles ordain that sensations do not usually occur alone. In normal human beings they are accompanied by very different mental acts, acts which do have an object distinct from themselves (1997, 174). If the principles of our constitution did not ordain this pairing, Reid believes we would be merely sentient beings (176). No amount of cogitation on our sensations, in other words, would lead to or produce a mental act worthy of the name ‘perception.’ Indeed, we could neither form the conception of a mind-independent material world, nor ground belief in such a thing (57–58). Yet we are percipient; and for Reid this means that our sensations are followed by a second psychological operation, which he analyzes in terms of conception and belief (2002, 226).

By acts of conception we apprehend and characterize things (2002, 295 and 24); through acts of belief we give assent to the way things are characterized by our conceptions (2002, 406). Not just any act of representing with assent makes us percipient, though. Reid’s account of perception also includes a restriction on the content of the constitutive perceptual acts. Perception requires conception of and belief in the present existence of mind-independent bodies and qualities (2002, 22).

Reid reserves the term ‘perception’ for this second act in the larger perceptual process. Perception, properly speaking, is simply content restricted belief acquisition, i.e., being inspired with conception of and belief in the present existence of mind-independent bodies and their qualities (2002, 22). Given the contingency of the laws pairing perception and sensation, not only could our sensations occur in the absence of perception but our perceptions could occur alongside very different sensations or none at all (1997, 176). Yet, sensations and perceptions are paired by the principles of our constitution. So n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introducation
• 2. Reidian Dual Component Theory defended
• 3. Reid’s response to Hume’s perceptual relativity argument
• 4. The extension of color sensations: Reid, Stewart, and Fearn
• 5. Reid on the moral sense
• 6. Reid on the first principles of morals
• 7. Reid’s moral psychology: animal motives as guides to virtue
• 8. Common sense in Thomas Reid
• 9. Thomas Reid on truth, evidence and first principles
• 10. Reid’s First Principle #7
• 11. Reason and trust in Reid
• 12. Reid on powers of the mind and the person behind the curtain
• 13. Reid on the priority of natural language
• 14. Disagreement, design, and Thomas Reid
• Index