Thomas Reid
Encyclopedia
The Reverend Thomas Reid FRSE (7 May (26 April O.S.
) 1710 – 7 October 1796), was a religiously trained Scottish
philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume
, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment
. The early part of his life was spent in Aberdeen
, Scotland
, where he created the 'Wise Club' (a literary-philosophical association) and graduated from the University of Aberdeen
. He was given a professorship at King's College, Aberdeen
in 1752, where he wrote An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (published in 1764). Shortly afterward he was given the prestigious Professorship of Moral Philosophy
at the University of Glasgow
when he was called to replace Adam Smith
. He resigned from this position in 1781.
Reid believed that common sense
(in a special philosophical sense of sensus communis
) is, or at least should be, at the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He disagreed with Hume, who asserted that we can never know what an external world consists of as our knowledge is limited to the ideas in the mind, and George Berkeley
, who asserted that the external world is merely ideas in the mind. By contrast, Reid claimed that the foundations upon which our sensus communis are built justify our belief that there is an external world.
In his day and for some years into the 19th century, he was regarded as more important than David Hume
. He advocated direct realism, or common sense realism
, and argued strongly against the Theory of Ideas
advocated by John Locke
, René Descartes
, and (in varying forms) nearly all Early Modern philosophers
who came after them. He had a great admiration for Hume and had a mutual friend send Hume an early manuscript of his (Reid's) Inquiry. Hume responded that the "deeply philosophical" work "is wrote in a lively and entertaining matter," but that "there seems to be some defect in method," and criticized Reid for implying the presence of innate ideas.
in its emphasis on the agency of the subject and self-control. He often quotes Cicero
, from whom he adopted the term "sensus communis
". Reid's answer to Hume's skeptical and naturalist arguments was to enumerate a set of principles of common sense (sensus communis) which constitute the foundations of rational thought. Anyone who undertakes a philosophical argument, for example, must implicitly presuppose certain beliefs like, "I am talking to a real person," and "There is an external world whose laws do not change," among many other positive, substantive claims. For Reid, the belief in the truth of these principles is not rational; rather, reason itself demands these principles as prerequisites, as does the innate "constitution" of the human mind. It is for this reason (and possibly a mocking attitude toward Hume and Berkeley) that Reid sees belief in the principles of common sense as a litmus test for sanity. For example, in The Intellectual Powers of Man he states, “For, before men can reason together, they must agree in first principles; and it is impossible to reason with a man who has no principles in common with you.” One of the first principles he goes on to list is that “qualities must necessarily be in something that is figured, coloured, hard or soft, that moves or resists. It is not to these qualities, but to that which is the subject of them, that we give the name body. If any man should think fit to deny that these things are qualities, or that they require any subject, I leave him to enjoy his opinion as a man who denies first principles, and is not fit to be reasoned with.”
Reid also made positive arguments based in phenomenological insight to put forth a novel mixture of direct realism and ordinary language philosophy
. In a typical passage in the Intellectual Powers he asserts that when he has a conception of a centaur, the thing he conceives is an animal, and no idea is an animal; therefore, the thing he conceives is not an idea, but a centaur. This point relies both on an account of the subjective experience of conceiving an object and also on an account of what we mean when we use words. Because Reid saw his philosophy as publicly accessible knowledge, available both through introspection and the proper understanding of how language is used, he saw it as the philosophy of common sense.
It has been claimed that his reputation waned after attacks on the Scottish School of Common Sense by Immanuel Kant
(although Kant, only 14 years Reid's junior, also bestowed much praise on Scottish philosophy) and by John Stuart Mill
. But Reid's was the philosophy taught in the colleges of North America during the 19th century and was championed by Victor Cousin
, a French philosopher. Justus Buchler has shown that Reid was an important influence on the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, who shared Reid's concern to revalue common sense and whose work links Reid to pragmatism
. To Peirce, conceptions of truth and the real involve the notion of a community without definite limits (and thus potentially self-correcting as far as needed), and capable of a definite increase of knowledge. Common sense is socially evolved, open to verification much like scientific method, and constantly evolving, as evidence, perception, and practice warrant, albeit with a slowness that Peirce came only in later years to see, at which point he owned his "adhesion, under inevitable modification, to the opinion of...Thomas Reid, in the matter of Common Sense" (Peirce called his version "critical common-sensism"). By contrast, on Reid's concept, the sensus communis is not a social evolutionary product but rather a precondition of the possibility that humans could reason with each other.
Reid's reputation has revived in the wake of the advocacy of common sense as a philosophical method or criterion by G. E. Moore early in the 20th century, and more recently because of the attention given to Reid by contemporary philosophers, in particular philosophers of religion in the school of Reformed epistemology
such as William Alston
, Alvin Plantinga
, and Nicholas Wolterstorff
, seeking to rebut charges that theistic belief is irrational where it has no doxastic foundations (that is, where that belief is not inferred from other adequately grounded beliefs).
He wrote a number of important philosophical works, including Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764, Glasgow & London), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). In 1844, Schopenhauer praised Reid for explaining that the perception of external objects does not result from the raw data that is received through the five senses:
and the metaphysics of personal identity. Reid held an incompatibilist
or libertarian notion of freedom, holding that we are capable of free actions of which we are the cause, and for which we are morally appraisable. Regarding personal identity, he rejected Locke's account that self-consciousness in the form of memory of one's experiences was the basis of a person's being identical with their self over time. Reid held that continuity of memory was neither necessary nor sufficient to make one numerically the same person at different times.
Until recently the standard edition of the Inquiry and the Essays has been the sixth edition of William Hamilton (ed.), Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart, 1863. A new critical edition of these titles, plus correspondence and other important material, is being brought out by Edinburgh University Press as The Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid. An accessible selection from Hamilton's 6th ed. is Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays, ed. Ronald Beanblossom and Keith Lehrer, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1983.
Old Style and New Style dates
Old Style and New Style are used in English language historical studies either to indicate that the start of the Julian year has been adjusted to start on 1 January even though documents written at the time use a different start of year ; or to indicate that a date conforms to the Julian...
) 1710 – 7 October 1796), was a religiously trained Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment
Scottish Enlightenment
The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By 1750, Scots were among the most literate citizens of Europe, with an estimated 75% level of literacy...
. The early part of his life was spent in Aberdeen
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, where he created the 'Wise Club' (a literary-philosophical association) and graduated from the University of Aberdeen
University of Aberdeen
The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...
. He was given a professorship at King's College, Aberdeen
King's College, Aberdeen
King's College in Old Aberdeen, Scotland is a formerly independent university founded in 1495 and an integral part of the University of Aberdeen...
in 1752, where he wrote An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (published in 1764). Shortly afterward he was given the prestigious Professorship of Moral Philosophy
Professor of Moral Philosophy, Glasgow
The Chair of Moral Philosophy is a professorship at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, which was established in 1727.The Nova Erectio of King James VI of Scotland shared the teaching of Moral Philosophy, Logic and Natural Philosophy among the Regents...
at the University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
when he was called to replace Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
. He resigned from this position in 1781.
Reid believed that common sense
Common sense
Common sense is defined by Merriam-Webster as, "sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts." Thus, "common sense" equates to the knowledge and experience which most people already have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have...
(in a special philosophical sense of sensus communis
Sensus communis
Sensus communis is a philosophical term originally used to refer to the perceptual power of binding the inputs of the individual sense organs into a coherent and intelligible representation. The term originates with Aristotle...
) is, or at least should be, at the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He disagreed with Hume, who asserted that we can never know what an external world consists of as our knowledge is limited to the ideas in the mind, and George Berkeley
George Berkeley
George Berkeley , also known as Bishop Berkeley , was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism"...
, who asserted that the external world is merely ideas in the mind. By contrast, Reid claimed that the foundations upon which our sensus communis are built justify our belief that there is an external world.
In his day and for some years into the 19th century, he was regarded as more important than David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
. He advocated direct realism, or common sense realism
Naïve realism
Naïve realism, also known as direct realism or common sense realism, is a philosophy of mind rooted in a common sense theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world...
, and argued strongly against the Theory of Ideas
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
advocated by John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
, René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
, and (in varying forms) nearly all Early Modern philosophers
17th-century philosophy
17th-century philosophy in the Western world is generally regarded as being the start of modern philosophy, and a departure from the medieval approach, especially Scholasticism....
who came after them. He had a great admiration for Hume and had a mutual friend send Hume an early manuscript of his (Reid's) Inquiry. Hume responded that the "deeply philosophical" work "is wrote in a lively and entertaining matter," but that "there seems to be some defect in method," and criticized Reid for implying the presence of innate ideas.
Thomas Reid's theory of common sense
His theory of knowledge had a strong influence on his theory of morals. He thought epistemology was an introductory part to practical ethics: When we are confirmed in our common beliefs by philosophy, all we have to do is to act according to them, because we know what is right. His moral philosophy is reminiscent of Latin stoicismStoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
in its emphasis on the agency of the subject and self-control. He often quotes Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
, from whom he adopted the term "sensus communis
Sensus communis
Sensus communis is a philosophical term originally used to refer to the perceptual power of binding the inputs of the individual sense organs into a coherent and intelligible representation. The term originates with Aristotle...
". Reid's answer to Hume's skeptical and naturalist arguments was to enumerate a set of principles of common sense (sensus communis) which constitute the foundations of rational thought. Anyone who undertakes a philosophical argument, for example, must implicitly presuppose certain beliefs like, "I am talking to a real person," and "There is an external world whose laws do not change," among many other positive, substantive claims. For Reid, the belief in the truth of these principles is not rational; rather, reason itself demands these principles as prerequisites, as does the innate "constitution" of the human mind. It is for this reason (and possibly a mocking attitude toward Hume and Berkeley) that Reid sees belief in the principles of common sense as a litmus test for sanity. For example, in The Intellectual Powers of Man he states, “For, before men can reason together, they must agree in first principles; and it is impossible to reason with a man who has no principles in common with you.” One of the first principles he goes on to list is that “qualities must necessarily be in something that is figured, coloured, hard or soft, that moves or resists. It is not to these qualities, but to that which is the subject of them, that we give the name body. If any man should think fit to deny that these things are qualities, or that they require any subject, I leave him to enjoy his opinion as a man who denies first principles, and is not fit to be reasoned with.”
Reid also made positive arguments based in phenomenological insight to put forth a novel mixture of direct realism and ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy is a philosophical school that approaches traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting what words actually mean in everyday use....
. In a typical passage in the Intellectual Powers he asserts that when he has a conception of a centaur, the thing he conceives is an animal, and no idea is an animal; therefore, the thing he conceives is not an idea, but a centaur. This point relies both on an account of the subjective experience of conceiving an object and also on an account of what we mean when we use words. Because Reid saw his philosophy as publicly accessible knowledge, available both through introspection and the proper understanding of how language is used, he saw it as the philosophy of common sense.
It has been claimed that his reputation waned after attacks on the Scottish School of Common Sense by Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
(although Kant, only 14 years Reid's junior, also bestowed much praise on Scottish philosophy) and by John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
. But Reid's was the philosophy taught in the colleges of North America during the 19th century and was championed by Victor Cousin
Victor Cousin
Victor Cousin was a French philosopher. He was a proponent of Scottish Common Sense Realism and had an important influence on French educational policy.-Early life:...
, a French philosopher. Justus Buchler has shown that Reid was an important influence on the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, who shared Reid's concern to revalue common sense and whose work links Reid to pragmatism
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
. To Peirce, conceptions of truth and the real involve the notion of a community without definite limits (and thus potentially self-correcting as far as needed), and capable of a definite increase of knowledge. Common sense is socially evolved, open to verification much like scientific method, and constantly evolving, as evidence, perception, and practice warrant, albeit with a slowness that Peirce came only in later years to see, at which point he owned his "adhesion, under inevitable modification, to the opinion of...Thomas Reid, in the matter of Common Sense" (Peirce called his version "critical common-sensism"). By contrast, on Reid's concept, the sensus communis is not a social evolutionary product but rather a precondition of the possibility that humans could reason with each other.
Reid's reputation has revived in the wake of the advocacy of common sense as a philosophical method or criterion by G. E. Moore early in the 20th century, and more recently because of the attention given to Reid by contemporary philosophers, in particular philosophers of religion in the school of Reformed epistemology
Reformed epistemology
In the philosophy of religion, reformed epistemology is a school of thought regarding the epistemology of belief in God put forward by a group of Protestant Christian philosophers, most notably, Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff and Michael C. Rea...
such as William Alston
William Alston
William Payne Alston was an American philosopher. He made influential contributions to the philosophy of language, epistemology and Christian philosophy. He earned his Ph.D...
, Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Carl Plantinga is an American analytic philosopher and the emeritus John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics, and Christian apologetics...
, and Nicholas Wolterstorff
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Nicholas Wolterstorff is an American philosopher and currently the Noah Porter Emeritus Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University...
, seeking to rebut charges that theistic belief is irrational where it has no doxastic foundations (that is, where that belief is not inferred from other adequately grounded beliefs).
He wrote a number of important philosophical works, including Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764, Glasgow & London), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). In 1844, Schopenhauer praised Reid for explaining that the perception of external objects does not result from the raw data that is received through the five senses:
Other philosophical positions
Though known mainly for his epistemology, Reid is also noted for his views in the theory of actionAction theory (philosophy)
Action theory is an area in philosophy concerned with theories about the processes causing willful human bodily movements of more or less complex kind. This area of thought has attracted the strong interest of philosophers ever since Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics...
and the metaphysics of personal identity. Reid held an incompatibilist
Incompatibilism
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that people have a free will. Strictly speaking, there is a dichotomy between determinism and free will where philosophers must choose one or the other...
or libertarian notion of freedom, holding that we are capable of free actions of which we are the cause, and for which we are morally appraisable. Regarding personal identity, he rejected Locke's account that self-consciousness in the form of memory of one's experiences was the basis of a person's being identical with their self over time. Reid held that continuity of memory was neither necessary nor sufficient to make one numerically the same person at different times.
Reid's works
- 1764. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense.
- 1785. Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man.
- 1788. Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind.
Until recently the standard edition of the Inquiry and the Essays has been the sixth edition of William Hamilton (ed.), Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart, 1863. A new critical edition of these titles, plus correspondence and other important material, is being brought out by Edinburgh University Press as The Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid. An accessible selection from Hamilton's 6th ed. is Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays, ed. Ronald Beanblossom and Keith Lehrer, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1983.
Further reading
- Barker, StephenStephen Francis BarkerStephen Francis Barker is an American philosopher of mathematics, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and a former faculty member at the University of Virginia and Ohio State University....
& Tom Beauchamp, eds., "Thomas Reid: Critical Interpretations" (1976). - Daniels, Norman. Thomas Reid's Inquiry:The Geometrey of Visibles and the Case for Realism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
- Davis, William C., Thomas Reid’s Ethics: Moral Epistemology on Legal Foundations. Continuum International, 2006. ISBN 0-826488-09-9
- Ducheyne, Steffen. "Reid’s Adaptation and Radicalization of Newton’s Natural Philosophy". History of European Ideas 32 (2006) 173–189.
- Haldane, John. "Reid, Scholasticism, and Current Philosophy of Mind" in M. Delgano and E. Matthews, eds., The Philosophy of Thomas Reid. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989.
- Lehrer, Keith. Thomas Reid. London: Routledge, 1989.
- Rowe, William. Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
- Wolterstorff, N. Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
External links
- The Reid Project at the University of AberdeenUniversity of AberdeenThe University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...
. - Redacted texts of Thomas Reid by Jonathan BennettJonathan Bennett (philosopher)Jonathan Francis Bennett is a British philosopher of language and metaphysics, and a historian of early modern philosophy.Born in Greymouth, New Zealand, Bennett was educated at the University of Oxford. He has taught at the University of Cambridge , Simon Fraser University , the University of...
in current, modern English. - Reid @ Google Books
- The Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid – critical edition of Reid's philosophical treatises and previously unpublished materials