Common sense in Thomas Reid

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. 142-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Greco
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Thomas Reid

This paper explains the nature and role of common sense in Reid and uses the exposition to answer some of Reid's critics. The key to defending Reid is to distinguish between two kinds of priority that common sense beliefs are supposed to enjoy. Common sense beliefs enjoy epistemological priority in that they constitute a foundation for knowledge; i.e. they have evidential status without being grounded in further evidence themselves. Common sense beliefs enjoy methodological priority in that they constrain philosophical theory: they serve as pre-theoretical commitments that philosophical theories ought to respect in the absence of good reasons for rejecting them.

Response to Keith Lehrer: Thomas Reid on Common Sense and Morals

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-143
Author(s):  
Esther Kroeker
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
Aesthetic Properties

This paper is a response to Keith Lehrer's ‘Reid on Common Sense and Morals.’ I start by defending the general claim that it is appropriate to call Reid a moral realist. I continue by discussing three aspects of Reid's account of moral ideas. First, our first moral conceptions are non-propositional mental states that are essential ingredients of moral perception. Our first moral conceptions are not gross, indistinct and egocentric but are uninformed mental states that might be about others. Second, moral perception functions like perception of aesthetic properties and of the mental states of other humans, and this kind of perception is both immediate and informed. Third, I discuss the role of moral feelings in moral motivation.

Two Touchstones for Philosophy: Naive Experience and Common Sense

2020 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-42
Author(s):  
René van Woudenberg
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Functional Role ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Thomas Reid

In this paper I explore, in sections 2 and 3, respectively, Herman Dooyeweerd’s notion of naive experience and the notion of common sense as found in the writings of Thomas Reid and G. E. Moore. I argue in section 4 that naive experience and common sense are assigned a structurally similar functional role by their advocates—viz., the role of touchstone for philosophy. In the final section I stage a conversation between Dooyeweerd and Reid about the touchstones they adopt.

Common Sense and Ideal Theory in Seventeenth-Century Scottish Philosophy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Gellera
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Epistemological Views

In the nineteenth century James McCosh and many others identified the Common Sense school with “Scottish philosophy” tout court: the supposedly collective “Scottish” reply to Hume was the rejection of skepticism and Ideal Theory. This chapter addresses the anticipations of the Common Sense school and its broader place in the history of Scottish philosophy. The seventeenth-century Scottish philosophers reacted to Cartesian skepticism with epistemological views which anticipate Thomas Reid: direct realism and perception as a faculty of judgment. Common sense-like views seem to have been a popular strategy against skepticism already before the Common Sense school, thus providing additional evidence for McCosh’s claim of the special role of common sense in the history of Scottish philosophy.

Thomas Reid on Common Sense and Morals

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Lehrer
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Moral Faculty ◽  
Moral Properties

Reid's philosophy of the moral faculty must be interpreted in the context of his philosophical theory concerning the human faculties and their connection with truth. One purpose of this paper is to offer an account of the development of our moral concepts that accords with a proposal of Esther Kroeker (Kroeker 2010) and also my own ( Lehrer 2010 ). Another is to explain how Reid combines an account of the objectivity of moral judgments with the denial of the existence of moral properties, the affirmation of a necessary connection of the moral judgments with sentiment and the accommodation of moral disagreement.

The Legacy of Reid's Common Sense in Analytic Epistemology

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Mark Boespflug
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The Common

The common sense that heavily informs the epistemology of Thomas Reid has been recently hailed as instructive with regard to some of the most fundamental issues in epistemology by a burgeoning segment of analytic epistemologists. These admirers of Reid may be called dogmatists. I highlight three ways in which Reid's approach has been a model to be imitated in the estimation of dogmatists. First, common sense propositions are taken to be the benchmarks of epistemology inasmuch as they constitute paradigm cases of knowledge. Second, dogmatists follow Reid in taking common sense propositions to provide boundaries for philosophical theorizing. Inasmuch as philosophical theorizing leads one to deny a common sense proposition, such theorizing is stepping outside of the bounds of what it can or should do. Third, dogmatists follow Reid in focusing heavily on the problem of skepticism and by responding to it by refusing to answer the demand for a meta-justification that the skeptic wants.

Thomas Reid on Causation and Scientific Explanation

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Barrantes ◽  
Juan M. Durán
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Common

We argue that there is no tension between Reid's description of science and his claim that science is based on the principles of common sense. For Reid, science is rooted in common sense since it is based on the (common sense) idea that fixed laws govern nature. This, however, does not contradict his view that the scientific notions of causation and explanation are fundamentally different from their common sense counterparts. After discussing these points, we dispute with Cobb's ( Cobb 2010 ) and Benbaji's ( Benbaji 2003 ) interpretations of Reid's views on causation and explanation. Finally, we present Reid's views from the perspective of the contemporary debate on scientific explanation.

The Skeptic and The Madman: The Proto‐Pragmatism of Thomas Reid

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Lundestad
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
The Other ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Other Hand

Even though the philosophy of common sense is not justifi able as such, the assump- tion upon which it rests, namely that there are things which we are not in position to doubt is correct. The reason why Thomas Reid was unable to bring this assumption out in a justifi able manner is that his views, both on knowledge and nature, are to be considered dogmatic. American pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey on the other hand, may be seen as offering us a ‘critical’ and post-Darwinian philosophy of common sense.

The “New Empire of Common Sense”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul B. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Joseph Priestley ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy

Although the rise of Scottish common sense philosophy was one of the most important intellectual developments of the Enlightenment, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the reception of Scottish common sense philosophy in the Atlantic world during the second half of the eighteenth century. This chapter focuses on the British context in the period 1764–93, and examines published responses to James Oswald, James Beattie, and, especially, Thomas Reid. The chapter contextualizes the polemics of Joseph Priestley against the three Scots and argues that it was Joseph Berington rather than Priestley who was the first critic to claim that the appeal to common sense was the defining feature of “the Scotch school” of philosophy. It also shows that Reid was widely acknowledged to be the founder and most accomplished exponent of the “school”, whereas Beattie and Oswald were typically dismissed as being derivative thinkers.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document