Reid, Thomas (1710–1796)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Rysiew
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Communicative Interaction ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Public Language ◽  
Theory Of Ideas ◽  
George Campbell ◽  
The Individual

Thomas Reid (1710–96) was a contemporary of both Hume and Kant. He was born in Strachan, near Aberdeen, and was a founder and central figure in the Scottish school of common sense philosophy. Educated at Marishal College, Aberdeen, Reid served as Librarian there, and then as Minister at New Machar. While regent at King’s College, Reid cofounded the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, or Wise Club (1758), other members of which included George Campbell, Alexander Gerard, John Stewart and James Beattie. During this period, Reid published his first major work, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764). That same year, he succeeded Adam Smith in the professorship of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow College, where he remained for the rest of his life. Reid published two other major works, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). Reid himself claimed that his main achievement was having called into question the widely held view (‘the theory of ideas’) that the immediate object of thought is always some idea in the mind of the thinker, the sceptical tendencies of which Hume brought to full fruition. But his philosophy contains many important positive contributions beyond that, including an articulation of the first principles of common sense, which he took to be the foundation of all thought and action, philosophical or otherwise. In place of the theory of ideas, Reid defended direct theories of memory and perception. As part of his critique of Hume and his predecessors, Reid articulates a distinction between sensation and perception and provides an account of how experience extends our perceptual powers. Reid rejects a picture of the individual as cut off from the world, and as passively registering various images and feelings. Most of the mind’s operations incorporate judgment, according to Reid. And our judgments, though fallible, yield knowledge of such matters as our nature and wellbeing require, including knowledge of material things and their properties, past events, states of others’ minds, and moral and aesthetic facts. Accompanying the movement away from the excessive, idea-centred individualism of previous theories is the emphasis Reid places on our deeply social nature. This shows up in his insistence that testimony is a basic source of knowledge, that some of the mind’s fundamental operations are essentially social, that humans possess a natural language that provides a pre-reflective, preconventional means of communicative interaction, that the meaning of a term is not an idea but the typically public object to which it refers, and that most of our general conceptions are acquired in the course of learning a public language. Reid insists that the locus of causal power is the agent, and that the self is not merely a material thing being pushed about by laws of nature. Science teaches us about the latter; but such laws are merely the regularities according to which things occur, and it is no part of natural philosophy to inquire into the real, efficient causes of things – that is, the source of motion or change. Our moral and aesthetic judgments are no less objective, and no less capable of truth and falsity, than are our perceptual judgments, and they too are underwritten by first principles. In both his moral and aesthetic theories, Reid relies on comparisons with perception as part of his account of how we acquire the relevant knowledge.

Reid, Thomas (1710–1796)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Gallie
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
First Principles ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Mental Images ◽  
George Campbell ◽  
Five Senses

Thomas Reid, born at Strachan, Aberdeen, was the founder of the Scottish school of Common Sense philosophy. Educated at Marishal College, Aberdeen, he taught at King’s College, Aberdeen until appointed professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow. He was the co-founder of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society or ‘Wise Club’, which counted among its members George Campbell, John Stewart, Alexander Gerard and James Beattie. His most noteworthy early work, An Inquiry into the Human Mind: Or the Principles of Common Sense attracted the attention of David Hume and secured him his professorship. Other important works are Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788). Reid is not the first philosopher to appeal to common sense; Berkeley and Butler are notable British predecessors in this respect, in the discussions of perception and of free will respectively. It fell to Reid, however, to collect and systematize the deliverances of common sense – the first principles, upon the acceptance of which all justification depends – and to provide adequate criteria for that status. Reid insists we rightly rely on our admittedly fallible faculties of judgment, including the five senses, as well as memory, reason, the moral sense and taste, without need of justification. After all, we have no other resources for making judgments, to call upon in justification of this reliance. We cannot dispense with our belief that we are continually existing and sometimes fully responsible agents, influenced by motives rather than overwhelmed by passions or appetites. In Reid’s view major sceptical errors in philosophy arise from downgrading the five senses to mere inlets for mental images – ideas – of external objects, and from downgrading other faculties to mere capacities for having such images or for experiencing feelings. This variety of scepticism ultimately reduces everything to a swirl of mental images and feelings. However we no more conceive such images than perceive or remember them; and our discourse, even in the case of fiction, is not about them either. Names signify individuals or fictional characters rather than images of them; when I envisage a centaur it is an animal I envisage rather than the image of an animal. In particular the information our five senses provide in a direct or non-inferential manner is, certainly in the case of touch, about bodies in space. Reid thus seems to be committed to the position that our individual perceptual judgments are first principles in spite of his admission that our perceptual faculties are fallible. Moreover, moral and aesthetic judgments cannot be mere expressions of feeling if they are to serve their purposes; a moral assessor is not a ‘feeler’. Reid is therefore sure that there are first principles of morals, a view that scarcely fits the extent and degree of actual moral disagreement. Reid offers alternative direct accounts of perception, conception, memory and moral and aesthetic judgment. He stoutly defends our status as continuing responsible agents, claiming that the only genuine causality is agency and that although natural regularities are held to be causes they cannot be full-blooded causes. Continuing persons are not reducible to material entities subject to laws of nature, (pace Priestley); nor does the proper study of responsible agents belong within natural philosophy. Morals may be adequately systematized on a human rights basis according to which private property is not sacrosanct, once moral judgment is recognised to be based on first principles of morals. Judgments of beauty likewise rest on a body of first principles, even though Reid readily allows that there are no properties that all beautiful objects must have in common.

Hume and the Contemporary “Common Sense” Critique of Hume

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorne Falkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Effective Response ◽  
Theory Of Ideas ◽  
George Campbell

This paper examines the principal objections that Hume’s Scots contemporaries, George Campbell, James Beattie, and Thomas Reid raised against his views of testimony, belief, and the “theory of ideas.” In opposition to Kant’s claim that “Reid, Oswald, and Beattie” had “appealed to common sense as an oracle when insight and research [failed them]” and had “[taken] for granted what [Hume] meant to call into doubt while emphatically, and often with great indignation, demonstrating what he had never thought to question” it is shown that, in each case, Hume’s critics understood him correctly and raised serious objections. But it is also shown that Hume’s work contains all the materials necessary to mount an effective response to their objections.

scholarly journals Contemporary Natural Philosophy and Contemporary Idola Mentis

Philosophies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin J. Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Logical Consistency ◽  
Comprehensive Program ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Choices

Contemporary Natural Philosophy is understood here as a project of the pursuit of the integrated description of reality distinguished by the precisely formulated criteria of objectivity, and by the assumption that the statements of this description can be assessed only as true or false according to clearly specified verification procedures established with the exclusive goal of the discrimination between these two logical values, but not with respect to any other norms or values established by the preferences of human collectives or by the individual choices. This distinction assumes only logical consistency, but not completeness. Completeness (i.e., the feasibility to assign true or false value to all possible statements) is desirable, but may be impossible. This paper is not intended as a comprehensive program for the development of the Contemporary Natural Philosophy but rather as a preparation for such program advocating some necessary revisions and extensions of the methodology currently considered as the scientific method. This is the actual focus of the paper and the reason for the reference to Baconian idola mentis. Francis Bacon wrote in Novum Organum about the fallacies obstructing progress of science. The present paper is an attempt to remove obstacles for the Contemporary Natural Philosophy project to which we have assigned the names of the Idols of the Number, the Idols of the Common Sense, and the Idols of the Elephant.

scholarly journals Neoliberalism with Scandinavian characteristics: The slow formation of neoliberal common sense in Denmark

2021 ◽  
pp. 030981682110290
Author(s):  
Rune Møller Stahl
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Alternative Analysis ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Economic Council ◽  
Ideational Change ◽  
Economic Developments

This article describes the ascension of neoliberal economic ideas in the macroeconomic establishment in Denmark. Based on a systematic analysis of documents from the Danish government and the Economic Council from the 1970s to the early 2000s, the article traces the development of the economic ideas and policy instrument that dominate the analytical process of the Danish macroeconomic establishment. The article applies a Gramscian-inspired framework to track the gradual and uneven process under which neoliberal economic ideas became common sense in the Danish context. This framework challenges some of the assumptions of the ideational focus of much constructivist literature, and offers an alternative analysis focused on the legitimating role of economic ideas. As much of the ideational change took place after policy adaptions to international economic developments, the Danish case provides little support for the theory of the causal power of ideas. Rather, it seems as though economic models and ideas are imported as ‘after the fact’ legitimations of changes in policy.

The State of Mishnah Studies

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
AMRAM TROPPER
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Current State ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
The Individual

This chapter examines the current state of research into mishnah, the first major work of rabbinic Judaism. It explains that the mishnah is primarily an edited anthology of brief and often elliptical pronouncements on matters of Jewish law and practice, frequently providing conflicting views on the individual matters discussed. It discusses the six sedarim of the mishnah and mentions that the mishnah frequently digresses from its main topics at every level of the organisational hierarchy.

Talent as Performance

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Haroutounian
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Music Teachers ◽  
Junior High ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Music Aptitude ◽  
Physical Ability ◽  
National Competition ◽  
The Individual ◽  
A Performance

The lovely student pianist was bowing graciously to an appreciative audience of music teachers from across the country. She was the junior high winner of a national competition, and her exquisite playing and careful training was apparent. Her performance was no surprise. It was polished and well prepared. As we rustled our programs, searching for the next performer’s name, the junior high cellist awkwardly stepped on stage, tried to adjust the chair and struggled with an endpin that seemed to enjoy sliding rather than sticking to the floor. After a few uncomfortable moments, she nodded to her accompanist and began to play. This performance was a captivating surprise. From the first notes, the audience was caught up in the enthusiasm, excitement, and connection she made with her cello and the music. As she finished, with a flourished release of the bow, the audience spontaneously rose to its feet, shouting “Bravo.” This young teenager, with the simple cotton dress and awkward entrance, stood transfixed. She looked around at her fellow competition winners to see them on their feet as well. She turned, bowed slightly, and gave a shy smile of appreciation. A musician communicates through performance. The recognition of musical talent through performance makes common sense to anyone who is a musician or teacher of musicians. Music aptitude may measure musical potential, but musical talent is realized through performance. We hear it. Musical talent blends the inborn perceptive capacities of the individual with the physical ability to perform with personal interpretation. Quite simply, a musician or music teacher believes that you can determine talent if you just listen to the student play. In fact, the assessment of musical talent by listening to a performance isn’t quite that simple. It poses a number of problems because of its inherently subjective nature. Performance is a process as well as a product. It is phenomenological. The opening performance of the young cellist was captivating. Why? It could have been the audience’s surprise at hearing a brilliant performance from a student who outwardly didn’t have the trappings of a seasoned competition winner.

Locke, John (1632–1704)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Anstey
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Theory Of Ideas ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
Basic Power

John Locke was the leading English philosopher of the late seventeenth century. His two major works, An Essay concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government, both published in 1690, have exerted enormous influence on subsequent thought, particularly in metaphysics, theory of knowledge and political philosophy. Locke’s writings were central to the philosophy of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and set the terms of reference for modern liberalism. Educated in the arts at Oxford, a friend of Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, and a close associate of the leading politician the first Earl of Shaftesbury, Locke’s intellectual range was broad. He trained as a physician, dabbled in chemistry and botany and throughout his life kept abreast of developments in natural philosophy. At the same time, he developed theories of natural law and religious toleration, contributed to debates on contemporary economic issues, wrote a primer on the philosophy of education, defended the reasonableness of Christianity and maintained an extensive correspondence and intellectual network. It was not until the publication of the Essay when Locke was in his late 50s, however, that he became a public intellectual. The Essay provides an analysis of the scope and limits of the faculty of human understanding, using a sophisticated theory of ideas. It contains four books, the first of which seeks to refute the view that the mind contains innate metaphysical and moral principles. The second book sets out Locke’s theory of ideas and contains original and penetrating treatments of the nature of the will and motivation and the nature of personal identity. It also contains Locke’s theory of material qualities with his famous distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and discussions of the nature of substance, duration, infinity and the association of ideas. Book Three deals with the nature of language, the theory of essences, and provides an account of the way in which humans divide substances into species. Book Four uses the resources set out in the preceding books to develop a theory of knowledge and belief and to explore the differences between faith and reason. Central to Locke’s project is the view that all knowledge is constructed out of ideas. Knowledge in its most basic form is nothing but the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas and ideas can only be acquired through the senses or through introspection on the operations of our minds. Once the understanding is furnished with enough simple ideas from these two sources of experience, it sets about constructing complex ideas, forming propositions out of its various ideas and giving the ideas names. Locke is fundamentally opposed to the view that knowledge and reason begin with a set of basic principles or maxims, such as that the whole is the sum of its parts. This is the motivation for his arguments against the claim that principles are innate. Instead we must construct the principles of all the different sciences from scratch out of our stock of ideas. In the cases of mathematics and morality this can be achieved. In the case of our knowledge of the sorts or species of substances we encounter in the external world, however, we are significantly constrained. This is because our senses are limited and we do not have epistemic access to the inner natures of things. We can see many effects but the underlying causes of those effects, such as magnetism or cohesion, are out of reach. As a result, Locke is pessimistic about the prospects of natural science, though he does believe that the method of experimental philosophy, particularly natural history, gives us the best chance to extend our knowledge of the natural world. Moreover, he believes that of all the speculative systems of natural philosophy, the corpuscular view of matter is the most intelligible. Locke’s political philosophy gives us some insight into his conception of the form that a demonstrative moral philosophy might take. However, the precise relation between the Two Treatises and the Essay remains a controversial issue. The starting point for Locke’s view of the formation of civil society is the natural equality of every human being. We are equal in freedom and equal in both power and obligation with respect to the law of nature. However, in the absence of civil society – that is, in the state of nature – we suffer many inconveniences, particularly with regard to protecting property and applying the law of nature. It is only by consenting to give up our basic power to enforce the law of nature, a power that is common to all, to an authority, that we are able to overcome the inconveniences of the state of nature. In so doing, we secure the integrity of our property, that is, our life, liberty and possessions. The handing over of our basic power does not render us politically impotent however. For, should the government, whether a democracy, oligarchy or monarchy, break the people’s trust, the citizens have a right of resistance and can dissolve the government. Locke’s Two Treatises was published anonymously and did not embroil him in ongoing debate in his own day, though its subsequent influence was profound. The same cannot be said of another anonymous work, his A Letter Concerning Toleration, which argued that religious toleration should be extended to all but atheists and those who submit to foreign authority. The most vigorous reaction to Locke’s writings, however, was to the Essay, particularly to Locke’s account of personal identity as continuity of consciousness and his suggestion that matter fitly disposed might have the power of thought. These two issues are indicative of the rich philosophical resources within the Essay, both in its positive theses and its illustrative material, which have ensured that this work continues to be read and studied with profit today.

Social epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick F. Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Sociology Of Science ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Normative Study ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

Social epistemology is the conceptual and normative study of the relevance to knowledge of social relations, interests and institutions. It is thus to be distinguished from the sociology of knowledge, which is an empirical study of the contingent social conditions or causes of what is commonly taken to be knowledge. Social epistemology revolves around the question of whether knowledge is to be understood individualistically or socially. Epistemology has traditionally ascribed a secondary status to beliefs indebted to social relations – to testimony, expert authority, consensus, common sense and received wisdom. Such beliefs could attain the status of knowledge, if at all, only by being based on first-hand knowledge – that is, knowledge justified by the experience or reason of the individual knower. Since the work of the common sense Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid in the mid-eighteenth century, epistemologists have from time to time taken seriously the idea that beliefs indebted to social relations have a primary and not merely secondary epistemic status. The bulk of work in social epistemology has, however, been done since Thomas Kuhn depicted scientific revolutions as involving social changes in science. Work on the subject since 1980 has been inspired by the ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of science, by feminist epistemology and by the naturalistic epistemology of W.V. Quine. These influences have inspired epistemologists to rethink the role of social relations – especially testimony – in knowledge. The subject that has emerged may be divided into three branches: the place of social factors in the knowledge possessed by individuals; the organization of individuals’ cognitive labour; and the nature of collective knowledge, including common sense, consensus and common, group, communal and impersonal knowledge.

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