Buffier, Claude (1661–1737)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Manns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
External World ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
External Reality ◽  
The Common ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy

A French Jesuit who flourished in the early eighteenth century, Buffier developed an outlook that he referred to as common-sense philosophy. While deeply influenced by the philosophies of Descartes and Locke, he saw their reliance on the testimony of inner experience to be conducive to scepticism concerning the external world. In reaction to this, he sought to establish the irrevocable claims of various ‘first truths’, which pointed towards external reality and qualified it in various respects. His work anticipates certain themes that surfaced later in the common-sense philosophy of Thomas Reid.

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.

Beattie, James (1735–1803)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Wood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
The Mind

James Beattie was famed as a moralist and poet in the late eighteenth century, and helped to popularize Scottish common-sense philosophy. At Marischal College, Aberdeen, Beattie cultivated a lecturing style which differed significantly from that of his Aberdonian predecessors. Because he believed that the form of abstract analysis characteristic of the science of the mind in his day often led students into the morass of Humean scepticism, Beattie endeavoured to inculcate sound moral and religious principles through the study of ancient and modern literature. Consequently his version of common-sense philosophy diverged from that developed by Thomas Reid. Beattie was more of a practical moralist than an anatomist of the mind, and his treatment of common-sense epistemology lacked the philosophical range and rigour of Reid’s.

Possible Theological Perspectives in Thomas Reid's Common Sense Philosophy

1990 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
The Common ◽  
Philosophical Writings ◽  
Theological Thinking ◽  
The Way

It is well known that Thomas Reid, premier exponent of the Common Sense school of Scottish philosophy, was an ordained and active minister. Less clear is the role played by theology in the deve opment ofthat philosophy as it matured slowly under his pen, particularly in me most prominent of his works, the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and the Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788), works which range widely over the field of human experience and the nature of reality. When philosophy and theology assumed more distinct and separate identities in the generations which succeeded Reid, it became common for critics of the Common Sense school to base their analyses solely on philosophical foundations and to neglect the theological underpinning which is essential to a fuller and clearer grasp of Keid s position. It would be a useful contribution to more than one discipline were Thomas Reid's philosophy linked more closely to the development and extent of his theological thinking. While his philosophical writings are strewn with theological references in the way typical of the eighteenth century, there is more substance in these references than is usually the case, when divines ofthat age wrote philosophy. That they are much more than casual, conventional embellishments becomes apparent from a careful reading of his works.

Hamilton, William (1788–1856)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.O. Mounce
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
The Mind

Sir William Hamilton was a leading exponent of the Scottish philosophy of ‘common sense’. This philosophy had its origin in the works of Thomas Reid, but it was through Hamilton that it achieved its most subtle form and exerted its greatest influence. ‘Common-sense’ philosophy, on a superficial view, may seem to hold that philosophical problems should be settled by appealing to the commonly accepted opinions of ordinary people. But that is not what it holds. The ‘common sense’ to which it refers are certain powers and beliefs natural to the mind and therefore common alike to the learned and vulgar. Hamilton holds that these powers and beliefs can neither be doubted nor justified. They carry their own authority. This view derives its significance from a point which has often been overlooked. When we doubt or justify a belief, we stand outside that belief and compare it with the world. But the power to compare a belief with the world itself presupposes beliefs about the world. We cannot step outside all our beliefs. That is why, according to Hamilton, certain powers and beliefs must carry authority.

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.

Some thoughts on lexemes, the dome, and inner speech

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Benzon
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
External World ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
The Common

Sydney Lamb’s model focuses our attention on the physicality of language, of the signs themselves as objects in the external world and the neural systems the support them. By means of the metaphor of a cognitive dome, he demonstrates that there is no firm line between linguistic and cognitive structure. In this context, I offer physically grounded accounts of Jakobson’s metalingual and emotive functions. Drawing on Vygotsky’s account of language development, I point out that inner speech, corresponding to the common sense notion of thought, originates in a circuit that goes through the external world and is then internalized.

A Change for the Better

2020 ◽  
pp. 220-246
Author(s):  
Hsueh M. Qu
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
Epistemological Framework ◽  
Internalist Reliabilism

This chapter makes the case that Hume’s epistemological framework in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is superior to that of the Treatise of Human Nature. First, the framework of EHU 12 has strong parallels to contemporary epistemology, in contrast to the Title Principle from THN 1.4.7.11. In particular, aspects of this framework have affinities with Wright-style conservatism, and Steup’s internalist reliabilism. Second, this framework avoids the weaknesses that afflicted the Title Principle: it has adequate foundation, is able to satisfactorily reject superstition, and is founded on truth. Third, unlike its analogue in the Treatise, the epistemological framework of the Enquiry is able to offer a ‘compleat answer’ to Reid and Beattie by denying the common-sense philosophy that is the fundamental basis of their critiques of his philosophy.

Herman Bavinck and Thomas Reid on Perception and Knowing God

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Sutanto
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
External World ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
External Reality ◽  
External Objects ◽  
The World ◽  
Triune God ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
The Way

AbstractNicholas Wolterstorff argues that Kant had erected an epistemological boundary between mental representations and external reality that precipitates an anxiety in modern theologians about whether one can properly refer to God. As a way past this boundary, Wolterstorff's Reformed epistemology retrieves Thomas Reid's account of perception as an alternative to Kant, according to which knowledge of external objects is direct and immediate. Further, Wolterstorff points to the Dutch neo-Calvinist Herman Bavinck as one who bears many “reidian” elements in his epistemology, especially in the way in which Bavinck argues that the epistemic accessibility of the external world ought to be taken for granted. The thesis of this present paper, however, is that a closer investigation of Bavinck's account of perception reveals that he, unlike Reid, accepts the gap between mental representations and external objects, such that representations are those through which we know the world. Bavinck affirms that a correspondence between the two can be obtained by an appeal to the resources found in Christian revelation. In effect, what emerges in a close comparison of Bavinck and Reid is that Bavinck's account is an alternative theological response to the kantian boundary—one according to which mental representations correspond with external objects because both participate in an organically connected cosmos shaped by a Triune God.

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