EPISTEMOLOGY Thomas Reid on truth, evidence and first principles

2017 ◽  
pp. 168-178
Keyword(s):  
2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. 224-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
René van Woudenberg

This paper argues that Reid's first principle of design can be more widely accepted then one might suppose, due to the fact that it specifies no marks of design. Also it is explicated that the relation of the principle, on the one hand, and properly basic design beliefs on the other, is a relation of presupposition. It is furthermore suggested that Reid's discussion of what can be done in case of disagreement about first principles points to a position that is relevant to the current debates in the Epistemology of Disagreement literature and that merits further elaboration.


2018 ◽  
pp. 108-130
Author(s):  
Keith Lehrer

Is knowledge and justification a matter of isolated intuition or coherence with a background system? One intuitionist, Thomas Reid, failed to acknowledge the controversy. He argued that knowledge was a matter of first principles, which drive intuition, but also claimed that the first principles depended on each other like links in a chain, as a coherentist might. Wilfrid Sellars, a famous coherentist, argued that all knowledge was explained by coherence with a background system, but, on the other hand, conceded that some knowledge claims were justified noninferentially, as an intuitionist might. This book suggests a resolution to the conflict in terms of a kind of knowledge requiring the knower be able to defend the target knowledge claim. The defense rests on exemplar representation of experience, yielding intuition, tied together in a keystone loop within a system to defend that representation, yielding coherence.


2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-217
Author(s):  
Jong Won Kim

Are the first principles in the philosophy of Thomas Reid derived inductively from particular experience, or are they self-evident? Is Reid an epistemic particularist, or a methodist? Some scholars interpret him as an epistemic particularistic, while others hold that he is a methodist like other philosophers of his time. This debate was central to an exchange between Roderick Chisholm and Keith Lehrer. Taking the general belief in personal identity as an example, this paper aims to show which interpretation is more consistent with Reid's whole philosophical system. Although Reid believes that the general belief is self-evident without reasoning, it is not self-evident in the way that beliefs in particular cases are. Reid's overall philosophical method makes the self-evidence of particular beliefs more basic, the self-evidence of general beliefs being transferred from particular beliefs by means of habit. I conclude that the particularistic interpretation is more consistent with his whole philosophical system than the methodist interpretation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. 156-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Lehrer

Reid had a theory of the human mind containing a theory of truth, both of our evidence of truth and the conditions of truth, fully consistent with empiricism. The justification and evidence of first principles is something felt in consciousness rather than some external relation. This is the result of our faculties, original and natural powers of our constitution. Original convictions and conceptions arise from our faculties in response to experience as a result of our natural development. Reid combines elements of foundationalism, coherentism, falliblism and nominalism. I distinguish and compare Reid to Hume, Moore, Quine, James and Wittgenstein.


1998 ◽  
Vol 93 (6) ◽  
pp. 947-954 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.J. ADAM ◽  
S.J. CLARK ◽  
M.R. WILSON ◽  
G.J. ACKLAND ◽  
J. CRAIN

1998 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 1063-1075
Author(s):  
W. C. Mackrodt, E.-A. Williamson, D. W

1997 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-174
Author(s):  
Terri Gullickson
Keyword(s):  

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