## 1. Philosophical Method


### 1.1 Common Sense and First Principles




Reid often articulates his theoretical positions in terms defending
common sense and the "opinions of the vulgar". Indeed, he
is often described as a "common sense philosopher". This
reputation owes less to the philosophical uses Reid makes of common
sense than to fellow Scotsman James Beattie, who popularized common
sense in his very widely read *An Essay on The Nature and
Immutability of Truth In Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism*
(1770). Even today it is easy to overestimate and to misunderstand the
role of common sense in Thomas Reid's philosophical system.




The most important use of the term "common sense" in Reid
occurs in the context of his epistemology and his philosophical
method. Here it refers to a select set of intuitive judgments. Reid
calls these variously "*first principles, principles of
common sense, common notions,* [or] *self-evident
truths*" (*Essays on the Intellectual Powers*,
abbreviated 'EIP', 6.4, 452). Common sense first principles are
identifiable because they typically possess a suite of additional
traits (traits, note, not necessary conditions) as follows. Denial of
a common sense principle is not only false but absurd (EIP 6.4,
462). A common sense judgment is "necessary to all men for
their being and preservation, and therefore it is unconditionally
given to all men by the Author of Nature" (EIP 4.6, 412). Common
sense intuitive judgments are "no sooner understood than they
are believed. The judgment follows the apprehension of them
necessarily, and both are equally the work of nature, and the result
of our original powers" (EIP 6.4, 452).




Common sense principles possess "the consent of ages and
nations, of the learned and unlearned, [which] ought to have great
authority with regard to first principles, where every man is a
competent judge" (EIP 6.4, 464). Common sense principles are
common sense because, but not only because, they are common to
humanity. Reid's account of common sense does not itself approach the
status of a philosophical or psychological theory. Though his
commitment to common sense forms a key component in his philosophical
method, a deeper methodological principle clearly underlies his appeal
to common sense. Reid attempts to build his fallibilist,
foundationalist account of empirical knowledge while working under an
empiricist constraint that prohibits speculative use of a priori
reason. As a result, Reid's reference to beliefs held in common across
time and place, across culture and religion, functions as *an
empirically justified generalization about species-typical features of
human cognition*.




Though this marks a point commonly neglected in the interpretation of
Reid, one can often find, in his discussion of common sense, emphasis
on empirical generalizations from observable data about what people
believe and how they behave. For example, he writes, "The
universality of these opinions, and of many such that might be named,
is sufficiently evident, from the whole tenor of human conduct, as far
as our acquaintance reaches, and from the history of all ages and
nations of which we have any records" (EIP 6.4, 466). Laying
stress upon his claim about the universality of certain beliefs across
our species has opened Reid up to tiresome criticism that began in his
lifetime and continues to the present of the following sort: Reid's
appeals to common sense are little more than affirmations of majority
opinion or appeals to the masses, but these are fallacious, so his
inferences from such principles are defeated. Reid corrects this
misunderstanding by emphasizing the fact that his first principles are
psychological generalizations about belief formation applicable to
most of our species (EIP 6.4, 464-5).




Reid often appeals to the structure of languages as evidence for
generalizations about human cognition, belief, and descriptive
metaphysics. Language, being something so widely shared, offers an
abundance of data for observation. Reid finds many commonalities
across languages. (The connection between ordinary language and common
sense that Reid espouses was of great influence on such later
philosophers as G. E. Moore and J. L. Austin.) Reid does not believe,
however, that every feature of ordinary language is indicative of some
important tenet of common sense (EIP 1.1, 26-27). Reid often suggests
that the relevant features are those that can be found in "the
structure of all languages", suggesting that the linguistic
features of relevance are features of syntactic structure shared among
languages. Reid says there is some important difference between the
active and the passive, since "all languages" have a
passive and active voice. All languages distinguish between qualities
of things and the things themselves (EIP 6.4, 466). This suggests that
certain universal features of the syntactic structure of languages
inform us of a common sense cognitive commitment, even if it is
implicit.



 
Most of Reid's first principles of contingent truth take the form of
Principle 5, which reads "That those things do really exist
which we distinctly perceive by our senses, and are what we perceive
them to be" (EIP 6.5, 476). Such common sense first principles
are intended to be *more than merely generalizations* about how
humans across cultures form beliefs. Reid intends these *general
principles to provide evidence for particular beliefs*. Thus
Principle 5 issues in the self-evident belief, for example, that I
perceive a computer before me (Van Cleve 1999). As a result, Reid's
philosophical method accords with common sense insofar as everyday
perceptual beliefs are evident or self-evident.




An implication of Reid's application of his common sense method to
first principles is that Reid is not concerned to answer questions of
justification that appear pressing to contemporary epistemologists. He
is not, for instance, interested in providing a refutation of
skepticism about the external world by appeal to first
principles. Reid believes he can refute skeptical hypotheses--such as
Descartes's hypothesis of an evil demon who makes us believe that the
world is the way we take it to be when it is really vastly
different--simply by showing that such a hypothesis is no more likely
to be true than the common-sensical belief that the world is much the
way we perceive it to be. Since the belief in the external world is a
dictate of common sense, it is, Reid thinks, as justified as it needs
to be when it is shown to be on the same footing as any
alternative. Justification, therefore, does not necessarily require
providing positive reasons in favor of common-sensical beliefs; common
sense beliefs could be adequately justified simply by undermining the
force of the reasons in favor of alternatives to common sense. In
fact, as we move through this entry, we will witness Reid's repeated
deployment of this strategy in the form of burden-of-proof arguments
against his major foil, the Way of Ideas. Common sense constrains,
rather than dictates, acceptable philosophical positions.



 
A number of additional problems remain in accounting for Reid's appeal
to common sense and in his treatment of first principles. For example,
a number of comments Reid makes indicate that he appears to have a
psychological conception of evidence whereby what is evident forces
assent. He writes, "[The different kinds of evidence] seem to me
to agree only in this, that they are fitted by nature to produce
belief in the human mind" (EIP 2.20, 292). Just what he means,
then, by terms "evident" and "self-evident"
(terms he greatly prefers to the more contemporary
"justification" and "knowledge") is an issue
meriting further research.


### 1.2 Newtonianism and Empiricism




The relations between one's first principles, the perceived
aims--and limits--of natural philosophy, and one's religious
background came together in eighteenth-century Great Britain to issue
in a number of different philosophical stances. Typically these
stances are framed as various commitments to Newton and
Newtonianism. Hume and MacLaurin believe the *mind's
operations* are to be studied with broadly observational Newtonian
methods, though this leads them to forms of local
skepticism. Priestley and Hartley apply Newtonianism not only to the
operations of the mind but to the *mind's substance* via
materialist commitments. Reid's teacher George Turnbull adopted
Newtonianism and was led to Berkeleyan idealism by many of Berkeley's
own common-sense commitments. Wanting both the world and knowledge of
it in his philosophical system, Reid was at pains to articulate his
account of both common sense and Newtonianism. Unlike most British
Empiricists, Reid read, understood, and taught Newton's writings. To
understand Reid's philosophical method, not to mention his philosophy
of science, one must understand core features of Reid's Newtonianism
(Callergard, 2010) and, perhaps, how Reid altered Newton's own
method (Ducheyne 2006).




First, Reid is committed to the positive role of mathematics in
stating and testing theories. Only in that field do we "find no
sects, no contrary systems, and hardly any disputes" (EIP 6.4,
457). Newton's greatness lies in part due to the fact that he places
physics upon firm mathematical ground, in sharp contrast to Cartesian
physics, its leading competitor of the time. Second, Reid says that
issues about causation are not issues physics should attempt to
resolve. This counterintuitive commitment is explained by the fact
that Reid believes *causes*, when that term is used properly,
are *efficient causes* (*The Correspondence of Thomas
Reid*, abbreviated '*Correspondence*' below, 2006,
158). Not only this, efficient causes are only ever agents (EAP 1.5,
30-32; for more about this, see 4. Causation and
Free Will, below). Reid attributes this position to Newton. Reid
mentions on many occasions, and with a certain pride, that Newtonian
science does not permit knowledge of causes of phenomena, for example,
the motion of the compass needle or the attraction of two bodies. Here
and elsewhere Reid frequently speaks with the scientists and uses
'cause' in a colloquial way to refer to physical causes; in doing so,
he explicitly follows David Hume's lead. More often, however, Reid
urges readers to think of scientific explanation in terms of laws, as
Newton had done. Laws are true general propositions used to explain
appearances (*Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation* 1996,
187). Physics does not aim to find efficient causes. By dispensing
with causes and amplifying the explanatory value and empirical
justification of statements of laws, Reid's account is regarded as a
forerunner to a deductive-nomological model of explanation.




Third, related, when one event produces another event, e.g. fertilizer
enables better plant growth, Reid strongly resists describing that
interaction as *necessary* (*The Correspondence of Thomas
Reid* 2006, 234, 243). One event may be constantly conjoined to
another event, but it is a mistake to believe that this forms any
necessity. Fourth, unlike nearly all other Early Modern philosophers
traditionally taught in the canon, Reid was an avowed experimentalist,
made so by borrowing Newton's methods in *Opticks*, and
conducted experiments to provide evidence for his claims about the
nature of the mind, perception and agency. Reid was active in his
community, bringing his penchant for knowledge through experimentation
to meetings in Aberdeenshire in which experimental techniques in
farming were debated. Fifth, Reid understands Newtonian physics to
offer partial confirmation to some beliefs about God and God's
relation to the world. Newtonian natural science's role in this
connection is to provide evidence for belief that our solar system is
orderly and well-governed. (See 8. Philosophy of
Religion below).




Stating central features of Reid's commitment to Newtonianism goes a
long way to understanding Reid's empiricism and science since Reid
attributes most of his own views about these matters to
Newton. Despite the fact that with a few notable exceptions Reid
scholars have neglected issues in his philosophy of science, a few key
controversies have emerged and merit brief mention. First, Reid was
embroiled in clashes with other thinkers and correspondents about the
scope of Newton's *Regulae Philosophandi*. Interpretations
differed considerably, as did the translations and restatements of the
rules themselves. Given that after Bacon's work,
Newton's *Regulae* formed the most important statement on
method in natural philosophy to be found in the Early Modern period,
Reid was quick to defend his interpretation of these rules against
alternate uses by Priestley and others.




Reid translates Newton's first rule from Latin as "No more
causes, nor any other causes of natural effects ought to be admitted,
but such as are both true, and are sufficient for explaining their
appearances" and adds in his own voice, "This is a golden
rule; it is the true and proper test, by which what is sound and solid
in philosophy may be distinguished from what is hollow and vain"
(EIP 1.3, 51). Reid expands the intended scope of this rule saying
that it is a "fundamental principle in our enquiries into the
structure of the mind, and its operations" (EIP 1.3,
51). Occurring in the introductory portion of his *Essays on
Intellectual Powers*, he would go on to use and reuse it countless
times in what followed. He also describes Newton's first rule as
"a dictate of common sense" (EIP 2.6, 102). Proponents of
the Way of Ideas fail to abide by Newton's first rule when they
endorse the existence of ideas because the existence of ideas is an
hypothesis and lacks evidence.



 
Another area of controversy in Reid's empiricism involves the
grounding of his belief to the effect that ether does not exist. Ether
appears to represent just the sort of posit (originally by Descartes
in *Principles of Philosophy*) that Newtonians often enjoyed
sweeping into the trash. Lacking any observational evidence for ether,
Descartes posits ether as a medium through which forces can act on
bodies that are not in direct contact. But does Reid reject ether
theory *on the grounds that it is unobservable* and therefore
does not belong in a Newtonian science, or does he reject ether
theory *because scientists as yet lack justificatory observations
on its behalf*? Reid's apparent hostility to
"hypotheses" in philosophy and "efficient
causes" in natural philosophy gives rise to the belief that Reid
does not believe that forces should be allowed into philosophy. The
answer to this question can resolve that issue and assist in locating
Reid's philosophy of science on the positivist/realist spectrum.




The first rule does not entail that unobservables like ether, subtile
fluids, or forces do not or cannot have explanatory force, let alone
that unobservables do not exist. Reid is explicit that questions about
the existence of ether were open questions that were not settled by a
priori (EIP 2.3, 82). Physical forces and causes do exist and may
yield their secrets to science in the form of purely physical forces
of attraction (*An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of
Common Sense*, abbreviated to 'IHM', 7, 211). This has two
corollaries of considerable importance for understanding Reid's
methods. First, the fact that Reid admits that these forces of
attraction--unobservable, immaterial forces--may be physical
implies that he is comfortable with a physical explanation of
gravitation that does not entail the existence of God. Second,
physical forces will not yield their secrets to an impoverished
Cartesian science. This criticism is made on the grounds that
Cartesians were attempting to understand gravitational attraction in
terms of only extension, figure and motion--for Reid, a
catastrophic mistake. In fact, Reid's criticism of the Cartesians has
provided a clue for an account of Reidian forces as irreducible
properties of matter (Callergard 2005, 2010).


## 2. Conception




Reid's theory of conception is at the heart of his philosophical
system and his faculty psychology. The term 'faculty psychology'
refers, at least for Reid, to both the distinction of certain
belief-forming systems from others, and the explanatory utility
purchased with such a set of distinctions. While faculty psychology
appears to be an obvious way to scientifically study the senses,
Reid's study of intellectual powers--memory, judgment,
abstraction--under the umbrella of faculty psychology was not
obvious. Reid would face pointed criticism for multiplying faculties,
but this consequence was more than outweighed by the explanatory
utility of separating mental powers--their inputs, their
operations, and their outputs--from one another.



 
The most ubiquitous mental power is that of *conception*. Our
suite of intellectual faculties supports a wide variety of mental
events. Acts of conceiving are embedded in most of them. Whether
judging that there is a tree before me, imagining there is a tree
before me, or reasoning to a generalization that all trees have roots,
these mental events employ the faculty of conception. It is in virtue
of conception that the first of these mental states is about the
proposition there is a tree before me; that the second mental state
takes as its object a non-existent tree; and that the third uses a
general conception of 'tree'. The Way of Ideas teaches, wrongly, that
acts of perception temporally begin with an act of simple apprehension
"and that after we have got simple apprehensions, by comparing
them together, we perceive agreements or disagreements between
them," but, Reid continues, "this appears to me to be all
fiction, without any foundation in nature" (IHM 2.4,
29). Instead, simple apprehension--the basic form of
conception--is bundled within typical acts of perception. The
model of conception received from the Way of Ideas marks its first
long step into two types of skepticism.



 
Note that the set of commitments that Reid refers to as "The Way
of Ideas" and the "Ideal Theory" is drawn form the
work of Locke, Berkeley, Hume and many others going back to Plato and
Aristotle. Its principle commitment is to mental representations,
called 'ideas' or 'images', that are believed
to mediate all our experience of the world--from conception to
memory and perception. Reid regards the Way of Ideas as unscientific
and founded on a flawed, anti-Newtonian methodology. He also argues
that it has highly undesirable consequences.


### 2.1 Conceiving



Conception lies at the heart of the operations of the intellectual
faculties because conception provides the intentional
content--the 'aboutness'--to mental states. Reid
distinguishes between several functions of conception. A rudimentary
form of conceiving, which Reid often calls 'simple apprehension,'
refers to "the bare conception of a thing without any judgment
or belief about it" (EIP 4.1, 295). This "enters as an
ingredient in every operation of the mind" (EIP 4.1, 296). In
order to believe, or remember or perceive, I must perform an act of
simple apprehension in order to get something in mind. 




We explain Reidian conception by contrast with the Way of
Ideas. First, Reid presupposes that the mind has an irreducible
capacity for intentional conception in which our mental states are
uniquely about specific objects. This faculty cannot be explained in
terms of further non-intentional states. How intentional conception
can be explained is mysterious--Reid is well aware of this. Yet
if "we were unable to give any account how we first got the
conception of power, this would be no good reason for denying that we
have it" (Reid 2001, "Of Power," 5). In a
contrasting methodological move, Hume suggests that intentional
content through ideas is built up from the operation of the laws of
association--contiguity in time and space, resemblance and
perceived causation--working upon impressions and images in the
mind (see *Treatise* 1.1.1.7, 4; 1.2.3.2, 33; 2.1.11.8,
319; *Enquiry* 7.2.6, 74).



 
Conception takes as its intentional objects items with varied
ontologies, including physical objects and propositions (EIP 1.1,
24-5) as well as fictional beings like Brienne of Tarth. The fact that
conception takes physical objects as (direct) intentional objects
marks a key contrast with the Way of Ideas since, on the Way of Ideas,
conception, perception, judgment and belief are "only different
ways of perceiving ideas in our own minds" (EIP 4.1, 298). (Note
that, according to Reid, the Way of Ideas fails to adopt a proper
faculty psychology since all mental powers--memory, perception,
abstraction, etc.--only ever take ideas as intentional objects.)
Considerable work in the secondary literature has been devoted to
determine just what the content of conceptions are or can be.



 
The state of conception is not a 'quantitative' state for Reid, as are
ideas according to Hume, who writes that some ideas are lively, others
not, and others partially lively (*Treatise* 1.1.1). Hume uses
these valences to determine which faculty is at work conceiving the
idea. If I perceive an idea of a tree, my conception is lively and
vivacious. If I remember the same idea of a tree, my conception is
faint. Instead, Reid offers an account of a distinct
faculty--conception--whose objects are embedded in other
acts of the intellectual powers.




Reid's is an act-based theory of conception, in contrast to the Way of
Ideas' object-based theory. Conceptions are ways of being aware of
objects. To conceive of an object is to be aware of that
object as the bearer of some particular property. So I can
conceive that *Brienne of Tarth is tall*, or that *Brienne
of Tarth is female*, or that *Brienne of Tarth is a tall
female*. Being tall and being female are different properties, and
their difference signals something important about Reidian
conception. Being tall is a relational property since height is a
trait that is assessed relative to some further thing or standard. To
foreshadow, this subtle feature of conception will become important
for Reid in his discussion of vision, especially his discussion of the
relational property of visible figure.


### 2.2 Conception and Self-Knowledge




Reid affirms human beings know what are the intentional contents of
their thoughts. If I think about a tree, then I am (defeasibly)
justified that I am thinking about a tree. But the Way of Ideas
jeopardizes Reid's commitment to the obviousness of our introspective
ability to identify what we are thinking about. Like the more familiar
veil of *perception* created by the representational role of
ideas (see 3.1 The Way of Ideas and Representational
Theories of Perception ), there is also a veil
of *conception*. The seeds of Reid's argument are in Hume's
candid remark that, given the Way of Ideas, mental events "seem
entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never
can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never
connected. ... [T]he necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no
idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely
without any meaning" (*Enquiry* 7.2.6, 74;
see *Treatise* 1.2.6.8, 67). Hume's causal explanation of
reverberating impacts on impressions in the mind does not explain the
content of our thoughts. Hume describes his theory of thought as
corpuscular because impressions are atomic and separable mental states
without any determinate intentional link to anything else. Note that
Hume appears to be led to this position by way of his attempt to
repurpose Newtonian mechanics, as it applies to bodies, to formulate a
science of the mind.



 
Troubled by the statement from Hume, Reid constructs a reductio
argument against Hume's theory of thought that plays upon the
implications just noted. Reid presents this argument about the
intentionality of thought through an analogy about the meaning of
language, specifically, about someone who is blind to the meaning of
the language in a book. Suppose I see unfamiliar ink marks on paper. I
neither know what they mean nor even that they are meaningful to
anyone. The *meanings of these words are not intrinsic to the
representations of the words*, whether those representations are
on paper or are sound waves, just like the intentional content of
ideas is not intrinsic to the ideas themselves. Reid writes:



> Suppose that ideas represent things like symbols; in this
> way, words and writing are known to express everything. Let the
> intellect, therefore, be instructed by ideas ... like a written or
> printed book, teaching us many things that are external, that have
> passed away, and that will come to be. This view does not solve the
> problem; for who will interpret this book for us? If you show a book
> to a savage who has never heard of the use of letters, he will not
> know the letters are symbols, much less what they signify. If you
> address someone in a foreign language, perhaps your words are symbols
> as far as you are concerned, but they mean nothing to
> him. (*Philosophical Orations*, Reid 1937, 35 & Reid 1989,
> 62)




Uninterpreted impressions are syntactic and purportedly
representational. But "Symbols without interpretation have no
value" (*Philosophical Orations*, Reid 1937, 35 and Reid
1989, 62). The resulting veil of conception implies that my
impressions risk having no meaning for me. As a result, I do not know
the contents of my own thoughts. Since this is absurd, Reid rejects
the Way of Ideas' premise that leads to it. This fascinating argument
has been explored and its affinities with John Searle's Chinese Room
argument have been noted (Haldane 1989, 1993 & Nichols 2007,
ch. 2), but it merits further development.




Reid's reductio of the Way of Ideas' theory of thought is intended to
buttress Reid's claims that conceiving is irreducibly intentional and
that, because of this, we have knowledge of the contents of our
thoughts. Hume refrains from this claim in part because he sees no
plausible metaphysics to support it. That is, if intentionality is
endemic to thought, then the mind must not be what we think it
is--a part of nature whose ideas operate on impact principles
familiar from Newtonian mechanics. Reid is aware of this problem and
prepares to bite the bullet. He describes our ability to apprehend one
thing and not another as being "a natural kind of magic"
(IHM 5.3, 59-60). In an effort to explicate this mysterious conceptual
ability, Reid examines theories of thought of Aristotle and medieval
philosophers. These theories posit substantial forms that conjoin
thoughts to their intentional objects (*Philosophical
Orations*, Reid 1937, 38 and Reid 1989, 66). Yet Reid judges them
harshly and finds their ontology "incomprehensible" (EIP
2.8, 114). He withholds further speculation about the metaphysics that
must undergird the claim that intentionality is primitive. This move
illustrates a feature of Reid's philosophical method: common sense and
knowledge are conceptually and explanatorily prior to metaphysical
commitments.


### 2.3 Abstraction, Universals and General Conceptions




Reid is a nominalist about universals, which means that Reid does not
believe that universals exist independently of the set of individual
things that instantiate the shared property. (A universal is a
property shared by many individuals, each of which instantiates the
universal. In addition to opposing arguments for universals, he also
opposes the form of nominalism advocated by Berkeley and Hume. Reid
concludes that universals are general terms, not abstract or general
ideas.




As usual, Reid builds his theory by learning from mistakes of earlier
theories. Medieval philosophers argued, by Reid's account, that a
universal exists independently of individual things. Some of these
philosophers argued that the independent existence of a universal was
existence as a *form*, a venerable philosophical
term. Addressing this, Reid says it is impossible that "a
triangle should really exist which has no precise proportion of sides
and angles" and, generally, it is "impossible that any
being should exist which is not an individual being" (EIP 5.6,
396). The principal philosophical error that led to the reification of
universal properties as independent existents is the conflation of the
objects of conception with the objects of perception (EIP 4.1,
302-3). The metaphysics required to undergird the existence of
universals is anathema to Reid's commonsense commitments and his
empirical method.




Next Reid considers a theory he associates with Locke, namely that
universals do not exist as metaphysical forms but rather universals
are abstract ideas. Abstract ideas arise through a process in which
facts about time and space are stripped away from particular members
of a class of thing leaving the abstract idea that represents common
characteristics (EIP 3.2). Reid argues that there can be no such
abstract ideas and that abstract ideas cannot represent members of a
class of particulars (EIP 5.6, 391-3). Reid recognizes his great debt
to Berkeley's criticisms of Lockean abstract ideas in these
connections.




In effect, Reid arrives at his own theory by endorsing Berkeley's
nominalism and attempting to remove from it reference to ideas. Reid
replaces talk of abstract ideas with the term 'general conception.' As
to the ontology of general conceptions, Reid says that human minds
create them, not nature; this reconfirms Reid's nominalism about kind
terms. General terms are the linguistic manifestation of general
conceptions. General terms are general due to their referents, but
they are particular token conceptions of individuals (EIP 5.2,
360). General terms refer to species or to attributes. When we
conceive of general terms like 'lion' or 'felony' or 'unicorn',
"the meaning of the word is the thing conceived" (EIP 5.2,
364). The term 'lion' does not resemble what it is about; it
represents the class of lions by convention.




This leads to Reid's explanation of how general conceptions are
formed. Reid says this typically happens via induction through
testimony and not via definitions (EIP 5.2, 363). For Reid, forming
general conceptions is typically a public process and a product of
social practices, in contrast to Locke, Berkeley and Hume, for whom
forming abstract ideas is typically a private process. (Though we do
not enter into discussion of the role of testimony and social
knowledge anywhere in this entry, it is especially prominent in Reid.)
However, one may also form a general conception on one's own. In this
case, in the first stage one analyses a subject into its attributes
and names them, which Reid compares to a chemist analyzing a compound
(EIP 5.3, 370). Next one observes that similar token attributes are
possessed by many objects. Third is "combining into one hole a
certain number of those attributes...and giving a name to that
combination" (EIP 5.3, 365). The name that results may be the
same as the name for a particular attribute, e.g. 'whiteness,' but
used as a general term, 'whiteness' "implies no existence, but
may be predicated of everything that is white, and in the same
sense" (EIP 5.3, 367). This way of putting the point--that
the general term whiteness may be predicated of everything that is
white--has inspired a dispositional interpretation of Reidian
general conceptions (Castagnetto 1992). Reid's writing on general
conceptions and abstraction are areas--like the next topic,
conception of non-existent objects--that have not been given much
attention.


### 2.4 Non-Existent Objects




Reid believes that we can conceive of non-existent objects. This does
not appear to comport with his alleged common-sense philosophy,
creating an interesting conundrum for Reid interpreters. The best
approach to understanding why Reid says we can conceive of
non-existent objects is to put this in the context of Reid's
opposition to skepticism. In the face of 'veil of conception'
skepticism, Reid is intent on defending the transparency and
self-knowledge of our thoughts. This leads him to argue that we can
conceive of non-existent, fictional objects: "I conceive a
centaur. This conception is an operation of the mind, of which I am
conscious, and to which I can attend. The sole object of it is a
centaur, an animal which, I believe, never existed" (EIP 4.2,
321; see EIP 2.12, 160). Suppose when I think I am conceiving of a
centaur, I am conceiving of something else, like an image of a
centaur. If so, then I do not know the contents of my thoughts. This
yields skepticism about the contents of my thoughts, which Reid
believes is false. So, by reductio he concludes that we are able to
conceive of objects that do not exist.




The factual claim that I know what I am thinking appears to be
obviously true insofar as anyone familiar with the meaning of
'centaur' conceives of centaurs when reading sentences that predicate
properties of centaurs. Representational theories of thought like the
Way of Ideas imply in this case that *I do not conceive of centaurs
but rather I conceive of mental representations of
centaurs*--images of them or words about them (EIP 4.2,
312). But Reid is asserting something different: I conceive *of a
centaur itself*--not a mental representation of a
centaur. Appreciating this point is necessary for understanding how
strange Reid's theory appears to be.




Reid understands the Way of Ideas' error theory of the conception of a
centaur: "The [proponent of the Way of Ideas] says, I cannot
conceive a centaur without having an idea of it in my mind.... Perhaps
he will say, that the idea is an image of the animal, and is the
immediate object of my conception, and that the animal is the mediate
or remote object." Reid first responds that when he introspects
he is aware of only one object of conception, not two. Second, the
object of conception, he writes,



> is not the image of an animal--it is an animal. I
> know what it is to conceive an image of an animal, and what it is to
> conceive an animal... The thing I conceive is a body of a certain
> figure and colour, having life and spontaneous motion. The philosopher
> says, that the idea is an image of the animal; but that it has neither
> body, nor colour, nor life, nor spontaneous motion. This I am not able
> to comprehend. (EIP 4.2, 321-2)




Even in difficult cases of thoughts about things like centaurs or
circles (EIP 4.3, 323-4), their intentional contents are so
transparent in a moment's reflection that we can identify them without
mistake. Reid presses this epistemological point into heavy service in
the context of the conception of non-existent objects. As with Reid's
appeal to the irreducible intentionality of conception, Reid's
position regarding the conception of non-existent objects has proven
challenging to explain and to defend, but starts have been made (David
1985-6; Nichols 2002). Though his commitment to the importance of
self-knowledge and the transparency of thought is obvious, Reid
jeopardizes his allegiance to common sense by asserting we think of
non-existent objects directly and without thinking of a mental
intermediary.


## 3. Perception and Knowledge of the World


### 3.1 The Way of Ideas and Representational Theories of Perception




When discussing Reidian conception, we contrasted Reid's analysis of
this faculty with the Way of Ideas'. For Reid, conceptions or 'simple
apprehensions' possess intentional content in virtue of which these
mental states are about other things. Conceptions can be about a wide
variety of thing: I can conceive of pain, a shooting pain Descartes'
foot, penne, and fictional characters like Podrick Payne. However,
according to the Way of Ideas, I can conceive only of one type of
thing: Ideas. According to the Way of Ideas, *this holds true not
only for conception but for all other faculties*. If I tactilely
perceive a pillow, my perceptual mental state is not about the pillow
but rather it is about my idea or mental representation of the
pillow. The basic structure of the representational theory of
perception (and conception, memory, etc.) is explicitly endorsed by
Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and many other Early Modern
philosophers, as well as many living philosophers. We doubt that there
is any other philosophical commitment that more exercised Reid's mind
than this one, which he thought to be a source of ruin for many
reasons. Both Reid and Richard Rorty see the Way of Ideas'
representationalism as the key player in the story of Early Modern
Western philosophy (Rorty 1981), which would continue as the story of
contemporary analytic philosophy.




To the basic structure of the representational theory of perception,
one of many components can be added to explain how we are 'aware' of
external, physical objects even though the immediate object of
perception is an idea. Here are three possibilities: (1) we are aware
of external objects directly *by* perceiving
representations of them, ideas; (2) we *infer* the existence
and nature of external objects by perceiving ideas of them; or (3)
there is no distinction between external objects and ideas, and, thus,
when we perceive ideas we are perceiving external objects.



 
On option (1), the representationalist would need to offer an
explanation of what it is that is so special about ideas that makes it
the case that whenever we are perceiving an idea, we are directly
aware of that which it represents. If this burden can be discharged,
then it is possible to say that we are aware of external objects and
remain consistent with the representational theory. In the history of
philosophy Reid documents a series of failed efforts to explain how it
is that perception of something in the mind could amount to any direct
perception or awareness of some external object. These attempts make
the mistake, he thinks, of giving unexplained and unexplainable powers
to ideas: how could they possibly, all by themselves, attach our minds
to objects whenever they are perceived? This question cannot be
answered, so he thinks.




As to (2), Reid thinks that nobody who has absorbed Hume's lessons
regarding causation would think that we can avoid skepticism about the
external world while insisting that we infer its nature from the
features of directly perceived ideas. On the representational model,
external objects are the causes of our ideas. But if Hume is right
about causation then we can only infer the nature of a particular
unobserved cause of a particular observed effect when we have had
repeated experience of conjunction of similar causes with similar
effects. But according to the Way of Ideas we have never in fact had
any experience of the relevant causes, namely physical objects and
their qualities; we have only experienced their effects on our minds,
ideas. Therefore, we can infer nothing about external objects by
examination of the ideas which they cause in us. Option (2) appears to
give skepticism a foothold.




As to (3), Reid believes that it amounts to an endorsement of
idealism. Reid finds this theory implausible on its own, and in
violation of a host of common sense principles, despite the fact that
he admires Berkeley's efforts to pursue its full implications. Reid's
arguments against representationalist attempts to recover the
awareness of the external world through perception via options (1),
(2) and (3) are by no means all of his arguments against the
representationalist theory of perception or the Way of Ideas. We now
introduce a few additional considerations for which Reid rejects that
theory.


### 3.2 Reid's Arguments Against Representationalism




First, note that proponents of the Way of Ideas commit themselves not
only to the existence of ideas but to pressing ideas into a number of
functional roles in the mental lives of human beings. But, according
to Reid, the underlying rationale for these commitments is typically
not even stated by proponents of the Way of Ideas; it is most often
taken for granted, or supported with demonstrably weak arguments. As a
result, the rationale for commitments to an ontology of ideas and to
their functional roles in the mind does not confer upon that
commitment much epistemic justification. In the context of a passage
in which Reid imagines a dialogue between "the vulgar" or
the common person on the one hand and "the philosopher" on
the other, Reid develops this reasoning as follows:



> When, therefore, in common language, we speak of having an
> idea of anything, we mean no more by that expression, but thinking of
> it. The vulgar allow that this expression implies a mind that thinks,
> an act of that mind which we call thinking, and an object about which
> we think. But, besides these three, the philosopher conceives that
> there is a fourth--to wit, the *idea*, which is the
> immediate object. The idea is in the mind itself, and can have no
> existence but in a mind that thinks; but the remote or mediate object
> may be something external, as the sun or moon; it may be something
> past or future; it may be something which never existed. This is the
> philosophical meaning of the word *idea*; and we may
> observe that this meaning of that word is built upon a philosophical
> opinion: for, if philosophers had not believed that there are such
> immediate objects of all our thoughts in the mind, they would never
> have used the word idea to express them. (EIP 1.1, 31)




The Way of Ideas philosopher must talk the man on the street out of
the belief that "When I perceive an apple in front of me, the
apple is the very thing I'm perceiving." The philosopher's
response--that this is a mistake, that the object of perception
is an idea of the apple--is predicated upon a rejection of the
vulgar's conception of everyday thoughts about objects. But this
rejection appears to rest in the opinion of philosophers rather than
in the entailment of some as yet unstated but decisive argument. As a
result, the rationale for commitments to an ontology of ideas and to
their functional roles in the mind appears to Reid to be as dubious,
if not more, than the man on the street's original commitment to a
direct form of perception. If Reid is correct, then this shifts the
burden of proof back upon the advocate of ideas.




Second, in a structurally similar argument, Reid observes something
important about the intended explanatory power of the representational
theory of perception. That theory is intended to explain the fact that
our mental states manage to connect to real objects, manage to
be *about* real objects. However, this fact about
beliefs is only explained by the model if the model is less obscure
than the phenomena to be explained by it. But, Reid observes, if we
notice that we do not understand how it is that we manage to connect
our minds to objects in the world, then it cannot help to say that we
do this by first connecting our minds to mental representations unless
we understand how it is that we manage to connect our minds to those
mental representations. This consideration gives the following
question its force: Why is the perception of a mental intermediary
like an idea supposed to be more intelligible than the direct
perception of a physical object? If it is no more intelligible, then
the representational theory is not serving to explain what it was
intended to explain. (See EIP 2.14, 185.)




In addition to burden of proof arguments against the Way of Ideas and
the representational theory of perception, Reid also deploys a number
of detailed arguments against specific components of these theories
and against commitments they presuppose to be true. Though these
arguments are unsuitable for recapitulation in the format of an
encyclopedia entry, we report one such argument in brief in an effort
to offer a hint at the robust detail, nuanced reasoning, and attention
to physiological facts in Reid's theory of perception.




In one of a small handful of arguments that David Hume explicitly
offers for a representational theory of perception, he concludes that
"nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or
perception" (*Enquiry* 12.9; see *Treatise*
1.4.1.12, 187) by reasoning from considerations having to do with what
is known as 'perceptual relativity'. Hume writes, "The table,
which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove farther from it: but the
real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration: it
was, therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the
mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason"
(*Enquiry* 12.9). This is perhaps the most compelling argument
for the representational theory of perception.



 
Reid responds to this argument with several objections. First, Reid's
analysis of each of the senses in *Inquiry* convince him that
some senses do not represent physical objects in the same way that all
the others do. Touch (IHM ch. 6), for example, presents qualities of
objects to the mind in ways more direct than does vision (IHM ch. 7),
resulting in what has been referred to as Reid's hybrid theory of
perception. A conclusion generalized to all the senses ("nothing
can ever be present...") but based solely on one sense is
therefore invalid.



 
The next of Reid's objections is more involved, requiring introduction
of a key distinction Reid makes on the basis of his attention to the
phenomenology of visual experience. First, though, notice Hume's use
of the term 'table' and 'the real table' in the argument above.
Following Berkeley's *New Theory of Vision*, Reid distinguishes
between visible figure from tangible figure (IHM 6.2, 81-2), or later,
which is virtually the same distinction, between 'apparent magnitude'
and 'real magnitude' (EIP 2.14, 181). The tangible or real figure of
an object is measured by yards or inches, but the visible figure is
not. Instead, the visible figure depends for its geometric
properties--the surface area that the table occupies in the
visual field--upon properties of the tangible figure, including
its shape and its distance from the eyes. Reid recognizes the obvious
phenomenon of perceptual relativity, for example, that when I see a
table at 10 yards and at 100, its "visible appearance, in its
length, breadth, and all its linear proportions, is ten times less in
the last case than it is in the first" (IHM 6.2, 81-2). The
tangible figure is measured by different means, sensed by a different
faculty, and is extended in three dimensions. This leads Reid to argue
that "The ingenious author has imposed upon himself by
confounding real magnitude with apparent magnitude," that is,
Hume equivocates (EIP 2.14, 182).



 
A pressing question arises at this juncture: Hasn't Reid now adopted a
position according to which there are perceptual intermediaries in the
visual perception process? If so, doesn't this imply that Reid's
theory will share many of the foibles with which he charges the Way of
Ideas? Most answers to these two questions have proven to be
contentious in part because Reid's interpreters often bring to this
issue prefabricated, a priori definitions of 'intermediary',
'representation' and 'directness'. While Reid's theory of visual
perception implies that visible figures are seen, visible figures are
radically unlike ideas. Visible figure is not merely a
representational intermediary; it is a relational property between
physical objects and eyes of perceivers. Only because ideas lack these
characteristics is Hume able to reason from the claim that
mind-independent tables are not immediate objects of awareness to his
stated conclusion above that we immediately perceive only ideas or
representations. That is the first of two important points in response
to the first question.



 
The second enters into Reid's development of a consistent geometry for
visible space, perhaps the most technically brilliant piece of writing
by any major British empiricist. This work allows Reid a crucial reply
to advocates of representational theories. Reid discovered and
mathematically described a law-like variation in the visible figure of
an external object with intrinsic (shape, size) and extrinsic
(distance, angle of orientation) properties of the tangible
figure. Reid summarizes his conclusion writing: 



> [T]he real table may be placed successively at a thousand
> different distances, and, in every distance, in a thousand different
> positions; and it can be determined demonstratively by the rules of
> geometry and perspective, what must be its apparent magnitude and
> apparent figure, in each of those distances and positions." (EIP
> 2.14, 183)



 
Hume assumes *that the relationship between a visible figure and a
tangible figure is subjective and mind-dependent*. Not only is
that erroneous, but, given Reid's work, the systematic variation of
the visible figure with the tangible figure is in fact evidence for
the objectivity of its independence from one's mind.




Reid further argues that this objective relationship between, for
example, *seeing the visible figure* of a coin
and *conceiving of the coin* becomes automated over time
through repeated experience. Perhaps the first time I saw a coin it
was presented to me at an angle, its visible figure an ellipse. I
might mistakenly form a perceptual belief about an elliptical object,
even though the coin is circular. Over time, this process is
habituated through a process that Reid describes with the help of a
distinction between original and acquired perceptions. In short, my
faculty of visual perception, if given experience, will successfully
model the geometrically demonstrable relationship between visible
figure and tangible figure.




This family of arguments has received considerable attention due to a
number of its complexities. These involve attempts to answer questions
including the following: As we have seen, through his science of
perspectival shapes of objects Reid argues that they are geometrically
equivalent to shapes projected onto surfaces of spheres. What is
Reid's formal proof for this, and is it valid (Yaffe 2002)? Does Reid
offer the first recorded non-Euclidean geometry in the history of
mathematics (Daniels 1972)? What is the bearing of Reid's repeated
attempts to derive Euclid's parallel postulate from the axioms of
incidence on an interpretation of the geometry of visible space as
non-Euclidean (Grandi 2005)? Where does Reid's theory of perception
and geometry of visibles leave the ontology of visible figure (Nichols
2007, ch. 4)? In what ways is visible figure the object of visual
perception, and in what ways not (Yaffe 2003; Falkenstein and Grandi
2003)? Does Reid's geometry of visible space jeopardize his theory's
ability to avoid a representational theory of visual perception (Van
Cleve 2002)? Does visible figure and awareness of it preclude
non-inferential perceptual knowledge from vision, or rather, what is
the relationship between original and acquired perceptions and visible
figure (Nichols 2007, ch. 8)?



 
Now that we know how and why Reid argues against the Way of Ideas'
representational theory of perception, we needn't address these
questions in order to continue with a discussion of the components of
Reid's own more direct theory of perception. Here we need to keep in
mind the fact that, though contemporary philosophers write a priori
about perception, sensation, and knowledge, Reid does not offer
necessary and sufficient conditions for perception or for its
component processes. Consistent with his Newtonian empiricism, Reid is
aiming for something else altogether: observations and accurate
experiments that reduce to general rules (EIP 1.3, 49-50; EIP 2.8,
120-1). Though operations of our intellectual powers are not definable
or analyzable a priori, it is possible to describe the operations Reid
has in mind.



 
According to Reid, the perceptual process operates as
follows. Individuals with functioning sensory organs and a developed
brain interact with physical objects in the world. These objects cause
sensory experiences in individuals. These sensations function as
natural signs for qualities of the objects. The experience of a
sensation orients my cognition so as to form a conception of a quality
of a mind-independent object. Sometimes, though rarely, an
individual's perception of an object will not only cause a sensation
but will also cause the person to become aware of the
sensation--perhaps even at the exclusion of any further awareness
of primary qualities of the object. For example, when I get hit by a
baseball thrown 90 mph I focus on my pain sensations, not the
qualities of the ball. To perceive an object is to be aware of the
object or its quality in a particular way, as the possessor of a
particular quality, *and*, at the same time, to be
convinced that the object exists and is as it is conceived it to
be. To defend a common sensical theory of perception that is supported
by observation and experiment, and that is capable of delivering
knowledge of real objects, Reid thinks he needs to show that we
are *directly* aware of real objects, in contrast to key
features of the Way of Ideas' *representational* theory of
perception just discussed. While there is debate over the precise
sense in which, for Reid, we are directly aware of objects, this much
seems clear: whatever the sense of "direct" is in which
the subscribers to the representational theory take us to be directly
aware of *ideas*, it is in that sense that Reid takes us to be
directly aware of *real objects*.


### 3.3 Sensations as Natural Signs of Qualities




In addition to being a Newtonian empiricist, Reid is an expert
phenomenologist, acutely aware to finely grained features of our
experience, especially our sensory experience. When we touch a table,
while we conceive of it and often form beliefs about it, we also sense
it. (See 2.1 Conceiving) The immediate
effect that objects have on us is to
cause *sensations*. Sensations are always associated with a
particular organ of sense; they are always distinctly of, for
instance, touch or vision. Sensations are the feelings that are the
immediate mental causal consequences of the influence of objects on
us. We become aware of the qualities of objects following the
sensations that those objects cause. However, for Reid, the
conceptions of objects that follow from our sensations are
not *derived* from our sensations since they do not
bear any kind of resemblance to the qualities which cause
them. *Awareness* of sensations are not, for Reid, essential
intermediaries for formation of perceptual beliefs. So what is the
precise relationship between sensory experiences and conceptual
content? This is a delicate question for Reid since the directness of
his theory of perception depends upon advocacy of a physiologically
and phenomenally real theory that accounts for our experience while
avoiding theoretical pitfalls that risk dragging his theory much
closer to a representational theory than Reid would like.




As we have often in this entry, we begin with historical context since
Reid's theory of the relation between sensations and qualities will
appear stranger than it is without background. According to the Way of
Ideas, ideas and images are mental representations in an individual's
mind, and my perceptual awareness of a table depends upon my prior
awareness of these ideas of sensation. This veil of perception is why
advocates of the Way of Ideas struggled to provide epistemic
justification for beliefs about external, mind-independent, qualities
of physical objects, and avoid skepticism. But besides the epistemic
problem, *advocates of ideas faced a difficulty accounting for the
origins of the contents of our very ideas of external
objects*. Though not easy to appreciate, this problem it is quite
important.




Reid argues that advocates of the Way of Ideas do not have a plausible
solution to this problem. Hume says bluntly that "[E]very simple
idea has a simple impression, which resembles it"
(*Treatise* 1.1.1.5, 3), which is a statement of what is known
as the Copy Principle: ideas have the content that they do because
they are copies, and resemblances, of impressions. Think of a
table. For Hume, your thought of a table is derivative and copied from
a sensory impression that you have had of that very table. The
explanation of the content of the idea of that table thus concerns the
contents of your simple impression of the corresponding physical
table. The Copy Principle is an exceedingly powerful tool on behalf of
the Way of Ideas for a variety of reasons, but Reid is unimpressed
with the evidence on its behalf, especially as presented by Hume
in *Treatise*. Reid's response to Hume leads to an argument,
which we can call his 'Sensory Deprivation Argument'.




Reid's Sensory Deprivation Argument proceeds as follows. First, Hume's
stated justification for the Copy Principle is inductive: he
challenges people to find an idea that is not derived from a sensory
impression, after he says that it appears all his ideas are copied
from sensory impressions. But that, says Reid, is an exceedingly weak
justification (EAP 1.4, 23). Besides, Hume's claim that the principle
is "certain" is mistaken because the argument he sets out
for the principle is inductive (IHM 5.7, 69-70, 75-6). After those
ground clearing moves, Reid begins the argument proper with a thought
experiment. Exhibiting affinities with Condillac's
remarkable *Treatise on Sensations* (1754), Reid asks his
readers to imagine a blind adult subject. Not only has he lost his
sight, but he has "lost all the experience, and habits, and
notions he had got by touch; [he lacks] the least conception of the
existence, figure, dimensions, or extension, either of his own body,
or of any other; but to have all his knowledge of external things to
acquire anew, by means of sensation, and the power of reason, which we
suppose to remain entire" (IHM 5.6, 65). Reid imagines
introducing this blind experimental subject to a number of tactile
sensations, one by one, from the most simple to the most involved: a
single pin prick in a split second of time; a blunt object pushed
against a small surface area of skin; the same object pushed against
skin over a period of time "with a force gradually increased
till it bruises him"; an object covering a large surface area of
skin, applied over a period of time, and so on. Reid's emphasis on
tactile sensations is important to understand: he uses this running
example because ideas of primary qualities are the most important for
gaining knowledge of the world and are the ideas essential for any
science.



 
Once a handful of skin cells are stimulated for the briefest of
moments by a pin, the subject has received a sensory
impression--or in Reid's language, he has had a
sensation--but, Reid argues, this does not equip the individual
to formulate an idea of extension or figure, space or motion, all
primary qualities of the pin. He writes, "[The primary
qualities] have no resemblance to any sensation, or to any operation
of our minds; and, therefore, they cannot be ideas either of sensation
or of reflection" (IHM 5.6, 67). For each subsequent iteration
of tactile sensations, Reid argues that those sensations too are
incapable of delivering to the subject ideas of extension, figure,
space or motion. His conclusion has two parts. First, the Way of
Ideas's story about the relation between sensations and the
intentional contents of conceptions is mistaken. Second, with an eye
toward developing his own theory of sensations, he writes,



> [T]his connection between our sensations and the
> conception and belief of external existences cannot be produced by
> habit, experience, education, or any principle of human nature that
> hath been admitted by philosophers. At the same time, it is a fact
> that such sensations are invariably connected with the conception and
> belief of external existences. Hence, by all rules of just reasoning,
> we must conclude, that this connection is the effect of our
> constitution, and ought to be considered as an original principle of
> human nature, till we find some more general principle into which it
> may be resolved. (IHM 5.3, 61/122b)




The process by which sensations give rise to our conceptions of
objects is something Reid calls 'suggestion'. Sensations in this
process he calls 'signs'. The qualities of objects are 'suggested' by
our sensations when they function as signs, so when we have sensations
we come to be aware of those objects as possessing those qualities.
But what is suggestion supposed to be? The first thing to notice is
that the suggestion relation or the 'sign-signified' relation is
contingent. Whereas philosophers prefer necessities, Reid does not
believe the messiness of the actual perceptual process contains any
necessity at this juncture. Second, suggestion is a pseudo-linguistic
notion for Reid. Signs suggest conceptions of that which they
signify. The word "dogs", for instance, leads those who
are familiar with the word to think of certain domesticated animals
who are also man's best friends.




But for those who already know the term, this does not happen by
hearing the word "dogs" then deriving or inferring some
object that has some peculiar fitness to the word. The relation of
signs to things they signify in spoken and written language is almost
always arbitrary in the sense that there is no similarity between dogs
and the word "dogs". In this sense, "dogs" is
an *artificial* or *artifactual sign*, for Reid, in
contrast to *natural signs*. Blushing *signifies* one of
a small number of mental states because blushing is caused by events
of embarrassment, anger, or romantic stimulation. Blood rushing
through the subcutaneous circulatory system in the face reliably
occurs, across members of our species, in response to a small set of
stimuli with apparent universality, making blushing a natural sign. We
discover this relationship by observation and experience.



 
However, according to Reid, a subset of natural signs lead us to think
of what they signify *without any prior experience*. Members of
this category "which, though we never before had any notion or
conception of the things signified, do suggest it, or conjure it up,
as it were, by a natural kind of magic, and at once give us a
conception, and create a belief of it" (IHM 5.3, 60). Put your
hand on a table, pause and experience the sensation of hardness. This
tactile sensation leads us immediately to conceive of that which
caused it as being hard, as having a certain resistive
construction. But we are aware of the table's hardness, which caused
the sensation, automatically. We do not understand why it is that we
think of this special kind of physical constitution after having this
kind of tactile sensation. Nonetheless, we must "conclude, that
this connection is the effect of our constitution, and ought to be
considered as an original principle of human nature" (IHM 5.3,
61). This is the defining feature of the kind of natural signs of
which the tactile sensation of hardness is an instance: these signs
lead us to conceive of what they signify simply because we are built
in such a way as to have such conceptions on encountering such
signs. Reid's approach to this relationship contrasts sharply with
that taken by most advocates of the Way of Ideas, who attempted to
posit a strong relationship between ideas of sensation and qualities
of physical objects.




Placing my hand on a table, my tactile sensation immediately leads my
mind to a conception or apprehension that I am touching a hard
object. When does one's conception of an object as having a particular
quality amount to a perception, a conception accompanied by a
conviction of its accuracy? The answer is: when one comes to have that
conception because one has encountered a natural sign which leads one
to the conception, and that natural sign leads one to the conception
merely because of one's constitution. Conviction in the accuracy of a
conception is bestowed on the conception, Reid thinks, just when the
relevant conception comes about because of our nature or
constitution. When we conceive of an object in a particular way merely
because it is in our nature to conceive of the object that way, then
the conception is non-optional, unavoidable, and is thus one that we
cannot help but trust. Perceptions, then, are dictates of common
sense: to be aware of an object in perception is to have a belief
which you cannot give up given your constitution.




Reid believes that our minds come to be connected to the
mind-independent world in something like the way that we come to grasp
objects through a language designed for the purpose. However, when we
come to be aware of objects through our senses, we do so by utilizing
something like a language embedded in our constitutions: our
sensations function like a language that nature has constructed. While
it is in a sense only a metaphor to say that we know about the world
because the world speaks to us, it is a metaphor that illuminates the
facts as Reid sees them.


### 3.4 Primary and Secondary Qualities




Intertwined with Reid's arguments that we can be immediately aware of
objects through their relational properties--such as their
apparent magnitudes--are Reid's arguments regarding the
distinction between primary and secondary qualities. As we would
expect, Reid approaches this distinction as a scientist of the mind
rather than as a metaphysician, and, as we would also expect, Reid's
entrance into this terrain is paved with references to earlier
thinkers.



 
Locke thought that our ideas of "primary
qualities"--shapes, sizes, motions, textures and physical
construction--resemble the qualities which cause them. However,
according to Locke, our ideas of a variety of other
qualities--colors, sounds, tastes and smells--do not. Ideas
of colors, sounds, tastes and smells, or "secondary
qualities," are caused by certain complex configurations of
primary qualities that bear no resemblance to the ideas which they
cause. Reid is deeply struck by Berkeley's attack on this distinction
at *Principles of Human Knowledge* 1.9-15. He agrees
with Berkeley that no mental state or object could possibly resemble
anything that is not, itself, a mental state or object. In Berkeley's
famous words, "An idea can be like nothing but an idea"
(*Principles of Human Knowledge* 1.8). Mental states and
objects have only mental properties, but only something that is,
itself, a mental state or object can have a mental property. Hence,
nothing can resemble--that is, share a property in common
with--a mental state or object other than another mental state or
object. Berkeley took this point to show
that *no* non-mental cause of an idea could resemble
it, whether the relevant idea were an idea of a shape or a
color. Berkeley concludes that Locke's distinction between primary and
secondary qualities is a grand mistake.




Reid accepts, for roughly Berkeley's reasons, that sensations cannot
possibly resemble their causes--a fact that Reid deploys in his
Sensory Deprivation Argument discussed above. Further, he accepts
Berkeley's objections to Locke, and takes them to show that no mental
events or states, whether sensations or the conceptions of objects
that follow them, could possibly *resemble* any non-mental
object. Another reason that Reid cannot draw the distinction between
primary and secondary qualities in the way that Locke did is that he
denies that conceptions of objects which we have following sensory
experiences are to be analyzed as perceptions of ideas. Instead, these
conceptions function to make us aware of qualities in objects that
caused the sensations. All of this would make it seem that Reid would
simply side with Berkeley and deny that there is any important
difference between primary qualities and qualities like colors,
sounds, tastes and smells. Instead, Reid defends the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities on grounds quite different
from Locke's, grounds that he takes to be immune to Berkeley's
criticisms of the distinction.




Reid accepts that the qualities which we ordinarily conceive objects
to have--whether shapes, sizes and motions, on the one hand, or
colors, sounds, tastes and smells, on the other--are genuinely
possessed by those objects (barring illusions and disorders of various
sorts, which are, incidentally, difficult for any direct theory of
perception like Reid's to explain). He thinks that shapes, sizes and
motions are intrinsic properties of objects while colors, sounds,
tastes and smells are relational properties of objects. But neither
secondary nor primary qualities resemble the sensory experiences that
they immediately cause in us. Colors, sounds, tastes and smells are
powers to produce certain characteristic sensations in us in normal
conditions. To believe that a rose has an agreeable smell or a red
color is not to perceive any intrinsic qualities of the object, but
is, rather, to perceive that the object bears a certain relation to
something else--our minds. Reid writes,



> The object of my perception, in this case, is that quality
> in the rose which I discern by the sense of smell. Observing that the
> agreeable sensation is raised when the rose is near, and ceases when
> it is removed, I am led, by my nature, to conclude some quality to be
> in the rose, which is the cause of this sensation. This quality in the
> rose is the object perceived; and that act of my mind by which I have
> the conviction and belief of this quality, is what in this case I call
> perception. (EIP 2.16, 194)




Physical structures of the rose in front of me--the anther in the
rose's stamen--produce pollen, which has a certain molecular
composition that results in my sensation of its odor. Other molecules
in the petals of the rose reflect light at a certain wavelength which
in turn causes in me a certain characteristic visual sensation of
red. If I am speaking correctly when I say "That rose smells
good", I am reporting the fact that I conceive of the rose as
possessing a particular relational property: I am aware that the rose
has the property of
being-such-as-to-cause-in-me-sensations-of-a-sweet-smelling-odor. Ultimately,
the rose possesses this relational property because of facts about its
molecular structure that account for its producing this odor in a
certain way, *and* facts about me that account for the fact
that these pollen molecules enter my nasal cavity, eventually reaching
the olfactory bulb, and cause certain sensations in my mind. But when
I am aware of the odor of the rose, I am aware of none of that; I am
aware only of the fact that there is something about the rose that
makes it cause in me certain sensations in normal conditions. 




Our conceptions of qualities such as smells and colors are to be
contrasted with our conceptions of primary qualities or configurations
of primary qualities, such as hardness. Say I'm holding the rose's
stem in my hand while I'm looking at it. I am having two importantly
different sensations: a visual sensation of red, and a tactile
sensation of hardness. For Reid, neither sensation resembles anything
in the object; both give rise to conceptions of the object as
possessing certain properties. The visual sensation gives rise to a
conception of the object as possessing a particular relational
property: its power to produce certain sensations in me in normal
conditions. The tactile sensation gives rise to a conception of the
rose's stem as possessing a particular intrinsic property: the complex
configuration of primary qualities that is hardness.




For both Locke and Reid, we are aware of objects as they are
intrinsically only when our awareness is caused by the primary
qualities of objects. But for Reid, and not for Locke, we are
genuinely aware of objects as they are when our awareness results from
the secondary qualities of objects; but we are aware of those objects
only as they are *relative* to us, and not as they
are in themselves.



> 
> 
> 
> "When a primary quality is perceived, the sensation immediately
> leads our thought to the quality signified by it, and is itself
> forgot." (EIP 2.17, 204)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "[T]here appears to be a real foundation for the distinction;
> and it is this--that our senses give us a direct and a distinct
> notion of the primary qualities, and inform us what they are in
> themselves. But of the secondary qualities, our senses give us only a
> relative and obscure notion. They inform us only, that they are
> qualities that affect us in a certain manner--that is, produce in
> us a certain sensation; but as to what they are in themselves, our
> senses leave us in the dark." (EIP 2.17, 201)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "[T]he sensations belonging to secondary qualities are an object
> of our attention, while those which belong to the primary are
> not." (EIP 2.17, 204)
> 
> 




Secondary and primary qualities are characterized by their relations
to the mind perceiving them and to the physical qualities in objects
that they signify. Primary qualities stand out as qualities of which
we have "direct" and "distinct" notions. This
is not so for secondary qualities. To return to Reid's rose, he writes
of the smell of the rose that



> I have a distinct notion of the sensation which it
> produces in my mind. ... The quality in the rose is something which
> occasions the sensation in me; but what that something is, I know
> not. My senses give me no information upon this point. The only
> notion, therefore, my senses give is this--that smell in the rose
> is an unknown quality or modification, which is the cause or occasion
> of a sensation which I know well. The relation which this unknown
> quality bears to the sensation with which nature hath connected it, is
> all I learn from the sense of smelling; but this is evidently a
> relative notion. The same reasoning will apply to every secondary
> quality. (EIP 2.17, 202/314b)




Reid does defend a primary/secondary quality distinction, but,
unusually, Reid's distinction is drawn not in metaphysical terms but
in *epistemic* terms premised upon discussion of the differing
ways that secondary and primary qualities relate to our minds (Nichols
2007, ch. 6).



 
An important note at this juncture is that Reid very infrequently uses
contemporary epistemological terms such as "knowledge",
"rational", or "justified", and even when he
does, he does not offer necessary and sufficient conditions for their
definition. Reid says above that sensations caused by primary
qualities "inform us" of the qualities in the objects that
caused them. One ought not look to Reid's epistemology for a detailed
formal apparatus clearly identifying his externalism about
justification, for example, even though he can be credited with
bringing what we now call externalism about justification into Early
Modern philosophy.


### 3.5 Responding to Skepticism about the External World




We are now in a position to understand the force of Reid's most
important response to any argument purporting to show that the
external world either might not exist, or might not be anything like
the way we take it to be. In one canonical statement of his position,
Reid says,



> The sceptic asks me, Why do you believe the existence of
> the external object which you perceive? This belief, sir, is none of
> my manufacture; it came from the mint of Nature; it bears her image
> and superscription; and, if it is not right, the fault is not mine: I
> even took it upon trust, and without suspicion. Reason, says the
> sceptic, is the only judge of truth, and you ought to throw off every
> opinion and every belief that is not grounded on reason. Why, sir,
> should I believe the faculty of reason more than that of
> perception?--they came both out of the same shop, and were made
> by the same artist; and if he puts one piece of false ware into my
> hands, what should hinder him from putting another? (IHM 6.20,
> 168-169)




The mistake that the skeptic makes, according to Reid, is to deny the
truth of something that is demanded by our constitutions. To perceive
an object as possessing a particular property is to have a conception
of the object delivered by one's constitution. What makes us convinced
of the accuracy of the conceptions of objects involved in perception
is that they arise from our constitutions. But, asks Reid here, why do
we find skeptical arguments so compelling? Why would someone sincerely
accept the radical skeptical conclusions following from Descartes's
hypothesis of the evil demon?



 
Ultimately, we think that such arguments lead to their conclusions
because we accept certain logical principles--such as the law of
non-contradiction, or modus ponens--which appear to us to be
self-evident. But to say that such principles are self-evident is just
to say that we cannot help but accept them. It is not to offer any
non-circular justification of those principles. But the
irresistibility of a belief is a very good indicator, Reid thinks,
that we hold that belief merely because of the way we are built,
merely because of our constitution. But then the skeptic has merely
placed the skeptical conclusion on the same footing as the common
sense belief about the external world: both rest on something that we
are compelled to believe by our constitutions. However, in order to
overthrow common sense, the skeptic must place the skeptical
conclusion, rather, on a *firmer* footing than the common
sense conclusion. Thus, the skeptic gives us no reason to reject
common sense beliefs about the external world. Reid has defended
common sense through construction of a direct theory of perception
that avoids the pitfalls of the Way of Ideas' representational
theory. Rather than landing in the "coal pit" of
skepticism, as Reid calls it, his theory purports to deliver knowledge
of the external world.


## 4. Causation and Free Will


### 4.1 Objecting to Hume




Reid develops his account of causation in light of Hume's account. As
Reid sees it, Hume starts with the assumption that if we are to learn
what causation is, we must first determine from what aspect of our
sensory experience the concept of causation is derived. Hume would put
the point in terms of the Way of Ideas as follows: we must determine
from what impression our idea of causation is copied. However, Hume
believed he had discovered that there is nothing in our sensory
experience corresponding to our ordinary notion of the causal
relation. In an inversion of the empiricist method attributed to Reid
above, Hume believed that causes *necessitate* their effects,
then he followed this commitment by arguing that we lack sensory
awareness of this necessitation. We see the first billiard ball hit
the second. We see the second move. We do not see the movement of the
first *assure*, or necessitate, the movement of the second. So
Hume concludes that causation must be something different from what we
take it to be ordinarily. 




But what is it? To answer this question, we must determine from what
sensory experiences we derive the idea of causation. It turns out, as
Reid reads Hume, that the sensory experiences that give rise to our
idea of causation are sensory experiences of what Hume
calls *constant conjunction*. The heating of the water is
regularly followed by the water's boiling. To say that the one event
causes the other is just to say that the two events always co-occur,
or that there is a brute law linking them. This is not to say that the
first event necessitates the second. The necessitation that we
ordinarily take to be involved in causation is not in the world; it is
in our heads as an expectation arising due to previous experience.



 
Reid accepts much of the negative side of Hume's view of causation
while rejecting Hume's assertions of the import of those negative
discoveries. Reid agrees, that is, that we have no sensory experience
of the necessitation of an effect by its cause. But this does not
imply our ordinary concept of causation is mistaken. Instead, Reid
thinks, the concept of causation is not an idea copied from a sensory
impression in the first place. Reid's complex thoughts here are tied
to perception and the role of sensations in
perception. (See 3.2 Reid's Arguments Against
Representationalism, above.) For him, sensations never bear
resemblance to the qualities they help us to perceive. It is hardly a
surprise, then, that the sensory experiences from which our thoughts
about causation spring bear no resemblance to the causal relation. But
this fact no more undermines our concept of causation than the lack of
resemblance between our sensory experiences of ordinary physical
objects and those objects themselves undermines our thoughts about
such objects. Like our thoughts about objects, our thoughts about the
causal relation are genuinely about the causal relation, despite the
fact that the sensations from which those thoughts spring, i.e.the
sensations of the relation of constant conjunction, bear no
resemblance to the relation they lead us to think about. We have no
sensations resembling necessitation, and, yet, causes necessitate
their effects.




However, Reid also offers criticisms of Hume's view of causation that
can be accepted independently of the Reidian view of perception and
sensation. Two of his most influential criticisms are of Hume's view
that our ordinary concept of causation is reducible to the relation of
constant conjunction.



 
Of the first he writes, "[I]t would follow from [Hume's
definition of causation], that whatever was singular in its nature, or
the first thing of its kind, could have no cause" (EAP 4.9,
250). Reid's point is that if the relation of causation is really that
of constant conjunction, then the first time that two types of event
are conjoined, the first cannot be the cause of the second. If there
is no history of conjunction, there is no causation. It would seem to
follow from Hume's definition, for instance, that if an earthquake
razes Mexico City, and no earthquake has ever done so before, then the
earthquake is not, in fact, the cause of the city's fall, an absurd
implication. This objection might not show Hume's theory is
mistaken--we omit consideration of it further here--but it
does pose a question with which any Humean must wrestle: Which
constant conjunctions are the genuine ones on the basis of which the
causal relation can be said to hold, and which are not? The more
specifically any two events are described, the more likely that there
will be no history of conjunction of the relevant sorts of events. But
what degree of specificity or generality in description is the right
degree?




The problem is made clearer by Reid's second objection to Hume's
analysis of causation and constant conjunction. He writes, "It
follows from [Hume's] definition of a cause, that night is the cause
of day, and day the cause of night. For no two things have more
constantly followed each other since the beginning of the world"
(EAP 4.9, 249). Since we don't ordinarily think that day is the cause
of night, or vice versa, Hume must deny that the two are actually
constantly conjoined, or, rather, he must insist that the constant
conjunction between the two of them is not of the right sort for the
relation between them to be one of causation. Hume thinks that there
is causation between two events just in case there is a law linking
them and also thinks that there is a law linking two events just in
case they are constantly conjoined. Reid's *first* objection
shows that it is not the case that wherever there is no constant
conjunction there is no law. His *second* objection shows that
it is not the case that wherever there is constant conjunction there
is a law. Constant conjunction is neither necessary nor sufficient for
the presence of a genuine law. The hard problem that remains for the
Humean, then, is to produce criteria for distinguishing genuine laws
from regularities that are not laws at all.



 
These criticisms lead Reid to hold that there is a legitimate causal
relation between two events whenever the two are conjoined by a law of
nature, even if laws of nature do not simply amount to constant
conjunctions. He uses the term *physical causation* to refer to
the relation that holds between two events just in case they are
conjoined by natural law. He takes the discovery of the physical
causes of phenomena to be central both to the sciences and to ordinary
life (see IHM 6.12, 122; EAP 1.5, 28-9; EAP 4.3, 211-2). But he also
holds that genuine causation, what he calls *efficient
causation*, is not reducible to physical causation. The reason is
that, for him, a law of nature is not a brute conjunction between
events. Rather, it is a regularity in the behavior of the efficient
cause of observed phenomena. Consistent with remarks above
(see 1.2 Newtonianism and Empiricism), Reid
writes,



> [S]upposing that all the phenomena that fall within the
> reach of our senses, were accounted for from the general laws of
> nature, justly deduced from experience; that is, supposing natural
> philosophy brought to its utmost perfection, it does not discover the
> efficient cause of any one phenomenon in nature. The laws of nature
> are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there
> must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The rules of
> navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never
> built a house. (EAP 1.6, 38)




It is a law that unsupported objects close to the earth will
fall. What this means, Reid thinks, is that the physical cause of the
fall of an object regularly causes objects to fall when they are
unsupported. Physical causation, for him, is parasitic upon the more
basic kind of causation, namely efficient causation. But what is
efficient causation? Reid writes, "In the strict and proper
sense, I take an efficient cause to be a being who had power to
produce the effect, and exerted that power for that purpose"
(Letter to James Gregory, in *Correspondence* 174). Efficient
causation is necessitation of the sort that Hume thought not to
exist. To efficiently cause an event is to be capable of seeing to it
that the event occurs, and to make an effort to see to it that it
does. Thus, at the bottom of Reid's theory of causation are his
notions of power and exertion.


### 4.2 Power, Exertion and Moral Liberty




Reid is clear that *power* is not the sort of thing that admits
of a logical definition. We cannot reduce it to some set of simpler
qualities. However, this doesn't mean that we can't say anything about
what power is. On the contrary, Reid makes a variety of claims about
power. Importantly, he claims that power is the quality that, when
coupled with exertion, necessitates a particular effect. Taking a cue
from ordinary language, he holds that it is a contradiction to say
that an entity has the power to do something, and exerts that power,
and yet the effect fails to come about. If the effect fails to come
about when the entity exerts itself, we might say, what that shows is
that the entity only seemed, but didn't actually, have the power to
bring about the effect. Reid also claims that any agent who has the
power to do something also has three other inter-related powers: the
power not to do the thing, the power *to try* to do that thing
(that is, the power to exert his power to do the thing), and the
power *not to try* to do that thing. He claims further that any
agent who has the power to do something must believe himself to have
that power.



 
Any one of these claims can be questioned, even if Reid is right that
they are embedded in our ordinary concept of power. Take, for
instance, the claim that an agent who has the power to do something
also has the power not to do it. Locke offers the following example,
which seems to be a counterexample to this claim:



> [S]uppose a Man be carried, whilst fast asleep, into a
> Room, where is a Person he longs to see and speak with; and be there
> locked fast in, beyond his Power to get out: he awakes, and is glad to
> find himself in so desirable Company, which he stays willingly
> in, *i.e.* prefers his stay to going away. I ask, Is not this
> stay voluntary? I think, no Body will doubt it: and yet being locked
> fast in, 'tis evident he is not at liberty not to stay, he has not
> freedom to be gone. (John Locke, *Essay Concerning Human
> Understanding*, 2.21.10)




The man in Locke's example seems to have the power to stay in the
room, while lacking the power not to stay. Reid would probably deny
that Locke's prisoner actually has the power to stay in the room, and
there is some intuitive force to this view. The man, it seems, is in
the hands of forces outside of his control. For Reid, what is in a
person's power and what is 'up to' him or her are the same. Since it
is not up to the man whether he stays (even if he thinks it is), it is
not in his power to stay.




Reid endorses the idea that what is in our power is just what is up to
us. He claims that the only entities that can have power are entities
with minds. That is, sticks and stones are never invested with power,
and are not, therefore, ever the efficient causes of any events. The
earthquake might be the physical cause of the fall of the city, but it
is not the efficient cause, Reid thinks, because it does not have a
mind. Since it is not up to the earthquake whether or not the city
falls, the earthquake lacks the power to raze the city. Reid offers
various reasons for thinking that wherever there is power there is a
mind. One of the most compelling is expressed in the following
passage:



> [I]f we had not will, and that degree of understanding
> which will necessarily implies, we could exert no active power, and
> consequently could have none: for power that cannot be exerted is no
> power. It follows also, that the active power, of which only we can
> have any distinct conception, can be only in beings that have
> understanding and will. (EAP 1.5, 29)




Reid's idea is that the only conception we can have of the exertion of
power is of that distinctive sort of mental effort in which we engage
when we will to do something. Since he holds that the power to act is
always accompanied with the power to exert that power, it follows that
the only entities that can have power are those who are capable of
engaging in the peculiar sort of mental effort with which we are all
familiar from our own case. But then it follows that the only entities
that can have power are those with minds. When coupled with the claim,
that Reid also makes, that every event is efficiently caused, it
follows that every event in nature is directed towards an end;
everything that happens is chosen to occur. In fact, Reid holds that
all and only our free actions are those events of which we are the
efficient causes. An agent who has the power to bring about a
particular action is said, by Reid, to have 'moral liberty'.




There is a puzzle that one encounters when trying to make sense of
Reid's notion of power and which sheds some light on Reid's concept of
moral liberty. The puzzle is this: Say that I have the power to do a
cartwheel. According to Reid it follows that if I exert my power and
thereby do a cartwheel, then I will be the efficient cause of my
cartwheel. Imagine that I do this and imagine that every event is
efficiently caused. Is my exertion of my power to do the cartwheel an
event? If so, then it must have an efficient cause. Am I the efficient
cause of the exertion? If not, then it doesn't seem that my cartwheel
is a free action. After all, if I'm not the efficient cause of the
exertion, then it wasn't up to me whether or not I tried to do the
cartwheel, and it seems to follow that it wasn't up to me whether or
not I did it. So, Reid seems forced to say that I am the efficient
cause of the exertion to do the cartwheel. But then it follows from
the definition of efficient causation that I exerted my power to exert
myself to do the cartwheel. And, therefore, we can ask if I am the
efficient cause of my exertion to exert myself to do the cartwheel. If
not, then I didn't do the cartwheel freely; if so, then we will find
ourselves having to ask about the efficient cause of the exertion to
exert my power to exert. In short, Reid's views of power, efficient
causation and moral liberty appear to be inconsistent with one
another.




The way out of the puzzle is to see that the relation between an agent
and the event he or she efficiently causes is not the same as the
relation between the agent and her exertion of power. Trying, on this
view, is not something that an agent does in order to do something
else; it is not a separate action on the way to performing another
act. If I am going to build a birdhouse, I first have to buy
nails. Buying nails is a distinct act from building the birdhouse that
must be done on the way to building the birdhouse. But *trying*
to buy the nails is not distinct from buying them in the way that
buying them is distinct from building the birdhouse. If I manage to
buy the nails, I haven't done two things, buy them and try to, but
only one. But if I manage to build the birdhouse, then I did do two
things: buy the nails, and build the birdhouse. So, there is something
wrongheaded about even asking whether the agent is the efficient cause
of the exertion of power. The agent is the efficient cause of the act,
and there is no separate act, the exertion, of which he or she needs
to be the efficient cause in order to have acted freely.




It is on the basis of this, or some other closely related line of
thought, that Reid is often described as having an 'agent causal'
theory of freedom. Agent-causation is the kind of causation that
occurs when an object or agent, rather than an event, causes a
change. Many people believe that there is no agent-causation. They
hold that there are only causal relations between events, and every
case of apparent agent-causation is merely apparent; every such case
is actually a veiled case of event-causation. Philosophers who hold
that free human actions require that certain events be agent-caused,
and also believe that some human actions are free, hold that there are
some events that are caused by agents but not by any events; they hold
that there is a basic causal relation between agents and events that
is instantiated every time a person acts freely. Given that, for Reid,
the relation between an agent and the action of which the agent is the
efficient cause must be a basic causal relation--it does not
consist, not even in part, in some further distinct relation between
the agent and the exertion of power--it follows that Reid holds
an agent-causal view of free action.


### 4.3 Motives and Actions




Why should we believe that human beings have moral liberty, i.e. why
should we think that we are endowed with power to produce our actions?
We have reason to think that we are not the efficient causes of our
own behavior. Our actions seem to come about according to
psychological laws linking them to prior motives for action. Jealous,
generous, prideful and benevolent motives lead in apparently law-like
ways to various characteristic behaviors. If it is a fact that our
conduct comes about according to laws, then it seems that the author
of the laws, if there is one, is the real author of our actions. 



 
Reid denies that there are laws linking motives with behavior, or in
his terms he denies that motives are the physical causes of action. He
offers a variety of fascinating arguments for this claim. The most
important of these arguments is summarized quite clearly in Reid's
correspondence, and presented at greater length in *Essays on the
Active Powers* 4.4. In the correspondence he writes: 



> It is a question of fact, whether the influence of motives
> be fixed by laws of nature, so that they shall always have the same
> effect in the same circumstances. Upon this, indeed, the question
> about liberty and necessity hangs. But I have never seen any proof
> that there are such laws of nature, far less any proof that the
> strongest motive always prevails. However much our late fatalists have
> boasted of this principle as of a law of nature, without ever telling
> us what they mean by the strongest motive, I am persuaded that,
> whenever they shall be pleased to give us any measure of the strength
> of motives distinct from their prevalence, it will appear, from
> experience, that the strongest motive does not always prevail. If no
> other test or measure of the strength of motives can be found but
> their prevailing, then this boasted principle will be only an
> identical proposition, and signify only that the strongest motive is
> the strongest motive, and the motive that prevails is the motive that
> prevails--which proves nothing. (Letter to James Gregory,
> in *Correspondence* 176)




Reid assumes that anybody who holds that there is a law linking
motives and behaviors will thereby accept the claim that human beings
always act on the strongest of their motives. However, Reid claims
that there are various ways in which the notion of the *strongest
motive* can be defined--there are various measures of
strength of motive--and depending which definition is employed we
find that it is either false or trivial and uninformative to say that
people always act on the strongest motive.




Reid identifies three particularly important senses in which the
strength of a motive can be measured: by, to use his terms, its
'prevalence', its 'animal strength', or its 'rational
strength'. According to the view that associates strength with
prevalence, the strongest motive is just the motive on which the agent
acts. Under this view, there is no way of assessing the strength of
motives prior to seeing what the agent does. The animal strength of a
motive is the degree to which it is felt, the degree to which the
agent might be said to have an *urge* for its object. The
rational strength of a motive is the degree to which the act it
dictates is judged to be worthwhile by the agent. 




As Reid puts the point in the above quotation, the claim that people
always act on their strongest motive when strength is associated with
prevalence is 'an identical proposition.' It is true but trivial, and
it fails to show that people are not the efficient causes of their own
behavior. After all, under the view of strength as prevalence, the
term 'strongest motive' can be replaced with the term 'the motive on
which the agent acts' and thus 'People always act on their strongest
motive' becomes 'People always act on the motive on which they
act'. True, but hardly the sort of truth from which anything
interesting follows. 




On the other hand, under either the view that the strongest motive is
the strongest animal motive, or the view that the strongest motive is
the strongest rational motive, it is false that people always act on
the strongest motive, thinks Reid. People sometimes do what they judge
to be right, even though they have a much stronger urge to do
something else. And people sometimes give in to their urges, contrary
to their better judgment. Both of these claims can be questioned. We
might say, for instance, that people who act as dictated by their
judgment actually have an urge to do so, an urge that counterbalances
their urge to do otherwise. And, we might say that people who act on
their urges, and counter to their best judgment, don't actually judge
the alternative to be better, but do so only in some watered-down
sense. Notice, however, that anyone who objects to Reid on either of
these two grounds seems to already accept that people always act on
the strongest of their motives in one sense or another. It is that
prior acceptance that motivates the objection. Reid, by contrast,
takes the facts that we sometimes act as dictated by our urges,
sometimes as dictated by our judgments, to be a prior fact that any
theory must account for, rather than a consequence of a theory of
motivation. Hence, he takes any theory that does not allow for these
consequences to be flawed, and takes himself to have shown that there
is no satisfactory sense in which people always act on the strongest
of their motives. 




Reid's argument does not decisively settle the question of whether or
not human conduct comes about in accordance with laws linking it to
prior motives. Rather, what he has shown is that we cannot accept the
claim that human conduct is law governed through simple reflection
from the armchair. We do need to do careful conceptual work in order
to provide a non-trivial definition of strength that is different from
either the animal or rational definitions; but we also need to do
careful empirical work in behavioral psychology in order to determine
if people do, indeed, always act on the strongest of motives in the
sense of strength that we develop. His argument, then, makes a
contribution to the question of whether or not people are the
efficient causes of their own behavior by posing a further, and
difficult problem for those, like Hume, who deny it on the grounds
that our behavior is law-governed.


### 4.4 The Three Arguments for Moral Liberty




Reid does not rest content to defend the claim that human beings are
the efficient causes of their own behavior by responding to the best
objections to it; he also provides three positive arguments for the
claim which he labels the 'first', 'second' and 'third argument for
moral liberty'. (The arguments appear in *Essays on the Active
Powers* 4.6-8.)




The first argument for moral liberty parallels Reid's response to
external world skepticism (see 3.5 Responding to
Skepticism about the External World, above). Reid claims that the
belief that we are endowed with power to produce our own actions is a
first principle and then employs his general form of defense of first
principles in order to argue that it must be so. We naturally and
non-inferentially believe ourselves to be endowed with power since
various activities in which we engage would make no sense if we did
not believe ourselves to be endowed with power. For instance, he
claims that the activity of deliberating, of weighing reasons for and
against various possible actions, proceeds under the assumption that
we have power; if we didn't believe that, he thinks, then we would not
bother deliberating.




What gives Reid's claim appeal is the fact that when we deliberate we
think that what we are deliberating about is up to us, and for Reid,
what is up to us is identical to what is in our power. However, it's
not clear that we have to think of actions as being in our power in
order to be motivated to deliberate; the thought that our actions are
'up to us', a thought which is undeniably involved in deliberation,
might be understood in some way which does not presuppose power. For
instance, in thinking that what we do is 'up to us', we might just be
thinking that if we're sufficiently motivated to do it, we will. By
way of example, note that it's generally true that people who
deliberate before they act do things that are more in their interests
than those who simply act impulsively, without deliberation. Hence, if
you are motivated to avoid impulsive action, that motive might lead
you to deliberate, and your deliberation might, in turn, lead you to
do something better than you would have done had you not
deliberated. It is not clear that a person who was motivated to
deliberate for this reason would be presuming himself or herself to be
endowed with power in Reid's sense. Such a person might think merely
that deliberation will produce motives that happen to give rise, for
reasons entirely out of the agent's control, to better actions. In
short, if we think of deliberation as motivated action, and if we can
imagine a person being motivated to engage in it even in the absence
of the belief that he or she is endowed with power, then Reid is
wrong.




Still, it is quite possible that Reid is right. The question turns on
whether or not it is possible to provide an adequate picture of the
psychology of deliberation without appeal to the belief that we are
endowed with power. What the first argument from moral liberty serves
to do is not to silence the opposition, but instead to force the
opposition not to oversimplify the phenomena. Those who deny that
human beings are endowed with power in Reid's sense need to explain
what we are thinking when we deliberate. That explanation must not
gloss over the complexity of ordinary deliberation, but also must not
show us to be thinking ourselves to be endowed with power in Reid's
sense whenever we deliberate about what to do (see Yaffe 2004,
ch. 1).




In the second argument for moral liberty, Reid claims that none of our
moral practices--our practices of holding ourselves and others
accountable for their behavior--would make any sense if we did
not believe ourselves and others to be endowed with power over
conduct. He claims, in short, that the very concept of a morally
accountable being presupposes that that being has power over his
conduct. Since we are, he thinks, morally accountable beings, it
follows that we are endowed with power over our conduct.




The first argument for moral liberty depends upon the inadequacy of
any account of deliberation that leaves out the belief that our
conduct is in our power. So the second depends upon the inadequacy of
any account of what makes a person morally accountable that does not
include the power to control action. Someone who wished to deny that
human beings have power over their conduct, but are still morally
accountable, might note, for instance, that one of the primary
purposes of certain forms of punishment, most notably imprisonment, is
to prevent the offender from acting similarly in the future. However,
such a purpose does not presuppose that the person has power over his
or her conduct. If the thief is going to steal again, then that's
reason enough to imprison him, we might say. This is so even if he is
going to steal only because his desires will inevitably give rise to
such behavior and not because he has power that he is resolved to
exercise objectionably in the future. Reid's second argument for moral
liberty fails if purposes of this sort exhaust the purposes of
punishment. The second argument turns, that is, on a retributivist
conception of punishment--a conception according to which a
punishment is appropriate only if it is *deserved*--and a
further claim to the effect that a punishment is never deserved in the
retributivist's sense if the crime was not efficiently caused by the
agent to whom the punishment is issued. It remains an open question
whether or not a retributivist conception of punishment could be
coherently married to a view that denies that human beings are endowed
with power. Reid's second argument for moral liberty raises this
question in a powerful form.




In the third argument for moral liberty, which is the most obscure of
the three, Reid claims that a person could not engage in planned
conduct if not endowed with power. Since it's obvious, he thinks, that
we do engage in planned conduct, it follows that we must have power
over our actions. Reid links the third argument for moral liberty with
the argument from design for God's existence. According to the
argument from design, God must exist since the world is so complex,
and yet so orderly, that there must have been an all-powerful,
all-knowing being who designed it and made it according to
plan. Similarly, Reid argues, planned conduct is at once so
complicated and so orderly that there must have been some author of
it. He then claims that since it is obvious that we think up our own
plans, we must also execute them. So, he thinks, we must be endowed
with power (see Hatcher 2013).




There is room to object not just to the third argument, but also to
the argument from design, by noting that ordered complexity can arise
through mechanisms other than a guiding hand. Most of us think, for
instance, that the mechanisms of natural selection result in the
production of enormously complicated and yet ordered biological
structures, like the human eye. If natural selection is causally
responsible for the human eye, then there is no designer of these
structures who efficiently caused them. We don't need power, in Reid's
sense, in order to execute our plans; we just need to be the sorts of
creatures whose minds are hooked up to their bodies in such a way that
they do what they plan. It could be, that is, that by forming plans we
engage powers that are not our own by engaging laws linking plans with
execution, laws of which we are not the authors.




This is a powerful objection, but it is not the end of the
debate. Notice that someone who rejects the argument from design is
likely to think both that there is no efficient cause of the complex
order which we encounter in nature, *and* that nobody planned
the order that we find. But there is no doubt that when a person, say,
builds a house that there was somebody who formed the plan to build
the house. The question is whether or not that person must have had
the power to build it in order to bring the plan to fruition. Reid's
point is that our attribution of the wisdom to form the plan goes
hand-in-hand with the attribution of the power to execute it. We might
think that nobody was either wise enough or powerful enough to create
the world; but if we do think someone was wise enough, then we must
also think that person powerful enough. In the case of planned
conduct, we know that there is a person wise enough--namely the
person whose plan it was--so surely we must also think that
person powerful enough. As he puts the point:



> Every indication of wisdom, taken from the effect, is
> equally an indication of power to execute what wisdom planned. And, if
> we have any evidence that the wisdom which formed the plan is in the
> man, we have the very same evidence, that the power which executed it
> is in him also. (EAP 4.8, 241)




Even this point--that where there's wisdom there's
power--can be questioned, but there is surely something right
about it. Traits of character, of which wisdom is an example, are both
cognitive and volitional: we think of a person who has one as both
capable of understanding things, and of doing them. To be wise isn't
just to know how to do something, but also to be able to do it. So,
when we ascribe someone with the intelligence to think up a complex
plan, and on those grounds take the person to be wise, we are also
taking the person to have the power to execute the plan. This is the
idea that drives Reid's third argument for moral liberty.




None of Reid's arguments for moral liberty are decisive. Each,
however, lays bare a manner in which the notion of power is naturally
construed to be implicated in our ordinary beliefs and our ordinary
practices. While it remains possible that what is implicated is
actually something less, something that can be described and explained
without appeal to Reid's very strong notion of power, Reid's arguments
nonetheless make clear what an account of human agency that does
without power would need to account for if it is to be
satisfactory. (For Reid on causation and free will, see Yaffe
2004.)


## 5. Memory and Personal Identity




Reid constructs a theory of personal identity in opposition to Locke's
account, which appeals to psychological continuity as a necessary
condition for sameness of person over time. Reid argues that Locke has
misunderstood the relationship between consciousness and memory. Reid
develops a direct theory of memory according to which the objects of
memory are events in the past, not mental representations. Reid
attempts to provide sufficient continuity of the self through time to
ground sameness of person without lapsing into Humean skepticism about
the self.


### 5.1 Theory of Memory




Consistent with Reid's faculty psychology, memory is a faculty of its
own and it takes a unique set of objects. Just as the faculty of
perception takes as its objects mind-independent bodies, the faculty
of memory takes as its objects events in the past. Reid develops this
into a direct theory of memory akin to his direct theory of
perception, and in contrast to the Ideal Theory and account of memory
(Copenhaver 2006).




The objects of memory are events in the past. Just like perceptions,
memories are accompanied by their own phenomenology and sensory
experience. When one remembers hitting a game-winning serve in a
volleyball match, one may experience memory-images of the court and
feelings of triumph. However, the imagery and emotion accompanying the
memory are not identical to the memory. To suggest that they are
identical to the memory is to confuse the psychological means by which
the memory occurs with the content of the memory belief. In Reid's day
the theory of memory endorsed by proponents of the Theory of Ideas
made a similar confusion, in his opinion, by claiming that memories
are mental events in which a past idea is compared to a present
idea. According to Reid, these philosophers confused the act of
remembering with the thing remembered (see EIP 3.1).




The direct theory distinguishes personal memory from factual memory
(Hamilton 2003). "I remember hitting the winning serve" is
an example of personal memory, which does not take form as a
propositional attitude. Those memories that do take form as
propositional attitudes, e.g. "I remember that I hit the winning
serve," are not necessarily personal memories. This is because I
may remember hitting the winning serve only because my best friend has
reminded me of that over the years. In that case my memory is not
known directly by virtue of the fact that I have not thought in the
first-person of an event in my past; instead, this memory arises
through inference from testimony.




Reid's advocacy of a direct theory of memory requires a commitment to
the claim that memories take past events as their objects, which
contrasts with Locke's theory. Reid explains this contrast with an
example having to do with the fact that, yesterday, he has smelled a
certain rose, and that, today, he remembers smelling the rose's
fragrance:



> Philosophers indeed tell me, that the immediate object of
> my memory and imagination in this case, is not the past sensation, but
> an idea of it, an image, phantasm, or species of the odour I smelled:
> that this idea now exists in my mind, or in my sensorium; and the mind
> contemplating this present idea, finds it a representation of what is
> past, or of what may exist; and accordingly calls it memory... This is
> the doctrine of the Ideal Philosophy. [But] memory appears to me to
> have things that are past, and not present ideas, for its
> object. ... I beg leave to think with the vulgar, that when I remember
> the smell of the tuberose, that very sensation which I had yesterday,
> and which has now no more any existence, is the immediate object of my
> memory. (IHM 2.3, 28)




Personal memories are present-tense mental states with first-person
perspective that take past events as intentional objects.




To clarify the epistemology of memory, Reid distinguishes between
distinct and indistinct memories. He says distinct memories are
"real knowledge" and indistinct memories are not:
"Memory is always accompanied with the belief of that which we
remember, as perception is accompanied with the belief of that which
we perceive," which emphasizes the structural similarity between
the two faculties. He adds, "in mature years, and in a sound
state of mind, every man feels that he must believe what he distinctly
remembers, though he can give no other reason of his belief, but that
he remembers the thing distinctly" (EIP 3.1, 254). This final
remark gestures at the unaccountability of memory.




Reid exemplifies his commitment to the unaccountability of memory
experience by placing a first principle about memory in his set of
first principles of contingent truths: "That those things did
really happen which I distinctly remember" (EIP 6.5, 474). Reid
illustrates the cogency of this first principle by describing a
courtroom scene in which a defense attorney appeals to global
skepticism about the reliability of memory in an effort to undermine
the devastating testimony of eyewitness about the actions of his
client. The argument "would have no other effect upon the judge
or jury, than to convince them that he was disordered in his
judgement" (EIP 6.5, 475). The canonization of memory in his set
of first principles indicates that Reid does not believe that the
reliability of the faculty of memory can be justified in a
non-circular way since any attempt to demonstrate its reliability will
presuppose its reliability (EIP 6.4, 481; IHM 2.3, 28).




Reid attempts to explain why memory is unaccountable:



> The knowledge which I have of things past by my memory,
> seems to me as unaccountable as an immediate knowledge would be of
> things to come; and I can give no reason why I should have the one and
> not the other, but that such is the will of my Maker. (EIP 3.2,
> 255-6)
> 
> 
> When I believe that I washed my hands and face this morning, there
> appears no necessity in the truth of this proposition. It might be, or
> it might not be. A man may distinctly conceive it without believing it
> at all. How then do I come to believe it? I remember it
> distinctly. This is all I can say. (EIP 3.2, 256)
> 
> 




When Reid says 'memory is unaccountable' he means that we don't know
why distinct memory is always accompanied by belief; we don't know why
it reliably produces true belief; and we can't established that memory
beliefs are true in a non-circular fashion (van Woudenberg
2004). Further analysis of the epistemology of memory belief is
prevented by virtue of this unaccountability. This insight about the
epistemology of memory belief indicates subtlety about the limits of
analysis, which has drawn favorable comparisons to Wittgenstein
(Wolterstorff 2000, ch. 9).


### 5.2 Reid on Personal Identity




Reid's theory of memory informs his theory of personal identity, as
does his three criticisms of Locke's theory of personal
identity. First, Reid argues that Locke's account is misleading due to
confusion between the concepts of consciousness, memory and personal
identity (IHM 1.3, 17; see John Locke, *Essay Concerning Human
Understanding* 2.27.24, 345). Reid believes that using
'consciousness' to describe awareness of past events is a misnomer
because we are only conscious, in such cases, of our remembrance of
those events. Second, Reid offers his 'Brave Officer' thought
experiment as a counterexample to Locke's account (EIP 3.6, 276). The
point of the thought experiment is to show that Locke's theory does
not adequately preserve the transitivity of the personal identity
relation. Put in other words, Reid argues that 'identity' in Locke's
theory of personal identity cannot refer to numerical identity. Third,
Reid follows Bishop Butler in arguing that Locke's justification of
his theory of personal identity is circular (EIP 3.6, 277). Reid's
opposition to Locke (and to Hume's bundle theory) inform Reid's
commonsense account of personal identity.




Reid affirms that humans have diachronic personal identity, and denies
Hume's so-called 'bundle theory'. Reid asserts the relation between
memory and personal identity in the second of his first principles
dealing with these issues: "Another first principle is our own
personal identity and continued existence, as far back as we remember
anything distinctly. This we know immediately, and not by
reasoning. It seems, indeed, to be a part of the testimony of
memory" (EIP 6.5, 476). (See 1.1
Common Sense and First Principles above for discussion of Reid's
first principles.)




Despite Reid's certainty on this point, he gives few further details
about the nature of personal identity and the self. Personal identity
implies the "continued existence of that indivisible thing which
I call myself. Whatever this self may be, it is something which
thinks, and deliberates, and resolves, and acts, and suffers. I am not
thought, I am not action, I am not feeling; I am something that
thinks, and acts, and suffers. ...that self or I, to which they
belong, is permanent... Such are the notions that I have of my
personal identity" (EIP 3.4, 264). Here Reid echoes Descartes'
operational definition of the self in *Meditation* 2. Reid also
argues that persons are not identical to their bodies (EIP 3.4,
264). (For more on Reid's theories of memory and personal identity,
see Reid on Memory and Personal Identity.)




Reid refuses to speculate on the substance of the enduring self,
however. Despite the fact that Reid is a substance dualist who
believes that selves are eternal souls, he does not defend that view
in the work that he published. In manuscript lectures he describes
souls as "beings of a quite different Nature" than
material bodies and says that the death of the body does not imply the
death of the soul (*Animate Creation* 617-618). As Reid spells
out his metaphysics of the self and soul here, his arguments become
theological and appeal to God's existence, love and justice. He offers
a moral argument about the necessity of reward and punishment for the
thesis that the self survives bodily death (*Animate Creation*
623). Though survival of the self after bodily death is "of the
highest Importance to Mankind yet it must be acknowledged that [all]
the Arguments that Philosophy suggests upon this head are not of such
Strength but that they may leave some doubt even in the Minds of wise
and thinking Men" (*Animate Creation* 629).


## 6. Moral Philosophy




Whereas Reid wrote an entire book about perception, *Inquiry into
the Human Mind*, his moral theory arrives to us piecemeal in
the *Active Powers*, the *Intellectual Powers* and
papers collected as *Reid's Practical Ethics*, alongside a
number of other concerns about free will, agency, causation, etc. As a
result, Reid's readers must do more work to structure his moral
philosophy than other components of his system.




Reid's moral philosophy is composed of several core theses. These
include: (i) that human beings have an active power that is not
causally determined by prior causes, laws of nature, or the
conjunction of the two, making Reid a libertarian about free will;
(ii) that moral statements are to be interpreted as propositions with
subject/object content, making Reid a cognitivist; (iii) that
truth-makers for moral statements are non-natural and independent of
the mental states of human beings, meaning that truths in ethics do
not generally depend upon the beliefs of humans; and (iv) that moral
knowledge is produced in a way structurally similar to knowledge of
the external world through perception, making Reid a moral sense
theorist. Reid's moral philosophy is influenced by his belief in a
benevolent, just, Christian God, but Reid doesn't endorse divine
command theory. Reid summarizes his ethics in the familiar terms of
his philosophical method by saying that



> by an original power of the mind, which we call
> conscience, or the moral faculty, we have the conceptions of right and
> wrong in human conduct, of merit and demerit, of duty and moral
> obligation, ...; and that by the same faculty, we perceive some things
> in human conduct to be right, and others to be wrong; that the first
> principles of morals are the dictates of this faculty; and that we
> have the same reason to rely upon those dictates, as upon the
> determinations of our senses, or of our other natural faculties. (EAP
> 3.3.6, 180)




Reid's theory faces common criticisms about the plausibility of moral
sense theory. The internal structure of Reid's moral philosophy has
led to criticisms about, for example, the relation between the moral
sense and moral first principles. It is unclear how the moral faculty
judges either the truth of universalized moral first principles or the
truth of contingent and fallible statements about particular action
tokens. Reid appears to use the term 'axiom' equivocally by referring
both to general and particular moral principles (Haakonssen
1990). However, promising steps to a full understanding of the
interpretive problems posed by the logical scope and status of
particular and general forms of Reid's first principles have been
made, even though they await application to Reid's moral theory.


### 6.1 Context




Several issues in the historical and religious context of Reid's
writing influence his moral philosophy. First, Reid adopts what, for
his time, was a non-traditional approach to moral philosophy insofar
as he is neither a rationalist, like Samuel Clarke or Richard Price,
nor a sentimentalist like Hutcheson, Hume or Smith. Reid understood
why it was that the unified front of cognitivists against Hobbesian
egoism had deteriorated into inter-nicene disputes between
sentimentalism and rationalism. Reid's position inhabits a middle
ground because he rejected assumptions dividing these camps (Davis
2006, ch. 2). Reid denies that a single faculty generates moral
motivation and moral judgment, and denies Locke's division of labor
between sense and reason. Instead Reid argues on behalf of a moral
sense capable of both motivation and judgment. He rejects rationalist
goals to identify and systematize necessarily true and general moral
principles. He repudiates the sentimentalist's wayward account of
moral judgment, and its lapse into observer-dependent moral
properties. Seen in its context in the history of Early Modern moral
thought, Reid attempts to draw the best from both groups in order to
avoid the errors of each.




The second relevant feature of Reid's context concerns the Scottish
legal tradition. Reid routinely discusses the competence of witnesses;
the 'final court of appeal' and first principles; inadmissible
evidence for moral judgments; burdens of proof; etc. The Scottish
legal tradition places an abiding presumption of charity in witnesses
and places faith in an independent judiciary. This is balanced by a
network of checks warranting credulity and securing
impartiality. These factors, and the competency of judges, provide the
context for Reid's moral first principles, for their use and for their
epistemological status. For example, criticisms that the moral first
principles do not seem to be universally believed or self-evident must
be put in context of the fact that Reid's moral system presupposes, as
did the Scottish legal system, that it administers subjects of sound
minds and common sense (Davis 2006, ch. 3).


### 6.2 Moral First Principles




Reid uses a method in his development of a deontic normative ethics
similar to the method he uses in his development of an epistemology
and metaphysics. Reid states first principles that serve as
foundational commitments. His ethics contain several types of first
principles, and the principles do not take any single form. Amongst
them are factual claims about moral reality, moral judgments about
action types, claims about obligations, etc. Reid says that there are
three types of moral principles, but the distinction between these
types is not always clear.



The first type is about "virtue in general." This set
includes statements such as:



> 
> 
> 
> |  |  |
> | --- | --- |
> | 1. | There are some things in human conduct that merit approbation and
> praise, others that merit blame and punishment; and different degrees
> either of approbation or of blame, are due to different actions. |
> | 2. | What is in no degree voluntary, can neither deserve moral
> approbation nor blame. |
> | 4. | Men may be highly culpable in omitting what they ought to have
> done, as well as in doing what they ought not. |
> | 6. | It ought to be our most serious concern to do our duty as far as
> we know it, and to fortify our minds against every temptation to
> deviate from it. (EAP 5.1, 271) |
> 
> 
> 




Reid says that these and the other principles "must appear
self-evident to every man who hath a conscience."



The next set of Reid's moral first principles is about "more
particular" aspects of virtue:



> 
> 
> 
> |  |  |
> | --- | --- |
> | 1. | We ought to prefer a greater good, though more distant, to a
> less; and a less evil to a greater. |
> | 2. | As far as the intention of nature appears in the constitution of
> man, we ought to comply with that intention, and to act agreeably to
> it. |
> | 3. | No man is born for himself only. |
> | 5. | To every man who believes the existence, the perfections, and the
> providence of God, the veneration and submission we owe to him is
> self-evident. (EAP 5.1, 272, 273, 274, 276) |
> 
> 
> 




Critics have found many of these principles questionable and their
status as self-evident more questionable. Some critics have argued
that they are poorly articulated since Reid does not state definitions
of key terms like "intention of nature." Others argue that
they depend upon the truth of Christianity. For example, Reid's
defense of his second Principle 2 includes discussion of the way in
which God has "excellently fitted" our conscience, reason,
natural instincts and bodily appetites to the benefit of the
species.




Moral first principles, like other first principles God has placed in
our natures, require experience in order to appreciate. In this very
narrow way Reid compares moral first principles to mathematical axioms
since those axioms are "not discerned till men come to a certain
degree of maturity of understanding. ... In like manner, our Moral
Judgment or Conscience, grows to maturity from an imperceptible seed,
planted by our Creator" (EAP 5.1, 276-7). So, though moral
principles are self-evident, they are only known to be true by those
who have reached an age of maturity. This resonates with the lessons
Reid derives from the requirements upon witnesses and judges in Scots
law.




Despite the fact that he offers a rich set of moral first principles,
as a moral sense theorist Reid does not intend to systematize a
network of moral obligations through his first principles. He writes,
"A system of morals is not like a system of geometry, where the
subsequent parts derive their evidence from the preceding, and one
chain of reasoning is carried on from the beginning;... [instead it]
resembles more a system of botany, or mineralogy, where the subsequent
parts depend not for their evidence upon the preceding, and the
arrangement is made to facilitate apprehension and memory, and not
give evidence" (EAP 5.2, 281). First principles are given
in an attempt to classify and systematize our obligations, and are not
given in an attempt to justify and defend them. The actions we are
obligated to perform are, according to Reid, obvious and, perhaps,
self-evident.


### 6.3 Moral Judgment




As with many of Reid's mature doctrines, his ethics is formed through
careful reflection on the theories of his predecessors, which leads
Reid to cognitivism: moral statements express propositions instead of
expressing feelings. When I say 'murder is wrong' this statement
predicates a moral property, wrongness, of an action type, murder. In
contrast, sentimentalists say that when I say 'murder is wrong' I mean
'murder makes me feel bad' or something like that. The historical
provenance of cognitivism in Western philosophy, a commonsense
interpretation of moral language, and the existence of a God who has
infallible knowledge of normative truths are some of the factors that
lead Reid to cognitivism. Because Reid takes cognitivism as supported
by these and other factors, he does not explicitly argue for
cognitivism.




Reid takes pains to refute arguments from Hume (and to a lesser
extent, Smith) for non-cognitivist forms of sentimentalism. The last
chapter of *Active Powers* contains Reid's clearest statements
of his arguments against Hume's sentimentalism. Reid glosses Hume and
Smith's theory as being that "Moral Approbation or
Disapprobation is not an Act of the Judgement, which, like all acts of
judgment, must be true or false, it is only a certain Feeling, which,
from the constitution of human nature, arises upon contemplating
certain characters of qualities of mind cooly and impartially"
(EAP 5.5, 301-2). According to Reid, moral statements are
judgments, which are affirmations of the truth or falsity of a
proposition. The target of Reid's attack denies that moral statements
are judgments in this sense.




Reid's best argument against Humean non-cognitivism appears in this
passage:



> That every form of speech, which language affords to
> express our judgments, should, in all ages, and in all languages, be
> used to express what is no judgment; and that feelings, which are
> easily expressed in proper language, should as universally be
> expressed by language altogether improper and absurd, I cannot
> believe; and therefore must conclude, that if language be the
> expression of thought, men judge of...virtue and vice...by the moral
> faculty. (EAP 5.7, 351-2)



 
So when one says that "*such a man did well and worthily, his
conduct is highly approvable*" (EAP 5.7, 673), one
predicates of this man's action a virtuous quality. At the heart of
this argument is a two-fold commitment to a commonsense understanding
of thought and language, which we have foreshadowed in earlier remarks
about Reid's philosophical method: sentences mean what they purport to
mean, and persons possess self-knowledge about the meanings of the
sentences they utter. Notice too that the evidence to which Reid
appeals here is construed as data in support of an inductive
conclusion about the meaning of language. When a sentence appears to
render a moral judgment, as does "murder is wrong,"
commonsense implies that, ceteris paribus, it does render a moral
judgment. Language is used to express judgments about all manners of
topics--about velocities of objects, about historical facts,
about mathematical statements--and in these contexts statements
that purport to express judgments are interpreted as statements that
in fact express judgments. Hume's denial that statements purporting to
express ethical judgments in fact express ethical judgments
contradicts our assertoric use of statements that purport to express
judgments.



 
Having argued that Reid's theory resembles that of cognitivists,
unlike other cognitivists Reid crafts extensive and important roles
for moral sentiments in his moral philosophy. Reid is not content with
a moral theory that has room only for reasoning and judgment, as in
Samuel Clarke's theory. Showing his sympathies for the
sentimentalists, he introduces the concept of moral approbation (and
disapprobation), which includes "not only a moral judgment of
the action, but some affection, favourable or unfavorable, towards the
agent, and some feeling in ourselves" (EAP 3.3.7, 180). For
example, when I witness someone coming to the aid of a stranger who
has fallen down, my moral approbation includes a praiseworthy judgment
of the actor's character and action and is conjoined with feelings of
approval and esteem for the actor. He says, "Our moral judgments
are not like those we form in speculative matters, dry and
unaffecting, but, from their nature, are necessarily accompanied with
affections and feelings" (EAP 3.3.7, 180). This
crystallizes Reid's disagreement with Hume in the previous
paragraph. Though moral judgments cannot be analyzed merely as the
expression of a sentiment, moral judgments take affective experiences
as an ingredient.


### 6.4 Moral Sense




The structure of a Reidian moral judgment resembles the structure of a
Reidian perceptual judgment, which is one of several important points
of contact between his moral philosophy and his theory of
perception. Reid attests to the depth and importance of these
connections (EAP 3.3.6). One fundamental implication of this
structural similarity reconfirms the point of the section about moral
judgment above, namely, moral judgment is assertoric and not merely
affective. Consider one's judgment about the person who assists the
stranger who has fallen down. I do not directly perceive the agent's
character, though I do make a judgment about it. I directly perceive
the agent's action, and this functions as a sign that informs me about
the agent's character. Reid's theory of moral judgment shares so much
structure with his theory of perception
(see 3. Perception and Knowledge of the World)
that many have written of Reid's 'theory of moral perception'.



 
The moral sense operates in a fashion structurally similar to
perception, but with an important difference. Moral feelings do not
occupy a role parallel with sensations. Though sensations 'suggest'
perceptual judgments, moral feelings do not suggest moral
judgments. Moral *judgments* are the basis of moral
feelings (Lehrer 1989, 225). Our moral *conceptions*,
though, are based upon moral feelings. Reid says, "Our first
moral conceptions are probably got by attending cooly to the conduct
of others, and observing what moves our approbation, what our
indignation. These sentiments spring from our moral faculty as
naturally as the sensations of sweet and bitter from the faculty of
taste" (EAP 5.2, 279).




Since moral perceptions operate in the way our visual perceptions
operate, Reid is able to claim that we can morally perceive things
like duty, even though duty, like visible figure, is a relational
property. He says that "Duty, or Moral Obligation" is
strictly speaking neither a quality of an action nor a quality of an
agent "but a certain relation between the one and the
other. ... So that, if we seek the place of a moral obligation among
the categories, it belongs to the category of *relation*"
(EAP 3.3.5, 173). Though the object of my tactile perceptions is
a primary quality in a mind independent object, the object of my
perception of a visible figure is a relation between the
mind-independent object and my eyes. In this limited way, the
perception of duty resembles the perception of visible
figures. Importantly, though, visible figures are themselves
mind-independent, in just the way that duty is also
mind-independent. Were someone else's eyes placed in the same location
as mine are, she too would visually perceive just the visible figure I
perceived. This intersubjectivity is important for grounding Reid's
claims about the perception of duty.


### 6.5 Moral Motivation




In his moral theory Reid attempts to draw from the rationalist
tradition of Samuel Clarke and Richard Price and from the
sentimentalist tradition of David Hume and Adam Smith. As a result,
his conception of the relationship between moral motivation and moral
action is complex and difficult to unify. Motives appear to Reid to be
both the ends for which we act, and the mental states that prompt our
active behavior (Cuneo 2011).




In the first of the two passages below, both drawn from *Active
Powers*, Reid implies that moral judgments about an action are not
necessarily connected to any moral motivation while in the second he
asserts that moral judgments about an action are necessarily connected
to moral motivation:



> 
> A judge, from a regard to justice, and to the duty of his
> office, dooms a criminal to die, while, from humanity or particular
> affection, he desires that he should live... The determination of the
> mind may be, not to do what we desire to do. (EAP
> 2.1, 49)
> 
> 
> I am very apt to think, with Dr Price, that, in intelligent beings,
> the desire of what is good, and aversion to what is ill, is
> necessarily connected with the intelligent nature; and that it is a
> contradiction to suppose such a being to have the notion of good
> without the desire of it, or the notion of ill without aversion to
> it. (EAP 3.3.2, 156)
> 
> 
> 




One means by which to interpret these passages is through the lens of
a teleological and theistic account of moral perception (Cuneo
2002). On this model, when we are functioning properly in the
environments for which God designed us, then moral judgments are
accompanied by moral motivations to act. However, this connection will
fail in those who are damaged or poorly designed. For example,
psychopaths suffer impairment in emotional response. Psychopaths can
know certain of their behaviors are outside standard morality and yet
not be motivated to alter their behavior. This, and the 'proper
function' interpretation of the relation between moral judgment and
moral motivation, is suggested in Reid's remark about the
depraved:



> Nor can we conceive a greater depravity in the heart of
> man, than it would be to see and acknowledge worth without feeling any
> respect to it; or to see and acknowledge the highest worthlessness
> without any degree of dislike and indignation. (EAP 3.3.7,
> 181)




Reid's account of moral motivation exemplifies his philosophical style
in general, which eschews a priori speculation, the crafting of
universal generalizations, and necessary and sufficient conditions in
favor of keeping close to his observations of others and his
introspection about himself. In the present context, Reid's account of
moral motivation does not endorse any universal generalizations about
what does and does not motivate us to moral action. What this
sacrifices in philosophical clarity it, perhaps, gains in its ability
to respond to real life cases. (For more on Reid's moral philosophy,
see
 Reid's Ethics.)


## 7. Aesthetics




Reid's aesthetics is composed of two core theses: that a work, to be
an artwork, must express the artist's sentiments, and that aesthetic
properties, like beauty and sublimity, are strictly speaking
properties of the mind of the artist and not properties of material
objects. Reid's mature aesthetics exemplifies a remarkable degree of
sophistication for its time period. First, he possesses a clear
concept of the fine arts and offers his readers a taxonomy of them
(Kivy 2004). Second, Reid discusses the formal or structural
properties of artworks in virtue of which they can be appraised in
aesthetic terms. Third, Reid has a theoretical framework that unifies
his concept of the fine arts and his account of how formal properties
of objects make those objects works of art: Reid advocates an
expression theory of art, arguably the first Western philosopher to do
so.



 
Before explaining Reid's two primary aesthetic theses, first a word
about the sources of Reid's aesthetics. The principal sources of our
knowledge of Reid's aesthetics are manuscripts that Reid used to teach
his advanced course on 'The culture of the mind' at Glasgow. These
manuscripts are narrow in scope and deal mostly with rhetoric. They
have been subsequently collected, edited and published in the
Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid as *Thomas Reid on Logic, Rhetoric
and The Fine Arts* (Reid 2004). (Though precise dating of these
manuscripts is impossible, we know they predate *Intellectual
Powers* (1785) and *Active Powers* (1788).) In addition to
this source, Reid's Glasgow lectures on fine arts were transcribed by
a student, and were subsequently edited and published as *Lectures
on the Fine Arts* (Reid 1973). These two sources overlap
considerably, and we draw from both, with the caveat that *Thomas
Reid on Logic, Rhetoric and The Fine Arts* is composed of
manuscripts not in Reid's own hand. Lastly, Reid discusses art at
various points in his major works.


### 7.1 Expressivism




In both *Logic, Rhetoric and the Fine Arts* and *Fine
Arts*, Reid shows a commitment to the importance of emotion and of
expression in understanding art and artworks. He writes,
"Expression is the capital thing in all Compositions of
Music" (*Logic, Rhetoric and the Fine Arts* 288) but
textual evidence for an *expression theory* in those works is
equivocal compared with Reid's remarks in EIP and in his
correspondence. In lecture notes Reid appears partially to endorse
expression theory and partially to endorse emotional arousal
theory. Emotional arousal theories of art are closely related to
expression theories since both appeal to emotion as an essential
feature of an artwork's aesthetic quality, but they differ on a
crucial point. Emotional arousal theories explain the aesthetic
quality of an artwork in terms of the way an artwork causes the
expression or experience of emotion in the viewer or listener, and not
(as on expression theory) in terms of the way in which an artwork's
aesthetic qualities are caused by the artist's representation of his
or her emotion in qualities of the artwork. In Reid's discussion
in *Lectures on the Fine Arts* he appears to combine both
theories to suggest that the emotion expressed by the artist must also
be the same emotion aroused in the viewer or listener. The playwright
introduces "a sign or expression of the passions, & when
this is accomplished, it affects us and causes the same passion in
us..." (*Lectures on the Fine Arts* 51). In his mature,
published work, advocacy of the emotional arousal theory
diminishes.




In his taxonomy of the fine arts, Reid includes: literature, drama,
painting, sculpture, architecture and wordless music. The inclusion of
wordless music was a novelty for the time (EIP 7.4, 605). Beauty
represented through the harmony and melody of music arises because of
the emotion expressed by the harmony and melody. Often harmony and
melody represent emotions by representing the nature of a
conversation. Though obvious in some music with words and in vocal
music, even the beauty of wordless music can be explained in part in
this way:



> When discord arises occasionally in conversation, but soon
> terminates in perfect amity, we receive more pleasure than from
> perfect unanimity. In like manner, in the harmony of music, discordant
> sounds are occasionally introduced, but it is always in order to give
> a relish to the most perfect concord that follows (EIP 7.4,
> 605).




Reid describes the way melody represents the human voice's expression
of sentiment as a form of 'imitation.'




Painting and sculpture follow the same pattern of analysis. In
the *Inquiry* Reid says that painting is a representational art
and that when a painting "happily expresses a passion by its
proper signs, every one understands the meaning of these signs,
without art, and without reflection" (IHM 6.8, 102). Dominant
species of painting include portraiture and landscape both of which
are well suited to express emotion through visual
representations. Naturally Reid places importance on the depiction of
the "passion & dispositions of men in the attitudes and
countenances" (*Lectures on the Fine Arts* 50) in
painting and sculpture. Reid holds that the "chief part"
of the beauty of paintings is their representation of the expression
of emotions. Reid's aesthetics of poetry closely resembles his
aesthetics of music and painting (*Lectures on the Fine Arts*
51).




Several philosophical issues arise from the discussion thus
far. First, if we interpret Reid's discussion of aesthetics
developmentally and we therefore discount certain commitments
in *Lectures* that are not repeated in *Intellectual
Powers*, then Reid skirts some traditionally troublesome problems
for expression theories of art. On this interpretation, Reid's mature
theory does not include a commitment to the claim that it is essential
for something to be a work of art that the artwork must be imbued with
an emotion by the artist that the artwork also arouses in the viewer
or listener. Second, oddly for an expressivist, Reid rarely describes
the cognitive and non-cognitive process whereby an artist creates an
artwork (Gallie 1998, 178). But if an artwork's aesthetic properties
are those properties that have been imbued in it in part through the
artist's experience of emotion, presumably the nature of the creative
process bears heavily on expression theories of art.


### 7.2 Aesthetic Qualities




Reid's account of what makes a work of art beautiful or sublime is
widely regarded as the most distinctive feature of Reid's
aesthetics. In his correspondence, he writes, "I am proud to
think that I first, in clear and explicit terms, and in the cool blood
of a philosopher, maintained that all the beauty and sublimity of
objects of sense is derived from the expression they exhibit of things
intellectual, which alone have original beauty" (Letter to
Archibald Alison, in *Correspondence* 209). (In characteristic
fashion, the next sentence reads: "But in this I may deceive
myself, & cannot claim to be held an impartial judge"
(*Correspondence* 209).) Material objects are not by nature
beautiful or sublime, but are only made so by the infusion of mental
states. The beauty in material objects derives from mental and
intellectual qualities that "excite our esteem"
(*Lectures on the Fine Arts* 41-2; see EIP 8.3, 590). To be
clear, brushstrokes and melodies, clay forms and the use of poetic
meter, and the (broadly) physical works of which they are a part are
not beautiful. Rather, these are signs, to the admirer, of the beauty,
depth, or grandeur of the mental states in the artist that they
suggest. In the case of Homer's *Illiad*, Reid says, "its
sublimity was really in the mind of HOMER. He conceived great
characters, great actions, and great events, in a manner suitable to
their nature, and with those emotions which they are naturally fitted
to produce... The grandeur of his thoughts is reflected to our eye by
his work, and therefore it is justly called a grand work" (EIP
8.3, 587).




This idea has been met with criticism by Reid's commentators. This
seems absurd since it follows that Homer's *Illiad* is not
itself beautiful or sublime (Gallie 1998). But there are resources
within the expressive theory to address this criticism with some
success. The best way to understand Reid's theory is that the beauty
of the artwork rests in the manner of its expression and not in what
it expresses (Kivy 2004, 284-5). Perhaps, though an expressivist
theory can be absolved of the problem, Reid's own version of it cannot
be. The *Illiad* remains distinct from its manner of
expression, and it is counterintuitive to say that the *Illiad*
itself is not beautiful.




Reid does not distinguish between the *Illiad* qua written text
and qua oral poetry; doing so informs debate both about the manner of
expression of the work and about the sublimity of the mental states
that gave it rise. By switching from Reid's example of literature to
music we can take account of something like this distinction and
therefore better respond to the objection under discussion. In the
case of musical performance, the manner of expression and the content
of what is expressed are distinct: the manner of a performance of a
symphony may differ substantially when led by two different
conductors. In each case it is distinct from the symphony itself (so
as long as the symphony is not identical to the set of its
performances). We are inclined to say that the performance of a
symphony is beautiful, and we are not inclined to say that 'the
symphony itself' is beautiful. This comports well with Reid's
theory. This suggestion requires assumptions about the ontology of
artworks; Reid does not discuss these matters at any length.




This discussion leads to a final consideration of Reid's
aesthetics--the ontology of aesthetic qualities. Reid says that
beauty "is derived" from the expression of mental events,
but Reid says little about the ontology of beauty. Commentators have
gravitated to this particular issue, but the results of this research
are mixed. Four views predominate, and each can be characterized in
terms of the relations espoused between aesthetic qualities and Reid's
finely grained distinction between primary and secondary
qualities. (i) Aesthetic qualities are secondary qualities, and that
Reid mistakenly compares aesthetic qualities to primary qualities
(Kivy 1970). Beauty, on this interpretation, is in the mind. But it is
not in the mind--or eye--of the beholder. Rather, beauty is
in the mind of the artist, and the artwork provides a sign of the
mental states of the artist. (ii) Aesthetic qualities are primary
qualities and secondary qualities, which suggests that this feature of
Reid's aesthetics is incoherent (Gracyk 1987). (iii) Aesthetic
qualities are neither primary nor secondary qualities, which also
poses serious problems for Reid's aesthetics (Nauckhoff 1994). (iv)
Aesthetic qualities bear features of both secondary and primary
qualities (Benbaji 2000). Aesthetic qualities are like secondary
qualities because both are dispositional, while they are like primary
qualities because our judgments about them are incorrigible.




Though (i)-(iv) are framed in terms of Reid's distinction between
primary and secondary qualities, none of these four major positions
begins from a considered account of Reid's views on the perceptual and
epistemological status of qualities. Consider (ii). This
characterization of aesthetic qualities is not itself reason to
dismiss Reid's ontology of aesthetic qualities as incoherent. This is
because one interesting feature of Reid's distinctions between primary
and secondary qualities is that what is a primary quality for one
person may be a secondary quality for another. Reid's aesthetics is an
under-explored area ripe for further research.


## 8. Philosophy of Religion




Reid formed his philosophy of religion under the influence of his
divinity degree received from Marischal College. Following this he was
licensed to preach by the presbytery of Kincardine O'Neil in 1731, and
became an ordained minister to New Machar, Aberdeenshire, in 1737. His
intellectual influences included Samuel Clark, Joseph Butler, and his
teachers and colleagues in Aberdeen, including George Turnbull. Reid,
like Butler, crafted analogical arguments on behalf of the faith, and
he states, without much novelty, a design argument and a cosmological
argument for God's existence. Reid's arguments for God's existence are
Newtonian in the sense that limitations of physics and Newtonian
strictures about attributions of causes prevent Reid from advocating
arguments for God's existence from physics (Callergard
2010). Reid's prescient, long-lasting contribution to the history of
philosophy of religion concerns the way he shifts his emphasis as
apologist from proving God's existence onto the task of showing that
it is rational for one to believe in God's existence. On this point
Reid is an innovator and has many contemporary followers. As a
testament to this, leading defenders of Christian belief within the
Anglo-American philosophical tradition do not merely pay homage to
Reid's trailblazing effort to focus upon and articulate the conditions
under which religious belief is made rational. They also make
extensive use of and further develop a number of his arguments and
maneuvers in the epistemology of religious belief.




Reid's abiding confidence in his religious belief meant that
his published work on traditional issues in the philosophy of
religion, such as God's nature and arguments for God's
existence, is minimal. In his lectures and unpublished work,
however, he vigorously attacks Hume, atheists and their
arguments with surprising vitriol. The fact that Reid does not
thoroughly address canonical issues in philosophy of religion
in the context of his published work, despite the personal and
professional importance of his religious commitments, is a
conundrum. The principal source for Reid's philosophy of
religion outside his published works are sets of student
notes--now, a total of four transcripts--from Reid's
lectures on natural theology at Glasgow in the years
1763-1780. One set has been published as *Thomas Reid's
'Lectures on Natural Theology'* (Reid 1981,
abbreviated *'Natural Theology'* below). This is not a
definitive source of Reid's own views, but given pedagogical
conventions of the time, and cross-references of materials in
the *Natural Theology* with materials elsewhere in
Reid's corpus, we can draw reliable inferences about Reid's
philosophy of religion from them. In this subsection we first
discuss the conundrum just mentioned, then treat Reid's novel
epistemology of religious belief, and then briefly discuss
traditional issues in philosophy of religion.


### 8.1 The Conundrum of Reid's Philosophy of Religion




Reid confesses that his philosophy of mind and theory of
perception are but a response to the theories of David Hume
(*Correspondence* 210-1). Hume offers one of the most
thorough and compelling philosophical indictments of religion
penned in English. Yet Reid rarely isolates and discusses
Hume's anti-religious arguments. Furthermore,
Hume's *Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion* was
published in 1779 while Reid was lecturing on natural theology
and long before Reid would publish his two sets
of *Essays*. (Note that the Baird notes--the set
used to prepare *Natural Theology*--were taken
from lectures dating between February 11, 1780 to March 3rd,
1780.) But this book had little discernible influence upon
Reid's thinking. Why did Reid mostly ignore Hume's great
challenges to rational belief in God?




There is no persuasive answer to this question, though several
converging considerations present themselves. One response is
that Hume's work in the philosophy of religion was not, in
Reid's opinion, deserving of a response. A second is that Reid
was aware that he lacked compelling arguments with which to
rebut Hume's criticisms, whether because he modestly appraised
his counter-arguments, or because counter-arguments
circulating in the milieu were satisfactory. A third is that
the severe social climate in the Scotland of Reid's day
obviated the need for Reid's response to Hume. Fourth, since
Reid's principal aims in philosophy of religion were to move
the debate from metaphysics to epistemology, perhaps Reid's
silence on many of Hume's criticisms is pointed.


### 8.2 Rationality and Belief in God




Above we explained several features of Reid's epistemology and his
foundationalism relevant for understanding his analysis of the
rationality of belief in God. Reid's case on behalf of the rationality
of belief in God follows from his critique of Cartesian and Humean
foundationalism, which required foundational beliefs to be justified
by reasoning. According to Reid, foundational beliefs do not require
proof of their own through argumentation. He writes, "Their
evidence is not demonstrative, but intuitive. They require not proof,
but to be placed in the proper point of view" (EIP 1.2,
42). Reason is not the "only judge of truth" (IHM 6.20,
169). Besides, *human reason itself is fallible* (EIP 2.22,
244-5). Reason is not necessary for epistemic justification, a fact
that situates Reid's theory of empirical knowledge in the externalist
camp. 




While this opens the way to a form of non-inferential,
rational belief in God, no such claim appears among Reid's
First Principles of contingent or necessary truths. Indeed,
belief in God possesses few of the features associated with
Reidian First Principles. Denying God's existence is not
absurd, belief in God does not have "consent of ages and
nations", and it is not held independently of education
and acculturation (see EIP 6.4, 463-467). Yet clearly Reid
holds that belief in God appears to be rational (not a word
that Reid deploys as a term of art) without inference. He
bases his claim that belief in God is rational (again, not a
term Reid uses) upon a model familiar from his theory of the
formation of perceptual beliefs (see Nichols &
Callergard 2011).


### 8.3 Arguments for God's Existence




Reid's treatment of arguments for God's existence is for the most part
unoriginal, and freely makes use of ideas of many previous Christian
thinkers along this well-worn trail. Reid's cosmological argument
stems from Samuel Clarke's and features a priori justification of the
principle, "That whatever begins to exist, must have a cause
which produced it" (EIP 6.6, 497). Reid defends this against a
few attacks associated with Hume. For example, if Hume's skepticism
about causation undermines this principle, Reid says that many
everyday inferences would become unjustified (EIP 6.6, 497-8). Reid
uses this principle in a cosmological argument, but only as recorded
in his lecture notes (*Natural Theology* 66-7), which leaves
much to be desired. Every being must be either contingent or
necessary. "We call that *contingent* which either might
or might not be and that *necessary* which must be. Whatever
either might or might not be depends on the will of some agent with
power to bring it to pass or not..." (*Natural Theology*
66). Reid is then recorded to argue that to suggest that the
"Supreme Being" exists contingently "evidently would
be absurd" (*Natural Theology* 66). He does not here
discuss the unintelligibility of a one-directional infinite series of
contingent causes or of a circular series of contingent causes.



 
Reid gives the design argument more discussion (EIP 6.6,
508-9). One first principle of necessary truth is "that
design, and intelligence in the cause, may be inferred, with
certainty, from marks or signs of it in the effect" (EIP
6.6, 503). This is an unusual principle to denominate as a
necessary "metaphysical" truth because it is an
epistemic thesis about what it is permissible for one to
infer. He labors to show that this is a necessary first
principle by saying, for example, that it is "too
universal to be the effect of reasoning" (EIP 6.6,
504). The first necessary principle serves as an opening
premise in the argument, to which Reid adds some empirical
data. The second premise says, "That there are in fact
the clearest marks of design and wisdom in the works of
Nature" (EIP 6.6, 509). From these two premises Reid
concludes "that the works of Nature are the effects of a
wise and intelligent cause" (EIP 6.6, 510). 




To the 'single-case' objection often credited to Hume, that
the design argument is not cogent since this is the only
universe of which we are aware, Reid replies that the
objection "is build on the supposition, that our
inferring design from the strongest marks of it, is entirely
owing to our past experience of having always found these two
things conjoined" (EIP 6.6, 511). But if Hume's
criticism does pose a problem for the design inference, it
also undermines our belief in other minds. This is because
Reid also does not witness the intelligence of another person
bringing about some effect (EIP 6.6, 511).




The first principle of necessary truth licensing inferences
from signs of intelligence to intelligence pairs with another
that states that the belief in other minds is also a first
principle (EIP 6.5, 484). Reid knows well how these two work
together (EIP 6.5, 511-12) and as a result he unambiguously
foreshadows the epistemological parity argument to be found in
Plantinga's *God and Other Minds* (1990).


### 8.4 The Problem of Evil




As a parish minister, a philosopher, and someone with extensive
theological training--as well as a father who had only one of six
children survive him--Reid no doubt reflected long and hard about
pain and suffering, and their relationship to God. But Reid writes
little about the problem of evil. In *Natural Theology*, in
what is labeled "Lect. 84th", he treats the subject
directly and in less than two thousand words.




Notes to Reid's lectures distinguish between three forms of evil:
"1. the evils of imperfection, 2. Evil which they call natural
Evil, 3. Moral *evil*" (*Natural Theology*
101). The first refers to the fact that creatures could have been
given greater degrees of perfection. The second form is
"suffering & pain which we see endured by beings in the
Universe." The third refers to the "violation of the laws
of Virtue by moral & reasonable agents" (*Natural
Theology* 101).



 
The traditional problem of evil focuses on the second definition of
'evil'. To this Reid offers a soul-making theodicy, and couples it
with an emphasis on human epistemic limits. First, "it is by
natural evil that men are trained unto wisdom & prudence in their
conduct." Then he adds that "we are not competent judges
& cannot possibly determine" whether these virtues could
have been achieved in humankind without the natural evil (and the
degree of natural evil) we witness in our world (*Natural
Theology* 101). The addition of this second epistemic component
gives rise to an internal tension. Reid juxtaposes this affirmation of
ignorance with substantive epistemic claims, for example, that
"from the present constitution of things we see they [natural
evils] are necessary to our acquiring any prudence or wisdom..."
(*Natural Theology* 101-102). Reid presents these comments as
answering the problem, but the Baird notes do not Reid's caveats or
Reid's attempt to justify the necessities to which he refers.



 
The cornerstone of Reid's reply to the third form of evil--moral
evil--is human freedom. *Lectures on Natural Theology*
does not revisit his theory of human freedom and agency, but these
issues are discussed thoroughly in *Active Powers*. He applies
this theory of freedom to moral evil in order to conclude that
"all moral evil then is not properly the doing of God but of
men, who by abusing their power are liable to misery & are then
justly punished for their misconduct" (*Natural Theology*
103).



 
To conclude, Reid's two substantive contributions to the subsequent
development of philosophy of religion are indirect. First, regarding
God's existence, Reid changes the field of play from metaphysics and
proofs to epistemology and rationality. Second, Reid's development of
an agent-causal account of freedom offered a foundation for responding
to the problem of moral evil.