This paper aims to discuss the philosophical roles of common sense in Thomas Reid’s thought. I argue that there is not only one way of appealing to common sense in attempt of discovering truth and allowing knowledge. According to my understanding, Reid makes at least three distinct uses of common sense: (1) the foundational use, in which common sense is taken as the foundation upon which knowledge must be built; (2) the methodological use, in which common sense arises as a (...) source of methodo-logical presuppositions of philosophical investigations; (3) the instrumental use, in which common sense, in the light of the emotion of ridicule, is used as an instrument to refute philosophical principles and conclusions. (shrink)

How is it that, as fiction readers, we are nonplussed by J. K. Rowling's prescription to imagine Ronan, Bane, and Magorian, three different centaurs of the Forbidden Forrest at Hogwarts? It is usually held in the philosophical literature on fictional discourse that singular imaginings of fictional objects are impossible, given the blatant nonexistence of such objects. In this paper, I have a dual purpose: on the one hand, to show that, without being committed to Meinongeanism, we can explain the phenomenon (...) of singular imaginings of different nonexistents of the same kind; while, at the same time, to attribute this position to Thomas Reid, thus correcting some misunderstandings of his view on imagination. (shrink)

This paper explores the role that Mary Shepherd's (1777–1847) acceptance of the so-called imago-dei thesis plays for her account of the human mind. That is, it analyses Shepherd's commitment to the doctrine that humans are created in the image of God, (see Gen. 1, 26–7) parts of which Shepherd quotes in Essays on the Perception of an External Universe (EPEU), 157, and the ways it informs her understanding of the human mind. In particular, it demonstrates how this thesis informs her (...) understanding of the cognitive and moral capacities of the human mind. In other words, I argue that her commitment to this thesis explains why she believes that human beings are capable of reaching the “higher acquirement of intelligence” and the “completion of virtuous habits” (EPEU 381). Thus, this paper highlights the relevance of Shepherd's theological assumptions to (the ever-growing number of) scholars interested in her understanding of the mind. (shrink)

Reid declared Hume's appeal to variation in the magnitude of a table with distance to be the best argument that had ever been offered for the ‘ideal hypothesis’ that we experience nothing but our own mental states. Reid's principal objection to this argument fails to apply to minimally visible points. He did establish that we have reason to take our perceptions to be caused by external objects. But his case that we directly perceive external objects is undermined by what Hume (...) had to say about the role played by color in our perception of the primary qualities of bodies. (shrink)

Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense devotes more space to double vision than to any other topic. In what follows, I examine why this subject was so important to Reid and why he dealt with it as he did. I also consider whether his argument for his position begs the question against his main opponents, Berkeley and Robert Smith. I show that, as Reid presented it, it does, but that he could have said more (...) than he did in reply to Smith. My discussion of why double vision was important for Reid begins with an exposition of the relevance of the theory of vision for one of Reid's principal concerns in the Inquiry: the concern to respond to scepticism concerning our knowledge of an external world. I then turn to consider how Reid's account of double vision contributes to his epistemological realism and why the alternative account offered by Berkeley and Smith challenges it. (shrink)

RESUMEN Precisamente en momentos en que el determinismo humeano de la voluntad estaba comenzando a tener fuerza de tradición, surge Thomas Reid con una filosofía de la voluntad libre que tiene los rasgos principales de la tradición clásica anterior a Hume, medieval y tempranamente moderna. Su método inductivo, sin embargo, está tomado de Newton y del sentido común. Desde esta metodología ilustrada, Reid afirma que la voluntad es una facultad metafísica. Ha tenido influencia en la agent-cause theory, que se ha (...) opuesto a la event-cause theory en la teoría de la acción contemporánea, de allí su alto interés histórico. ABSTRACT Precisely, by the time in which humean's will determinism was beginning to have strength of tradition, Thomas Reid arises with a philosophy of free will that had the main features of the pre-Hume classic tradition, medieval and early modern. His inductive method, however, is taken from Newton and from common sense. Since this illustrated methodology, Reid states that will is a metaphysical faculty. It has had influence in agent-cause theory, which has opposed to event-cause theory in contemporary action theory, thence its high historical interest. (shrink)

According to the Psychological-Continuity Account of What Matters, you are justified in having special concern for the well-being of a person at a future time if and only if that person will be psychologically continuous with you as you are now. On some versions of the account, the psychological continuity is required be temporally ordered, whereas, on other versions, it is allowed to be temporally unordered. In this paper, I argue that the account is implausible if the psychological continuity is (...) allowed to be temporally unordered. I also argue that, if the psychological continuity is required to be temporally ordered, it cannot plausibly be purely psychological (in the sense that the psychological continuity is not required to be caused through spatio-temporal continuity of a brain). The upshot is that no plausible version of the Psychological-Continuity Account of What Matters is purely psychological. So psychological continuity is not what matters in survival. (shrink)

The key to understanding self-identity is identifying the transcendental structures that make a temporally extended, continuous, and unified experiential life possible. Self-identity is rooted in the formal, temporalizing structure of intentional experience that underlies psychological continuity. Personal identity, by contrast, is rooted in the content of the particular flow of experience, in particular and primarily, in the convictions adopted passively or actively in reflection by a self-identical subject in the light of her social and traditional inheritances. Secondarily, a person’s identity (...) is rooted in others’ characterizations of that person in the light of the social conventions and constructs of the cultures and traditions that have shaped the personal identity of the ones who make the attributions. Personal identity, on this view, is fundamentally rooted in beliefs, traits—especially character traits—sentiments, and moods, that is, in the subject’s convictions about the true, the good, and the right—and in the commitments to the pursuit of (apparently) worthwhile goods and to the practical identities rooted in those convictions. (shrink)