By Reid's own account, ‘That the natural faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious’, has a special place among the First Principles of Contingent Truths. Some have found that claim puzzling, but it is not. Contrary to what's usually assumed, certain FPs preceding FP#7 do not already assert the better part of what FP#7 explicitly states. FP#7 is needed because there is nothing epistemological in the FPs that precede it; and its special place among the FPs (...) is a straightforward consequence of its being both perfectly general and distinctively epistemological. (shrink)

The 18th-century Scottish ‘common sense’ philosopher Thomas Reid argued that perception can be distinguished on several dimensions from other categories of experience, such as sensation, illusion, hallucination, mental images, and what he called ‘fancy.’ We extend his approach to eleven mental categories, and discuss how these distinctions, often ignored in the empirical literature, bear on current research. We also score each category on five properties (ones abstracted from Reid) to form a 5 × 11 matrix, and thus can generate statistical (...) measures of their mutual dependencies, a procedure that may have general interest as illustrating what we can call ‘computational philosophy.’. (shrink)

Once a name to conjure with, Scottish idealist James Frederick Ferrier (1808–1864) is now a largely forgotten figure, notwithstanding the fact that he penned a work of remarkable power and originality: the Institutes of Metaphysic (1854). In ‘Reid and the Philosophy and Common Sense,’ an essay of 1847 which anticipates some of the central themes of the Institutes of Metaphysic, Ferrier presents an excoriating critique of Thomas Reid's brand of common sense realism. Understanding Ferrier's critique of Reid – its content, (...) motivations, and significance – is the task of the present essay. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to show that animal motives play an important role in guiding human agents to virtue, according to Reid. Animal motives, for Reid, are constituted of desires and of their objects. These desires are intrinsic desires for objects other than moral or prudential worth. However, from a rational and moral point of view, animal motives are good and useful parts of the human constitution that lead to happiness, teach self-government, create the habit of acting virtuously, (...) and add force to rational motives. Understanding animal motives as guides to virtue provides Reid with the hybrid sentimentalist/rationalist account he seeks to offer. (shrink)

I examine the views of Thomas Reid with respect to a certain version of the problem of induction: Why are inductions using natural kinds successful, and what justifies them? I argue that while both Reid holds a kind of conventionalist view about natural kinds, this conventionalism has a realistic component which allows him to answer both questions.

Common-sense philosophers typically maintain that common-sense propositions have a certain kind of epistemic privilege that allows them to evade the threats of skepticism or radical revisionism. Butwhydo they have this special privilege? In response to this question, the “Common-Sense Tradition” contains many different strands of arguments. In this paper, I will develop a strategy that combines two of these strands of arguments. First, the “Dynamic Argument” (or the “starting-point argument”), inspired by Thomas Reid and Charles S. Peirce (but which will (...) be strengthened with the help of Gilbert Harman’s epistemology of belief revision). Second, G.E. Moore’s “greater certainty argument” (interpreted along the lines of Soames’ and Pollock’s construal). This combined strategy, I will argue, is the strong core of Common-Sense Philosophy, and relies on extremely modest and widely held assumptions. (shrink)

Common-sense philosophers typically maintain that common-sense propositions have a certain kind of epistemic privilege that allows them to evade the threats of skepticism or radical revisionism. But why do they have this special privilege? In response to this question, the “Common-Sense Tradition” contains many different strands of arguments. In this paper, I will develop a strategy that combines two of these strands of arguments. First, the “Dynamic Argument” (or the “starting-point argument”), inspired by Thomas Reid and Charles S. Peirce (but (...) which will be strengthened with the help of Gilbert Harman’s epistemology of belief revision). Second, G.E. Moore’s “greater certainty argument” (interpreted along the lines of Soames’ and Pollock’s construal). This combined strategy, I will argue, is the strong core of Common-Sense Philosophy, and relies on extremely modest and widely held assumptions. (shrink)

This paper explains the nature and role of common sense in Reid and uses the exposition to answer some of Reid's critics. The key to defending Reid is to distinguish between two kinds of priority that common sense beliefs are supposed to enjoy. Common sense beliefs enjoy epistemological priority in that they constitute a foundation for knowledge; i.e. they have evidential status without being grounded in further evidence themselves. Common sense beliefs enjoy methodological priority in that they constrain philosophical theory: (...) they serve as pre-theoretical commitments that philosophical theories ought to respect in the absence of good reasons for rejecting them. (shrink)

The puzzle is this: I argue that for Reid, moral sense needs benevolent affections – i.e. some of our animal, non-cognitive principles of action – to apply the rules of duty. But he also thinks that duty can conflict with benevolent affections. So what happens in these conflict cases? I will argue that Reid takes moral psychology seriously and that he believes that our natural benevolent affections can be used as indicators of duty. Although creative, his account has a major (...) problem, because he does not resolve certain conflicts that arise between what action a duty prescribes and what action a natural affection, associated to that duty, inclines us to do. (shrink)

Thomas Reid offers an explanation of how memory of events is possible. This paper presents, criticize,s and amends his view that memory not only preserves our knowledge of the external world, but also contributes to such knowledge, by being essential for the perception of events. Reid’s views on memory are in line with his generalanti-skeptical commitments, and thus attractive, for several reasons. One reason is that, just like perception, memory is not infallible, but it can constitute or, at least, ground (...) knowledge. Reid argues that memory, like perception, is immediate: it gives direct access to the external world, and not to mental representations of the external world. Another reason is that Reid’s explanation of how memory of events works emphasizes the impor- tance of the divide between memory and perception and consciousness: it is one thing to perceive or be conscious of something; it is another to remember that thing. Despite these advantages, a careful study of Reid’s views on memory will uncover a serious problem of general philosophical interest: it is unclear how exactly we are able to remember events episodically, since it is not settled whether we ever literally perceive events. This problem is engendered by a clash of the following two intuitions: (i) we can perceive only presently existing things, and (ii) we can remember events, which usually span periods of time longer than the present (whether the present is durationless or not). (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is Thomas Reid's anti-skepticism: our knowledge of the external world is justified. The justificatory process, in his view, starts with and relies upon one of the main faculties of the human mind: perception. Reid's theory of perception has been thoroughly studied, but there are some missing links in the explanatory chain offered by the secondary literature. In particular, I will argue that we do not have a complete picture of the mechanism of perception of (...) bodies. The present paper, relying, in part, on a particular theory in psychology – the feature integration theory of attention – will make a contribution in this regard. (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)

Thomas Reid’s epistemological ambitions are decisively at the center of his work. However, if we take such ambitions to be the whole story, we are apt to overlook the theory of mind that Reid develops and deploys against the theory of ideas. Reid’s philosophy of mind is sophisticated and strikingly contemporary, and has, until recently, been lost in the shadow of his other philosophical accomplishments. Here I survey some aspects of Reid’s theory of mind that I find most interesting. I (...) examine whether Reid is a mysterian about the mind, whether Reid has a direct realist theory of perception, and whether Reid has a higher-order, or “inner-sense,” view of consciousness. Along the way I will mention portions of the secondary literature that examine these aspects and point out whether and to what degree I part ways with the interpretations present in the literature. (shrink)

Two significant aspects of Thomas Reid's thought seem to be irreconcilable with one another. On the one hand, Reid constantly refers to the substantive benefits which human knowledge receives from the Christian revelation. On the other hand, he does not justify philosophical or scientific beliefs by way of appeal to God. In this essay, I argue that a closer inspection of both Reid's philosophical reflection and scientific investigations shows that the two aspects just mentioned are compatible with one another. In (...) short, although an influence on rational investigation is somehow exerted by divine revelation, this does not limit the autonomy of reason, which is actually stimulated and promoted precisely because of a religiously rooted confidence in our rational faculties. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the work of Keith Lehrer, especially in his book Self-Trust has applications to feminist ethics; specifically care ethics, which has become the leading form of normative sentimentalist ethics. I extend Lehrer's ideas concerning reason and justification of belief beyond what he says by applying the notion of evaluation central to his account of acceptance to the need for evaluation of emotions. The inability to evaluate and attain justification of one's emotions is an epistemic failure (...) that leads one not to act on one's own aspirations and desires and treat those desires as if they did not exist. I argue that this is a common condition among women in patriarchal societies because patriarchy can cause women to believe that they are not worthy of their trust concerning what they accept, specifically acceptance of their anger over their own mistreatment. As a result, many women are unable to realize the self-protective role of their anger. All of this reflects a lack of what I shall call epistemic personhood, a concept based on Lehrer's theory concerning the keystone role of self-trust in the epistemic arch of rationality, justification and knowledge. Lastly, I use this concept of epistemic personhood to develop a care ethical account of self-respect that counters the Kantian account. (shrink)

According to dogmatism, a perceptual experience with p as its content is always a source of justification for the belief that p. Thomas Reid has been an extant source of inspiration for this view. I argue, however, that, though there is a superficial consonance between Reid’s position and that of the dogmatists, their views are, more fundamentally, at variance with one another. While dogmatists take their position to express a necessary epistemic truth, discernible a priori, Reid holds that if something (...) like dogmatism is true, it is a mere contingent truth, discernible a posteriori. Owing to Reid’s epistemological naturalism, it might have been false that a perceptual experience is, by itself, a source of justification. On account of regarding something like dogmatism as only contingently true, then, Reid accepts the demand for a meta-justification of a sort that dogmatists squarely reject, and purports to meet it. Given that dogmatism essentially involves the rejection of the demand to meet this kind of meta-justification, it would seem that Reid should not be construed as endorsing dogmatism at all. I close by briefly considering how Reid’s view fits amongst dogmatism’s competitors. (shrink)

Prior to the twentieth century, theories of knowledge were inherently perceptual. Since then, developments in logic, statis- tics, and programming languages have inspired amodal theories that rest on principles fundamentally different from those underlying perception. In addition, perceptual approaches have become widely viewed as untenable because they are assumed to implement record- ing systems, not conceptual systems. A perceptual theory of knowledge is developed here in the context of current cognitive science and neuroscience. During perceptual experience, association areas in the (...) brain capture bottom-up patterns of activation in sensory-motor areas. Later, in a top-down manner, association areas partially reactivate sensory-motor areas to implement perceptual symbols. The stor- age and reactivation of perceptual symbols operates at the level of perceptual components – not at the level of holistic perceptual expe- riences. Through the use of selective attention, schematic representations of perceptual components are extracted from experience and stored in memory (e.g., individual memories of green, purr, hot). As memories of the same component become organized around a com- mon frame, they implement a simulator that produces limitless simulations of the component (e.g., simulations of purr). Not only do such simulators develop for aspects of sensory experience, they also develop for aspects of proprioception (e.g., lift, run) and introspec- tion (e.g., compare, memory, happy, hungry). Once established, these simulators implement a basic conceptual system that represents types, supports categorization, and produces categorical inferences. These simulators further support productivity, propositions, and ab- stract concepts, thereby implementing a fully functional conceptual system. Productivity results from integrating simulators combinato- rially and recursively to produce complex simulations. Propositions result from binding simulators to perceived individuals to represent type-token relations. Abstract concepts are grounded in complex simulations of combined physical and introspective events. Thus, a per- ceptual theory of knowledge can implement a fully functional conceptual system while avoiding problems associated with amodal sym- bol systems. Implications for cognition, neuroscience, evolution, development, and artificial intelligence are explored. (shrink)

Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids which rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are 'stored' only superpositionally, and reconstructed rather than reproduced. Both models, argues John Sutton, depart from static archival metaphors by employing distributed representation, which brings interference and confusion between memory traces. Both raise urgent issues about control (...) of the personal past, and about relations between self and body. Sutton demonstrates the role of bizarre body fluids in moral physiology, as philosophers from Descartes and Locke to Coleridge struggled to control their own innards and impose cognitive discipline on 'the phantasmal chaos of association'. Going on to defend connectionism against Fodor and critics of passive mental representations, he shows how problems of the self are implicated in cognitive science. (shrink)

Mental imagery (varieties of which are sometimes colloquially refered to as “visualizing,” “seeing in the mind's eye,” “hearing in the head,” “imagining the feel of,” etc.) is quasi-perceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli. It is also generally understood to bear intentionality (i.e., mental images are always images of something or other), and thereby to function as a form of mental representation. Traditionally, visual mental imagery, the most discussed variety, was thought (...) to be caused by the presence of picturelike representations (mental images) in the mind, soul, or brain, but this is no longer universally accepted. (shrink)

Our beliefs utilize various sources: perception, memory, induction, etc. We trust these sources to provide reliable information about the world around us. My dissertation investigates how this trust could be justified. Chapter one introduces background material. I argue that justification rather than knowledge is of primary epistemological importance, discuss the internalism/externalism debate, and introduce an evidentialist thesis that provides a starting point/framework for epistemological theorizing. Chapter two introduces a puzzle concerning justification. Can a belief source provide justification absent prior justification (...) for believing it's reliable? Any answer appears to either make justifying the reliability of a source intellectually unsatisfying or all together impossible. Chapter three considers and rejects a plethora of proposed solutions to our puzzle. Investigating these solutions illustrates the need to further investigate evidence, evidence possession, and evidential support. Chapter four discusses the metaphysics of evidence. I argue that evidence always consists of a set of facts and that fact-proposition pairs stand in confirmation relations isomorphic to those holding between pairs of propositions. Chapter five argues that justification requires what I call actually connected possession of supporting evidence: a subject must be aware of supporting evidence and of the support relation itself. Chapter six argues that the relation constitutive of a set of facts being justificatory evidence is a sui generis and irreducible relation that is knowable a priori. Chapter seven begins by showing how Richard Fumerton's acquaintance theory meets the constraints on a theory of justification laid down in previous chapters. I modify the theory so as to: make room for fallible foundational justification, and allow inferential justification absent higher-order beliefs about evidential connections. Chapter eight applies the developed theory of justification to our initial puzzle. I show how my modified acquaintance theory is in a unique position to vindicate the idea that necessarily a source provides a person with justification only if she is aware of evidence for the reliability of that source. However, this awareness of evidence for a source's reliability falls short of a justified belief and thereby avoids impalement from our dilemma's skeptical horn. (shrink)

Locke’s theory of consciousness is often appropriated as a forerunner of present-day Higher-Order Perception (HOP) theories, but not much is said about it beyond that. We offer an interpretation of Locke’s account of consciousness that portrays it as crucially different from current-day HOP theory, both in detail and in spirit. In this paper, it is argued that there are good historical and philosophical reasons to attribute to Locke the view not that conscious states are accompanied by higher-order perceptions, but rather (...) that conscious states constitute perceptions of themselves. (shrink)