Thomas Reid uses the term 'moral liberty' to refer to a kind of free will that is agent-causal and incompatible with determinism. I offer and textually support a new interpretation of Reid's third argument for moral liberty, which Reid presents in Section 4.8 of Essays on the Active Powers of Man. Generally regarded as obscure, most commentators either ignore Reid's third argument or lend it cursory attention. In my interpretation, Reid points to the truism that we have reason to think (...) that human persons conceive of long-term plans. Then, Reid argues that determinism implies that God both conceives of and enacts these plans, leaving us without any reason to believe that people even conceive of these plans. Therefore, we should hold onto the truism and reject determinism. On my interpretation, Reid employs the premises of a theistic argument from design as premises of his argument. (shrink)

What could Arthur Schopenhauer, the German pessimist and speculative metaphysician of the irrational will, possibly have in common with Thomas Reid, the staid and pious apostle of common sense? Unlike their contemporaries, both philosophers distinguished carefully between sensation and perception. In this essay I examine their respective formulations of the sensation / perception distinction, and I attempt to explain where they agree and where they diverge. Such an examination seems long overdue, for no-one – to the best of my knowledge (...) – has bothered to compare their views on this subject. (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)