1/8. Reid on Common Sense

Transcription

1 1/8 Reid on Common Sense Thomas Reid s work An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense is self-consciously written in opposition to a lot of the principles that animated early modern philosophy and which we have tracked during this course. So, in concluding by looking at it, we will view a response to the area of metaphysics that, whilst itself being a product of early modern philosophy, attempts to oppose much of the content of that philosophy. Prior to looking directly at Reid however, it is useful to remember a certain tension that is at work in Hume s account of philosophy. Hume consistently argues that there is such a thing as human nature, a nature that his principal work, the Treatise on Human Nature, intends to explore. During the course of this work Hume presents a number of sceptical positions but he does not think that philosophy could alter the way we naturally think about things. For example, the account of personal identity we looked at last week is not one that is likely to persuade us that we should abandon the notion of the self and nor did Hume think that this either would or should be its effect. Rather, the point of much of Hume s work was to suggest that the foundations of our views of some things was not in the place that earlier philosophers had often looked for it. Hence, rather than trusting that reason itself can provide us with a ground for certain views we should rather look to the data of experience and find there the point of the use of the ideas in question but not expect theoretically that a justification of this use is going to be forthcoming.

2 2/8 This element of Hume s work explains, in a sense, how, for example, he could take the notion of cause to be central to how we view the mind at the same time that, in many respects, he would have appeared to undermine our confidence in the very notion of cause itself. The notion would rest, in some sense, on our nature and not, fundamentally, on some principle of our reason. I have begun with this reference to Hume as we will see that a theme of the kind I have been referring to in his work is, in a certain way, used against that work and taken further, by Reid. The positive term in the title of Reid s book is common sense. Since common sense is often appealed to by people who are not philosophers it is useful to see what kind of status it could be given by philosophy. Reid refers to certain principles which, as he puts it, the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them and he then declares that these are the principles of common sense. So we see that just as Hume thought to distinguish the nature of our thought viewed, in some sense, as part of our nature from what our reason might be able to justify, that Reid also makes an appeal here to beliefs that we are under a necessity to take for granted even though we cannot give a reason for them. In order to think more clearly about why we should take such an appeal seriously let s look at the two cases Reid makes for this view. On the one hand, there is a negative argument, that is grounded on the problems of previous philosophy. On the other, a positive argument, intended to show

3 3/8 what philosophical results can be attained by starting from the basis Reid appeals to. The negative case is presented heavily in the first chapter of Reid s work, before he turns to the positive one so let s take these two cases in the order Reid gives them. The general negative case suggests that little seems to have emerged from previous philosophical inquiries other than scepticism. Descartes began modern philosophy with his sceptical arguments and hoped to base everything upon the cogito. The evidence for Descartes assertions is suggested by Reid to not be at all clear. The doubts raised by Descartes are, hence, better put, Reid intimates, than the solutions he adopts for them. Further, Locke s attempt to base the notion of personal identity on consciousness is shown to end with no better a basis for a notion as important as this than an appeal to memory. The effect of the work of these philosophers is thus such as to dissuade guidance from philosophy at all. The basic problem with their works, on Reid s account, is that they have extended the boundaries of philosophy too far so that it has encroached in an illegitimate way on the territory of common sense. This is one of Reid s points but the next is that philosophy does, in any case, originate from common sense and when detached from it is bound to wither. A further difficulty alleged with regard to previous procedures of philosophy is that they are not, in any case, consistent. So, in relation to Hume s account of personal identity, it is not consistent for the author of this work to present it to the public when in it he argues that there is no solid idea of the self. Without any such idea we can have no confidence in the

4 4/8 view that anything coherent is being argued in Hume s work since that work undermines the authorial notion at work in writing it. Also, however, there is a general guidance at work in how people govern their lives, a guidance expressed in the principles that are required for these lives to be lived. This is what is meant by claiming that philosophy emerges in the first place from common sense. In attacking the general tendency of modern philosophy, the tendency to evade common sense or to attempt to undermine it, Reid gives modern philosophy a general name: he calls it the ideal system. In response to this system Reid s positive case begins from an examination of our senses, the territory native to empiricist philosophers and he begins with the nature of smell. When we smell a certain kind of sense operates in relation to particular objects and this sense affects us in a way that is involuntary. The next point to make about this sense is that it not only affects us in the present but we also have memory of it later and also imagination of it in addition. When something is smelled, however, it is perceived and this perception leads to the conviction that something exists as the basis of the smell. This is what we term a belief in the existence of the thing in question. However, Reid s point here is that this belief is not itself grounded on some further principle that can now be appealed to in order to reassure us concerning the view that there is indeed such an object as seems to be called for by the smell it appears to be affecting us with. Rather, there is here a simple and original act of the mind. Now, the philosophers who Reid is opposing invoke, in addition to the acts of the senses, the existence of ideas but Reid s opposition to them

5 5/8 comes from his denial that there are such things as these ideas. When I smell the rose, the rose is the basis of the smell and my view that there is a rose is not something that can be said to exist in between the rose and myself. Similarly, when I have a memory of the smell of the rose this memory does not involve reference to an idea as there is only the view that I smelled it, i.e., a reference to the sensation in question and the understanding of how it affected me. When I imagine it, likewise, the object of my imagination is simply the smell itself not an idea of the smell. Reid summarises this argument thus: Sensation and memory, therefore, are simple, original, and perfectly distinct operations of the mind, and both of them are original principles of belief (15-16). In contrast to Reid s conception here there is the view of Hume to the effect that there is first of all a simple apprehension that something exists and that we have to compare these apprehensions to each other in order to arrive at beliefs. Reid rejects this claim on the basis that the sensation we receive from the object is primary over and above any judgment and that the notion of such a thing as a simple apprehension could not arrive before judgment since we only arrive at it by analysing how judgment itself works. Similarly, Reid rejects Hume s claim that the difference between a real belief that something exists and an imagination that it does consists only in a difference of degree of the strength of the idea. Reid s rejection of this point consists in looking at what is at issue between two people who have a controversy concerning the reality of an idea. If someone denies, for

6 6/8 example, that there is such a thing as an immortal soul, does this person have a different degree of reality of this idea occurring in their mind than someone else who affirms that the immortal soul exists? This surely is not the ground of the argument between them and yet, if the difference between a real idea and an imagined one is only the difference in the intensity of the belief then some account like this would have to be adopted. By contrast to this view Reid argues that the belief which accompanies sensation and memory is not something that can be defined. Any one who has a belief knows what he has in having it just as someone who has sight knows what it is to see but would have problems in explicating it to someone else who was blind. Amongst the beliefs that we have, firm beliefs that belong to the notion of common sense, is that thought has to have a thinker and that experiences require an experiencer. Thus the mind is something distinct from its ideas and impressions. It seems, therefore, that this opinion preceded all reasoning, and experience, and instruction; and this is the more probable, because we could not get it by any of these means. (22-3.) Again, going back to the simple sensation of smelling, it alone implies that there is someone who is smelling and that this someone has discernment in relation to smells, i.e., has a mind. If such notions seem thus to be involved in something as simple as smelling then surely there is no place we could have derived such notions from. This is why Reid refers to them, in a manner that echoes Hume s own positive views, as judgments of nature, a phrase that, similarly, echoes Descartes reference to the teachings of nature in the Sixth Meditation. Since they are

7 7/8 such judgments or principles then it is not the case, says Reid, that we could possibly shake them off. Since such abstract notions as these also seem required for something as apparently simple as the sensation of smell they also could not be derived, as Hume s account suggests, from comparison of relations between ideas or reflection on our ideas. It must instead be the case that the sense we have of relations is itself grounded ultimately on the sensation that provides us with the view that there are things that correlate with our sensations. From sensation we have what Reid terms natural suggestions, particularly the suggestion of a reference to an existence following from a sensation. Along with this suggestion of an existence comes the view that existences cause us to have the sensations in question so that causation is as natural a suggestion as the existence itself is. Against the view that common beliefs confuse the qualities of bodies with ideas of the mind, the view suggested by the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, Reid argues that common belief distinguishes clearly between the two. So common belief finds the quality that produces smell to reside in the rose but the sensation that is produced in us is a quality of the mind which nonetheless does not lead us to think either that the mind itself smells or that the rose s smell is itself a mental quality. The reason why it appears that common beliefs are confused here is, however, due to the difference there is between suffering a sharp sensation and having one that is not violent. In the case of the sharp sensation, such as is at issue in cases of serious pleasure or pain then it is the sensation itself that we concern ourselves with and we name it directly and view it as

8 8/8 something that is the basis of a mental experience. In that case there is scant reference to anything external. In the ordinary case, however, the sensation itself is not specifically attended to by our thought as it is rather the fact of the sensation as what Reid terms a sign for something else that is at issue for us. The object that produces the sensation is thus given the same name as the sensation we have in these cases even though it is the object that is productive of the sensation that is most of interest to us in such cases. Reid s last main point is to dispute the general view that the mind is purely passive when we smell something. Whilst it is the case that smell is something that arises involuntarily it is also the case that sensation makes an impression upon us inasmuch as we give it our attention. Hence it is not the case that sensations are ever purely passive. Reid s general case, thus, points to a basis for thinking that there principles that need to be attended to in order to respond to the sceptical bias of the ideal system and that inasmuch as we do attend to them we will have less incentive to adopt the scepticism that such a system produces.