Thomas Reid (1710-96) was a contemporary of both David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and a central figure in the Scottish School of Common Sense. Until recently, his work has been largely neglected, and often misunderstood. Like Kant, Reid cited Hume’s Treatise as the main spur to his own philosophical work. In Reid’s case, this led him to challenge ‘the theory of ideas’, which he saw as the cornerstone of Hume’s (and many other philosophers’) theories. For those familiar with Reid’s work, it is clear that its significance extends well beyond his challenging the theory of ideas.
The variety of topics which this book covers attests to the richness and variety of Reid’s philosophical contributions, and the persisting relevance of his work to contemporary philosophical debates. The work included in this book, by leading figures in Reid scholarship, deals with aspects of Reid’s views on topics ranging from perception, to epistemology, to ethics and meta-ethics, through to language, mind, and metaphysics. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
1. Introducation
Patrick Rysiew
Part I: Perception
2. Reidian Dual Component Theory Defended
Todd Buras
3. Reid’s Response to Hume’s Perceptual Relativity Argument
Lorne Falkenstein
4. The Extension of Colour Sensations: Reid, Stewart, and Fearn
Giovanni Grandi
Part II: Moral theory
5. Reid on the Moral Sense
Rebecca Copenhaver
6. Reid on the First Principles of Morals
Terence Cuneo
7. Reid’s Moral Psychology - Animal Motives as Guides to Virtue
Esther Kroeker
Part III: Epistemology
8. Common Sense in Thomas Reid
John Greco
9. Thomas Reid on Truth, Evidence and First Principles
Keith Lehrer
10. Reid’s First Principle #7
Patrick Rysiew
11. Reason and Trust in Reid
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Part IV: Mind, Language, Metaphysics
12. Reid on Powers of the Mind and the Person Behind the Curtain
Laurent Jaffro
13. Reid on the Priority of Natural Language
John Turri
14. Disagreement, Design, and Thomas Reid
René van Woudenberg
Biography
Patrick Rysiew is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Victoria. His primary research interest is in epistemology, including its points of intersection with certain issues in philosophy of language and psychology. He has published a number of articles on Reid.