Thomas Reid is notorious for rejecting the orthodox theory of conception (OTC), according to which conceiving of an object involves a mental relationship to an idea of that object. In this paper, I examine the question of what this rejection amounts to, when we limit our attention to bare conception (rather than the more widely discussed case of perception). I present some of the purported advantages of OTC, and assess whether they provide a genuine basis for preferring OTC to a (...) Reidian alternative. I argue that Reid’s approach is no worse off than OTC at explaining intentionality of our conceptions, and suggest that OTC diverges less from Reid’s view than it would at first seem. (shrink)

Na filosofia moderna, Thomas Reid (1710-1796) foi um dos filósofos que olhou com atenção para o problema da vagueza das palavras quando utilizadas para expressar nosso pensamento ao outro. Ao tratar da concepção de linguagem, Reid parece abordar o tema da ambiguidade e da vagueza das palavras de modo a afastar os erros que a linguagem carrega consigo, apurando-a no sentido de torná-la mais adequada à representação dos fenômenos mentais e, desta forma, tornar possível o avanço sobre o estudo acerca (...) da mente. O presente estudo busca tornar aparente a noção reidiana de linguagem, pretendendo, assim, expor o que esta noção pode representar no que diz respeito à relação entre mundo perceptível, mente e linguagem a partir do pensamento de Reid. (shrink)

José María Vigil y Antonio Caso fueron dos defensores de la democracia liberal y de la posibilidad de un limitado, aunque efectivo, manejo consciente de los asuntos públicos y sociales dentro de los contextos adversos de México durante la administración de Porfirio Díaz y en el periodo post-revolucionario. Ambos autores basan sus posiciones en una crítica concerniente al positivismo y al determinismo social, que apuntaría hacia una manera de pensar muy distante del pensamiento subjetivista, aunque muy cercana a un “realismo (...) directo” epistemológico que establece que el mundo no es de hecho una construcción subjetiva o intersubjetiva que debe interpretarse subjetiva o intersubjetivamente. Sin embargo, esto no es algo que pueda saberse a través de una copia mental o representación de sus entidades y procesos. Tal vez el defensor más evocador del realismo directo en la historia ha sido el filósofo escocés del siglo XVIII, Thomas Reid, un gran representante del “sensocomunismo” explícitamente recuperado por Vigil y reivindicado tácitamente por Antonio Caso. (shrink)

Epistemological realists have long struggled to explain perceptual error without introducing a tertium quid between perceivers and physical objects. Two leading realist philosophers, Thomas Reid and Everett Hall, agreed in denying that mental entities are the immediate objects of perceptions of the external world, but each relied upon strange metaphysical entities of his own in the construction of a realist philosophy of perception. Reid added ‘visible figures’ to sensory impressions and specific sorts of mental events, while Hall utilized an array (...) of ways that he maintained properties may participate in the world. This paper assesses each realist's attempt to explain perceptual relativity and illusion without contradicting either the science of his time or the structure of common sense. (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)

There is a problem about the compatibility of Reid's commitment to both a sign theory of sensations and also direct realism. I show that Reid is committed to three different senses of the claim that mind independent bodies and their qualities are among the immediate objects of perception, and I then argue that Reid's sign theory conflicts with one of these. I conclude by advocating one proposal for reconciling Reid's claims, deferring a thorough development and defence of the proposal to (...) another paper. (shrink)

The controversy over the interpretative issue—is Thomas Reid a perceptual direct realist?—has recently had channelled into it a host of imaginative ideas about what direct perception truly means. Paradoxically enough, it is the apparent contradiction at the heart of his view of perception which keeps teasing us to review our concepts: time and again, Reid stresses that the very idea of any mental intermediaries implies scepticism, yet, nevertheless insists that sensations are signs of objects. But if sensory signs are not (...) mental intermediaries, what are they? Hasn't Reid merely swapped the common ‘sensation’ for the notorious ‘idea’, ending up with indirect realism?1 Current imaginative strategies answer negatively: Reid's sensory sign does not contradict direct perception, and those who think otherwise merely fail to understand what it means. (shrink)

Thomas Reid presented a two-dimensional geometry of the visual field in his Inquiry into the Human Mind (1764). The axioms of this geometry are different from those of Euclidean plane geometry. The ‘geometry of visibles’ is the same as the geometry of the surface of the sphere, described without reference to points and lines outside the surface itself. In a recent article, James Van Cleve has argued that Reid can secure a non-Euclidean geometry of visibles only at the cost of (...) abandoning his direct realist theory of perception, and reintroducing sense-data. The question will be reexamined by considering two aspects of Reid’s theory of vision: the claim that we do not directly perceive distance by sight and Reid’s characterization of visible figure as a partial notion of an external object. (shrink)