Journal of the History of Philosophy

Reid's Realism* PHILLIP D. CUMMINS THOMAS REID'S Essays on the Intellectual Powers oJ Man was first published in 1785. In it Reid presented a revised and refined version of the analysis of perception and defense of perceptual knowledge first stated in his Inquiry into the Human Mind of 1764. His position on perception is in many ways the keystone of Reid's philosophy, and one aspect of it, his rejection of the Way of Ideas, is that for which he is best known. Reid maintained that the chief lesson taught by the history of philosophy is that to accept the doctrine of ideas is to court results which only serve to discredit philosophy, x His account of the history of the doctrine may be summarized as follows: every major philosopher from Plato to Hume held that, strictly speaking, sensory ideas are the only objects of perceptionY This position seemed innocent enough to most ancient and medieval philosophers , who either ignored the issue of perceptual knowledge or uncritically assumed that sensory ideas are the effects and replicas of material things. 3 Realizing that this assumption , even when carefully qualified, is by no means self-evident, Descartes made a circuitous, obscure attempt to prove the existence of the material world. To it Locke added a clear but feeble attempt. 4 The arguments and results of Malebranche, Berkeley and Hume made it obvious that, because no such proofs can succeed, the doctrine of sensory ideas must beget either idealism or scepticism. 5 Reid embraced neither; instead, he rejected their source. He insisted upon the need to justify a doctrine so big with bizarre consequences and held that the available evidence is not sufficient to do so. We do not know by sense experience that ideas exist. 6 One is not required to postulate them in order to solve puzzles about perception, since doing so generates parallel puzzles about ideasY * I wish to thank H. M. Bracken, R. W. Watson and D. D. Todd for their very helpful comments and criticisms. t Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers o[ Man, ed. Baruch Brody (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1969), Essay II, Chapter xiv, pp. 230-232. (Hereafter, references to this work will be given as follows: Essays, II, xiv, 230-232.) It will be convenient, perhaps, to provide in each case a reference to the corresponding passages in Reid, Philosophical Works, 2 vols., ed. Sir William Hamilton (Hildesheim, Germany: Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1967). In this case the appropriate reference is to Volume I, p. 306. These references will be given as follows: (PW, I, 306). 2 Essays, I, i, 16-21; II, vii, viii and xiv, 123-126, 133-134 and 211-232 (PW, I, 225-226, 262-264, 267, and 298-306). S. A. Graves, The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), Chapters 1 and 2, contains a detailed and well-documented review of Reid's attack on the theory of ideas and, in addition, an excellent examination of criticisms offered against Reid's attack by two of his contemporaries, Thomas Brown and Joseph Priestley. a Essays, II, viii, 133-135 and 150-152 (PW, I, 267-268 and 274-275). 4 Essays, II, viii-x and xiv, 135-168 and 231 (PW, I, 267-281 and 306). Compare Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles o[ Common Sense (hereafter, Inquiry), Chapter VII, Section i (PW, I, 204-211). 5 Essays, II, vii and x-xii, 126-131 and 167-203 (PW, I, 264-267 and 280-295). Compare Inquiry, I, iii-vii (PW, I, 99-103). 6 Essays, II, iv and xiv, 107-109 and 212-215 (PW, I, 256-257 and 298-299). 7 Essays, II, xiv, 229-230 (PW, I, 305-306). Compare: Essays, IV, ii, 406--424 (PW, I, 368-374). [3171 318 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The natural sciences provide no support for the doctrine of ideas; they seem to do so only when gratuitously supplemented by questionable metaphysical assumptions. 8 Finally, the few philosophical arguments offered in defense of the dogma are either unintelligible or unconvincing. 9 For these reasons, in opposition to his many famous predecessors, Reid boldly denied...