Hume Studies

Hume Studies Volume 27, Number 2, November 2001, pp. 349-352 NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF. Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2001. Pp. xiii + 265. ISBN 0-521-79013-1, cloth, $60.00. Reid advocates some fascinating views and voices forceful arguments on their behalf, the plausibility of which has only ripened with age. Perhaps the best way to characterize Wolterstorff's book is as a guided tour of these arguments . The book is timely because there are only a handful of books explicating Reid's theories. Due to its structure and scope, Wolterstorffs effort occupies a place on the scholarly shelf near Keith Lehrer's Thomas Reid (London: Routledge, 1989) and Roger D. Gallie's Thomas Reid and the "Way of Ideas" (Boston: Kluwer, 1989). Wolterstorffs point of departure and his primary line of investigation is the analysis of conception (or thinking). I will focus on this aspect of the book in this review at the risk of neglecting other important and able discussions. Wolterstorff introduces three types of conceiving—by a singular concept, by naming, and by acquaintance—none of which comes directly from Reid. His decision to begin his analysis of Reid's theory of perception with the theory of conception is wise, though he approaches that issue at some distance from Reid's work. It is wise because commentators on Reid's theory of perception frequently assume the most important issue in the neighborhood is the analysis of our knowledge of the world, which was not something foremost in Reid's development of his views. Furthermore, Wolterstorff sees (as only John Haldane has) the importance of Reid's theory of thinking in his response to the Ideal Theory. After repeating Reid's characterization of the Ideal Theory, Wolterstorff begins an extended analysis of Reid's primary objections to it. The Ideal Theory fails because (1) the ideas and images (construed as entities) in the mind and the causal or associative relations between them cannot explain thinking (46ff)); (2) it substitutes the activity of agents with the activity of matter (54ff); (3) there are few arguments in its favor (65ff); (4) it confuses sensation and perception, mistakenly making sensations intentionally related to objects (80ff); (5) it makes awareness of external objects a matter of immediate introspective awareness of images (85ff); (6) it assumes that sensations must resemble their objects (86ff); (7) it implies that perceptual beliefs require inference from sense data (92ff). Wolterstorff discusses Reid's initial objections to the Ideal Theory comprehensively rather than presenting these arguments formally. The central virtue of this approach is that, while some previous literature has emphasized the Hume Studies 350 Book Reviews role of reductios to skepticism in Reid's case against the Ideal Theory, Wolterstorff nicely shows the breadth and sophistication of Reid's case. However , as a consequence of this approach a variety of important questions remain unanswered. Consider (1) above. Wolterstorff doesn't specify the demands on what it is to explain thinking, which is unfortunate since Reid's comments can appear question-begging. Wolterstorff spots this problem on the horizon without directly dealing with it. The discussion of explanation is brief and occurs in two places (50 and 63-5). Wolterstorff says that the Ideal Theory's explanation of thinking fails to conform with Reid's demands on scientific explanation (50). Taken as an objection against the Ideal Theory's analysis of thought, this leaves unaddressed who has the burden of proof. Since scientific explanations involve necessary laws according to Wolterstorff (51-2), Hume would grant that he hasn't offered anything that should be construed as a scientific analysis of thinking. Despite this, Reid's corpus does contain the tools needed to construct arguments against representational theories of thinking (in his commencement addresses, published as his Philosophical Orations ). There Reid, like some contemporary thinkers, argues explicitly that the representational theory of the mind cannot account for intentionality. Wolterstorffs interpretive position could have been be strengthened by filling this lacuna and considering Reid's arguments in these writings. One wonders how Reid himself accounts for thinking of mind-independent objects given Wolterstorffs assertion that Reid's greatest criticism of the Ideal Theory...