The Rise and Fall of Scottish Common Sense Realism [First edition.] 9780191848094, 0191848093, 9780192507068, 0192507060

Table of contents :
Reid and the foundations of Scottish common sense --
Kames and the argument from perceptual reliability --
Reid and the problem of the external world --
Stewart and Hamilton : defenders of the faith --
Ferrier and the myth of Scottish common sense realism --
Ferrier and the foundations of idealism --
"Scottish to the very core."

Citation preview

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

The Rise and Fall of Scottish Common Sense Realism

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

The Rise and Fall of Scottish Common Sense Realism Douglas McDermid

1

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Douglas McDermid 2018 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017957223 ISBN 978–0–19–878982–6 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

For Michelle, Julia, and Andrea

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations

ix xi

Introduction

1

1. Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense

8 8 10 11 16 21 24 26 29 38 43 47

2. Kames and the Argument from Perceptual Reliability

56 56 57 59 59 64 67 69

1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6

Introduction Thomas Reid: Curriculum Vitae Scepticism and Reid’s Principles of Common Sense Why Philosophy Depends on Common Sense ‘The Pride of Philosophy’ ‘To Common Sense They Now Appeal’ James Oswald: Primary Truths and Rational Perceptions James Beattie: The Desolation of Philosophy George Campbell: Miracles and Rhetoric A Common Sense Credo Descendants and Ancestors Introduction The Primacy of Natural Feeling The Argument from Perceptual Reliability The Perceptual Reliability Thesis The Immediate Object Thesis The Incoherence of Idealism A Diamond in the Rough

3. Reid and the Problem of the External World

72 72 74 79 84 94 99 103 106 107

4. Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith

113 113 114 120 125

3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3

Introduction The Cartesian Reformation in Philosophy The Argument from the All or None Thesis The Cartesian Solution to the Problem of the External World Scepticism and The Way of Ideas Perception as Fact and Mystery How to Be a Common Sense Realist Reid and Kames ‘A Scandal to Philosophy’ Introduction Stewart and Common Sense Realism Hamilton and the Relativity of Knowledge Hamilton and Natural Realism

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

viii  contents 4.4 4.5

Hamilton’s Critique of Hypothetical Realism A Northern Ozymandias

129 132

5. Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism

137 137 138 140 143 146 149 151 154 155 158 161

6. Ferrier and the Foundations of Idealism

165 165 166 170 173 177 183 188 190 193 197

7. ‘Scottish to the very core’

203

Bibliography Name Index General Index

211 223 227

5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9

Introduction ‘As helpless as a whale in a field of clover’ Reid and Berkeley on Intuitive Perception Metaphysicians or Psychologists? Hypothetical Realism and its Discontents The Common Sense Argument for Realism Realism and the Inconceivability Principle Five Morals Solving the Problem of Perception From Reid to Hamilton What’s Past is Prologue

Introduction Ferrier’s Master Argument for Idealism The Law of All Knowledge Defended: Part I The Law of All Knowledge Defended: Part II The Law of All Knowledge Defended: Part III From the Law of All Knowledge to the Law of All Ignorance Against Things-in-Themselves: Beyond Kant and Hamilton Where Did Reid Go Wrong? Why Philosophy Does Not Depend on Common Sense A Tradition Transcended from Within

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Acknowledgements I would be remiss if I did not thank the following individuals, each of whom helped me think better about the issues and authors dealt with in  this book: Peter Baumann, Michelle Boué, Justin Broackes, Alberto Corona, Cairns Craig, Phillip Ferreira, James Foster, Giovanni Gellera, James Harris, Colin Heydt, Damian Ilodigwe, Ralph Jessop, Jennifer Keefe, Arthur Kleinman, Esther Kroeker, Keith Lehrer, Bill Mander, Jorge Ornelas, Stamatoula Panagakou, Carlos Pereda, Sabine Roeser, Nathan Sasser, Ernest Sosa, Jan Swearingen, James Van Cleve, and Rory Watson. Special thanks go to Gordon Graham for his enthusiasm for this project, and for organizing the superb series of conferences on  Scottish Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary. I am also deeply indebted to Peter Momtchiloff at Oxford University Press for his patience and editorial guidance, and to two anonymous readers for their instructive comments on the manuscript. I also wish to thank Joanna North for her skilful and efficient copy-editing. Some of the early work on this book was done during my 2011–12 sabbatical, which I spent as a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School. I wish to thank William Graham, Karin Grundler-Whitacre, and David Lamberth, all of whom made my stay at Harvard pleasant as well as possible. I also want to acknowledge the assistance I received from the helpful staff at Widener Library, the Harvard Law School Library, and the Andover-Harvard Theological Library. Finally, I thank my colleagues and students at Trent University, my home institution, for their interest and support. This book incorporates material from two previous publications of mine: “Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism”, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 11 (2013): 87–107; and “Scottish Common Sense and American Pragmatism”, in A History of Scottish Philosophy in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Gordon Graham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 205–35. I thank the publishers for their permission to reproduce that material here. Finally, I dedicate this book with love to Michelle, Julia, and Andrea, all of whom have more common sense than I do.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Abbreviations ACS James Oswald. (1766–72) An Appeal To Common Sense In Behalf of Religion, ed. James Fieser. Bristol: Thoemmes, 2000. AM

James Burnett, Lord Monboddo. (1779–99) Antient Metaphysics: Or, The Science of Universals. 6 volumes. London and New York: Garland Publishing, 1977.

BAL Thomas Reid. (1774) “A Brief Account of Aristotle’s Logic”. In Thomas Reid: Philosophical Works, With Notes and Supplementary Dissertations, ed. Sir William Hamilton. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1967: 681–714. DM

George Campbell. (1762) A Dissertation on Miracles. In Early Responses to Hume’s Writings on Religion. Volume 2, ed. James Fieser. Bristol: Thoemmes, 2001: 1–114.

DPL Sir William Hamilton. (1853) Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform. Edinburgh: MacLachlan and Stewart. EAP Thomas Reid. (1788) Essays on the Active Powers of Man, ed. Baruch Brody. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969. EIP

Thomas Reid. (1785) Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, ed. Derek R. Brookes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002.

EOT James Beattie. (1771) Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism. Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1975. EPM Henry Home, Lord Kames. (1751) Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion. London and New York: Garland Publishing, 1976. FW

James Frederick Ferrier. (1864) Philosophical Works of James Frederick Ferrier. 3 volumes, ed. A. Grant and E. L. Lushington. Bristol: Thoemmes, 2001.

HSD William Hamilton. (1846) Dissertations, Historical, Critical, and Supplementary. In Thomas Reid: Philosophical Works, With Notes and Supplementary Dissertations, ed. Sir William Hamilton. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1967: 741–987. ICR

John Calvin. (1559) Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009.

IHM Thomas Reid. (1764) An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, ed. Derek R. Brookes. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

xii  Abbreviations LML Sir William Hamilton. (1861) Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic. 4 volumes, ed. H. L. Mansel and J. Veitch. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons. POR George Campbell. (1776) The Philosophy of Rhetoric, ed. Lloyd F. Bitzer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963. RC

Thomas Reid. (1764–92) Correspondence of Dr. Reid. In Thomas Reid: Philosophical Works, With Notes and Supplementary Dissertations, ed. Sir William Hamilton. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1967: 39–92.

SCG St Thomas Aquinas. Summa Contra Gentiles. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975. SP

James Frederick Ferrier. (1856) Scottish Philosophy: The Old and the New. Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox.

ST

St Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947.

SW

Dugald Stewart. (1854–60) The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart. 11 volumes, ed. Sir William Hamilton. Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Company.

All passages from the Old and New Testaments are taken from The Bible: Authorized King  James Version, ed. Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

It shows a lack of education not to know of what things we ought to seek proof and of what we ought not. For it is altogether impossible for there to be proofs of everything; if there were, one would go on to infinity, so that even so one would end up without a proof; and if there are some things of which one should not seek a proof, these people cannot name any first principle which has that characteristic more than this. —Aristotle, Metaphysics

If the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes something—a great deal in fact—for granted, supporting its scruples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and as a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it assumes that the Absolute stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent yet separated from it, and yet is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is excluded from the Absolute, is surely outside the truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby what calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth. —G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Introduction About the very cradle of the Scot there goes a hum of metaphysical divinity . . . —Robert Louis Stevenson

This book tells the lively and little-known story of common sense realism’s rise and fall in Scotland. The plot revolves around the contributions of five philosophers, each of whom enjoyed a generous measure of renown during his lifetime: I. Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782) II. Thomas Reid (1710–96) III. Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) IV. Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856) V. James Frederick Ferrier (1808–64) It goes without saying that Thomas Reid, the canny apostle of common sense, is far and away the most famous of the five. Nevertheless, the other four authors on our list are also worth reading; and if you are seriously interested in understanding what any one of the five has to say about the central questions of epistemology and metaphysics, you would do well to study the works of the rest. Why? Simple: Kames, Reid, Stewart, Hamilton, and Ferrier are members of a rich and underappreciated tradition, and they routinely develop and define their positions by reference to the contributions of their predecessors. Such, at any rate, is the first of this book’s principal contentions, and I shall support it by carefully analysing what Kames, Reid, Stewart, Hamilton, and Ferrier had to say about a major issue which lies at the intersection of epistemology and metaphysics—namely, the thesis of realism about ordinary physical objects, or what J. L. Austin called “moderate-sized specimens of dry goods” (Austin 1962: 8). To be more specific, this book shall follow the career of a position known as ‘common sense realism’ through four main developmental stages in Scotland: its humble beginnings (Kames), its definitive formulation (Reid), its elevation to the status of academic orthodoxy (Stewart and Hamilton), and, finally, its dramatic repudiation and overcoming (Ferrier).1 This brings us to the book’s thematic, as opposed to its historical, focus. In what follows, I explore the different ways in which Kames, Reid, Stewart, Hamilton, and Ferrier tackled a problem which has haunted Western philosophy ever since Descartes: that of

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

2  Introduction determining whether any form of perceptual realism is defensible, or whether the very idea of a material world existing independently of perception and thought is more trouble than it is worth.2 As we shall see, this century-long conversation about the relation between mind and world led our five Scots to think uncommonly hard about a host of challenging issues in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and meta-philosophy: • Is the very idea of ‘things existing without the mind’ hopelessly confused or incoherent? Is a mind-independent world even a possible object of thought or conception? What, for that matter, are the limits of thought and conception, and what is supposed to determine or fix them? • If a mind-independent world exists, is there good reason to suppose that we can  have knowledge of it? Can we refute or disprove the thesis of external world scepticism, according to which we can never have knowledge of a mindindependent world? And if there isn’t any way to refute this thesis, does that mean it is reasonable for philosophers to endorse it? • If we reject external world scepticism, what (if anything) can we learn from our encounter with it? Must we regard external world sceptics as wholly mistaken, or can we credit them with some significant philosophical discoveries or fresh insights? • What are the objects of sense-perception? Does perception yield immediate epistemic access to anything beyond one’s mental states or representations (i.e.—our ‘ideas’ or ‘impressions’, in the parlance of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy)? If so, how? If not, does this mean that external world scepticism is unavoidable? • Can we prove that our faculties of sense-perception are fundamentally reliable or trustworthy? If we cannot prove this, does it follow that doubting the veracity of their deliverances is a reasonable thing to do? • Is our knowledge of the physical world inescapably conditioned by subjectderived forms of thought or sensibility? Can we know objects only as they appear to us, or can we know things as they are ‘in themselves’? • Should philosophers begin their inquiries with radical and all-devouring doubt à la Descartes? Is such doubt even coherent, or is it ultimately self-defeating? Moreover, what are the proper starting-points for philosophical reflection, and in virtue of what feature(s) do they qualify as such? • Can we refute a philosophical thesis by showing that it contradicts some plain dictate(s) of ‘common sense’? If we can, then what gives common sense its authority? How are its authentic dictates identified? And—finally—what does the primacy of common sense reveal about human nature and our place in the scheme of things? That the Scots’ reflections on all these topics repay close study, that their works are chock-full of bold thoughts and nice distinctions, that their thinking has the power to

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

introduction  3 deepen our understanding of the questions they addressed—that is this book’s second principal contention, and I shall defend it by offering perspicuous and detailed reconstructions of their main arguments and theses. In order to present each philosopher’s views in a fair and reasonably charitable light, I have tried to identify the main problems he was attempting to solve, to relate his work to that of his predecessors where possible, to describe the mistakes (real or perceived) he was particularly anxious to correct, to explain the internal logic of his position, and to discuss some of the main objections which he anticipated and tried to rebut. My hope is that even seasoned students of the realism controversy may learn something new and valuable from this exercise, if only because I have chosen to focus not on the usual suspects—Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant—but on a fresh and undervalued cast of characters. The third aim of this book is to re-contextualize some of the achievements of Thomas Reid, who has frequently been treated as little more than a pedestrian footnote to David Hume. According to those who take this interpretive line, Reid was a mere Nay-sayer or negative thinker, a philosophical reactionary profoundly suspicious of modern thought, a dull and unimaginative critic who naïvely believed that he could refute Hume by pointing out that the ordinary person—the sober man or woman of ‘common sense’—finds Humean scepticism unspeakably silly and utterly incredible. This interpretation is a crude caricature of Reid’s procedure, to be sure, and no one who has studied Reid’s writings with a modicum of care will be tempted to take it too seriously. Nevertheless, the shadow cast by this reductive reading leaves us with an obvious and pressing question: if Reid should not be viewed as a mere footnote to Hume, what should we say about his place in the history of modern philosophy? My impulse is to divide this question into two sub-questions. Question 1: Can we construct a narrative about Reidian common-sensism which deepens our understanding of its historical significance without taking Hume’s assumptions or conclusions as its sole or primary point of reference?3 Question 2: Can we find a way of thinking about the connections between Reid’s thought and the work of later philosophers which does not lift Reid out of his historical and cultural context by presenting him as the precursor of some current school or movement?4 We can accomplish both of these things, I hope to show, provided we change our perspective and see Reid’s common sense philosophy as an integral part of the Kamesto-Ferrier sequence. When we relate Reid’s philosophical outlook to that of Kames, for instance, we get a much better sense of the ways in which Reid’s common sense realism was truly original, as well as a better sense of the ways in which it wasn’t; for once we become aware of his intellectual debts to Kames, we can see how Reid transformed what he received, both by adding to it and by subtracting from it. Similarly, our overall understanding of Reid’s common sense realism—our perception of its strengths and its weakness, its presuppositions and its ramifications—is enriched when we reflect on the ways in which Reid’s philosophy was received by leading nineteenth-century Scottish philosophers, who chose either to refine and systematize its contents (as in the case of Dugald Stewart), to synthesize it with doctrines derived from Kant (as in the case of

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

4  Introduction Sir William Hamilton), or to reject it altogether in order to start from scratch, buoyed by the noble hope of creating a system that would be free of all the supposedly crude and embarrassing blunders committed by Reid and his Scottish epigoni (as in the case of James Frederick Ferrier). The fourth and final aim of this book is to win a wider audience for the neglected work of James Frederick Ferrier, a thinker of rare daring and originality who was arguably the first academic philosopher in nineteenth-century Britain to offer a sophisticated defence of idealism.5 Once a name to conjure with, Ferrier is now a largely forgotten figure; and the three volumes of his Philosophical Works, written with ferocity and finesse, gather dust on the shelves of research libraries or antiquarian bookshops in old university towns. To be sure, many is the mighty name whose lustre has faded, and time has made phantoms of more than one philosopher reckoned immortal by adoring contemporaries. But is Ferrier’s pathetic fate fair or fitting? Does he deserve to become a dumb shade, known only (if at all) for coining the term ‘epistemology’?6 The answer, I submit, is a firm and emphatic No. To be more specific, I believe that there are at least two reasons why Ferrier’s oeuvre deserves careful study. In the first place, Ferrier was that rarity among Anglophone philosophers: an honest-to-goodness speculative system-builder in the venerable rationalist tradition of Spinoza. With its self-conscious commitment to rigour and its proofs ad more geometrico, the format of Ferrier’s magnum opus, the Institutes of Metaphysic: The Theory of Knowing and Being (1854), reminds us much more of the Ethics than it does of any previous work of note in English-language philosophy. Beginning with a single proposition set up as an undeniable first principle or irrefragable axiom, Ferrier advances a total of forty-one propositions, the vast majority of which are presented as unavoidable logical consequences of propositions established at some earlier stage of the Institutes. The result, which John Stuart Mill called ‘the romance of logic’, is an impressive synthesis of rationalism and idealism which is remarkable for its breadth, coherence, and intellectual beauty.7 In the second place—and this is closely related to our first point—Ferrier was an extremely aggressive and skilful dialectician, a metaphysical Hannibal whose wars were waged with the well-honed weapons of pure reason. As anyone who peruses the Institutes soon realizes, Ferrier’s book is one long and audacious campaign of argument from beginning to end; and this campaign’s creator, like a seasoned military commander, has devised an ingenious and far-sighted strategy, the purpose of which is to ensure the downfall of his realist and common-sensist enemies by attacking them directly and repeatedly, and by cutting off their logical lines of retreat with platoons of necessary truths and regiments of razor-sharp syllogisms. In short, the Institutes of Metaphysic is a beautifully plotted book, and its fine structure mirrors the subtle yet far-seeing mind of its maker. Very little needs to be said about the plot or structure of this book, because its plan is largely self-explanatory. After introducing the Scottish common sense school of philosophy led by Thomas Reid (Chapter 1), we delve into its prehistory by examining

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

introduction  5 the powerful but little-known defence of perceptual realism mounted by the redoubtable Lord Kames (Chapter  2). This sets the stage for an extended discussion of Reid’s insightful treatment of external world scepticism and his influential plea for common sense realism (Chapter 3). After describing how Reidian realism was appropriated and re-stated by Dugald Stewart and Sir William Hamilton in the early nineteenth century (Chapter 4), we take a close look at James Frederick Ferrier’s two great contributions to the realism debate in Scotland: his no-holds-barred critique of Reid’s position (Chapter 5) and his little-known argument for a form of idealism which is both neoBerkeleyan and post-Kantian (Chapter 6). We conclude with some reflections about the direction Scottish philosophy took in the years following Ferrier’s death in 1864 (Chapter 7). Although it is tedious as well as un-Parmenidean to talk about what a book is not, I would like to make it perfectly clear at the outset that this is not a history of Scottish common sense philosophy.8 It cannot possibly be that, since common sense realism is only one part of common sense philosophy—a rather important part, as I think, but a comparatively small one, all things considered. If you are inclined to doubt the latter claim, consider two points. (1) There is much more to Scottish common sense philosophy than epistemology. As students of the primary and secondary literature know very well, common sense philosophers explored a wide range of topics—in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy (pure and applied), aesthetics (including rhetoric and criticism), and philosophy of ­religion—many of which had little or nothing to do with the issues we shall discuss in this book. (2) Moreover, external world scepticism is only one of many epistemological problems addressed by Scottish common-sensists. To be sure, Reid and company were deeply interested in questions raised by sense perception; but they were also deeply interested in corresponding questions about memory, reason, introspection, conscience, and testimony. The conclusion supported by (1) and (2) may be expressed metaphorically: if common sense philosophy were a country, common sense realism would be a provincial capital whose reputation and charm once made it a mandatory stop on the Grand Tour. This book tells a story about that famous city’s rise and fall: about how and when it was built, who lived there, what they did, and how its once-firm foundations were shaken. Another thing this book does not do is trace the emergence or evolution of the concept of ‘Scottish common sense philosophy’. That is to say, I shall not focus on how or when this category was first constructed, what interests and purposes it served, whose interests and purposes it served, why it survived and spread, or how it was related to extra-philosophical developments inside or outside of Scotland. As readers will see in Chapter 1, however, I firmly believe that there was what might be called a ‘school’ of common sense philosophy; but I acknowledge that there are some scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment who are sceptical about this old-fashioned judgment, and whose reservations flow from their account of that judgment’s genesis or historical

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

6  Introduction origins. In the interests of fairness, and for the benefit of readers who are keen to explore the history of the concept of ‘common sense’ on their own, I have included numerous references to the work of these scholars in the notes. One word more before we begin. There are many signs that scholarly interest in the Scottish philosophical tradition as a whole has increased dramatically in recent years: the creation of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy,9 the establishment of the Center for the Study of Scottish Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary (which grew out of The Reid Project based at the University of Aberdeen), the creation of the International Association for Scottish Philosophy, the republication of classic texts in the Library of Scottish Philosophy undertaken by Imprint Academic, the publication of much-needed critical editions of the works of Thomas Reid by  Edinburgh University Press, the multi-volume history of Scottish philosophy published by Oxford University Press, and the publication of excellent scholarly monographs devoted to understanding various aspects of the Scottish philosophical tradition. I very much hope that this encouraging trend will continue; and if what I have written about the career of common sense realism in Scotland leads readers to take a closer look at the work of any of the figures I discuss, this book will have served its primary purpose.

Notes 1. Readers who cannot wait to find out what is meant by ‘common sense realism’ may consult Section 3.6 now. The present book, I hasten to add, does not purport to be an exhaustive or comprehensive history of common sense realism in Scotland. 2. According to Schopenhauer, this problem “is the axis on which the whole of modern philosophy turns” (Schopenhauer 1851 I: 15; cf. 3, 20). 3. Of course, I do not deny that Hume was a very important influence on Reid and the first wave of common sense philosophers. For more on this point, see Sections 1.2, 1.5–1.8. 4. According to some recent students of Reid’s work, Reid can be read as an externalist and a reliabilist avant la lettre, or as anticipating certain themes in the ‘Reformed epistemology’ associated with Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (1983). I have absolutely no desire to argue against such interpretations; my interest here is in relating Reid’s work to pre-twentiethcentury philosophy in Scotland. 5. In his magisterial study, British Idealism: A History (2011), W. J. Mander writes: “Although the idealist movement proper did not begin until the 1860s, there were a few philosophers before then who may be thought of as forerunners, figures who began to sense the possibility of new lines of thought and who freed up the ground for others to go further. The first such person to consider is James Frederick Ferrier, a Scot, who was educated in the Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Heidelberg, before finally he became Professor of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews” (Mander 2011: 27; cf. 28). As Mander points out, Ferrier was also seen as a forerunner by early twentieth-century commentators like James Seth (1912: 332), W. R. Sorley (1920: 284), and J. H. Muirhead (1931: 162–4). See also Rudolf Metz (1938: 247–8) and Bernard Mayo (1969/2007: 159).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

introduction  7 6. “It is a curious, if minor, irony that where none of the books Ferrier wrote remains on a university syllabus, a mere word he coined does: the word ‘epistemology’ ” (Mayo 1969/2007: 161). 7. “His fabric of speculation is so effectively constructed, and imposing, that it almost ranks as a work of art. It is the romance of logic” (Mill, quoted in Seth 1912: 332). 8. See Grave (1960) for a book-length treatment of Scottish common sense philosophy. 9. Formerly known as Reid Studies, the journal’s name was changed in 2003 to reflect its broadened focus.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

1 Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense I’ve sent you here by Johnie Simson, Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on; Smith, wi’ his sympathetic feeling, An’ Reid, to common sense appealing. Philosophers have fought an’ wrangled, An’ meikle Greek an’ Latin mangled, Till wi’ their logic-jargon tir’d, An’ in the depth of Science mir’d, To common sense they now appeal, What wives an’ wabsters see an’ feel! —Robert Burns

1.0 Introduction What was Scottish common sense philosophy? To answer this question, we shall examine the works of four authors affiliated with the so-called ‘Scottish common sense school’: Thomas Reid (1710–96), James Oswald (1703–93), James Beattie (1735–1803), and George Campbell (1719–96). As Reid is by far the best-known and most accomplished member of this group, we shall place him at the centre of our account, treating his system as the sun by whose light three less brilliant bodies of work can be seen and measured. First, however, an indiscreet and potentially subversive query is in order. Isn’t the very idea of common sense philosophy an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms? Robert Burns (1759–96), for one, seemed to think that it was; and so did Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Indeed, in the Preface to his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), Kant famously complained that common sense is the last refuge of the cynical and ambitious littérateur who, lacking any real aptitude for speculative thought, seeks to win over the public by consecrating their inherited prejudices and unexamined beliefs. Any half-educated scribbler or unscrupulous dilettante, Kant suggests, can now make an author of genius look like a fool or a knave in the eyes of non-philosophers; all she needs to do is insist that whoever contradicts the entrenched convictions of the

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  9 mob must be mischievous or mad. The problem with this approach, Kant thinks, is obvious: the judgments of common sense, while worth a great deal outside of philosophy, are virtually worthless within it. Common sense is an intellectual opiate, a curiositykilling drug which sedates human reason and keeps philosophy in a deep dogmatic slumber; and in that sleep of reason we know what dreams may come—dreams of a world where sceptical doubts are unknown, metaphysical perplexity is unheard of, and naïveté is the beginning of wisdom as well as its end: But fate, ever ill-disposed toward metaphysics, would have it that Hume was understood by no  one. One cannot, without feeling a certain pain, behold how utterly and completely his opponents, Reid, Oswald, Beattie, and finally Priestley, missed the point of his problem, and misjudged his hints for improvement—constantly taking for granted just what he doubted, and, conversely, proving with vehemence and, more often than not, with great insolence exactly what it had never entered his mind to doubt—so that everything remained in its old condition, as if nothing had happened . . . In order to do justice to the problem, however, the opponents of this celebrated man would have had to penetrate very deeply into the nature of reason so far as it is occupied solely with pure thought, something that did not suit them. They therefore found a more expedient means to be obstinate without any insight, namely, the appeal to ordinary common sense. It is in fact a great gift from heaven to possess right (or, as it has recently been called, plain) common sense. But it must be proven through deeds, by the considered and reasonable things one thinks and says, and not by appealing to it as an oracle when one knows of nothing clever to advance in one’s defense. To appeal to ordinary common sense when insight and science run short, and not before, is one of the subtle discoveries of recent times, whereby the dullest windbag can confidently take on the most profound thinker and hold his own with him. So long as a small residue of insight remains, however, one would do well to avoid resorting to this emergency help. And seen in the light of day, this appeal is nothing other than a call to the judgment of the multitude; applause at which the philosopher blushes, but at which the popular wag becomes triumphant and defiant.  (Kant 1783: 8–9)

A curious passage, this.1 Note that Kant appears to treat Thomas Reid, James Oswald, and James Beattie as equals, that he does not mention George Campbell, the fourth horseman of Scottish common sense, and that he writes as if the Englishman Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) were an ally of the Scottish philosophers instead of being one of their earliest and most caustic critics. Note, too, that Kant’s main objection is not so much that Reid, Oswald, and Beattie did not answer David Hume correctly; it is that they did not answer him at all. Ill-equipped to deal with an intelligence as penetrating and powerful as Hume’s, they thought it best to avoid a direct confrontation with him; unable to respond to reason with reason, they took the liberty of consulting an ‘oracle’ (ein Orakel)—that is to say, an inspired source of knowledge whose authority is hallowed and mysterious, ancient and unquestioned—whose revelations are presented in the form of our ordinary beliefs. Unfortunately for the Scots, says Kant, this entire line of thought is a little more than a desperate and execrable argumentum ad populum. Instead of being

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

10  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense a species of philosophy, the Scottish appeal to common sense is an act of treason against reason itself.2 What is wrong with Kant’s interpretation of Scottish common sense philosophy? Where and why does it miss the mark? To answer this question, we must become better acquainted with the work of the school’s representatives, beginning with Thomas Reid.

1.1  Thomas Reid: Curriculum Vitae The bare facts of Reid’s life and academic career are easily summarized. A son of the manse, Reid was born in 1710 in Strachan, Kincardineshire, and received his early education there, followed by several years at a nearby school.3 After graduating in 1726 from Aberdeen’s Marischal College, where one of his teachers was the Berkeleyan philosopher George Turnbull (1698–1748),4 Reid devoted himself to the study of divinity in preparation for a career as a minister in the Church of Scotland. Ordination duly followed in 1731, and in 1737 Reid became the parish minister of New Machar in Aberdeenshire. During his tenure there, he continued to cultivate his life-long interests not only in philosophy, but also in mathematics and the natural sciences.5 In 1751, Reid took up his first academic post: that of Regent at King’s College in Aberdeen, whose Philosophical Society (or “Wise Club”, as some witty locals christened it) Reid co-founded in 1758. During the late 1750s and early 1760s, he presented several papers to this Society, whose members served as a sounding-board for his novel ideas about perception—ideas which were to figure prominently in his first book, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764).6 In that book’s Dedication, addressed to the Earl of Findlater and Seafield, Reid acknowledges his intellectual debt to the Wise Club, which he refers to as “a private philosophical society, of which I have the honour to be a member”: My thoughts upon this subject were, a good many years ago, put together in another form, for the use of my pupils; and afterwards were submitted to the judgment of a private philosophical society, of which I have the honour to be a member. A great part of this inquiry was honoured even by your Lordship’s perusal. And the encouragement which you, my Lord, and others, whose friendship is my boast, and whose judgment I reverence, were pleased to give me, counterbalanced my timidity and diffidence, and determined me to offer it to the public. (IHM Dedication, 5; emphasis mine)7

Reid remained at King’s College until 1764, when the Inquiry into the Human Mind was published. The very same year, his younger contemporary Adam Smith (1723–90), whose Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) had appeared only a few years before Reid’s Inquiry, unexpectedly retired from the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of  Glasgow.8 The vacancy created by Smith’s sudden departure was filled by Reid, whose professional duties in Glasgow differed in kind from his old ones in Aberdeen. As Regent at King’s College, Reid had been required to teach a remarkably diverse

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  11 assortment of subjects, including mathematics and science;9 as Professor of Moral Philosophy, his assignment was predictably more specialized, though still far from narrow. Epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics (both theoretical and practical), aesthetics, and natural theology: these were the subfields of philosophy to which Reid returned time and again during his years in Glasgow. In addition to preparing lectures on these topics, he found time to compose other works, such as “A Brief Account of Aristotle’s Logic With Remarks”,10 “A Statistical Account of the University of Glasgow”, and several papers on Priestley and materialism.11 Although Reid held the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow until his death in 1796, he stopped teaching in 1780 and let his assistant, Archibald Arthur (1744–97), lecture in his stead.12 Determined to set down his philosophical thoughts in a final and integrated form, Reid spent several years converting decades’ worth of manuscripts and lecture material into two major books: Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788).13 It is ultimately upon these two works, along with his earlier Inquiry into the Human Mind, that his philosophical reputation rests. An important part of that reputation, of course, is the idea that Reid was ‘a philosopher of common sense’. This epithet is in some ways a singularly unfortunate one, however, because it may conjure up images of a mad-dog dogmatist—one who boldly barks ‘I refute you thus!’ as his buckled shoes ring against reassuringly solid rocks.14 Although Reid was certainly interested in overcoming scepticism, this pedestrian and comically inept way of confronting it has virtually nothing in common with his approach, and it is high time that we explained why.

1.2  Scepticism and Reid’s Principles of Common Sense One fruitful way of understanding Reid’s common-sensism is to see it as a reply, not to a single form of scepticism, but to no fewer than four: epistemological scepticism, metaphysical scepticism, moral scepticism, and religious scepticism.15 Epistemological sceptics directly target our faith in the basic reliability of our cognitive faculties (perception, memory, reason, and introspection), cast aspersions on our conviction that we can have knowledge of other minds, scout our belief in nature’s uniformity, or urge that the weight we naturally give to testimony is excessive. Metaphysical sceptics, taking a rather different tack, complain that our ordinary conceptual scheme is hopelessly confused or fundamentally inadequate. According to this class of doubting Thomases, certain categories which we are accustomed to take for granted in our thinking about the world—categories such as substance, selfhood, personal identity, causation, and libertarian free will—can no longer be employed with a clean philosophical conscience, because there is nothing in reality to which they correspond. Moral sceptics, for their part, contend that we cannot act altruistically, doubt whether the distinction between virtue and vice is rooted in the nature of things, argue that practical reason is

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

12  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense the slave of the passions, deny the possibility of moral knowledge, or assert that what pass for moral judgments are actually mere expressions of sentiment. Finally, religious sceptics plead that none of the chief articles of Christian orthodoxy or natural religion are defensible. As they see it, cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God are vitiated by their reliance on dubious metaphysical principles; belief in a future state seems a fond hope without any foundation; and testimony in support of miracles can never be reckoned credible, since nothing could be more improbable than a violation of the laws of nature. To combat this four-pronged sceptical menace—a menace memorably incarnated for many in the person of David Hume (1711–76)—Reid invokes what he calls ‘the principles of common sense’. For anyone seeking clarification of this phrase,16 the following passage from Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764) is an excellent place to start: If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which 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; these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd.  (IHM 2.6, 33)

Direct yet dense, this sentence tells us a good deal about the principles of common sense.17 In the first place, such principles are propositions ‘which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe’. Assent to them, we are thus given to understand, is rooted in human nature itself, as opposed to being derived from the vagaries of experience, the association of ideas, the influence of custom, or the force of habit; and this carries with it the implication that nothing will qualify as a principle of common sense unless assent to it is now and always has been virtually universal. In the second place, we are not ‘able to give a reason for them’: principles of common sense are first principles, not the secondary products of inference or argument, and their epistemic status is that of basic or foundational premises which do not admit of any direct proof or demonstration. Third, ‘we are under a necessity to take [them] for granted in the common concerns of life’: principles of common sense are practically indispensable, and anyone who actually succeeded in doubting them—something Reid thinks can’t be done by a sane individual, because belief in them is normally irresistible—would soon meet with a rather nasty end, or need to be locked up for his own protection. Fourth, ‘what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd’: the denial of a principle of common sense strikes us not merely as false or improbable, but as downright outlandish, preposterous, or ridiculous. But why should we suppose that there are first principles? Reid’s reply is at least as old as Aristotle: unless we allow that there is such a thing as non-inferential justification or self-evident judgments, we must confess that no judgments are evident or justified for us. For if all judgments were “grounded on argument” or “got by reasoning” (EIP 6.4, 452, 454), an infinite justificatory regress would ensue: judgment A would derive its justification from judgment B, B from C, C from D, and so on, without end.18 Since

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  13 “we cannot go back in this track to infinity” (EIP 6.4, 455), we must stop at some point—but where? Reid’s answer could not be clearer: we are entitled to stop “only when we come to propositions, which support all that are built upon them, but are themselves supported by none, that is, to self-evident propositions” (EIP 6.4, 455). Using a different metaphor, he says that such judgments possess “the light of truth” in themselves and do not “borrow it from another” (EIP 4.6, 452). They are intrinsically credible or self-evident, and without them nothing else could be known: “[A]ll knowledge got by reasoning must be built upon first principles” (EIP 6.4, 454). Since nothing is more basic or foundational than such principles, it is clear that they cannot be demonstrated or established by proof: “Their evidence is not demonstrative, but intuitive. They require not proof, but to be placed in a proper point of view” (EIP 1.2, 41). When we survey the lists of ‘first principles’ or ‘principles of common sense’ in Essays on the Intellectual Powers and Essays on the Active Powers,19 we discover that many of the principles which Reid has included under this heading are propositions which have been targeted by epistemological, metaphysical, or moral sceptics. Here are a few of Reid’s epistemological first principles—principles, that is, which deal with the reliability of our cognitive faculties or with the status of certain assumptions underpinning our ordinary belief-forming practices.20 First, then, I hold, as a first principle, the existence of everything of which I am conscious. (EIP 6.5, 470) Another first principle I take to be, That those things did really happen which I distinctly remember.  (EIP 6.5, 474) Another first principle is, That those things do really exist which we distinctly perceive by our senses, and are what we perceive them to be.  (EIP 6.5, 476) Another first principle is, That the natural faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious.  (EIP 6.5, 480) Another first principle relating to existence is, That there is life and intelligence in our fellow-men with whom we converse.  (EIP 6.5, 482) Another first principle I take to be, That certain features of the countenance, sounds of the voice, and gestures of the body, indicate certain thoughts and dispositions of mind.  (EIP 6.5, 484) Another first principle appears to me to be, That there is a certain regard due to human testimony in matters of fact, and even to human authority in matters of opinion.  (EIP 6.5, 487) The last principle of contingent truths I mention, is, That, in the phænomena of nature, what is to be, will probably be like to what has been in similar circumstances.  (EIP 6.5, 489)

As any philosophically-minded reader will immediately perceive, these principles can be used to rebut various kinds of epistemological scepticism, including scepticism about our natural cognitive faculties, scepticism about other minds, scepticism about testimony, and scepticism about induction. Reid’s message is consequently a deeply affirmative one: our natural trust in the aforementioned principles is neither arbitrary

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

14  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense nor misplaced, and anyone who argues that human knowledge is a dream should not expect to be believed. In short, philosophy can never show that human beings cannot know anything about mathematics and science, about the present and the past, about their own minds or the minds of their neighbours. Another batch of Reid’s first principles affirms the fundamental soundness of our common sense metaphysical outlook, with its commitments to a substantial self or mind, personal identity, incompatibilist free will, material substance, and universal causation: Another first principle, I think, is, That the thoughts of which I am conscious, are the thoughts of a being which I call myself, my mind, my person.  (EIP 6.5, 472) Another first principle is our own personal identity and continued existence, as far back as we remember anything distinctly.  (EIP 6.5, 476) Another first principle, I think, is, That we have some degree of power over our actions, and the determinations of our will.  (EIP 6.5, 478) That the qualities which we perceive by our senses must have a subject, which we call body, and that the thoughts we are conscious of must have a subject, which we call mind.  (EIP 6.6, 495) [T]hat whatever begins to exist, must have a cause which produced it.  (EIP 6.6, 497) That design, and intelligence in the cause, may be inferred, with certainty, from marks or signs of it in the effect.  (EIP 6.6, 503)

Once these propositions about the nature of reality are recognized as self-evident, we can dismiss the suggestion that our shared worldview is nothing but a farrago of ancient nonsense. That the categories implicit in our ordinary ways of thinking and talking should not be despised, that we should not listen to critics who want to replace our natural conceptual scheme with a model manufactured in the Thinkery, that we should be descriptive metaphysicians like Aristotle and not revisionary metaphysicians like Plato—these slogans sum up the drift of Reid’s response to metaphysical scepticism.21 In addition to first principles in the fields of epistemology and metaphysics, “[t]here are also first principles in morals” (EIP 6.6, 494): unassailable moral axioms whose truth is self-evident to any mature and normally constituted human being.22 According to Reid, the Golden Rule—“That we ought not to do to others what we would think unjust or unfair to be done to us in like circumstances” (EIP 6.6, 494)—is an excellent example of a first principle in morals, for it is “self-evident to every man who hath a conscience” (EAP 5.1, 366): In every case, we ought to act that part towards another, which we would judge to be right in him to act toward us, if we were in his circumstances and he in ours; or, more generally, what we approve in others, that we ought to practise in like circumstances, and what we condemn in others we ought not to do. If there be any such thing as right and wrong in the conduct of moral agents, it must be the same to all in the same circumstances . . .

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  15 As the equity and obligation of this rule of conduct is self-evident to every man who hath a conscience; so it is, of all rules of morality, the most comprehensive, and truly deserves the encomium given it by the highest authority, that it is the law and the prophets.23 (EAP 5.1, 365–6)

Yet the Golden Rule, though ‘it is the law and the prophets’, is not the only first principle of morals. Another fundamental principle in this domain is that each of us has obligations not only to other individuals, but also to the various groups or communities of which we are members: No man is born for himself alone. Every man, therefore, ought to consider himself as a member of the common society of mankind, and of those subordinate societies to which he belongs, such as family, friends, neighbourhood, country, and to do as much good as he can, and as little hurt to the societies of which he is part.  (EAP 5.1, 365)

Another moral first principle is that if a person sincerely believes in God, she should revere God and submit to him in practice. In other words, religious believers have a duty to glorify God and serve him by doing his will: To every man who believes the existence, the perfections, and the providence of God, the veneration and submission we owe to him is self-evident. Right sentiments of the Deity and of his works, not only make the duty we owe to him obvious to every intelligent being, but likewise add the authority of a divine law to every rule of right conduct.  (EAP 5.1, 367–8)

Yet another self-evident moral judgment, Reid observes, is that certain duties take precedence over others. For some of our obligations may come into conflict with others, forcing us to decide which of them has the greatest claim on us as moral agents: That . . . unmerited generosity should yield to gratitude, and both to justice, is self-evident. Nor is it less so, that unmerited beneficence to those who are at ease should yield to compassion to the miserable, and external acts of piety to works of mercy, because God loves mercy more than sacrifice.  (EAP 5.1, 368)

Thanks to the natural faculty of conscience, then, the ordinary person or non-philosopher cannot help holding certain epistemically basic beliefs about what is right and what is  wrong. Since nature has not left humanity totally in the dark when it comes to the foundations of morality, the moral sceptic makes the same basic mistake as the external world sceptic: that of contradicting common sense by doubting the basic ­veracity of one of our natural faculties. In the case of external world scepticism, of course, that faculty is sense-perception; in the case of moral scepticism, it is conscience or the moral sense. Finally, what about common sense and religion? Here things are more complicated. On the one hand, none of the propositions to which religious sceptics take exception— propositions about God’s existence or attributes, about belief in miracles, about the immortality of the soul, and so on—finds a place in Reid’s catalogue of first principles.24 On the other hand, Reid’s catalogue does include metaphysical and epistemological

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

16  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense principles which may be used to defend such propositions. The existence of God, for instance, is not listed as a first principle; but we can formulate versions of the cosmological and teleological arguments for God’s existence using assumptions which are identified as first principles (i.e.—“[T]hat whatever begins to exist, must have a cause which produced it” (EIP 6.6, 497) and “That design, and intelligence in the cause, may be inferred, with certainty, from marks or signs of it in the effect” (EIP 6.6, 503; cf. 508), respectively).25 Again, a common sense philosopher intent on championing the immortality of the soul is entitled to believe (pace Hume) that there exists a substantial mind or self which is distinct from one’s thoughts—“That the thoughts of which I am conscious, are the thoughts of a being which I call myself, my mind, my person” (EIP 6.5, 472) and “that the thoughts we are conscious of must have a subject, which we call mind” (EIP 6.6, 495)—without needing to prove that such a self or mind exists. Similarly, a common sense philosopher eager to answer Hume’s celebrated argument against belief in miracles may begin her rebuttal by helping herself to another Reidian first principle: “That there is a certain regard due to human testimony in matters of fact, and even to human authority in matters of opinion” (EIP 6.5, 487).26

1.3  Why Philosophy Depends on Common Sense Our survey of Reid’s first principles indicates that his basic anti-sceptical strategy is  straightforward: all four forms of philosophical scepticism—epistemological, metaphysical, moral, and religious—can be rebutted by appealing to the dictates of common sense. But why does Reid believe this? That is to say, how does he understand the relation between the principles of common sense, on the one hand, and the practice of philosophy, on the other? According to Reid, philosophy must rest upon the principles of common sense, just as a building must rest upon a fixed and solid foundation, because common sense is prior to philosophy in every sense that counts: It is a bold philosophy that rejects, without ceremony, principles which irresistibly govern the belief and the conduct of all mankind in the common concerns of life; and to which the philosopher himself must yield, after he imagines he hath confuted them. Such principles are older, and of more authority, than Philosophy: she rests upon them as her basis, not they upon her. If she could overturn them, she must be buried in their ruins; but all the engines of philosophical subtilty are too weak for this purpose; and the attempt is no less ridiculous, than if a mechanic should contrive an axis in peritrochio to remove the earth out of its place; or if a mathematician should pretend to demonstrate, that things equal to the same thing are not equal to each other.  (IHM 1.5, 21)

In saying this, Reid takes up arms against one aspect of the tradition inaugurated by René Descartes (1596–1650), for whom philosophy must begin with radical and all-encompassing doubt. Common sense, seen from within this tradition, must be

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  17 presumed guilty until proven innocent; and the modern philosopher, serving ­simultaneously as police inspector, prosecutor, and judge, proves a most zealous and  implacable opponent. None of our ordinary beliefs, no matter how natural or ­tenacious, receives a free pass from him; damning charges are brought against them all; no assumptions are granted, no alibis permitted; and nothing, we are sternly warned, shall henceforth be taken on trust. Each class of our convictions is now obliged to produce its epistemological passport, or confess that it is really an impostor—a dressed-up prejudice or disguised idée fixe—instead of the stuff of which real knowledge is made. But is philosophy truly fit to sit in judgment on common sense? Contrariwise: ­philosophy is ultimately answerable to common sense, not common sense to philosophy: “Such principles [i.e.—principles of common sense] are older, and of more authority, than Philosophy: she rests upon them as her basis, not they upon her” (IHM 1.5, 21). As Reid sees it, the plain dictates of common sense do not need to be grounded by means of philosophical arguments; and a wise philosopher will be disposed to take our  shared first principles for granted, viewing them as brute ineradicable givens that cannot sensibly be gainsaid. In other words, philosophers need to appreciate that philosophy, far from being an autonomous or self-contained pursuit, can only grow out  of common sense, and that philosophy can flourish only as long as it remains ­connected to that tough, lowly, life-giving root: “Philosophy . . . has no other root but the principles of Common Sense; it grows out of them, and draws its nourishment from them; severed from this root, its honours wither, its sap is dried up, it dies and rots” (IHM 1.5, 19). Reid concludes from this that philosophy cannot controvert the principles of common sense without subverting itself. Suppose, for instance, that a sceptical philosopher argues that we do not have good reasons to trust the deliverances of perception, or that we cannot know that our senses are not shameless prevaricators or inveterate dissemblers. Faced with such a bold antagonist, Reid has an ingenious rejoinder—to wit, that our sceptic is not sceptical enough, since her doubts ultimately rest on dogmas to which she is blindly committed. To be more specific, Reid thinks that the sceptical philosopher who fulminates against our faith in perception puts her faith in reason without it ever dawning on her that this is inconsistent: I am aware, that this belief which I have in perception, stands exposed to the strongest ­batteries of scepticism. But they make no great impression upon it. The sceptic asks me, Why do you believe the existence of the external object which you perceive? This belief, Sir, is none of my manufacture; it came from the mint of Nature; it bears her image and superscription; and, if it is not right, the fault is not mine: I even took it upon trust, and without suspicion. Reason, says the sceptic, is the only judge of truth, and you ought to throw off every opinion and every belief that is not grounded on reason. Why, Sir, should I believe the faculty of reason more than that of perception?; they came both out of the same shop, and were made by the same artist; and if he puts one piece of false ware into my hands, what should hinder him from putting another?  (IHM 6.20, 168–9)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

18  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense It is evident that our sceptic thinks reason trustworthy (since she relies upon it, “the only judge of truth”, to make her case against perception). Yet it is also evident that reason, like perception, is one of our natural cognitive faculties; and we are constrained at the outset of our inquiries to put all such faculties (i.e.—memory, introspection, perception, reason, and conscience) on a par as far as their basic reliability is concerned. After all, none of them can be reckoned infallible or perfectly reliable, and no faculty can be used to validate itself, since that way lies circularity: If a man’s honesty were called into question, it would be ridiculous to refer it to the man’s own word, whether he be honest or not. The same absurdity there is in attempting to prove, by any kind of reasoning, probable or demonstrative, that our reason is not fallacious, since the very point in question is, whether reasoning may be trusted.  (EIP 6.5, 480) Every kind of reasoning for the veracity of our faculties, amounts to no more than taking their own testimony for their veracity; and this we must do implicitly, until God give us new faculties to sit in judgment upon the old . . .  (EIP 6.5, 481) For it is evident, that every argument offered to prove the truth and fidelity of our faculties, takes for granted the thing in question, and is therefore that kind of sophism which Logicians call petitio principii.  (EIP 7.4, 571) The faculties which nature hath given us, are the only engines we can use to find out the truth. We cannot indeed prove that those faculties are not fallacious, unless God should give us new faculties to sit in judgment upon the old. But we are born under a necessity of trusting them.  (EAP 3.6, 237)

If our sceptic is prepared to credit the deliverances of her reason, she should also be prepared to extend the same courtesy to the deliverances of her senses; yet the moment she takes that eminently commonsensical step, she has ceased to be a sceptic about perception. If, on the other hand, our sceptic decides to disavow perception to the ­bitter end, consistency requires her to renounce the works of reason along with those of perception. But since renouncing reason is tantamount to abandoning argument and philosophy altogether, it begins to look very much as though our sceptic can remain a sceptic only by ceasing to be a philosopher.27 In the end, Reid maintains, a philosopher really has only two options: either consistently respect the authority of common sense (and so eschew scepticism), or commit intellectual suicide and fall silent forever.28 Note that there is an additional sense in which a philosopher who argues against common sense is at odds with himself. Because Reidian first principles are psychologically irresistible, we cannot throw them off in practice, no matter how hard or long we try; such natural commitments simply cannot be extirpated or expelled from any healthy mind. Indeed, anyone who really doubted whether he existed, say, or whether there were other minds or external objects, would not be hailed as a great metaphysician and admired; he would simply be pitied as a madman and promptly sent to Bedlam. Yet our philosophical sceptics are but mad north-north-west: whatever they may write or say in the privacy of the study, their speech and their conduct in the marketplace prove

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  19 that they do not really doubt that they exist, or that there is a material world, or that fire warms, or that water refreshes. Sceptics from Pyrrho to Hume believe all these things and more, Reid observes; and this is because they, like the rest of humanity, ­cannot help it: All we would ask of this kind of Sceptic is, that he would be uniform and consistent, and that his practice in life do not belie his profession of scepticism with regard to the fidelity of his faculties: For the want of faith, as well as faith itself, is best shown by works. If a Sceptic avoid the fire as much as those who believe it dangerous to go into it, we can hardly avoid thinking his scepticism to be feigned, and not real.  (EIP 7.4, 571) My belief is carried along by perception, as irresistibly as my body by the earth. And the greatest sceptic will find himself in the same condition. He may struggle hard to disbelieve the informations of his senses, as a man does to swim against a torrent: but ah! it is in vain. It is in vain that he strains every nerve, and wrestles with nature, and with every object that strikes upon his senses. For after all, when his strength is spent in the fruitless attempt, he will be carried down the torrent with the common herd of believers.  (IHM 6.20, 169)

Here the sceptic’s humiliating fate—that of being “carried down the torrent with the common herd of believers”—may be seen as a fitting rebuke to “the pride of philosophy” (EIP 2.20, 233): a pride that dares to contradict nature, despises common sense, and dismisses mankind as a herd of “Yahoos” or credulous fools (IHM 1.6, 21; cf. IHM 5.7, 68). By opposing philosophy to common sense, by doubting first principles instead of acquiescing in them, by refusing to follow nature with serene spontaneous confidence, the sceptic effectively denies his kinship with the rest of us. Philosophical sceptics, Reid intimates, are consequently guilty of a kind of hubris and misanthropy; for their unnatural doubts are a form of rebellion, evincing a desire to reject “the lot of humanity” altogether: We cannot give a reason why we believe even our sensations to be real and not fallacious; why we believe what we are conscious of; why we trust any of our natural faculties. We say, it must be so, it cannot be otherwise. This expresses only a strong belief, which is indeed the voice of Nature, and which therefore in vain we attempt to resist. But if, in spite of Nature, we resolve to go deeper, and not to trust our faculties, without a reason to shew that they cannot be fallacious, I am afraid, that seeking to become wise, and to be as gods, we shall become foolish, and being unsatisfied with the lot of humanity, we shall throw off common sense.  (EIP 6.6, 497)

The final sentence of this passage contains an allusion—“seeking to become wise, and to be as gods”—whose significance in the present context would certainly not have been lost on Reid’s Calvinist contemporaries in Scotland. Steeped in the Bible and theology, they would have heard in these words an echo of an argument made long ago in Eden, when the serpent tempted Eve with specious reasoning, and a flattering fallacy led to a Fall.29 And they would have immediately seen what Reid was driving at: that underlying the sceptic’s faux pas in epistemology—that of demanding proof where proof is neither necessary nor possible—is a proud and self-enfeebling refusal to trust God, “the Author of our being” (EAP 4.6, 304). Determined to be wholly self-sufficient

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

20  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense and autonomous, the sceptical philosopher is discomfited by his dependence upon a nature that is his and yet not his—a nature by which he is ruled, but which is not of his own making—and so he seeks to transcend its limitations in thought. Instead of acknowledging that there are intuitive principles which “the constitution of our nature leads us to believe . . . without being able to give a reason for them” (IHM 2.6, 33), our sceptic, “seeking to become wise”, reserves the right to reject them unless they can be established by his reason, “the only judge of truth” (IHM 6.20, 169); and so he “wrestles with nature” (IHM 6.20, 169) in a vain attempt to throw off such involuntary and (to him) demeaning commitments, though no one can make his way in this world without their guidance. The sceptic is thus divided against himself; and this deplorable loss of integrity, this deep cleft bisecting his being, stems from an unlawful and futile desire to silence “the voice of nature”. As this suggests, Reid encourages his readers to view radical scepticism not only through the lens of philosophy, but also through the lenses of religion and theology. The moral he invites us to draw is hard to miss: radical scepticism, when seen from a Christian perspective, wears the appearance of impiety, foolish pride, and presumption. It goes without saying that none of this amounts to a philosophical refutation of scepticism; but there isn’t the slightest reason to think that it was intended by Reid as such. Rather, it can be understood as a diagnosis or interpretation of scepticism’s genesis which is available to a reader who already belongs to that religious tradition and who thinks from within it—available, that is, to a person “who is persuaded that he is the workmanship of God, and that it is a part of his constitution to believe his senses” (EIP 2.20, 231). Taken in this way, the diagnosis seems reasonable enough: if you truly conceive of first principles as “the gift of Heaven” (EIP 2.20, 233) or as “the inspiration of the Almighty” (IHM 7, 215; EIP 2.20, 231), there can be no question of rejecting, contesting, or second-guessing them.30 Such unconquerable convictions are divine gifts to be accepted, not with idle doubts and murmurs, but with humble trust and hope; they are boons to be viewed not as objects of suspicion, but as occasions for gratitude; and their practical indispensability and irresistibility may be taken as proof that (pace Hume) the great guide of human life is not custom or habit, but a ubiquitous species of common grace. For Reid, accepting first principles in this pious spirit—with trust, hope, and ­gratitude—means accepting a certain picture of ourselves as creatures whose true good lies in a confident and whole-hearted submission to the laws of the constitution which the benevolent “Author of our being” has seen fit to give us.31 This broadly Christian picture of human nature informs much of Reid’s writing, and his allegiance to it is proclaimed on the title pages of his three major works, whose epigraphs stress our indebtedness to a sovereign and provident God. Drawn from the Book of Job, the epigraphs to the Inquiry into the Human Mind and the Essays on the Intellectual Powers—“The inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding” (Job 32:8) and “Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts?” (Job 38: 36), respectively—indicate the extent of our debts in the domain of epistemology; and the Essays on the Active Powers

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  21 begins with a verse from the Book of Micah—“He hath showed thee, O Man, what is good” (Micah 6:8)—which does the same for the realm of ethics or moral philosophy. From this we may draw two conclusions. The first is that Reid’s philosophy, like that of Hume, presents us with a vivid and well-defined picture of human nature;32 the second is that Reid’s picture, unlike Hume’s, is meant to be consonant with the spirit and tenets of Christianity.33 What do we discover, then, when we study the curious case of ‘Reid, to common sense appealing’? Not (as Immanuel Kant and Robert Burns seem to have imagined) a dull, crude, and desperate appeal to ‘[w]hat wives an’ wabsters see an’ feel’, but a sober yet ambitious philosophy which is not lacking in subtlety. For what, we may ask, is it which Reid ultimately hopes to achieve? Nothing less than this: to establish a sceptic-proof scheme in which ordinary perception, science, morality, and religion are understood not as enemies or rivals, but as different branches of a single tree—a tree whose ancient roots nourish and sustain human nature. Suspicious of dramatic one-sidedness and tidy oversimplification, Reid’s philosophy of common sense aspires to avoid the extremes that have tempted defiant sceptics, on the one hand, and complacent dogmatists, on the other.34 It is committed to acknowledging the authority of our faculties without making them the measure of all things; it is pleased to credit conscience no less than perception; it welcomes religion while shunning superstition and enthusiasm; and it is liberal and large enough to accommodate both Newton’s Principia and the Westminster Confession of Faith. In addition, it proclaims that Providence has placed us somewhere between angels and brutes in the great chain of being; that we are not our own, but belong to God; that God evidently intends human beings to lead a life devoted to prudent and dutiful action, as opposed to one filled with unanchored speculations or base gratifications; and—last but not least—that to repine at our God-given condition is unnatural and impious, not to mention self-defeating.

1.4  ‘The Pride of Philosophy’ If Reid is right in thinking that philosophy ultimately depends on common sense, philosophy is not nearly as important as most of its leading modern practitioners have thought. Why? Because Descartes, Locke, Malebranche, Hume, and others have assumed—quite erroneously, as Reid thinks—that our ordinary conceptual scheme must be validated by philosophers if its employment is to qualify as reasonable and warranted. This self-aggrandizing assumption reflects a deep and invidious contrast between ‘the vulgar’ and ‘the philosophers’; a contrast, that is to say, between the innumerable naïfs who accept that conceptual scheme without argument, on the one hand, and, on the other, the handful of fastidious sages who will consent to endorse ordinary beliefs only on the basis of esoteric arguments which they themselves have excogitated. According to this way of understanding our epistemic predicament, the ordinary person’s belief in the existence of material objects, other minds, or the uniformity of nature does not amount to knowledge. Why not? Not because these run-of-the-mill

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

22  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense beliefs are false—they may very well be true—but because the vulgar person, who cannot argue cogently for their truth, is not justified or warranted in holding them. If the philosophical elite can find arguments which vindicate vulgar convictions, well and good; such beliefs will finally have been rationally grounded or justified. However, it would not follow that the vulgar qua vulgar are justified in holding such beliefs. Indeed, we should expect to be told by the modern philosopher that the ordinary man or woman is not justified in believing in a material world, say, or in other minds, or in nature’s uniformity. For according to the line of thought whose trajectory we have been tracing, you are entitled to hold such beliefs if and only if you can establish their truth by ingenious reasoning or rigorous logical proof; yet anyone who can perform that remarkable intellectual feat surely deserves the honorific title of philosopher.35 On the other hand, if philosophy either (a) fails to find arguments which justify some set of ordinary beliefs or (b) produces arguments which refute or discredit such beliefs, the result will be some form of scepticism about that entire class of convictions. Here, too, the philosopher may claim that he has an advantage over the person who takes the correctness of such homely judgments for granted. For whereas the vulgar man thinks that he knows something—say, that material objects exists—which he in fact does not know, it is the boast of the modern sceptic that he knows that he does not know whether material objects exist. What is more, the sceptic’s knowledge that he does not know such things is derived from his own rigorous and independent investigations, the conclusions of which purport to be universally valid. Hence the sceptic not only claims he does not know whether things ‘without the mind’ exist; he also claims that no one can ever know whether such things exist. The fact that the rest of humanity blithely takes the reality of material things for granted may excite our philosopher’s pity or inspire his contempt; depending upon his humour, he may wax eloquent on ‘the whimsical condition of mankind’, or throw up his hands in a paroxysm of misanthropic despair. Yet regardless of whether he laughs or weeps at the sight of our irremediable simplicity and gullibility, he can always console himself with the flattering thought that he has seen through the foolish illusions that hold the rest of humanity captive. A Pharisee of the intellect, he gives thanks to the goddess Reason that he is ‘not as other men are’—purblind and superficial, unsophisticated and obtuse. The modern opposition between the vulgar and the philosophers recalls a much older and more famous contrast: that between the imprisoned Platonic Cave-Dweller who takes the shadowy play of appearances at face value, and the emancipated Platonic Sun-Worshipper who sees through the deceptive surface of things to the luminous reality above them.36 Whatever its lineage or pedigree, however, this wholesale dualism between the vulgar and the philosopher is roundly condemned by Reid, who insists that when it comes to matters of common sense, “[t]he learned and the unlearned, the Philosopher and the day-labourer, are upon a level” (EIP 6.4, 461; cf. EIP 2.19, 219). In  The Scottish Philosophy (1875), James McCosh (1811–94), himself a Scot and a

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  23 c­ ommitted common-sensist, summed up Reid’s attitude beautifully: “Reid laboured to restrain the pride of philosophy, and to bring men back to a common sense in respect of which the peasant and philosopher are alike” (McCosh  1875: 419). Let us look briefly at two passages from the Essays on the Intellectual Powers which illustrate and illuminate this aspect of Reid’s thought. In the first passage, found in Essay 2 (“Of The Powers We Have By Means of Our External Senses”), Reid stresses the limitations of human reason, a faculty whose epistemic reach has been greatly exaggerated by vain philosophers, who have expected it to deliver insights into familiar things that are deeper than the platitudes known to every peasant and child. Yet there are cases, Reid observes pointedly, where reason can give the learned philosopher no advantage whatsoever over the uneducated day-labourer or peasant. Such rude and brutal levelling deeply wounds ‘the pride of philosophy’—or at least the pride of certain modern philosophers: To a Philosopher, who has been accustomed to think that the treasure of his knowledge is the acquisition of that reasoning power of which he boasts, it is no doubt humiliating to find, that his reason can lay no claim to the greater part of it. By his reason, he can discover certain abstract and necessary relations of things: But his knowledge of what really exists, or did exist, comes by another channel, which is open to those who cannot reason. He is led to it in the dark, and knows not how he came by it. It is no wonder that the pride of philosophy should lead some to invent vain theories, in order to account for this knowledge; and others, who see this to be impracticable, to spurn at a knowledge they cannot account for, and vainly attempt to throw it off, as a reproach to their understanding. But the wise and the humble will receive it as the gift of Heaven, and endeavour to make the best use of it.  (EIP 2.20, 233)

The second passage, which is found in Essay 6 (“Of Judgment”), expresses what we may call Reid’s epistemological egalitarianism: his view that philosophical theories are constrained by the natural or commonsensical convictions of ordinary people, and that ordinary people—Robert Burns’s ‘wives an’ wabsters’—are in a perfectly good position to judge what counts as a natural conviction. Non-philosophers may know that a philosopher’s argument has gone wrong without knowing exactly where it has gone wrong, provided they know that the argument’s conclusion contradicts some common sense principle or natural commitment. In cases of this sort, the philosopher and the non-philosopher are truly ‘upon a level’, and the former cannot pull rank on the latter: In matters beyond the reach of common understanding, the many are led by the few, and willingly yield to their authority. But, in matters of common sense, the few must yield to the many, when local and temporary prejudices are removed. No man is now moved by the subtile arguments of Zeno against motion, though perhaps he knows not how to answer them . . . In a matter of common sense, every man is no less a competent judge than a Mathematician is in a mathematical demonstration; and there must be a great presumption that the judgment

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

24  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense of mankind, in such a matter, is the natural issue of those faculties which God hath given them. Such a judgment can be erroneous only when there is some cause of the error, as general as the error is: When this can be shown to be the case, I acknowledge it ought to have its due weight. But, to suppose a general deviation from truth among mankind in things self-evident, of which no cause can be assigned, is highly unreasonable.  (EIP 6.4, 461, 465–6; EAP 4.6, 314)

Why have modern philosophers resisted epistemological egalitarianism, and employed reason to prove or disprove what everyone already believes by nature? Is it an expression of nothing but fiendish conceit or superbia? That is not the view of it taken by Reid, whose common-sensism leaves room for the idea that philosophy’s insatiable hunger for proofs and guarantees is an overreaction to a very real and serious problem—the problem of dogmatism and irresponsible belief. That we are highly fallible creatures who are easily led astray, that prejudice and superstition are all around us as well as within us, that there is a surfeit of foolish and wild opinions in the world—these are facts about the human condition which nobody can deny. Yet it does not follow from any of this that a philosopher always has the right to question, let alone to condemn, the unreasoned commitments of ordinary people. Some of these commitments are our common property or inheritance, bequeathed to us by nature, and we cannot part with any of them unless we are willing to part with all of them. As long as modern philosophers overlook this crucial truth, Reid thinks, their schemes and speculations will end in bankruptcy, and this is because—here the circle of our discourse closes—all our thinking about things is ultimately funded by common sense.

1.5  ‘To Common Sense They Now Appeal’ Reid was not the only Scottish thinker of his day who accused modern philosophers of trampling with impunity upon the natural rights of common sense. That there was, once upon a time, a flourishing Scottish school of common sense philosophy;37 that it originated in the mid-eighteenth century and thrived in Scotland for almost a century;38 that its influence was extensive, reaching well beyond academic circles at home and abroad; that it was initially based in and around Aberdeen, seat of King’s College and Marischal College;39 that most of its early exponents were ­affiliated in some way with the Wise Club, the philosophical society founded in 1758 by Reid and some of his Aberdonian associates;40 that the intellectual interests of  the Aberdeen group were impressively diverse and many-sided—these facts are all matters of historical record. A further fact, no less significant for us, is that several prominent members of the Wise Club, including Reid, George Campbell (1719–96), and Alexander Gerard (1728–95), were well acquainted with the works of David Hume, whose talents they admired but whose sceptical turn of mind they deplored. In a letter of March 1763, written to thank Hume for his comments on a partial draft of An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, Reid makes it quite clear that the deep respect he and his fellow ‘wise men’

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  25 feel for Hume’s work is perfectly compatible with a firm refusal to endorse the l­atter’s novel doctrines: Your Friendly adversaries Drs Campbell and Gerard, as well as Dr Gregory, return their compliments to you respectfully. A little philosophical society here, of which all the three are members, is much indebted to you for its entertainment. Your company would, although we are all good Christians, be more acceptable than that of Saint Athanasius; and since we cannot have you upon the bench, you are brought oftener than any other man to the bar, accused and defended with great Zeal, but without bitterness. If you write no more in morals, politics, or metaphysics, I am afraid we shall be at a loss for subjects.41  (RC 92)

‘[W]e are all good Christians’: these words remind us that Reid and Campbell were ordained ministers licensed to preach by the Church of Scotland, as was James Oswald (1703–93), a freelance common-sensist unaffiliated with the Wise Men of Aberdeen.42 Reid, it will be recalled, spent nearly a decade and a half (from 1737 until 1751) as the minister of New Machar before becoming Regent at King’s College; Oswald, who was named Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1765, was a parish minister for almost all of his adult life; Gerard was Professor of Divinity at Marischal College from 1760 until 1771, when he became Professor of Divinity at King’s;43 and Campbell, Principal of Marischal, became Professor of Divinity there in 1771, filling the vacancy created by Gerard’s move to King’s College. Yet another of Scottish common-sensism’s leading lights and a member of the Wise Club, the poet and philosopher James Beattie (1735–1803), who had been appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Marischal in 1760,44 seriously considered ordination at one point, though in the end he decided against it. Nevertheless, it may very well be that the combative and bombastic Beattie was the most popular and powerful preacher of the lot, as we shall see in Section 1.6.45 As ‘good Christians’, these men could not accept a philosophy which they knew was at odds with their faith; as honest philosophers, they could not accept a philosophy which they knew was at odds with reason. The philosophy of common sense gave them what they had been looking for: a way of thinking about human nature and its place in the grand scheme of things which struck them as intellectually defensible and as consistent with a Christian worldview. As far as they were concerned, ‘common sense’ was the friend of religion, a disdain for our natural convictions was the stuff of impiety, and the answer to philosophical scepticism was contained in a simple thought which proved potent when fully unfolded—to wit, that doubting the fundamental deliverances of our constitution is an exercise in futility and unreason. For if common sense is the real foundation of philosophy, philosophy cannot subvert common sense without subverting itself; so if common sense is religion’s ally and friend, no sound philosophy can be religion’s nemesis. These are large claims, and what one makes of them depends on the answers to two interrelated questions. First, what exactly do these philosophers mean by ‘common

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

26  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense sense’? Second, why do they regard its dictates as authoritative and beyond question? As we have already outlined Reid’s answers to these questions in Sections 1.2 to 1.4, it is time to see what Oswald, Beattie, and Campbell have to say for themselves.

1.6  James Oswald: Primary Truths and Rational Perceptions Let us begin with James Oswald, the least important and most obscure member of our supporting triumvirate. An Appeal To Common Sense In Behalf of Religion (1766–72),46 Oswald’s sole contribution to common sense philosophy, may be described as a third-rate work of Christian apologetics masquerading as a third-rate work of philosophy. The book’s title accurately identifies its author’s aim: to vanquish scepticism and ‘infidelity’ (a word of which Oswald was inordinately fond) by showing that natural religion’s critics contradict the self-evident judgments of common sense. But if this is right, the foundations of Christian belief—more or less co-extensive with what the scholastics had called the praeambula fidei—must be regarded as impervious to philosophical criticism. In addition to being a work of apologetics, Oswald’s Appeal is a work of social and cultural criticism. Writing with the ire and indignation of a self-styled prophet, Oswald denounces the frivolous spirit of a free-thinking age, appalled by what he sees as its affected scepticism, its rank impiety, and its lawless hedonism. The world is turning its back on God, he declares, and the consequences of widespread infidelity are dire indeed. How can a people expect to endure, let alone prosper, without an abiding and lively faith in God? And for how long shall a decadent and sybaritic nation, weakened by feverish doubting and wasted by fashionable vice, be suffered to remain upon the earth? What effect an earthquake,47 or the pestilence, or a formidable French invasion, might have, is uncertain; but it seems agreed, that there is not as much regard to God and a good conscience, as would save the nation in a severe trial; and hardly so much as is necessary for the preservation of decency and good order. And if this is the truth, it demands the serious attention of every good citizen, and indeed of every one who hath the feelings of a man. (ACS 2 Conclusion, 306)

According to our sour Scottish Jeremiah, we cannot arrest society’s slide into decadence unless we come to our senses and stop feigning ignorance of the fundamental truths of religion and morality. Instead of letting ourselves be imposed upon by restive sceptics or malignant doubt-mongers, we need to remember what their false philosophy, Lethe-like, has almost made us forget—namely, that there are certain clear and incontestable truths which all human beings are naturally disposed to accept, and by which men and women are meant to live. That a just God governs this world; that we are answerable to him for our conduct; that there is a real distinction between good and evil; that the difference between virtue and vice is not a matter of convention; that we

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  27 have certain definite obligations to God, to other men and women, and to ourselves; that we can acquire knowledge of the order of things: these are among the plain yet pregnant truths to which Oswald repeatedly calls our attention in his Appeal To Common Sense. Although modern philosophers have sought to discredit these traditional ­convictions, this only indicates that these authors are not true lovers of wisdom, and that their hearts are not in the right place. Unwilling to countenance truths which would humble their pride and restrain their appetites, cunning and worldly men have perverted philosophy, turning it into the fine art of manufacturing unanswerable objections to unassailable truths. As for the enlightened idea that we are entitled to dismiss as mere prejudices all opinions which cannot be supported by convincing proofs, Oswald will have none of it: “A philosopher ought, no doubt, to be above vulgar prejudices; but he cannot, with safety to his own character, set himself above the common sense of mankind. His business is not to confound the ignorant and the unthinking with paradoxical opinions, but to pursue his inquiries, until he arrive at things in which men of judgment can rest” (ACS 1.2, 36). Why does Oswald take this line? Not because he distrusts reasoning per se, but because he maintains that we have a significant amount of non-inferential or immediate knowledge—knowledge, that is, which we do not owe to our reasoning powers. Failure to appreciate this point, he thinks, has led many a modern philosopher to question truths which are beyond question, to demand proof where proof is impossible, and to advance proofs where no proofs are necessary. Yet this endless quest for reasons and demonstrations is vanity and madness, a striving after wind: Reasoning is proper, of great use, as well as of indispensable necessity, when kept within its own province; but beyond that, becomes frivolous, impertinent, and fitter to perplex and abuse the understanding, than to assist in the discovery of truth.  (ACS 1.4, 84) Many truths in nature, and among these the great truths in religion, have too much evidence in themselves to admit of any foreign proof. Their evidence is at least equal to, if not greater than what can be found in any other truths with which they are connected or can be compared. Every attempt therefore to establish their belief by means of argument, takes from their native evidence, or weakens the assent they would obtain on being fairly presented to the mind. With regard to truths of this order, the business is not to reason, but to judge.  (ACS 1.4, 86)

The modern sceptic’s peremptory demand for proofs is not always in order, Oswald concludes, because not every judgment which is justified for us is justified through inference or reasoning. Some truths are beyond argument in the sense of being prior to it; far from being proper subjects for disputation, they must be endorsed without proof (and without question) as soon as they are apprehended by any healthy and normally constituted human being. These self-evident or fundamental judgments are primary truths, and they are contrasted by Oswald with the secondary truths whose epistemic status is derived from them: You see now, that there is a real difference, however small it may be in some cases, between the evidence of primary and secondary truths. The one is absolute; the other is not. The one admits

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

28  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense the possibility of mistake; the other does not. The one is but a high degree of probability; the other is certainty. And you see at the same time, that the different evidence arises from the different nature of the truths. One is an object of intuition; and therefore, if there is no defect in the faculty by which you perceive those truths, there can be no possible ground of doubt. The other is a subject of reasoning, in which you are always more or less liable to mistake, through a variety of causes needless to be enumerated, let your faculty of perception be ever so perfect, and your medium ever so clear.  (ACS 1 Letters, 138)

Supposing there are primary truths, how can we know them? Through what faculty or power are such elementary verities grasped or apprehended? Readers of An Appeal To Common Sense In Behalf of Religion soon learn Oswald’s answer: the power of the  human mind which immediately perceives primary truths is none other than common sense: [R]ational beings are distinguished from the irrational, not so much by the discursive faculty, as by a perception and judgment of certain obvious truths, which for quickness, clearness, and indubitable certainty, is called sense; and on account of its being possessed in some degree by all the rational kind, is called common sense.  (ACS 1.4, 68)

If this is true, why have so many modern philosophers questioned the judgments of common sense? The answer has to do with the self-serving way in which they have interpreted the ancient dictum that man is a rational animal. Once we identify the essence of humanity with rationality, and once we equate rationality with reasoning, it becomes tempting to think of ourselves as creatures born to wrangle and argue endlessly about whatever we please, and to pose as inquirers entitled to pry patiently into all things. This temptation is one to which modern infidels and idle lovers of argument have repeatedly succumbed; for such proud free spirits, Oswald seems to think, are “men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth”.48 Strictly speaking, however, our reasoning powers are not what distinguish us from the beasts of the field who lack understanding; what truly makes us rational animals is our native faculty of judgment, our inborn capacity to intuit truths which are abstract and inaccessible to sense—‘rational perceptions’, as he calls them, in contradistinction to mere ‘animal perceptions’. If this account of human nature is correct, and our rationality is rooted in our possession of common sense, how can anyone think it right to attack common sense in the name of rationality? According to Oswald, the very idea is risible—and so, by implication, is scepticism. The moral is plain: “All who trust to common sense, may rest assured, that the great truths of natural philosophy, theology, and ethics, will maintain their ground against all the attacks of the most subtile reasoning. These [sceptical] doctrines do hurt raw minds and superficial thinkers, but can give no disturbance to men of sound understanding and solid judgment; for indeed they have no influence, or but little influence on those who adopt them” (ACS 1.2, 35). From a philosophical point of view, Oswald’s Appeal to Common Sense In Behalf of Religion leaves much to be desired. The book’s principal arguments, though frequently repeated, are seldom formulated with care or precision; objections typically receive

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  29 brusque, superficial replies; and remarkably little interest is shown in elucidating key concepts, including that of common sense.49 Nevertheless, Oswald was at least pursuing a philosophically interesting project: that of developing a moral epistemology which would steer clear of two vicious yet seductive extremes. The first of these extremes is radical scepticism, where there is too much doubt and not enough belief; the second is vulgar bigotry, where there is too much belief and not enough doubt. The dramatic clash between these camps reflects the logical distance between their respective starting-points. According to our cautious sceptic, it is folly to believe what we cannot prove to be true—a maxim which leads him to doubt the primary truths on which all moral knowledge rests. According to our blustering bigot, it is treason to doubt what one feels must be true—a maxim which leads him to confuse beloved prejudices with primary truths, and to present the slogans of his own sect or party as dogmas for which no argument need ever be advanced. The thoughtful sceptic thus judges things by one false standard; the thoughtless bigot by another. Fortunately, a third possibility is available: we can navigate between these perilous extremes, Oswald suggests, if we let ourselves be guided by the compass of common sense. And just how does Oswaldian common sense save us from the Scylla of indifference and the Charybdis of fanaticism? In the first place, scepticism is vanquished by the recognition that there are primary truths, self-evident and accessible to all persons of sound mind, which supply a firm foundation for moral knowledge. In the second place, bigotry is rebuked by the twin reminders that subjective certitude is not the same thing as self-evidence, and that passion’s alchemy can never transmute the lead of prejudice into the gold of primary truths. That Oswald himself occasionally needed to be reminded of these things is no doubt ironic, but his shortcomings as a philosopher in no way invalidate his project: that of finding the mean between unnatural apathy and unreasonable self-assertion, or between excessive self-suspicion and unconscionable complacency.50

1.7  James Beattie: The Desolation of Philosophy James Beattie’s An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism (1771) was that rarity of rarities: a philosophical best-seller which created a sensation in its day among non-philosophers.51 Although the Essay on Truth was memorably denounced by David Hume in an uncharacteristically illhumoured outburst—“Truth! There is no truth in it; it is a horrible large lie in Octavo” (Mossner 1980: 581)—the book was praised by the likes of Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson, and it quickly made its author a famous man: fêted in England, studied on the Continent, and acclaimed in the New World. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted Beattie’s portrait, entitled ‘The Triumph of Truth, with the Portrait of a Gentleman’; King George III, one of the Essay’s many non-philosophical admirers, desired an audience with its author; the Crown gave Beattie a pension of £200 a year; Oxford University

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

30  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense offered him an honorary doctorate; the American Philosophical Society, founded in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin, made him a member; and the Essay itself was translated into French, German, and Dutch. Hume, in a huff, might curse “that bigoted silly Fellow, Beattie” (Mossner 1980: 577), but countless readers held the author of the Essay in high esteem and hailed his book as a great achievement.52 Why did the Essay on Truth enjoy such a vogue? One reason for its success, no doubt, was that the book told cultural conservatives and timorous Christians exactly what they wanted to hear: that philosophical sceptics are utterly misguided, that traditional morality is woven into the very nature of things, that faith in God has nothing to fear from the proper exercise of reason, and that the ancients were better students of human nature than the moderns. Speaking as the friend and self-appointed defender of “truth, virtue, and Christianity” (EOT Introduction, xv), the author of the Essay reassures pious men and women that their inherited worldview is essentially correct,53 and he warns them not to waste their time reading the works of Hume—an urbane infidel who makes the weaker argument the stronger, a conceited sciolist whose pages overflow with toxic paradoxes.54 In order to impress upon his readers the dangers of “philosophy and vain deceit”,55 Beattie penned several passages which are remarkable from a rhetorical, though hardly from a logical, point of view. Here, for the reader’s delectation, are three examples: This is called the age of reason and philosophy; and this is the age of avowed and dogmatical Atheism. Sceptics have at last grown weary of doubting; and have now discovered, by the force of their great talents, that one thing at least is certain, namely, that God, and religion, and immortality, are empty sounds. This is the final triumph of our so much boasted philosophic spirit; these are the limits of the dominion of error, beyond which we can hardly conceive it possible for human sophistry to penetrate. Exult, O Metaphysic, at the consummation of thy glories. More thou canst not hope, more thou canst not desire. Fall down, ye mortals, and acknowledge the stupendous blessing: adore those men of great talents, those daring spirits, those patterns of modesty, gentleness, and candour, those prodigies of genius, those heroes of beneficence, who have thus laboured—to strip you of every rational consolation, and to make your condition ten thousand times worse than that of the beasts that perish.  (EOT 3.3, 321) Why can I not express myself with less warmth! Why can I not devise an apology for these philosophers, to screen them from this dreadful imputation of being the enemies and plague of mankind!—Perhaps they do not themselves believe their own tenets, but publish them only as the means of getting a name and a fortune. But I hope this is not the case; God forbid that it should! for then the enormity of their guilt would surpass all power of language; we could only gaze at it, and tremble. Compared with such wickedness, the crimes of the thief, the robber, the incendiary, would almost disappear. These sacrifice their fortunes or the lives of their fellowcreatures, to their own necessity or outrageous appetite: but those would run the hazard of sacrificing, to their own avarice or vanity, the happiness of mankind, both here and hereafter. No; I cannot suppose it: the heart of man, however depraved, is not capable of such malignity. (EOT 3.3, 321–2) Caressed by those who call themselves the great, ingrossed by the formalities and fopperies of life, intoxicated with vanity, pampered with adulation, dissipated in the tumult of business, or

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  31 amidst the vicissitudes of folly, they perhaps have little need, and little relish, for the consolations of religion. But let them know, that, in the solitary scenes of life, there is many an honest and tender heart pining with incurable anguish, pierced with the sharpest sting of disappointment, bereft of friends, chilled with poverty, racked with disease, scourged by the oppressor; whom nothing but trust in Providence, and the hope of a future retribution, could preserve from the agonies of despair. And do they, with sacrilegious hands, attempt to violate this last refuge of the miserable, and to rob them of the only comfort that had survived the ravages of misfortune, malice, and tyranny!  (EOT 3.3, 322–3)

In these supremely purple passages, it is clear that the poet has wrested the pen from the philosopher’s hand, and that the impassioned orator has driven the sober reasoner from the field of battle. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to conclude that the Essay on Truth is all style and no substance, all rhetoric and no reasoning; for if we have the patience to look beyond Beattie’s self-dramatizing asides, overwrought declamations, and vituperative ad hominem attacks,56 we can find the outlines of an interesting anti-sceptical argument whose Reidian provenance is plain. The starting-point of Beattie’s argument is, I think, easy enough to grasp: there are certain things which we are all disposed to believe because our constitution makes us believe them. That there is a book on the table in front of me, that I went for a walk in the woods yesterday, that the sun will rise tomorrow, that I am now thinking of the Parthenon: such beliefs are ultimately not my work, but the work of my constitution.57 A sovereign and inscrutable nature has simply decreed that this is how human beings shall form beliefs; under certain conditions or circumstances, certain informationbearing inputs shall automatically and immediately produce certain doxastic outputs in properly functioning subjects. Such elementary principles or laws are thus written into our constitution; innate and inescapable, they are the fundamental and ahistorical givens of human nature. Enter a genteel and polished sceptic, who insinuates that our natural trust in our constitution may be misplaced, even foolish. Yes, the sceptic tactfully agrees, there is no question that the testimony of our faculties immediately leads us to believe certain things under certain conditions; and yes, we normally feel quite confident that beliefs formed in this way are sound or well-founded. But what of it? The strength or popularity of one’s convictions is surely no proof of their truth, and there is no non-circular way for us to show that our faculties are reliable or their testimony trustworthy. Why, then, should we think it is reasonable to believe them, to credit their testimony, or to put any stock in what they say? For all we know, we are the dupes of a capricious Mother Nature or the playthings of a malin génie, and it is our fate to hold a coherent yet massively false set of beliefs. It is at this point that Beattie’s Reid-like counterattack begins. His reply is built around the following logical observation: if we really suspected that our natural beliefs were false, we would have to conclude that our constitution is fundamentally untrustworthy, since those basic beliefs are its direct and unadulterated expression. Yet if we conclude that our constitution is fundamentally untrustworthy, we can do absolutely

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

32  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense nothing in the sphere of practice or in the sphere of theory. We can do nothing in the sphere of practice, because the beliefs in question, being the work of nature, are ones which it is not in our power to shed or shake off. And we can do nothing in the sphere of theory, because if we think that we cannot trust the dictates of our nature, then we cannot claim to know anything—not even that we cannot trust the dictates of our nature or that we cannot know anything. What, then, is the moral? Since scepticism about the fundamental principles of our constitution is both idle and self-stultifying, philosophy must acknowledge that there are some things which we are entitled to believe, not because we can prove them—we cannot—but simply because they are the spontaneous issue of our constitution. Such is the drift of Beattie’s central anti-sceptical argument in the Essay on Truth, although the idiom in which we have couched it is not his. Beattie’s own formulation pivots on a distinction between two distinct powers of the human mind: that of ‘Common Sense’ and that of ‘Reason’. The essential difference between these two powers or ­faculties is that the first apprehends its truths immediately or non-discursively and with unshakeable conviction, whereas the second apprehends its truths only through the medium of inference or proof. This way of drawing the distinction is only a first approximation, however; for a fuller and more accurate statement of it, we need to look at Beattie’s formal definitions of its two terms. Here is his official definition of Reason: Reason, as implying a faculty not marked by any other name, is used by those who are most accurate in distinguishing, to signify that power of the human mind by which we draw inferences, or by which we are convinced, that a relation belongs to two ideas, on account of our having found, that these ideas bear certain relations to other ideas. In a word, it is that faculty which enables us, from relations or ideas that are known, to investigate such as are unknown; and without which we could never proceed in the discovery of truth a single step beyond first principles or intuitive axioms. And it is in this last sense we are to use the word Reason in the course of this inquiry.  (EOT 1.1, 24–5)

And here is his official definition of Common Sense: The term Common Sense has been used by some philosophers to signify that power of the mind which perceives truth, or commands belief, not by progressive argumentation, but by an instantaneous and instinctive impulse; derived neither from education nor from habit, but from nature; acting independently on our will whenever its object is presented, according to an established law, and therefore not improperly called Sense; and acting in a similar manner upon all mankind, and therefore properly called Common Sense. It is in this signification that the term Common Sense is used in the present inquiry.  (EOT 1.1, 26–7)

The first thing to notice about these definitions is that Common Sense and Reason are both identified as faculties or powers of the human mind. Not only that: Common Sense and Reason are both cognitive or belief-forming faculties, that is, faculties by which truth is supposedly apprehended or grasped. What distinguishes these two faculties is this: whereas Common Sense perceives the truth intuitively or non-inferentially (‘not by progressive argumentation’), Reason arrives at truth indirectly or through prior

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  33 premises (‘in consequence of a proof ’). Note, moreover, that our assent to the self-evident truths of Common Sense is involuntary (‘acting independently on our will’), immediate and powerful (‘by an instantaneous and instinctive impulse’), universal (‘acting in a similar manner on all mankind’), and natural (‘derived neither from education or habit’). As Beattie sees it, the dictates of Common Sense are irresistible, and we believe in them without any deliberation or reflection. This is why we do well to speak of Common Sense (‘not improperly called Sense’); for what is a sense if not a natural faculty, possessed by virtually all human beings, which is capable of producing spontaneous convictions in us directly and without the aid of inference?58 Does this mean that the phrase ‘truths of Common Sense’ is really just a euphemism for ‘groundless ancestral prejudices’? Beattie anticipates a version of this objection— “Must every principle be admitted as true, which we believe without being able to assign a reason?” (EOT 2 Introduction, 99; cf. 2.3, 240; 3.1, 247)—and his reply is very much in the spirit of Reid. Beattie’s central point is that there are certain features or marks by which authentic principles of common sense can be identified. In addition to being unreasoned and universal, the principles of common sense are indispensable in practical life; and although we cannot give any satisfactory argument for them—being foundational or basic, such propositions are more evident to us than any premises which we could employ in their defence—we are quite unmoved by arguments against them, no matter how clever or cogent such objections may seem. We stand by the dictates of Common Sense not because we choose to do so, but because we cannot do otherwise; thanks to nature, we must hold these truths to be self-evident. In short, such principles are not private opinions whose truth one can reasonably contest; and if we dare to challenge their authority, their battle-cry—Nemo me impune lacessit—will ring in our ears until we surrender. What are some of these supposedly incontestable ‘truths of Common Sense’? In Part 1, Chapter 2 of the Essay of Truth Beattie gives numerous examples, and none of them will come as much of a surprise to readers who are well-acquainted with Reid’s works. That ‘external sense’, or perception, is basically reliable (EOT 1.2, 37–8); that ‘internal sense’, or introspection, is basically reliable (EOT 1.2, 42); that memory is basically reliable (EOT 1.2, 57–8); that whatever begins to exist must have a cause (EOT 1.2, 64); that nature is uniform (EOT 1.2, 76); that similar effects tend to have similar causes (EOT 1.2, 81); that human testimony is to be regarded as trustworthy unless there is some good reason to doubt it (EOT 1.2, 83ff.): all these principles are ones to which we are naturally committed, and the dark arts of modern philosophy are powerless to overthrow them. And why, we may ask, is Beattie so sure that philosophy cannot subvert our natural beliefs? Simple: inasmuch as Common Sense is the supreme judge or standard of truth, its authority cannot be denied by Reason on pain of absurdity. Ultimately, Reason can do nothing without self-evident or intuitive judgments, and philosophy cannot get off the ground unless there are principles which we all accept because our constitution gives us a firm and unconquerable faith in their truth. ‘That may well be so,’ an exasperated critic may interject, ‘but how do we know that our

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

34  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense intuitive convictions are true? Mightn’t at least some of them be false?’ Beattie’s reply is uncompromising: unless all our fundamental natural judgments are taken as self-evident, our thought and our reasoning are idle, and truth and falsity become empty words.59 For scepticism, if it is to be consistent, must also be comprehensive; so if we doubt one of our intuitive convictions, we have forfeited our right to rely upon any of them. When a sceptic attacks one principle of common sense, he does in effect attack all; for if we are made distrustful of the veracity of instinctive conviction in one instance, we must, or at least we may, become equally distrustful in every other. A little scepticism introduced into science will soon assimilate the whole to its own nature; the fatal fermentation, once begun, spreads wider and wider every moment, till all the mass be transformed into rottenness and poison. (EOT 3.3, 321)

Hence no half-measures can be countenanced: we must either accept or reject all the fundamental and unreasoned convictions which we owe to nature. And if we accuse nature of wholesale deceit in this matter, we have no logical right to believe anything— not even that our natural constitution may be inherently deceitful. Since doubting our most basic judgments eventuates in a form of universal scepticism which is self-subverting, we must conclude that the intuitive principles of Common Sense are off-limits, that Reason cannot sit in judgment on them, and that philosophy cannot impugn their credibility without discrediting itself. As the following passages indicate, Beattie makes frequent use of this Reidian argument in the Essay: Nature speaks to us by our external, as well as by our internal, senses; it is strange, that we should believe her in the one case, and not in the other; it is most strange, that supposing her fallacious, we should think ourselves capable of detecting the cheat.  (EOT 1.1, 30) Certain it is, our constitution is so framed, that we must believe to be true, and conformable to universal nature, that which is intimated to us, as such, by the original suggestions of our own understanding. If these are fallacious, it is the Deity who makes them so; and therefore we can never rectify, or even detect, the fallacy. But we cannot suppose them fallacious, without violating our nature; nor, if we acknowledge a God, without impiety; for in this supposition it is implied, that we suppose the Deity a deceiver. Nor can we, consistently with such a supposition, acknowledge any distinction between truth and falsehood, or believe that one inch is less than ten thousand miles, or even that we ourselves exist.  (EOT 1.2, 36) If the universe had a beginning, it must have had a cause. This is a self-evident axiom, or at least an undeniable consequence of one. We necessarily assent to it; such is the law of our nature. If we deny it, we cannot, without absurdity, believe anything else; because we at the same time deny the authenticity of those instinctive suggestions which are the foundation of all truth. (EOT 1.2, 75) I know not but it may be urged as an objection to this doctrine, that, if we grant common sense to be the ultimate judge in all disputes, a great part of ancient and modern philosophy becomes useless. I admit the objection with all my heart, in its full force, and with all its consequences; and yet I must repeat, that if common sense be supposed fallacious, all knowledge is at an end;

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  35 and that even a demonstration of the fallacy would itself be fallacious and frivolous. For if the dictates of my nature deceive me in one case, how shall I know that they do not deceive me in another?  (EOT 1.2, 91) I must therefore affirm, that the existence of matter can no more be disproved by argument, than the existence of myself, or than the truth of a self-evident axiom in geometry. To argue against it, is to set reason in opposition to common sense; which is indirectly to subvert the foundations of all just reasoning, and to call in question to distinction between truth and falsehood.  (EOT 2.2, 177–8)

If this argument succeeds, Common Sense does not require the imprimatur of Reason. Yet the majority of modern philosophers, Beattie believes, have completely failed to understand this—failed, that is, to appreciate what the respective jurisdictions of Reason and Common Sense are, and how those domains are logically related. Blind to the fact that the convictions of Common Sense are indisputable and independent of Reason, modern philosophy has assumed that Reason is competent to determine their fate—to acquit them or condemn them, to prop them up with proofs or to subvert them with refutations. Appointing Reason as the sole judge of truth, metaphysicians from Descartes to Hume have proceeded to turn things upside down, demanding arguments where arguments are neither possible or necessary, and recommending doubt where doubt is groundless and unreal. Their sceptical cri de coeur—“That nothing is to be believed, but what we can give a reason for believing” (EOT 3.1, 257)—is, as we now know, “a maxim destructive of all truth and science” (EOT 3.1, 257). Is it then any wonder that their works are replete with absurdity? There are no material objects existing independently of perception; personal identity is a myth, and the self a flimsy fiction; past experience can furnish us with no reason to believe anything about the course of future events: these are the sort of outrageous assertions which Reason madly embraces once it has declared its independence from Common Sense. Is it not perfectly plain, asks Beattie, that Reason was never meant to be the measure of all our beliefs? And is it also not perfectly plain that our sceptics, who reserve the right to question and doubt what everyone else takes for granted, turn out to be incorrigible dogmatists, utterly besotted with their own implausible theories about the human understanding and its manifold operations? Nor is this the only vexing discrepancy we find between what philosophical sceptics say and what they do, or between their words and the facts. For on the one hand, some sceptics say that they doubt the practically indispensable principles of common sense; on the other hand, they keep out of harm’s way without any difficulty, and conduct themselves in daily life with the same degree of prudence and caution as everyone else. Again, sceptics plume themselves on their intellectual humility; and yet what could be more presumptuous and arrogant than to say that virtually all men and women who have ever lived are know-nothings? Furthermore, don’t sceptics tell us that it is the prerogative of a free mind, one moved by an ardent love of knowledge, to doubt in order to arrive at the truth? And yet we find that the methods of sceptics are conspicuously

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

36  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense absent in the fields of mathematics and the natural sciences, where truth has recently been discovered in abundance. In these disciplines, extraordinary progress has been made by inquirers who acknowledge that doubt has non-trivial limits, and who are content to take certain principles for granted. And this inconvenient fact, Beattie thinks, should make sceptics hold their silver tongues and blush with shame. Finally, Beattie observes that Hume, the greatest of the modern sceptics, has espoused ill-founded views about human nature whose moral and political implications are far from innocuous. Recall the infamous passage from the 1753 version of Hume’s essay “Of National Characters”, where it is argued that Africans (and, for that matter, all non-European peoples) are naturally inferior to whites: I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.  (Miller 1987: 629–30; cf. 208)

An abolitionist who in later years enthusiastically supported the campaigns of his younger contemporary William Wilberforce (1759–1833), Beattie thought it vitally important to discredit the natural inferiority thesis espoused by Hume and others, because he was convinced that (a) this thesis was routinely invoked by apologists for slavery and the slave trade;60 and (b) a racist worldview was incompatible with a truly Christian understanding of human nature.61 Accordingly, Beattie’s Essay contains a  powerful six-pronged response to Hume’s racism in “Of National Characters”.62 Objection 1: Hume’s argument for the natural inferiority thesis takes it for granted that there has never been ‘a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation’. However, Hume cannot possibly know that this historical premise is true, because no one can: “Of the facts here asserted, no man could have sufficient evidence, except from a personal acquaintance with all the negroes that now are, or ever were, on the face of the earth. These people write no histories; and all the reports of all the travellers that ever visited them will not amount to any thing like a proof of what is here asserted” (EOT 3.2, 311). Objection 2: What is more, we know that Hume’s historical premise is false, since the accomplishments of civilizations in Africa and pre-Columbian America are indisputably impressive: “The empires of Peru and Mexico could not have been governed, nor the metropolis of the latter built after so singular a manner, in the middle of a lake, without

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  37 men eminent both for action and speculation . . . The Africans and the Americans are known to have many ingenious manufactures and arts among them, which even Europeans would find it no easy matter to imitate” (EOT 3.2, 311). Objection 3: Even if Hume’s historical premise were true, we could not infer the natural inferiority thesis from it. For the fact that X is not as civilized as Y does not necessarily mean that Y is naturally superior to X, just as the fact that X is not civilized now does not mean that X cannot or will not become so: “The inhabitants of Great Britain and France were as savage two thousand years ago, as those of America and Africa are at this day. To civilise a nation, is a work which it requires a long time to accomplish. And one may as well say of an infant, that he can never become a man, as of a nation now barbarous, that it never can be civilised” (EOT 3.2, 310–11). Objection 4: Furthermore, it is patently unreasonable to claim that people lack the capacity to do certain things simply because they have not been able to do them under extremely unfavourable conditions. Hence Hume’s assertion that ‘there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity’ would prove nothing if it were true—which it isn’t: “It will readily be allowed that the condition of a slave is not favourable to genius of any kind; and yet the negro-slaves dispersed over Europe, have often discovered symptoms of ingenuity, notwithstanding their unhappy circumstances. They become excellent handicraftsmen, and practical musicians, and indeed learn every thing their masters are at pains to teach them, cruelty, perfidy, and debauchery not excepted” (EOT 3.2, 311; cf. 312). Objection 5: The achievements in art and science which have been adduced as proof of the natural superiority of white Europeans are either discoveries in which luck played a large role, or brilliant inventions for which only a few geniuses—exceptional individuals who are in no way representative of their nation—are responsible: “Gunpowder, and the mariner’s compass, have produced wonderful revolutions in human affairs, and yet were accidental discoveries. Such probably were the first essays in writing, and working in iron. Suppose them the effects of contrivance; they were at least contrived by a few individuals; and if they required a superiority in the inventors, those inventors, or their descendants, are the only persons who can lay claim to the honour of that superiority” (EOT 3.2, 312). Objection 6: The claim that non-Europeans are uncivilized rests on the dogmatic and self-congratulatory assumption that European customs and manners are the standard by which all c­ ultures ought to be judged: “That every practice is barbarous which is not according to the usages of modern Europe, seems to be a fundamental maxim with some of our philosophers” (EOT 3.2, 312). Yet what would a non-European observer say about the customs and manners of Parisians or Londoners? Surely he would find much to mock and decry: “[I]f a Lucian or a Voltaire, from the coast of Guinea, or from the Five Nations, were to pay us a visit; what a picture of European manners might he present to his countrymen at his return! Nor would caricatura, or exaggeration, be necessary to render it hideous” (EOT 3.2, 312). Taken all in all, Beattie concludes, the demoralizing and sceptical philosophy of the moderns is good for little or nothing. Its arguments are fallacious, and its doctrines

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

38  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense are pernicious; it will not make us happier or more humane, and it can never make us wise or good. In truth, it can teach us nothing we need to know, apart from reminding us that philosophy self-destructs when divorced from common sense: In the whole circle of human sciences, real or pretended, there is not any thing to be found which I think more perfectly contemptible, than the speculative metaphysics of the moderns. It is indeed a most wretched medley of ill-digested notions, indistinct perceptions, inaccurate observations, perverted language, and sophistical argument; distinguishing where there is no difference, and confounding where there is no similitude; feigning difficulties where it cannot find them, and overlooking them when real. I know no end that the study of such jargon can answer, except to harden and stupify the heart, bewilder the understanding, sour the temper, and habituate the mind to irresolution, captiousness, and falsehood.  (EOT Postscript, 327)

As far as Beattie is concerned, then, the impious philosophy of Hume contains nothing but sophistry and illusion, and the philosophies of Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Hobbes, Berkeley, and Leibniz aren’t much better. Their arguments may be ingenious, their schemes of thought intricate and subtle; but their ludicrous conclusions manifestly contradict the verdicts of nature, who speaks to us directly in the universal language of common sense.63

1.8  George Campbell: Miracles and Rhetoric George Campbell contributed two lucid and stimulating works to the common sense canon: A Dissertation on Miracles (1762) and The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776). Despite significant differences in aim and focus, both books reveal Campbell’s firm commitment to the idea that there are innate and ultimate presuppositions of human thought—presuppositions which he calls “the first and most acknowledged principles of human reason, or, if you like the term better, common sense” (DM 1.1, 31; cf. 1.2, 38; 1.4, 43; Conclusion, 114). The primary target of Campbell’s Dissertation on Miracles, a philosophically sophisticated work of Christian apologetics, is Hume’s contention that it is never reasonable to believe in miracles on the basis of testimony, since nothing could be more improbable than a violation of the laws of nature. Campbell’s main objection is easily summarized: whereas Hume assumes that rational confidence in the reliability of testimony is based exclusively upon experience,64 the fact of the matter is that testimony “hath a natural and original influence on belief, antecedent to experience” (DM 1.1, 23). To be more specific, Campbell maintains that human beings are naturally disposed to take others at their word unless we have some good reason not to do so. And this strong but defeasible disposition to trust testimony, he is quick to add, is not the only innate or original principle of human belief. That memory is basically reliable, that nature is uniform, that similar effects have similar causes—these, too, are basic presuppositions of our thought about the world, and they are all built into our nature. Though Campbell readily admits that no proof or ‘rational account’ of such innate

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  39 principles is possible, he insists that we can neither doubt these constitutional principles nor make sense of our experience without them: If it be objected by the author, that such a faith in testimony as is prior to experience, must be unreasonable and unphilosophical, because unaccountable; I should reply, that there are, and must be, in human nature, some original grounds of belief, beyond which our researches cannot proceed, and of which therefore it is vain to attempt a rational account. I should desire the objector to give a reasonable account of his faith in this principle, that similar causes always produce similar effects; or in this, that the course of nature will be the same tomorrow, that is was yesterday, and is today: Principles, which he himself acknowledges, are neither intuitively evident, nor deduced from premises; and which nevertheless we are under a necessity of ­presupposing in all our reasonings from experience. I should desire him to give a reasonable account of his faith in the clearest informations of his memory; which he will find it alike impossible either to doubt or to explain.  (DM 1.1, 24)

According to Campbell, then, Hume’s argument stumbles on the threshold: since testimony ‘hath a natural and original influence on belief, antecedent to experience’, we are immediately entitled to believe what others tell us unless we have good reason to doubt their words.65 Notice that Campbell does not deny that doubting or rejecting testimony is perfectly reasonable under certain conditions; the only question, he thinks, is what those conditions are. Two reasons to doubt testimony are identified early in his Dissertation: “first, and most directly, by contradictory testimony; that is, when an equal or greater number of witnesses, equally or more credible, attest the contrary: secondly, By such evidence, either of the incapacity or of the bad character of the witnesses, as is sufficient to discredit them” (DM 1.1, 24). Very well, you might respond; but what if the event reported represents an unheard-of departure from the known order of things or rerum natura? Isn’t that very fact a sufficient reason to distrust testimony? Campbell has anticipated this Humean objection, and the heart of his reply to it runs as follows: That this consideration has no weight at all, it was never my intention to maintain; that by itself it can very rarely, if ever, amount to a refutation against ample and unexceptionable testimony, I hope to make extremely plain. Who has ever denied, that the uncommonness of an event related, is a presumption against its reality; and that chiefly on account of the tendency, which, experience teaches us, and this author has observed, some people have to sacrifice truth to the love of wonder? The question only is, How far does this presumption extend? In the extent which Mr Hume has assigned it, he has greatly exceeded the limits of nature, and consequently of all just reasoning.  (DM 1.1, 25)

These claims about the epistemology of testimony set the stage for the central apologetic argument of the Dissertation on Miracles, a book whose main purpose is supposed to be as affirmative and constructive as that of Hume’s essay was sceptical and destructive: “It is not the only, nor even the chief, design of these sheets, to refute the reasoning and objections of Mr Hume, with regard to miracles: The chief design of them is, to set the principal argument for Christianity in its proper light” (DM Advertisement, 8). The

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

40  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense ‘principal argument for Christianity’ presented by Campbell boils down to this: we  are  entitled to believe that miracles described in the Gospels—especially the Resurrection—actually occurred because (a) we are entitled to believe testimony unless there is good reason on balance to doubt or discount it, and (b) the testimony for the miracles on which Christianity is founded is weighty, and we do not have good reasons to doubt or discount it. As Campbell himself recognizes, the most controversial of these premises is (b), and his defence of it takes up the better part of his book.66 As a result, A Dissertation on Miracles contains little discussion of the status and authority of common sense principles (or ‘original grounds of belief ’) apart from the author’s initial remarks on testimony, which are introduced to support premise (a).67 Anyone looking for a fuller and more systematic statement of Campbell’s views on the nature and authority of common sense principles must therefore consult The Philosophy of Rhetoric, key portions of which were drafted as early as the late 1750s and presented to the Aberdeen Philosophical Society—“a private literary society of which the Author had the honour to be a member”, as Campbell tells us in the work’s Preface (xli).68 In Book 1, Chapter 5 (entitled “Of the different Sources of Evidence and the different Subjects to which they are respectively adapted”), Campbell develops a foundationalist theory of knowledge which recognizes two basic kinds of evidence: intuitive and deductive.69 Logical truth consisteth in the conformity of our conceptions to their archetypes in the nature of things. This conformity is perceived by the mind, either immediately on a bare attention to the ideas under review, or mediately by a comparison of these with related ideas. Evidence of the former kind is called intuitive; of the latter, deductive.  (POR 1.5, 35)

When we speak of intuitive evidence, we are talking about judgments whose truth is apprehended directly or perceived immediately, without any reasoning or comparison of ideas. Now, why should we suppose that there are any such judgments? Campbell’s argument for foundationalism is much the same as Reid’s: if there are no intuitively evident judgments, then all justification is inferential in character; but if all justification is inferential, we face an infinite regress which is vicious. Hence nothing can be made evident unless something is self-evident, and nothing can be demonstrated unless some premises can be known without a demonstration. All reasoning necessarily supposes that there are certain principles in which we must acquiesce, and beyond which we cannot go—principles clearly discernible by their own light, which can derive no additional evidence from anything besides. On the contrary supposition, the investigation of truth would be an endless and a fruitless task; we should be eternally proving, whilst nothing could ever be proved; because, by the hypothesis, we could never ascend to premises which require no proof.  (POR 1.5, 42; cf. 39)

Campbell then calls our attention to three classes of intuitively evident propositions. The first class contains the axioms of mathematics, which are known by ‘pure intellection’ (POR 1.5, 37; cf. POR 1.5, 35–6 n1). Since axioms in geometry and arithmetic are

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  41 statements about the content of our concepts or ‘general notions’ (POR 1.5, 36) and not descriptions of actual existences, such logically necessary and a priori propositions express what Hume called ‘relations among ideas’. Examples include ‘Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other’ and ‘The whole is greater than a part’ (POR 1.5, 36). At bottom, Campbell thinks, these propositions are really disguised affirmations of the Law of Identity: “In fact, they are all, in some respect, reducible to this axiom, ‘Whatever is, is’ ” (POR 1.5, 36).70 The second class of intuitively evident propositions are the immediately justified judgments of introspection or ‘consciousness’: that I exist, and that I am thinking, feeling, sensing, in pain, and so on. To quote Campbell: The next kind [of intuitive evidence] is that which ariseth from consciousness. Hence every man derives the perfect assurance that he hath of his own existence. Nor is he only in this way assured that he exists, but that he thinks, that he feels, that he sees, that he hears, and the like. Hence his absolute certainty in regard to the reality of his sensations and passions, and of every thing whose essence consists in being perceived.  (POR 1.5, 37)

Thanks to the operations of consciousness, I can have direct or non-inferential knowledge of the fact that I am now having certain perceptual experiences, that I am being appeared to in certain ways, that I am thinking of Patagonia or Uluru. What consciousness cannot do, however, is justify the belief that there are objects external to consciousness which correspond to my experiences: obelisks and oliphants, Norse runestones and Roman ruins. In short, truths about my mind and its present contents are immediately apprehended by consciousness; truths about mind-independent material things are not. The third class of intuitively evident truths identified by Campbell are those of common sense.71 These truths, we immediately discover, are a rather heterogeneous lot: The third sort is that which ariseth from what hath been termed properly enough, common sense, as being an original source of knowledge common to all mankind . . . It is purely hence that we derive our assurance of such truths as these: “Whatever has a beginning has a cause”— “When there is in effect a manifest adjustment of the several parts to a certain end, there is intelligence in the cause.” “The course of nature will be the same to-morrow that it is today; or, the future will resemble the past”—“There is such a thing as body; or, there are material substances independent of the mind’s conceptions”—“There are other intelligent beings in the universe besides me”—“The clear representations of my memory, in regard to past events, are indubitably true.” These, and a great many more of the same kind, it is impossible for any man by reasoning to evince, as might easily be shown, were this a proper place for the discussion. And it is equally impossible, without a full conviction of them, to advance a single step in the acquisition of knowledge, especially in all that regards mankind, life, and conduct.  (POR 1.5, 40–1)

Readers will immediately realize that Campbell, like Reid, is prepared to use common sense as a weapon in the war against various forms of scepticism. Campbell’s first two common sense principles—‘Whatever has a beginning has a cause’ and ‘When there is in effect a manifest adjustment of the several parts to a certain end, there is intelligence

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

42  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense in the cause’—are propositions which can be used to combat religious scepticism, since each is the major premise of a philosophical proof of God’s existence. (To be more specific, the first principle can be used to anchor a cosmological argument; the second, a teleological argument.) His third example—‘The course of nature will be the same to-morrow that it is today; or, the future will resemble the past’—is supposed to eliminate the Humean problem of induction; for if the principle of nature’s uniformity is intuitively evident to us, past experience can justify beliefs about the future (e.g.— that the sun will come up tomorrow). The fourth example—‘There is such a thing as body; or, there are material substances independent of the mind’s conceptions’—is a response to external world scepticism; for if Campbell is right, the sceptic is asking that we treat an axiom as if it were a theorem, which is patently absurd. His fifth example— ‘There are other intelligent beings in the universe besides me’—is aimed directly at scepticism concerning other minds: since the existence of minds other my own is intuitively evident to me, it is something which I know non-inferentially or without argument. Finally, Campbell’s sixth example—‘The clear representations of my memory, in regard to past events, are indubitably true’—is meant to undercut scepticism about memory’s veracity: if the truth of definite recollections can simply be taken for granted, the fact that we cannot demonstrate the reliability of memory should not lead us to question its basic accuracy. And these six propositions, far from constituting an exhaustive list, are only a few of the truths of common sense, since there are ‘a great many more of the same kind’. How are the truths of common sense related to the two other classes of intuitively evident truths recognized by Campbell? Four observations, I think, are in order here. (1) Instead of dealing with abstract notions or concepts (like the truths of pure intellection), the truths of common sense describe the order of actual existences. In  this respect, the truths of common sense resemble the truths of consciousness. (2) Unlike the truths of consciousness, however, the truths of common sense have as  their subject-matter things other than my mind and its miscellaneous contents: material objects, other minds, the fixed order of nature, relations between causes and effects in the world, and so on. (3) Another salient difference is that the universally valid truths of common sense—truths such as ‘Whatever has a beginning has a cause’ or ‘The course of nature will be the same tomorrow as it is today’—are much richer in content and in logical consequences than the truths of consciousness, since the latter deal only with the fleeting particulars of my mental life. In this respect, truths of common sense are less like the truths of consciousness than they are like the axioms of  mathematics or geometry. (4) Yet mathematical axioms are logically necessary truths; when they are denied or negated, they yield contradictions. Are the truths of common sense also necessary truths? Although Campbell appears to think that at least one common sense principle cannot be denied without self-contradiction—his example is ‘Whatever has a beginning must have a cause’—he does not believe this is true of common sense principles in general. The denial of common sense truths is problematic in his eyes not because it is logically impossible, but because it constitutes prima facie

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  43 evidence of insanity or madness. That is to say, a person who sincerely doubts the existence of material objects, the existence of other minds, the uniformity of nature, and so on, has not violated the laws of logic; but she has violated the laws of human nature, because human beings who are in their right mind find it psychologically impossible to doubt these things. Campbell clinches this point with an apt quotation from Claude Buffier (1661–1737),72 a French Jesuit and pre-Reidian philosopher of common sense: It is, perhaps, physically possible that the course of nature will be inverted the very next moment; that my memory is no other than a delirium, and my life a dream; that all is mere illusion; that I am the only being in the universe, and that there is no such thing as body. Nothing can be juster than the reply given by Buffier, “It must be owned,” says he, “that to maintain propositions, the reverse of the primary truths of common sense, doth not imply a contradiction; it only implies insanity.” But if any person, on account of the difference in the nature of these two classes of axioms, should not think the term intuitive so properly applied to the last mentioned, let him denominate it, if he please, instinctive: I have no objection to the term; nor do I think it derogates in the least from the dignity, the certainty, or the importance of the truths themselves. Such instincts are no other than the oracles of eternal wisdom.  (POR 1.5, 41–2)

Being natural and instinctive, the truths of common sense are ones from which no human beings, apart from ‘idiots’ and ‘changelings’ (POR 1.5, 40), can withhold their assent in practice. Indeed, ordinary women and men typically believe these ‘oracles of eternal wisdom’ without any qualms or second thoughts, and our staunch faith in their truth is immune to the cavils of contrarians.73 Although it is quite true that these ‘primary truths’ (POR 1.5, 41) cannot be demonstrated or vindicated by direct argument, it is also true that they do not need to be; our constitution is such that we are bound to find them intrinsically credible, and belief in them is immediate and firm in any human being who has not taken leave of his senses. With the truths of common sense, Campbell concludes, we have hit epistemological and psychological bedrock—a faultless stratum of inexpugnable and intuitively evident convictions on which our knowledge of real things rests.74

1.9  A Common Sense Credo The reader will recall that this chapter began with a simple question: What was Scottish common sense philosophy? That is to say, what themes and theses were dearest to the hearts of its earliest adherents, and how did their fundamental commitments fit together? Now that we have examined the writings of Reid, Oswald, Beattie, and Campbell, we are ready to essay an answer to this question. 1. Common sense may be described as a faculty or a power of the human mind by which certain fundamental principles are apprehended and accepted nondiscursively.75 Whether one thinks of common sense as a faculty or power, however, is of secondary importance; what is essential is the idea that the mind

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

44  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense is not a tabula rasa, and that human reasoning, conception, perception, and belief-formation are governed by certain fixed and ultimate principles. Some of  these principles deal with epistemology, others with metaphysics and the foundations of natural theology; some have to do with morals, others with taste; some with grammar and logic, others with mathematics. That I exist, that our senses can be trusted, that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us, that circular arguments prove nothing, that the future will resemble the past, that whatever has a beginning has a cause, that there is a defeasible presumption in favour of human testimony, that qualities or properties cannot exist apart from a subject—these are all principles of common sense, and a moment’s reflection on their content should convince the reader that common sense’s province is extensive and its terrain quite varied. 2. Not only do the principles of common sense express what we happen to believe now; they express what we must believe, and what all people in their right minds have always believed, simply in virtue of being human. This is because these elementary commitments are original or innate, as opposed to being acquired through experience or reasoning, education or indoctrination, habit or the association of ideas. It follows that Kant was quite mistaken in thinking that the Scottish appeal to common sense amounted to nothing more than an appeal to the arbitrary prejudices of one’s unlettered and ignorant contemporaries. Since the commitments of common sense have their foundation in human nature itself, they are ahistorical but contingent constants which are prior to all reasoning and philosophy. 3. Although the principles of common sense are innate, our knowledge that a given proposition is a principle of common sense must be derived from experience and observation.76 Why? According to common sense philosophers, we are justified in believing that a proposition is a principle of common sense if and only if we are justified in believing that it possesses certain properties such as psychological irresistibility, practical indispensability, early appearance, and universal acceptance. Yet whether it possesses these properties is plainly a question of fact; as such, the matter must be referred to the tribunal of experience. Since conclusions derived inductively from experience in this way are fallible and potentially open to revision, the common sense philosopher should be cautious and undogmatic when drawing up a list of the innate or original principles of the human mind.77 4. The principles of common sense may be described as epistemically foundational, properly basic, intuitive, primary, elementary, self-evident, or intrinsically credible; for they are justified immediately and non-inferentially in the manner of first principles, and their positive epistemic status does not depend on their relations to any other beliefs or judgments. To be sure, not all of our justified beliefs are common sense beliefs; but any justified belief which is not a common sense belief ultimately depends upon some common sense belief(s) for its justification.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  45 Two types of justified beliefs must therefore be recognized: those judgments which are first principles, on the one hand, and those judgments which may be justly derived from first principles, on the other. 5. Because the principles of common sense are epistemically foundational, it would be a category mistake to demand that they be justified—if by ‘to justify’ we mean ‘to support with positive evidence or arguments’ or ‘to infer from premises which are more evident for us’. Since nothing is more evident for us than the absolutely basic principles of common sense, the fact that we are unable to give a reason for believing them is not a reason to doubt them. Moreover, attempted justifications of these ground-floor commitments will always be circular or question-begging, since any proposition which we might press into service as a premise of a justifying argument will be every bit as ­vulnerable as the commitments which we are seeking to justify with its aid. 6. Because nothing is more evident for us than the principles of common sense, we can have no grounds for doubting them. For what could we possibly regard as a good reason for questioning them or contesting their authority? Any propositions relied upon by a doubter, it seems, could not be any more authoritative or doubt-proof than the proposition to be doubted. But if every attempt to refute common sense principles ultimately depends on some premise which is no more evident or credible than the principle under attack, scepticism about first principles turns out to be self-defeating. Logical limits to self-criticism are imposed upon us by the fact that we cannot step outside our minds and critically assess our basic framework of concepts and beliefs from some external and neutral point of view.78 7. Philosophers must therefore make their peace with the fact that philosophy rests upon common sense, and not vice versa. What are the implications of this claim? At the very least, it means that modern philosophers must abandon two self-aggrandizing projects. The first project is that of justifying or grounding our common sense beliefs by putting a philosophical foundation underneath them; the second is that of debunking or undermining those beliefs by showing that they lack such a foundation. Both of these projects are doomed; the only logical difference is that the first involves circularity, and the second involves self-referential incoherence. 8. Ordinary women and men, endowed by their Maker with the gift of common sense, do not need to look to the philosopher for the sort of assurance or guidance which many a modern author has offered them. That is to say, the vulgar do not wait with bated breath for the metaphysician to prop up their common sense beliefs with arguments, nor do they go in fear lest some supercilious sophist should undertake the demolition of their worldview’s foundations. Quite the contrary, in fact: non-philosophers rightly take themselves to know many things which they cannot prove, and they are perfectly entitled to reject a philosopher’s arguments if and when his faddish fancies clash with the ageless edicts of common sense.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

46  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense 9. A truly wise philosopher, mindful of the foregoing, will restrain his pride and rein in his ambition; and, having become more patient and less superficial, he will discover that what he formerly thought of as foolish or fugitive prejudices are in reality irresistible principles which must be taken as selfevident because their roots reach down to the very depths of our being. Instead of treating the peasant or day-labourer with lordly condescension, the enlightened philosopher will acknowledge him as a brother; instead of sneering at unschooled ‘wives an’ wabsters’, he will appreciate how much his mind has in common with theirs; and, instead of posing as a misanthropic demi-god, he will honour human nature by treating it as the source of ­philosophy’s first principles. 10. Because Thomas Reid, James Oswald, James Beattie, and George Campbell shared a well-defined and distinctive outlook—an outlook whose main articles are contained in our common sense credo—we may conclude that an informal ‘school’ or loosely affiliated group of common sense philosophers did indeed exist in Scotland during the second half of the eighteenth century. However, we must be careful not to read too much into the phrase ‘Scottish school of common sense’.79 To be more specific: the claim that such a school existed does not mean that our four authors thought of themselves primarily as members of a metaphysical fraternity, or that they understood common sense in exactly the same way, or that their agendas and motivations were identical, or that their contributions were of comparable depth and originality, or that common sense philosophy had become the new orthodoxy in Scottish universities before the end of the eighteenth century. 11. Nor does believing in the existence of a Scottish common sense school require us to believe that the epithet ‘common sense philosopher’ is the best way to characterize Thomas Reid, a many-sided Enlightenment thinker whose subtle and inquisitive mind had a decidedly interdisciplinary bent. G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), in a superb little book devoted to the thought of another Thomas, observed that “history has many examples of an irritating habit of labelling somebody in connection with something, as if he never did  anything else. Who was it who began the inane habit of referring to Dr. Johnson as ‘our lexicographer’; as if he never did anything but write a dictionary?” (Chesterton 1933: 106). The treatment which Reid has received from many historians of philosophy is an excellent example of the phenomenon which Chesterton deplored. Instead of marvelling at the breadth of Reid’s interests and activities, historians have tended to cast Reid as ‘our common sense philosopher’; as if he never did anything but talk about our natural beliefs, perception, and scepticism. Although my concern in this book is only with Reid the common sense philosopher, there is no question that he was much more than this—just as the Great Cham was much more than ‘our lexicographer’.80

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  47

1.10  Descendants and Ancestors In this introductory chapter we have explored a philosophical movement which, thanks to Thomas Reid and his congeners, began to bloom in and around Aberdeen in the late 1750s and the early 1760s. When Reid left Aberdeen for Glasgow in 1764, the movement’s geographical centre shifted south, and there it was to remain for the better part of a century. For it was at Edinburgh that the movement’s most distinguished later representatives, Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) and Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856), were based: Stewart as Professor of Moral Philosophy from 1785 until 1820, and Hamilton as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1836 until 1856. Since both Stewart and Hamilton will play a role in our story about common sense realism, a few words about each are called for. A gifted and prolific writer, Dugald Stewart was the author of Elements on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (in three parts: 1792, 1814, 1827), Outlines of Moral Philosophy (1793), Philosophical Essays (1810), and Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man (1828). In addition to these books, which addressed many of the central questions of practical and theoretical philosophy in prose remarkable for its stately cadences and its air of serene self-confidence, Stewart also published three lengthy ­biographical essays, each of which celebrated the achievements of a major figure from the Scottish Enlightenment: Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith (1793), Account of the Life and Writings of William Robertson (1796), and Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Reid, D.D. (1803).81 His influence on the republic of letters was considerable, and it was by no means confined to the sacred precincts of Edinburgh (where the famous Monument honouring his memory still stands on Calton Hill) or even to the British Isles. For Stewart’s works were widely read abroad, and the esteem in which their author was held is reflected in the fact that he was made an Honorary Member of several foreign learned societies, including the American Societies of Philadelphia and of Boston, the Royal Academies of Berlin and of Naples, and the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg. Moreover, his reputation as a captivating lecturer who had a rare way with words inspired countless students from the Continent and America to come to Edinburgh expressly for the purpose of hearing him hold forth. What did he teach them? Among other things, the young academic pilgrims who attended his classes received a healthy dose of Reidian epistemology, Reidian metaphysics, and Reidian philosophy of mind. This is in no way surprising, since Stewart’s own philosophical outlook owed a great deal to the master, under whom he studied—albeit briefly—at Glasgow in 1772.82 Scotland’s other outstanding common sense philosopher in the early nineteenth century was Sir William Hamilton, an author so influential and so famous in his own day that John Stuart Mill (1806–73), who was no admirer of the philosophical movement Hamilton represented, felt compelled to write a book-length exposé of his thought.83 Known for his immense historical learning (which he was not shy about displaying), his passion for analysis and taxonomy (it seems he never met a distinction

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

48  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense he didn’t like), and his interest in logic (he was hailed for his work on the quantification of the predicate),84 Hamilton positioned himself as the custodian of the Scottish common sense tradition—a tradition to which he was drawn both as a student of philosophy’s history and as a speculative thinker in his own right. Eager to preserve the very best which that tradition had to offer, he edited Dugald Stewart’s collected works, the first volume of which appeared in 1854. More importantly, Hamilton produced what was until recently the standard scholarly edition of Reid’s collected works (1846), to which he appended an extended commentary in the form of his “Copious Notes and Supplementary Dissertations”. He also defended a broadly Reidian account of perception in his own published writings, four of which deserve a special mention in  this connection: “The Philosophy of Perception” (1830), “Idealism” (1839), the aforementioned “Copious Notes and Supplementary Dissertations” (1846), and, finally, the four-volume Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics (1858–60) which he delivered to his classes in Edinburgh. Yet unlike Dugald Stewart, Hamilton’s basic epistemological outlook was not influenced by Reid alone; an aficionado of German philosophy, he was  one of the first academic philosophers in the British Isles to appreciate Kant’s genius, and he embraced the Kantian doctrine that the objects of knowledge are always conditioned by the knowing subject.85 Hamilton thus looked well beyond the Reidian tradition of common sense philosophy; but it must be emphasized that he took this unprecedented step not because he wanted to transcend that tradition, but because he sought to reform and perfect it. At this point, a reader unfamiliar with nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy may ask: Why are Stewart and Hamilton called ‘common sense philosophers’? It’s a fair question, and one to which we may give a five-part answer. (1) Both Stewart and Hamilton emphasize philosophy’s essential dependence upon a broad foundation of natural, implicit, and indispensable commitments which are beyond doubt or proof. Although neither was particularly fond of the Reidian term ‘principles of common sense’, it is clear this is essentially what they have in mind.86 (2) According to Stewart and Hamilton, our primitive commitments include a number of epistemological and metaphysical theses which Reid, Campbell, and Beattie had already identified as first principles: that I exist, that there are mind-independent objects or material substances, that some of the properties of such substances are directly known, that our belief-forming faculties are fundamentally reliable, and so on. (3) Stewart and Hamilton think the discovery of philosophy’s essential dependence on these natural commitments sheds some much-needed light on the problem of scepticism. To be more specific, they think it should now be clear to modern philosophers that although arguments against scepticism are futile (because they beg the question), arguments for scepticism are self-undermining (because they call into question the presuppositions of philosophy itself). (4) Stewart and Hamilton reject representational theories of perception (which deny that we are ever directly aware of anything extra-mental) partly because they believe that such theories clash with our natural commitments, such as our primitive conviction that a material world is directly apprehended in ordinary perception.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  49 (5) Finally, neither philosopher pretends that these views are fundamentally new or entirely his own—quite the contrary. Stewart and Hamilton frequently acknowledge their indebtedness to Reid, whose influence on their philosophical outlook is in any case undeniable. Although they do not think that he was right about everything, they are inclined to believe that Reid’s answers to many of the central questions of epistemology and metaphysics are approximately true; and when they discuss these questions, they tend to present themselves as Reid’s philosophical descendants, determined to make the most of what they have inherited. Thanks in large part to the high-profile efforts of Stewart and Hamilton (whom we shall get to know better in Chapter 4), common-sensism enjoyed a long and healthy life in Scotland after Reid. What is rather less well-known is that Scottish common-sensism also had a life before Reid, and that the movement which we have explored in this chapter had several distinguished Scottish ancestors.87 In our next chapter, we shall become acquainted with one of these neglected figures: Reid’s friend Henry Home (1696–1782), who was an eminent jurist, philosopher, man of letters, gentleman-farmer, and—in the words of a recent historian of the Scottish Enlightenment—“the most formidable of Edinburgh’s cultural entrepreneurs” (Phillipson 2010: 72).

Notes 1. According to Dugald Stewart, Kant’s remarks about Scottish common-sensism are merely “petulant sneers” (SW 1: 461, cf. 393–442); Stewart’s response is examined in Friday (2005). See Lemos (2004: 67–70) for a recent attempt to reconstruct Kant’s objections. 2. How well did Kant know Reid’s work? For an interesting answer, see Kuehn (1987), Chapter 9. 3. According to Alexander Campbell Fraser, “in his tenth year the home education of the manse was followed by two years spent in the neighbouring parish school of Kincardine O’Neil” (Fraser 1898: 11). Cf. SW 10: 248. 4. For more on Turnbull, see Chapter 4 of Norton (1982) and Wood (2015a: 405, 408–12). For a discussion of Turnbull’s influence on Reid, see Broadie (2004: 38–44). 5. As Gideon Yaffe has observed, “Thomas Reid was . . . as dedicated to solving problems that we now consider to be in the domain of natural science as he was to solving traditional philosophical problems” (Yaffe 2004: 1). This view has long been defended by Paul Wood, who has argued that many historians of philosophy have misunderstood Reid precisely because they have tended to ignore his mathematical and scientific pursuits. See Wood (1985), (2004). 6. Reid’s views about perception are the subject of Sections 3.4 and 3.5. 7. The ‘private philosophical society’ to which Reid refers here played an important part in the early history of Scottish common sense philosophy. We shall say more about its members in Section 1.3. 8. For an account of the causes and consequences of Smith’s departure from Glasgow, see Phillipson (2010), Chapters 8 and 9.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

50  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense 9. According to Alexander Broadie, the curriculum which regents in arts were expected to teach in eighteenth-century Scotland “is a rather distant descendant of the medieval university curriculum of the seven liberal arts” (Broadie 2009: 240; cf. Broadie 2004: 34–5). 10. An appendix contributed to Sketches of the History of Man (1774), authored by the jurist and philosopher Lord Kames (1696–1782), whose argument for perceptual realism is the subject of Chapter 2. Kames supported Reid’s candidacy for the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, and the two philosophers became close friends. For more on this, see Ross (1972: 357). 11. From 1785 on, according to Paul Wood, “Priestley supplanted Hume as Reid’s primary philosophical antagonist” (Wood 2015a: 433). 12. For a discussion of Reid’s appointment and his tenure at Glasgow, see Wood (1997: 289–99). A less detailed version can be found in Emerson (2008: 156–7). 13. The story of how Reid’s two Essays came to be published is told by Sher (2006: 391–5). 14. See Boswell (1791: 248). 15. My taxonomy here owes a good deal to Norton (1982: 241–56). For more on the thematic and topical range of Reid’s philosophy, see Broadie (2009), Chapter 9. 16. I have written at greater length about this question in McDermid (1999), (2010), and (2015). 17. I have been influenced by Wolterstorff ’s analysis of this passage (2001: 227–31). Cf. EIP 6.2–6.4: 423–67. 18. For more on the epistemic regress argument, see Feldman (2003: 49–52). For more on foundationalism and its varieties, see Sosa (1991), especially Chapters 9 and 10. 19. Although the Inquiry identifies several natural or constitutional principles which govern belief and concept-formation, no formal list of such principles is drawn up in that work. 20. Reid claims that these principles are contingent truths; see EIP 6.5, 470. 21. The distinction between descriptive metaphysics and revisionary metaphysics was drawn by P. F. Strawson: “Descriptive metaphysics is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world; revisionary metaphysics is concerned to produce a better structure” (Strawson 1959: 9; cf. 10–11). 22. Reid claims that the first principles of morals, along with the first principles of metaphysics, are necessary truths; see EIP 6.6, 490. For more on Reid’s approach to ethics, see Rowe (1991), Lehrer (2010), Graham (2010), Kroeker (2010), (2016), and Cuneo (2010), (2011). 23. An allusion to Matthew 22:40. See also Matthew 22:39 and Leviticus 19:18. 24. Gideon Yaffe and Ryan Nichols rightly observe that “belief in God possesses few of the features associated with Reidian First Principles. Denying God’s existence is not absurd, belief in God does not have ‘consent of ages and nations’, and it is not held independently of education and acculturation” (Yaffe and Nichols 2014). 25. For more on Reid’s philosophy of religion, see Tuggy (2004), Yaffe and Nichols (2014), and Kroeker (2016). 26. Audi (2009) contains a sympathetic exposition of Reid’s views on testimony. 27. “I suppose it is true in a sense that a man can be a fundamental sceptic, but he cannot be anything else; certainly not even a defender of fundamental scepticism” (Chesterton 1933: 95). Compare this with Reid’s distinction between total sceptics and “semi-sceptics” (IHM 5.7, 70–2).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  51 28. For more on Reid’s treatment of external world scepticism, see Wolterstorff (2001), Chapter 8, and de Bary (2002). 29. See Genesis 3:4–5 and Romans 1:22. John Calvin (1509–64) discusses the causes and consequences of the Fall in his Institutes of Christian Religion (1559, 4th edition); see ICR 2.1.1–11, 146–54. 30. This is, of course, very much in the spirit of Calvin: “How can the idea of God enter your mind without instantly giving rise to the thought that, since you are his workmanship, you are bound, by the very law of creation, to submit to his authority?” (ICR 1.2.2, 8). 31. Cf. ICR 1.2.1–2, 7–8; 1.4.4, 14; 3.7.1, 449–50. 32. Hence Alexander Broadie’s view strikes me as exactly right: “[I]n his search for first principles of common sense Reid is seeking, like Hume, to draw a map of human nature, and his method is not a priori, but based firmly on the deliverances of experience” (Broadie 1990: 108). 33. For more on the relation between Christianity and common sense in Reid’s philosophy, see Wolterstorff (2001), Chapter 10 (on so-called “Reidian piety” and trust) and Harris (2007). 34. “[L]et us remember how common the folly is, of going from one faulty extreme to another” (EIP 6.4, 464). See also EAP 4.3, 275. 35. Nietzsche makes this point in The Gay Science: “Kant’s joke.—Kant wanted to prove, in a way that would dumbfound the common man, that the common man was right: that was the secret joke of this soul. He wrote against the scholars in support of popular prejudice, but for scholars and not for the people” (Nietzsche 1887: §193). 36. To a mind shaped and sharpened by Scottish Calvinism, this contrast may recall another: that between the pre-Reformation understanding of the distinction between the laity and the priestly hierarchy, on the one hand, and, on the other, the less authoritarian and more democratic Presbyterian model of church government implemented by John Knox (1514–72) and Andrew Melville (1545–1622). When seen from this point of view, Scottish common-sensism looks like philosophy’s answer to the Protestant idea of the priesthood of all believers. 37. According to Paul Wood (Wood 2015a: 429–31; Sher and Wood 2012: 100), the idea that there was a Scottish school of common sense was first articulated by two Englishmen: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) and Joseph Berington (1743–1827). Priestley was the first to treat Reid, Beattie, and Oswald as birds of a philosophical feather, whereas Berington was the first to call them ‘a school’. 38. See Wood (2015a: 418–28) for an analysis of the beginnings of Scottish common sense philosophy. 39. Marischal College was founded in 1495, King’s College in 1593. The two institutions were united to form the University of Aberdeen in 1860. 40. A helpful description of the history, members, and inner workings of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society is given by King (1971); see also Veitch (1877: 214–16). The Society’s official minutes can be found in Ulman (1990). 41. Compare this with what Campbell says about Hume at the beginning of A Dissertation on Miracles (DM Advertisement, 9). See also Grave (1960: 10 n2). 42. Oswald was influenced by Reid’s early work, however. As James Fieser has noted, “Oswald was familiar with and to some extent inspired by Thomas Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense (1764). However, Reid’s influence should not be overstated” (Fieser 2000: xvii).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

52  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense 43. We shall say no more about Alexander Gerard, but only because his best-known contributions lie outside the areas of metaphysics and epistemology: An Essay on Taste (1759)—a work which, in the words of Paul Guyer, “offers the most fully developed account of aesthetic response as a free and playful mental activity to be found in eighteenth-century aesthetics before Kant” (Guyer 2011: 60)—and his later An Essay on Genius (1774). Still, the mere mention of Gerard’s works is salutary, because it reminds us of the common sense philosophy’s interest in the problems of aesthetics, criticism, and rhetoric. 44. Beattie was thus a latecomer to Reid’s circle, as Paul Wood has noted: “James Beattie joined the group in 1760, well after common sense philosophy had begun to infiltrate the public domain. Hence Beattie cannot be regarded as a figure who was directly involved in the genesis of that philosophy” (Wood 2015a: 418). 45. Henry Sidgwick’s description of Beattie seems apt: “a poet by choice and a philosopher from a sense of duty” (Sidgwick 1895: 147). 46. The first volume appeared in 1766, with a second edition in 1768; the second volume appeared in 1772 (McCosh 1875: 212). See Fieser (2000) for an extremely detailed summary of the Appeal. 47. Possibly a reference to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. 48. 1 Timothy 6:5. 49. In the words of James McCosh, “Oswald can hardly be represented as grappling with the deeper problems of metaphysics” (McCosh 1875: 213). This is consistent with Sidgwick’s claim that Oswald was merely “a theological pamphleteer” (Sidgwick 1895: 147). 50. “Whether credulity or scepticism, in excess, is the more shameful or more dangerous folly, may bear dispute. But that both are weaknesses of pernicious consequences, to which the human mind is liable, and against which it ought to be guarded with care, will be easily allowed” (ACS 1.1, 1). 51. The story of how Beattie’s Essay on Truth became a spectacular “Enlightenment best-seller” is told by King (1972). 52. As Richard Sher has observed, the popularity of Beattie’s Essay “was short-lived and less noticeable among the literati in Edinburgh than among the social and political elite of London” (Sher 1985: 311). 53. According to James Harris, this may have been one of the things which made certain readers receptive to Beattie’s appeal to common sense: “What is to be trusted, before anything else, Beattie intimates, is how things feel . . . At a time when natural philosophy was showing that appearances very often are deceptive, this may well have been a comforting thing to be told” (Harris 2005: 154). Henry Laurie (1837–1922), a Scot who taught at Melbourne and held the first philosophical chair in Australia, mentions another possibility: “It is easy to understand how this comfortable doctrine appealed to the ordinary Philistine, who was flattered into the belief that he had been a first-class philosopher all his life without knowing it” (Laurie 1902: 172–3). For more on Laurie, see Grave (1984: 14–17). 54. Laurie’s description of Beattie’s attitude towards Hume’s philosophy seems to me to hit the nail squarely on the head: “Instead of regarding Hume’s scepticism as a challenge to establish speculative philosophy on a firmer basis, Beattie considered it a dogmatic system which men were asked to accept in the name of reason” (Laurie 1902: 173). 55. See Colossians 2:8.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  53 56. Stewart disapproved of Beattie’s use of ad hominem arguments: “I cannot conclude these Strictures on Dr. Beattie without expressing my regret at the asperity of invective which he has occasionally introduced into his philosophical Arguments” (Wood  2012: 117). Paul Wood sums up this exasperating (and un-Reidian) side of Beattie nicely: “Although he was something of an anatomist of the mind, Beattie much preferred warmth in the cause of virtue to sustained metaphysical analysis, and typically resorted to verbal abuse rather than careful argumentation when attacking Humean scepticism” (Wood 1997: 296). 57. Recall Reid’s words: “This belief, sir, is none of my manufacture; it came from the mint of Nature; it bears her image and superscription; and if it is not right, the fault is not mine” (IHM 6.20, 169; emphasis mine). 58. Recall the definition of ‘sense’ given by Francis Hutcheson in An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, With Illustrations on the Moral Sense: “If we may call every Determination of our Minds to receive Ideas independently on our Will, and to have Perceptions of Pleasure and Pain, a Sense, we shall find many other Senses beside those commonly explained” (Hutcheson 1742: 1, 17). 59. According to Beattie, what we absolutely cannot help believing must be taken as true, and what we absolutely cannot help disbelieving must be taken as false: “I account That to be truth which the constitution of our nature determines us to believe, and That to be falsehood which the constitution of our nature determines us to disbelieve” (EOT 1.1, 19). 60. See EOT 3.2, 313. As Beattie points out, a version of the argument from natural inferiority can be found in Aristotle’s Politics, where it is claimed that some individuals are ‘slaves by nature’ (EOT 3.2, 309–10). 61. See EOT 3.2, 313. Note Beattie’s references in this passage to Genesis 3:20 and Acts 17:26, which affirm the common origin and the unity of the human race. 62. For more on Beattie and abolitionism, see Doris (2009). For more on Hume’s racism, see Popkin (1978), Immerwahr (1992), Palter (1995), and Garrett (2000). 63. In his Elements of Moral Science (1790–3), Beattie defends the same sort of common-sensism which we find in the Essay on Truth. 64. See Chapter 4 of Coady (1992) for an analysis of Hume’s account of testimony. For more on  Hume’s argument against belief in miracles, see Earman (2000), who discusses Campbell’s reply. 65. For a detailed examination of Campbell’s critique of Hume on testimony, see Pitson (2006). Compare Campbell’s understanding of testimony with the account offered by Reid in the Inquiry (IHM 6.24, 190–202). 66. For a recent defence of (b), see Swinburne (2003) and (2009). 67. Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), the celebrated Scottish preacher and philosopher, expressed his dissatisfaction with Campbell’s reply in On the Miraculous and Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion (Chalmers 1836: 72). According to Chalmers, the question on which Campbell concentrates in the first part of his Dissertation—‘Is our basic faith in testimony instinctive or natural?’—is something of a red herring, as Hume’s argument can be refuted without contesting the assumption that testimony’s authority is derived from experience. 68. It will be remembered that Reid had used a very similar phrase—‘a private philosophical society, of which I have the honour to be a member’—in his Dedication to the Inquiry. See IHM Dedication, 5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

54  Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense 69. Why does Campbell bother outlining his theory of knowledge in a book devoted to the arts of rhetoric and oratory? As Alexander Broadie explains, there is nothing odd or incongruous about this, given Campbell’s understanding of the ends of rhetoric: “The central insight from which Campbell is working is that the orator seeks to persuade people, and in general the best way to persuade is to produce perspicuous arguments” (Broadie 2013). 70. Campbell’s account of axioms was criticized by Dugald Stewart; see SW 3: 26–30. 71. Campbell believes that his understanding of ‘common sense’ is very close to that of Reid and Beattie, those “two very able writers in the science of man”: “[T]hough for distinction’s sake, I use the term common sense in a more limited signification than either of the authors last mentioned, there appears to be no real difference in our sentiments of the thing itself ” (POR 1.5, 38). One way in which Campbellian common sense is narrower than its Reidian counterpart has been identified by Broadie, who notes that “Campbell holds that conscious­ ness is a separate principle from common sense, unlike Reid” (Broadie 2009: 281). 72. When Buffier’s Traité des Premieres Vérités (1724) was rendered into English in 1780 as First Truths and the Origin of Our Opinions Explained, the translator accused Reid, Beattie, and Oswald of plagiarism; for more on this, see Grave (1960: 8). Dugald Stewart responded to the translator’s charge of plagiarism as follows: “[W]hy suppose Reid to have borrowed from this learned Jesuit, a mode of arguing which has been familiar to men in all ages of the world; and to which, long before the publication of Buffier’s excellent book, the very same phraseology had been applied by numberless other authors?” (SW 3: 62; cf. 61–9). For a detailed examination of Buffier’s relation to the tradition of Reidian common-sensism, see Marcil-Lacoste (1982). 73. Note that Campbell, like Kant, compares common sense to an oracle; the difference, of course, is that Campbell sees this as a good thing. For Campbell, common sense is a divinely appointed medium or vehicle through which ‘eternal wisdom’ (presumably God) speaks to all human beings. 74. Campbell’s chapter on common sense contains a lengthy footnote (POR 1.5, 38–9) in which he defends Reid and Beattie from criticisms made by Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) in An Examination of Dr. Reid’s Inquiry into the human mind on the principles of common sense, Dr. Beattie’s Essay on the nature and immutability of truth, and Dr. Oswald’s Appeal to common sense in behalf of religion (1774). One of Campbell’s main points is that the dispute between Priestley and the common-sensists he attacks with such gusto may turn out to be merely verbal, because Priestley—like Reid and like Beattie—concedes that there are intuitively evident judgments about things which none of us can doubt (POR 1.5, 39). 75. Ernest Sosa has observed that Reid’s writings are ambiguous on this point: “What exactly does Reid mean by common sense? Does he mean a shared faculty or a shared set of believed propositions? Although the answer is ‘mostly the latter,’ Reid does occasionally mean faculties, rather than beliefs, as the relevant items shared” (Sosa 2009: 61). 76. For more on this point, see McCosh (1875: 10–11). 77. “We do not pretend, that those things that are laid down as first principles may not be examined, and that we ought not to have our ears open to what may be pleaded against it” (EIP 1.2, 46). 78. This brings to mind Nietzsche’s aperçu in The Will to Power: “A critique of the faculty of knowledge is senseless: how should a tool be able to criticize itself when it can use only itself for the critique?” (Nietzsche 1888: §486; cf. §410, §473).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense  55 7 9. See SW 3: 68 for some of Stewart’s thoughts on this. 80. Anyone who doubts that Reid was more than a common sense philosopher needs to examine the wealth of unpublished material which Edinburgh University Press has included in its multi-volume edition of Reid’s works. For more on this point, see McDermid (2016), which is a review of Haakonssen and Wood (2015). 81. See Wood (1985) for an instructive critique of Stewart’s portrayal of Reid. 82. See SW 10: 264. According to John Veitch (1829–94), “[n]o pupil ever caught the spirit of a master more fully, or more intelligently appreciated his method of philosophical inquiry” (SW 10: xxv, cf. xviii). 83. An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1865). 84. On the quantification of the predicate, see Bochenski (1961: 262–4). For more on Hamilton’s achievements in logic, see Jessop (2008). 85. See Wellek (1931: 51–62) for a discussion of Hamilton’s interpretation of Kant. 86. For a discussion of some of Stewart’s reservations about the term ‘common sense’, see Section 4.1. 87. See Gellera (forthcoming). The movement also had some non-Scottish ancestors of note. These include the aforementioned Buffier, who was born in Poland, as well as Lord Shaftesbury (1671–1713), who was English. However, the works of these authors lie off the course we have charted for ourselves in this book.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

2 Kames and the Argument from Perceptual Reliability The subject of these essays is Man. We have formed no imaginary schemes for exalting, or for depressing his nature. The inquiry has been, whether his capacities and powers suit his present circumstances, and fit him for acting a proper part in life. —Lord Kames

2.0 Introduction Blunt man of law and of letters, cousin and critic to David Hume, friend and mentor to several of the most brilliant minds of the Scottish Enlightenment, Henry Home—or Lord Kames, as he was known after his appointment to the Court of Session in 1752— had remarkably varied intellectual interests, a boundless supply of energy, and a quill which was apparently in perpetual motion.1 In addition to his voluminous writings on jurisprudence and legal matters, Kames was the author of Essays upon Several Subjects Concerning British Antiquities (1747), Introduction to the Art of Thinking (1761), Elements of Criticism (1762), Progress of Flux-Husbandry in Scotland (1766), Sketches of the History of Man (1774), The Gentleman Farmer: Being an Attempt to Improve Agriculture by Subjecting it to the Test of Rational Principles (1776), and Loose Thoughts on Education, chiefly concerning the Culture of the Heart (1781).2 His principal philosophical work is Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (1751, revised in 1758 and again in 1779), which contains constructive rejoinders to many of the sceptical arguments presented by Hume in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). Despite its fundamentally anti-sceptical message, the first edition of the Essays was viewed with suspicion and alarm by religious authorities in Scotland, who were perturbed by Kames’s endorsement of determinism and by his related claim that our sense of ourselves as free and morally responsible agents is deceitful.3 David Hume, who was also in hot water with the Kirk around this time, commented on the reception of Kames’s book in a letter to Michael Ramsay dated 22 June 1751: Have you seen our Friend Harrys Essays? They are well wrote; and are an unusual instance of an obliging method of answering a Book. Philosophers must judge of the question; but the

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

kames and the argument from perceptual reliability   57 Clergy have already decided it, & say he is as bad as me. Nay some affirm him to be worse, as much as a treacherous friend is worse than an open Enemy.  (Greig 1932: 162)

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse Kames’s defence of perceptual realism as it was set forth in the 1751 version of ‘our Friend Harrys Essays’. As will become apparent in Chapter 3, Kames’s argument—most of which is contained in his essay “On the Authority of Our Senses”—anticipated and inspired Thomas Reid’s betterknown and more elaborate plea for the view that we have immediate knowledge of a mind-independent world.4 Since Reid’s impressive plea in turn inspired Dugald Stewart and Sir William Hamilton (as we shall show in Chapter 4), it is not foolish or fanciful to think of Kames as the de facto founder of the Scottish common sense realist tradition.5

2.1  The Primacy of Natural Feeling In order to understand how the defence of perceptual realism which Kames offers in “On the Authority of the Senses” is related to the rest of his Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, we need to say a few words about what is arguably that book’s central theme: the affirmation of the epistemological primacy of natural feeling or perception (from our internal and external senses) over reasoning, argument, and inference. According to Kames, philosophers have tended to overlook the fact that our worldview ultimately rests on a broad foundation of feeling, and that our deepest convictions are supported by a rock-hard layer of original and instinctive perceptions: “If natural feelings, whether from internal or external senses, are not admitted as evidence of truth, I cannot see, that we can be certain of any fact whatever . . . we cannot be certain even of our own existence” (EPM 2.2, 234–5). Because the feelings and perceptions in question are universal, they should be treated not as accidental or adventitious phenomena, but as fixed and inescapable expressions of human nature: “[A] sentiment, common to all, must be founded on the common nature of all” (EPM 1.3, 156). It follows from this, Kames thinks, that we are determined by our constitution to think in certain definite ways, and that we cannot contest the authority of these built-in modes of thought without doing violence to our nature.6 True, the correctness of our basic modes of thought cannot be established by means of reasoning or direct proof; but this is only to be expected, since our reasoning about things inevitably depends upon certain foundational premises which are directly apprehended by our internal or external senses. Embedded in this no-nonsense line of thought is an interesting piece of metaphilosophical advice: in the case of those familiar truths which sceptics are wont to question—the principle of the uniformity of nature, the principle of universal causation, the fact that I exist at this moment, the fact that I am the same person now as I was a year ago, the fact that there are external objects of sense, and so on—what is

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

58  kames and the argument from perceptual reliability needed is not more argument but less, because “[m]any a proposition is rendered obscure, by much laboured argument, for the truth of which, we need but appeal to our own perceptions” (EPM 2.7, 337; cf. 339). Since nature supplies the foundation on which philosophy and human reason must build, philosophers should pay more attention to what we must feel and believe simply in virtue of being human, instead of assuming that every vital truth about knowledge or reality must be demonstrable or inferentially justified. This anti-sceptical stance, which weds naturalism to foundationalism,7 is featured prominently in the Essays: [F]eeling affords conviction, where reason leaves us in the dark.  (EPM 1.3, 156) Our feelings are no doubt the test of truth; which is so evident, that, in many instances, no other means are afforded us for coming at the truth. The few exceptions that are discovered by reason or experience, serve the more to confirm the general rule.  (EPM 1.3, 161) [O]ur natural principles are too deeply rooted, to give way to philosophy.  (EPM 1.3, 203) Fond of arguments drawn from the nature of things, we are too apt to apply such arguments without discretion; and to call that demonstration, which, at bottom, is nothing but a conviction from sense and feeling. Our perceptions, which work silently, and without effort, are apt to be overlooked; and we vainly imagine, we can demonstrate every proposition, which we perceive to be true.  (EPM 2.4, 276) We are not left to gather our duty by abstract reasoning, nor indeed by any reasoning. It is engraved upon the table of our hearts. We adapt our actions to the course of nature, by mere instinct, without reasoning, or even experience.  (EPM 2.7, 316) But it is an error, common to the bulk of writers, to substitute reason for feeling. The faculty of perception, working silently, and without effort, is generally overlookt. And we must find a reason for every thing we judge to be true; tho’ the truth of the proposition often depends, not upon reasoning, but upon mere feeling.  (EPM 2.7, 349) But happily for man, where reason fails him, perception and feeling come to his assistance. By means of principles implanted in our nature, we are enabled to make the above inferences and conclusions . . .  (EPM 2.7, 357)

Kames’s meta-philosophical advice seems tailor-made for sceptical philosophers such as Hume, who demanded reasoned justifications for beliefs and judgments whose authority is ultimately derived from our natural feelings or instinctive perceptions. While Kames agrees that many of our most entrenched beliefs about the nature of things cannot be demonstrated or established by argument, he thinks Hume was quite wrong to conclude from this that such beliefs are epistemically unjustified, irrational, or ill-founded. From Kames’s point of view, such scepticism is a sign that our fundamental judgments have been judged by the wrong epistemological standard, and that a philosopher has elected to treat principles which natural feeling has forced on us as if they were the products of reason and inference: “We vainly imagine, we can demonstrate every proposition, which we perceive to be true” (EPM 2.4, 276). This diagnosis of philosophical scepticism informs Kames’s ground-breaking treatment of perceptual realism, to which we now turn.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

kames and the argument from perceptual reliability   59

2.2  The Argument from Perceptual Reliability In “On the Authority of the Senses”, Kames develops an argument for perceptual realism which we may call the Argument from Perceptual Reliability. Let us begin with the leanest and meanest possible reconstruction of it: P1.  The Perceptual Reliability Thesis: Our faculties of sense-perception are basically trustworthy or reliable under standard conditions. ___________________________________________________________________ .: C.  The Thesis of Perceptual Realism: Most of the things whose properties we directly encounter in perception under standard conditions—trees and thistles, teacups and tables—exist independently of perception, and are typically more or less as they appear to us. Before we proceed any further, we need to say something about the logical elephant in the room: the objection that the Argument from Perceptual Reliability flagrantly begs the question against the external world sceptic or an interlocutor who wants to know why we should believe that sense-perception is fundamentally trustworthy. This objection, it must be stressed, misunderstands what Kames is up to. Instead of trying to prove that perception is trustworthy (i.e.—to infer its reliability from some propositions which are more obvious or evident to us than the proposition that perception is ­reliable), Kames seeks to convince us that we do not need to prove that perception is  trustworthy, because our spontaneous confidence in our external senses is the expression of an epistemically basic belief or foundational judgment (i.e.—a belief or judgment which is intrinsically credible or non-inferentially justified). The basic idea is that we do not need to answer the perceptual sceptic directly, because the ­sceptic’s demand for discursive justification rests on an indefensible assumption—the assumption that our natural trust in perception is not epistemically basic. As we shall see in Chapters 3 and 4, this anti-sceptical strategy—that of shifting the burden of  proof back to the external world sceptic by arguing that his own assumptions are ­ill-founded—was later used to great effect by Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, and Sir William Hamilton. Two elementary questions about Kames’s Argument from Perceptual Reliability must now be tabled for discussion. (1) What is supposed to speak in favour of P1, the Perceptual Reliability Thesis? That is, why does Kames think we should accept this premise? (2) Does C in fact follow from P1? That is, can the Thesis of Perceptual Realism be validly inferred from the Perceptual Reliability Thesis? These two questions shall keep us busy for the rest of this chapter.

2.3  The Perceptual Reliability Thesis Why does Kames accept the Perceptual Reliability Thesis? The very first thing we need to understand here is that Kames deliberately advances no positive argument for P1.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

60  kames and the argument from perceptual reliability Why is this? The explanation, we have already noted, is actually quite straightforward: Kames is convinced that our belief in the basic veracity of our senses is epistemically foundational and undeniable, and he does not wish to render its truth obscure ‘by much laboured argument’. In Reidian terms, Kames’s central claim is that P1 is a principle of common sense or natural conviction, a foundational or self-evident proposition which nobody can really doubt or deny. Three lines of thought, it seems, are supposed to support this claim. 1.  In the first place, Kames thinks we cannot consistently doubt the testimony of our senses in practice, because our make-up or constitution is such that we must put stock in almost everything they tell us. Trusting our senses, or taking perception at its word without any prior proof of its veracity, comes naturally to human beings; and this species of trust—unreasoned, artless, and instinctive—cannot be subverted or eradicated by the subtleties of philosophical argument, as Kames frequently reminds us: We are so constituted by nature, as to put trust in our senses. Nor, in general, is it in our power to disbelieve our senses: they have authority with us irresistible. There is but one exception that I can think of. Finding, by experience, that we have been sometimes led into error, by trusting some particular perceptions, the remembrance of these instances, counter-balances the authority of our perception in the like case, and either keeps the mind suspended, or, perhaps, makes it rest in a conviction, that the perception is erroneous.  (EPM 2.1, 227) There is nothing to which all men are more necessarily determined, than to put confidence in their senses. We entertain no doubt of their authority, because we are so constituted, that it is not in our power to doubt.  (EPM 2.3, 239) When the authority of our senses is thus founded on the necessity of our nature, and confirmed by constant experience, it cannot but appear strange, that it should come into the thought of any man to call it into question.  (EPM 2.3, 239) But we cannot call it [i.e.—the evidence of our senses] in doubt, otherways than in speculation, and even then, but for a moment. We have a thorough conviction of the reality of external objects; it rises to the highest certainty; and we act, in consequence of it, with the greatest security of not being deceived. Nor are we in fact deceived. When we put the matter to a trial, every experiment answers to our perceptions, and confirms us more and more in our belief.  (EPM 2.3, 269) We trust to our perceptions, for the existence of external objects, and their past, present and future operations. We trust to these perceptions by the necessity of our nature, and, upon experience, find ourselves not deceived.  (EPM 2.7, 329)

When sceptical doubts about the basic veracity of our perceptual faculties are looked at from this down-to-earth point of view, Kames suggests, they are apt to strike us as purely theoretical or speculative, even frivolous or foolish. Thanks to nature or to God, there is no practical question about whether human beings will believe their senses; as Hume observed in his first Enquiry, “Nature is always too strong for principle” (Hume 1748: §12, 160), and nature has decreed that our senses shall cause us to believe in the existence of external objects. To quote Hume again, this time from the Treatise of Human Nature:

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

kames and the argument from perceptual reliability   61 Thus the sceptic still continues to reason and believe, even tho’ he asserts, that he cannot defend his reason by reason; and by the same rule he must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, tho’ he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteem’d it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but ’tis in vain to ask Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.8  (Hume 1739–40: 1.4.2, 187)

Like his famous cousin, Kames is a naturalist who thinks that the world of perception is too much with us for us to doubt its reality in practice. Suspension of judgment is not a viable option, for we can neither resist the steady and relentless solicitations of sense, nor rid ourselves of the convictions it thrusts upon us every minute of our waking lives. But if this correct, and if sceptical doubts about perception’s basic reliability contradict the dictates of our constitution, there is a sense in which such doubts are idle or empty.9 2.  ‘That is all well and good,’ we might reply, ‘but what if the arguments for scepticism about perception are actually good ones? If they are sound, we ought to accept their conclusion in theory, even if we cannot live by it or put it into practice.’ This brings us to the second plank in Kames’s anti-sceptical platform: his contention that standard philosophical arguments against trusting the testimony of our senses are unpersuasive, even feeble. To illustrate his point, he singles out two objections to the Perceptual Reliability Thesis. Objection 1: Our senses misrepresent reality when we perceive things from very far away (‘remoteness of place’), or through a fog (‘grossness of the medium’), or with impaired senses (‘indisposition of the organ’) (EPM 2.3, 237). Hence we are not entitled to trust our senses. Reply: According to Kames, this argument does not prove that our senses are inherently unreliable; it only shows that they are unreliable or highly fallible under certain non-standard conditions—conditions, that is to say, for which they were not made or under which they were not meant to function. And we are rarely taken in by the misleading testimony of our senses in these non-standard cases, Kames adds, because we can usually tell that the perceptions produced under the aforementioned conditions are abnormal or ‘off ’: “In such instances, the perception is always faint, obscure or confused: and they noway invalidate the authority of the senses, in general, when abstracting from such accidental obstructions, the perception is lively, strong, and distinct” (EPM 2.3, 237).10 Objection 2: Our senses represent things as having secondary qualities—as being coloured and flavoured and fragrant, for instance. But we now know that material objects do not really possess such qualities, because it has been shown that colours and flavours and scents are not in objects themselves: “[W]e have discovered, by philosophy, that secondary qualities exist not in matter, and that our sensible ideas, in various instances, do not correspond to philosophic truth” (EPM 1.3, 215; cf. 153–4). Since the

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

62  kames and the argument from perceptual reliability manifest image of the world does not perfectly match the way the world really is, the testimony of our senses consistently misleads us and thus should not be trusted.11 Reply: Since Kames agrees that secondary qualities are not in things themselves, he is happy to concede that there is a sense in which our senses regularly deceive us. Yet to what extent should this ‘deception’ or ‘false appearance’ undermine our basic confidence in perception? Kames’s answer turns on two main considerations. In the first place, he points out that the deception in question cannot be total or permanent; if it were, this objection could not even be formulated. The very fact that philosophers have discovered that an apple is not red or sweet apart from its relation to perceivers is proof that human beings are capable of knowing which qualities or properties belong to material objects, and which qualities or properties do not: [I]t appears, that our perceptions some times, are less accommodated to the truth of things, than to the end for which our senses are designed. Nature, at the same time, has provided a remedy; for she seldom or never leaves us without means of discovering the deception, and arriving at the truth.  (EPM 1.3, 154–5) [T]he testimony of our senses still remains, as a sufficient ground of confidence and trust. For, in all these cases, where there is this sort of established deception, nature furnishes means of coming at the truth. As in this very instance of secondary qualities, philosophy easily corrects the false appearances, and teaches us, that they are rather to be considered, as impressions made upon the mind, than as qualities of the object. A remedy being thus provided to the deception, our belief, so far as it can be influenced by reason, is the more confirmed, with regard to our other sensations, where there is no appearance of illusion.  (EPM 2.3, 238)

In the second place, Kames thinks that our senses must be deemed trustworthy provided they perform the function proper to them. Now, what is that function? Not to mirror material things with maximum exactitude, but to provide for “the ends of life and action” (EPM 1.3, 152). And if we judge things by this pragmatic standard, Kames claims, we cannot deny that the manifest image conjured up by our senses is decidedly superior to a purely objective or qualia-free picture of the world: “The ends of life and action are better provided for by such artifice, than if these perceptions were more exact copies of their objects” (EPM 1.3, 152–3; cf. 1.3, 212–13; 2.3, 238–9; 2.7, 383–4).12 But if our lives are enriched and our actions are more successful in virtue of the fact that things appear to us to have secondary qualities, we should conclude that our senses are performing their function well when they represent material objects as having such qualities, even though colours and flavour and their ilk are not real features of the external world: [I]t is now universally admitted, that the qualities called secondary, which we by natural instinct attribute to matter, belong not properly to matter, nor exist really without us. Colour in particular is a sort of visionary beauty, which nature has spread over all her works. It is a wonderful artifice, to present objects to us thus differently distinguished: to mark them out to the eye in various attires, so as to be best known and remembered: and to paint on the fancy, gay and lively, grand and striking, or sober and melancholy scenes: whence many of our most

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

kames and the argument from perceptual reliability   63 pleasurable and most affecting sensations arise . . . From this, and other instances of the same kind which might be adduced, it appears that our perceptions some times, are less accommodated to the truth of things, than to the end for which our senses are designed. (EPM 1.3, 153–5; emphasis mine) [T]he Almighty has adapted our senses, not to the discovery of the inanimate nature and essences of things, but to the uses and conveniences of life . . . he has, in several instances, exhibited natural objects to us, not in their real, but in a sort of artificial view, clothed with such distinctions, and producing such sensations as are for the benefit of man . . . Life is conducted according to this artificial view of things, and, by our speculations, is not in the least affected.  (EPM 1.3, 190) After we have discovered, by philosophy, that several of the appearances of nature, are only useful illusions, that secondary qualities exist not in matter, and that our sensible ideas, in various instances, do not correspond to philosophic truth; after these discoveries are made, do they, in the least, affect even the philosophy himself in ordinary action? Does not he, in common with the rest of mankind, proceed, as it is fit he should, upon the common system of appearances and natural feelings?  (EPM 1.3, 215) When any sense presents to our view, an appearance that may be called deceitful, we plainly discover some useful purpose intended. The deceit is not the effect of an imperfect or arbitrary constitution; but wisely contrived, to give us such notice of things, as may best suit the purposes of life.  (EPM 2.3, 238–9)

Underlying this part of Kames’s reply to Objection 2 is a theme which plays an important role in the Essays: the primacy in human life of conduct over contemplation, of action over speculation, of practice over theory. Because we are engaged and embodied agents first and detached subjects second, Kames seems to think, human knowledge cannot be understood purely as an end in itself; and because we must reason and believe in order to act and work, our view of the world is conditioned and limited by our practical interests: “It was not intended that man should make profound discoveries. He is framed to be more an active than a contemplative being; and his views both of the natural and moral world are so adjusted, as to be made subservient to correctness of action rather than of belief ” (EPM 1.3, 152).13 The latter claim points towards Kames’s so-called ‘providential naturalism’: the view that our constitution and our faculties of knowledge have been given to us by a wise and benevolent Creator, and that they were designed to help us make something of ourselves in the world which God has made.14 3.  Finally, Kames maintains that the logical consequences of scepticism about perception are extremely far-reaching and radical. Since nothing is more evident to us than the fundamental veracity of our senses under normal conditions, consistency demands that we condemn all our basic belief-forming faculties if we condemn the run-of-themill testimony of perception. This means that scepticism cannot be neatly contained or compartmentalized; once the seed of philosophical doubt about our senses has been planted, it must spread unchecked like a preternaturally noxious weed, choking even the brightest flowers in the garden of belief. The core of this argument—the Perceptual

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

64  kames and the argument from perceptual reliability Reliability Thesis’s denial leads logically to global scepticism—is expounded economically in the following two passages: [A]ny doctrine, which leads to a distrust of our senses, must land in universal scepticism. If natural feelings, whether for internal or external senses, are not admitted as evidence of truth, I cannot see, that we can be certain of any fact whatever. It is clear, from what is now observed, that, upon this sceptical system, we cannot be certain even of our own existence. (EPM 2.2, 234–5; cf. 236) A late author, who gives us a treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge, by denying the reality of external objects, strikes at the root of the veracity of our senses, and thereby paves the way to the most inveterate scepticism. For what reliance can we have upon our senses, if they deceive us in a point so material? If we can be prevailed upon, to doubt of the reality of external objects, the next step will be, to doubt of what passes in our own minds, of the reality of our ideas and perceptions. For we have not a stronger consciousness, nor a clearer conviction of the one, than of the other. And the last step will be, to doubt of our own existence; for it is shown in the essay immediately foregoing [i.e.—“Of the Idea of Self and of Personal Identity”], that we have no certainty of this fact, but what depends upon sense and feeling. (EPM 2.3, 239–40)

Start as a sceptic about perceptual beliefs, Kames cautions his readers, and in the end you will discover that absolutely none of your beliefs are left standing—not your belief that you are the same person today as you were yesterday, not your belief that you are now thinking about Scottish philosophy, not even your belief that you exist. Such supposedly privileged beliefs about one’s self are ultimately based on feeling or consciousness, and the deliverances of consciousness (an ‘internal sense’) are no more authoritative than those of perception (our ‘external senses’). What this means is that we are faced with a choice: either we must take it for granted that our most basic perceptions can be trusted on the whole and for the most part, or we must embrace scepticism about absolutely everything. That is to say, Kames maintains that either we must grant that the Perceptual Reliability Thesis is a foundational and self-evident belief, or we must become global sceptics who deny that anything can be known or reasonably believed. There is no third option, no way to escape this stark dilemma.

2.4  The Immediate Object Thesis So far Kames has made three points about the Perceptual Reliability Thesis. First, human beings trust their senses by nature, moved by a deep and unshakeable faith in perception’s power to reveal salient aspects of the world. Second, two stock arguments against trusting our senses are non sequiturs, and no one should be persuaded by such objections to take scepticism seriously in theory—which is the only way one could take it seriously, since one has no choice but to rely on one’s senses in practice. Third, scepticism about perception eventuates in a form of global or all-encompassing scepticism, because we cannot trust anything if we cannot trust our senses.15 Now if all this is

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

kames and the argument from perceptual reliability   65 true, Kames asks, what reason can we possibly have to doubt that we perceive aspects of a mind-independent world most of the time? Unless the very idea of perceiving external things is somehow incoherent or absurd (and no one, Kames thinks, has ever shown that), it seems we are entitled to conclude that we normally perceive more or less what we think we perceive—everything from aqueducts to ziggurats and back again. When the veracity of our senses is thus founded on the necessity of our nature, and confirmed by constant experience, it cannot but appear strange, that it should come into the mind of any man to call it into question.  (EPM 2.3, 239) And if he cannot prove it [i.e.—the perception of external things] to be a contradiction, the question is at an end; for, supposing only the fact to be possible, we have the very highest evidence of its reality, that our nature is capable of, no less than the testimony of our senses. (EPM 2.3, 259)

This sums up Kames’s answer to the first question we identified in Section 2.2: Why accept premise P1? We now turn to our second question: Does C follow from P1? That is to say, can the Thesis of Perceptual Realism be validly derived or deduced from the Perceptual Reliability Thesis? We may be strongly inclined to answer this question in the negative, since it seems quite clear that there is no logical inconsistency involved in affirming the Perceptual Reliability Thesis while denying the Thesis of Perceptual Realism. If we probe a bit deeper, however, we discover that Kames’s Argument for Perceptual Realism is best understood as an enthymeme, and that it rests on an unstated premise about the objects of perceptual experience and belief. Here is a rough approximation of that phantom premise—a premise also accepted by Reid, Stewart, and Hamilton—which we may call the Immediate Object Thesis: P2.  The immediate objects of veridical perception are not mind-dependent ideas or impressions, but material things existing independently of perception and minds. Once this suppressed premise has been identified, we can state the Argument from Perceptual Reliability in a more or less linear fashion. According to the Perceptual Reliability Thesis, we cannot doubt that our faculties of sense-perception are basically trustworthy or reliable under normal conditions. Hence it must be granted that most of our ordinary perceptual beliefs are true; for to say that a belief-forming faculty or cognitive process is reliable is to say, inter alia, that most of its outputs under normal or standard conditions (however those are defined) are correct. Is this enough to vindicate perceptual realism? No, because we still do not know whether the objects of our ordinary perceptual beliefs are mind-independent substances with qualities, or whether they are merely Berkeleyan bundles of ideas or mind-dependent appearances.16 The introduction of the Immediate Object Thesis is supposed to settle this issue in the perceptual realist’s favour. Since our constitution is such that perceptual inputs naturally and ineluctably lead us to believe that the objects whose qualities we

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

66  kames and the argument from perceptual reliability immediately perceive (e.g.—trees and rocks) are mind-independent substances, all or almost all of our perceptual beliefs would be false if the Thesis of Perceptual Realism were false. Yet if all or almost all of our perceptual beliefs were false, perception would be inherently deceitful and treacherous; and this proposition, needless to say, cannot be reconciled with the Perceptual Reliability Thesis. The Thesis of Perceptual Realism must therefore be true: most of the things we immediately encounter in perception under standard conditions—thistles and whistles, teacups and tables—exist independently of our minds, and are typically more or less as they appear to us. Case closed? By no means: we know very well that the Berkeleyan idealist, who rejects Perceptual Realism but has no wish to quarrel with the Perceptual Reliability Thesis, will now go on the offensive and attack the Immediate Object Thesis with gusto. To be more specific, Berkeley and his immaterialist minions will grant P1, but plead that P2 is false because we perceive nothing but mind-dependent entities: our own ideas, impressions, or sensations. To say that Kames is sceptical about their proposal would be an understatement: The doctor’s fundamental proposition is, that we can perceive nothing but our own ideas or perceptions. This, at best, is an ambiguous expression. For, taking perception or sensation in its proper sense, as signifying every object we perceive, it is a mere identical proposition, sciz. that we perceive nothing but what we perceive. But, taking the doctor’s proposition as he intended it, that we can have no perception or consciousness of any thing, but what exists in our own minds, he had certainly no reason to take this assertion for granted; and yet he has never once attempted a proof of it: tho’, in so bold an undertaking, as that of annihilating the whole universe, his own mind excepted, he had no reason to hope, that an assertion, so singular, and so contradictory to common sense and feeling, would be taken upon his word. It may be true, that it is not easy to explain, nor even to comprehend, by what means we perceive external objects. But our ignorance is, in most cases, a very indifferent argument against matter of fact. At this rate, he may take upon himself equally to deny the bulk of the operations in the natural world, which have not hitherto been explained by him, or others. And, at bottom, ’tis perhaps as difficult to explain the manner of perceiving our own ideas, or the impressions made upon us, as to explain the manner of perceiving external objects. (EPM 2.3, 257–8)

According to Kames, the Berkeleyan view that ‘we can perceive nothing but our own ideas or our perceptions’ faces a dilemma which can be reconstructed as follows. First Horn: Suppose ‘perceptions’ simply means ‘the objects we perceive’. In that case, Berkeley’s fundamental proposition is ‘a mere identical proposition’ or barren analytical truth; for to say that we perceive what we perceive is hardly informative, let alone philosophically interesting or illuminating. Yet this toothless tautology, which is compatible with P2, is certainly not what Berkeley had in mind. Second Horn: Suppose ‘perceptions’ means ‘mind-dependent entities’ (i.e.—items which are purely mental, or exist only in the mind). This accurately reflects Berkeley’s intentions, and it is indeed incompatible with P2, the Immediate Object Thesis. Nevertheless, Kames

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

kames and the argument from perceptual reliability   67 is convinced that we should not accept this account of perception, because it faces at least three serious problems, all of which are identified in the passage cited above. Problem 1: The view that ‘we can have no perception or consciousness of any thing, but what exists in our own minds’ is certainly not a self-evident or foundational truth. Because it runs counter to ‘common sense and feeling’, this account of perception must be defended with solid arguments or convincing proofs; for we need to be persuaded to accept what is counter-intuitive, and what is not self-evident must be made evident to us if we are to regard it as worthy of belief. Yet Berkeley, protests Kames, treats the account of perception on which his idealist scheme depends as if it were self-evident or common knowledge: “[H]e certainly had no reason to take this assertion for granted; and yet he has never once attempted a proof of it” (EPM 2.3, 257; cf. 383–4). Problem 2: That we cannot explain a fact or a phenomenon does not entitle us to deny its existence; otherwise, observation would be totally at the mercy of theory in science. Yet Berkeley, it seems, has reasoned as follows: because we cannot explain how the mind can perceive mind-independent things, we must deny that the mind perceives mind-independent things.17 Kames points out that this will not do: “It may be true, that it is not easy to explain, nor even to comprehend, by what means we perceive external objects. But our ignorance is, in most cases, a very indifferent argument against matter of fact” (EPM 2.3, 258). Problem 3: If it is difficult to understand how the mind can perceive external objects which are material, Kames observes, it is no less difficult to understand how the mind can perceive internal objects which are mental: “And at bottom, ’tis perhaps as difficult to explain the manner of perceiving our own ideas, or the impressions made upon us, as to explain the manner of perceiving external objects” (EPM 2.3, 257–8). But if we have no insight into how the mind perceives ideas, Berkeley’s account of perception cannot be reckoned satisfactory, since it merely substitutes a mystery for an enigma, replacing a stubborn old riddle with a new and no less tractable one.

2.5  The Incoherence of Idealism Yet we mustn’t give the impression that Kames believes that Berkeley’s case for idealism is merely inconclusive. No; Berkeley is actually a global sceptic sans le savoir, we are told, because his immaterialist views imply that our senses are inherently fallacious or mendacious. This point is hammered home with a bang in a passage which we cited in its entirety in Section 2.3, and the relevant part of it deserves to be cited again: A late author, who gives us a treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge, by denying the reality of external objects, strikes at the root of the authority of our senses, and thereby paves the way to the most inveterate scepticism. For what reliance can we have upon our senses, if they deceive us in a point so material?  (EPM 2.3, 240)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

68  kames and the argument from perceptual reliability The core of Kames’s argument is easily isolated. If Berkeley’s idealism is correct, there are no external objects in the realist’s sense of the term; and if there are no external objects in the realist’s sense of the term, ‘the authority of our senses’ is totally undermined. The argument for the latter conditional depends on two assumptions: (a) our senses naturally and normally lead us to believe that the things whose attributes we immediately perceive are mind-independent substances, and (b) our senses must be deemed wildly unreliable if ‘they deceive us in a point so material’—if, that is to say, they naturally and normally lead us to believe in a class of things which simply do not exist. It follows from this, Kames believes, that we cannot trust our senses if Berkeley’s idealism is true. Yet the argument doesn’t stop there, because Kames maintains (as we saw in Section 2.3) that if we cannot trust our senses, we cannot trust anything at all. Berkeley’s idealism thus entails a form of global scepticism, according to which you cannot know anything—not even that you are thinking, or that you exist. If natural feelings, whether from internal or external senses, are not admitted as evidence of truth, I cannot see, that we can be certain of any fact whatever . . . we cannot be certain even of our own existence.  (EPM 2.3, 234–5) If we can be prevailed upon, to doubt of the reality of external objects, the next step will be, to doubt of what passes in our own minds, of the reality of our ideas and perceptions. For we have not a stronger consciousness, nor a clearer conviction of the one, than of the other. And the last step will be, to doubt of our own existence; for it is shown in the essay immediately foregoing, that we have no certainty of this fact, but what depends upon sense and feeling. (EPM 2.3, 240; cf. EPM 2.7, 383, 387)

Here is another way of presenting Kames’s objection. Suppose that you are inclined to agree with the Berkeleyan thesis that only minds and their contents exist. Now ask yourself: Why do you not doubt the existence of your own mind and its contents or states? There is only one acceptable answer to this question, according to Kames: if you are candid as well as philosophically astute, you will admit that your belief in your own existence and in the existence of your thoughts ultimately rests not on reason or philosophical argument, but on natural feeling or internal sense. But the belief in ordinary mind-independent things—the very things Berkeley dismisses as mythical— also rests on natural feeling and external sense, not on reason or philosophical argument. The problem with Berkeleyans, therefore, is that they are inconsistent—that they judge things by a double standard. For if a Berkeleyan thinks she is justified in believing in the existence of her mind and its subjective contents, she should also think that she is justified in believing in the existence of material objects; and if she thinks that she is not justified in believing in the existence of material objects, she should also think she is not justified in believing in the existence of her mind and its contents. In the end, there are only two coherent or internally consistent positions: perceptual realism (for those who respect the testimony of our nature), or something less than solipsism (for those who don’t). Idealism, being essentially an arbitrary and ad hoc compromise, is not a real option.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

kames and the argument from perceptual reliability   69

2.6  A Diamond in the Rough The Argument from Perceptual Reliability developed in the Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion seems simple but sensible, sane yet suggestive.18 Nevertheless, even sympathetic readers may be puzzled or troubled by certain features of Kames’s defence of perceptual realism. Here, for the purposes of illustration, are two apparent problems with his view. 1. In the first edition of the Essays, Kames admits—nay, he insists—that our natural feeling that we are metaphysically free and morally responsible agents is fallacious.19 The problem this admission creates for his system is a serious one: if one of our God-given natural convictions is deceitful, why not another? To be more specific, how do we know that those natural feelings which speak in favour of perceptual realism are not every bit as specious and misleading as the natural feelings which speak in favour of libertarian free will and moral responsibility?20 2. If Kames denies that secondary qualities are real attributes of bodies, what does he think secondary qualities are? Some philosophers would say the answer is perfectly clear: if secondary qualities are not in the world, they must be identified with ideas in the mind. Yet it seems that Kames must reject this conventional answer on pain of inconsistency, because it presupposes a theory of perception which is incompatible with the Immediate Object Thesis: the theory that nothing is present to the mind in perception except one’s ideas or impressions.21 These examples suggest that more needs to be said about the presuppositions and the implications of Kames’s two premises: the Perceptual Reliability Thesis and the Immediate Object Thesis. Assuming this is correct, it seems fair to compare Kames’s Argument from Perceptual Reliability to the proverbial diamond in the rough. In order to see what this dialectical diamond looks like when it has been cleaned, cut, and polished by a professional, we must turn to the works of Kames’s younger friend Thomas Reid, whose classic statement of the case for common sense realism is the subject of the next chapter.

Notes 1. Dugald Stewart knew whereof he spoke when he praised “the active and adventurous spirit of Lord Kames” (SW 1: 463). For extended scholarly treatments of Kames’s life and career, see the biographies by Lehmann (1971) and Ross (1972); for an entertaining and less academic account, see Herman (2001), Chapter 4. A helpful overview of the Essays can be found in Norton (1982), Chapter 4. 2. The philosopher-judge Lord Monboddo (1714–99) was unimpressed by his colleague’s literary productions: “When Kames asked him if he had read Elements of Criticism, Monboddo replied tartly: ‘I have not, my lord. You write a good deal faster than I am able to read’ ” (Ross 1972: 335). For more on Monboddo, see Cloyd (1972).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

70  kames and the argument from perceptual reliability 3. As Ian Simpson Ross has noted, the essay “On Liberty and Necessity” (EPM 1.3, 151–218) “gave the book its notoriety and put Henry Home in danger of religious persecution” (Ross 1972: 103). For more on the reception of the first edition of the Essays, see Ross (1972), Chapters 6 and 8. 4. “On the Authority of the Senses”, which David Fate Norton describes as “the most important essay of [Kames’s] book” (Norton 1982: 178), is the third essay in Part II of the 1751 ­edition (EPM 2.3, 237–69). On the question of Kames’s influence on Reid, see Laurie (1902: 103) and Ross (1972: 99). 5. Hugh Blair (1718–1800), Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at Edinburgh, made this point in a 1774 letter to James Beattie: “Tho’ Lord Kames is commonly confounded with the Sceptical Writers, yet I have always thought that He was the first person who led into this method of Philosophizing, in his Essays On Belief, Authority of our Senses &c, where he professedly answers D. Hume’s Principles by recurring to our Natural original Feelings or Perceptions of Truth; & Illustrates the Doctrine very properly: tho’ by succeeding writers it has been more fully developed” (quoted in Ross 1972: 345). Blair’s discerning verdict was seconded a century later by John Veitch: “Henry Home (1696–1782), better known as Lord Kames, an acute and original thinker, in his Essays upon the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (1751), made close approximation to the special doctrines of Reid” (SW 10: xix–xx). 6. As James Harris has pointed out, Kamesian natural feelings are similar to Reidian first principles: “Natural beliefs, or feelings, are conceived of, by Kames as by Reid and Beattie, as natural in the sense of being elements of the human constitution” (Harris 2005: 106). 7. Modest foundationalism, to be more precise. See Feldman (2003: 70–5). 8. Hume’s well-known characterization of Berkeley’s arguments should be borne in mind: “[T]hey admit of no answer and produce no conviction. Their only effect is to cause that momentary amazement and irresolution and confusion, which is the result of scepticism” (Hume 1748: §12, 155). 9. For some interesting reflections on this idea, see Strawson (1985), Chapter 1. 10. Compare this with Beattie: “A distempered sense, as well as an impure or unequal medium, may doubtless communicate false sensations; but we are never imposed upon by them in any thing material” (EOT 2.1, 121–2). 11. The term ‘manifest image’ was coined by Wilfrid Sellars (1963). 12. This idea is not new; Descartes had said something similar about the role of secondary qualities in Meditation VI (Descartes (1641: 118). For an intriguing argument which begins with secondary qualities and ends with God, see Adams (1987), Chapter 16. 13. “Man is by nature fitted for labour, and his enjoyment lyes in action . . . [M]an was intended an active being, and therefore left to his own industry, as much as possible” (EPM 1.2, 104–5; 2.5, 309; cf. 2.7, 371). 14. The term ‘providential naturalism’ was coined by David Fate Norton, who applied it to Kames, among others; see Norton (1982: 171, 190–1). For the record, Kames maintains that belief in God is justified in the same way as belief in external objects—to wit, not by recondite arguments which only a handful of philosophers can understand, but by our natural feelings and intuitive perceptions. For Kames’s defence of theism, see EPM 2.7, 315–49. 15. This idea was used to good effect by the Scottish writer James Hogg (1770–1835) in his spellbinding novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824): “We have

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

kames and the argument from perceptual reliability   71 nothing on earth but our senses to depend on: if these deceive us, what are we to do?” (Hogg 1824: 95, cf. 99; emphasis mine). 16. For Kames’s defence of a substance ontology, see EPM 2.3, 247–52. 17. “For so short-sighted a creature as man, it is the worst reason on the world for denying any well attested fact, that we cannot account for the manner by which it is brought about . . . [I] t is mere arrogance, to pretend to doubt of the fact, upon that account; for it is, in effect, maintaining, that there is nothing in nature, but what we can explain” (EPM 2.3, 266–7). 18. To quote Henry Laurie: “The Essay on the Authority of our Senses, though not free from ambiguity, maintains the immediate knowledge of a material world as against the representative theory which prevailed; and in insisting on the twofold reference—of impressions or sensations to the sentient self and of material qualities to the not-self—Kames laid the only foundation on which a reasonable doctrine of Natural Realism can rest” (Laurie 1902: 104). 19. See “Of Liberty and Necessity” (EPM 1.3, 151–218). For a careful examination of the ways in which Kames’s views of the free will question changed in the years following the publication of the first edition of the Essays, see Harris (2005), Chapter 4. 20. Although Kames wrestles with these problems in the first edition of the Essays (EPM 1.3, 207–16; 2.2, 235–6), it is far from clear that the solutions he outlines are satisfactory. 21. At times it seems as if Kames was prepared to accept this answer: “[I]n this very instance of secondary qualities, philosophy easily corrects the false appearances, and teaches us, that they are rather to be considered, as impressions made upon the mind, than as qualities of the object” (EPM 2.3, 238).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

3 Reid and the Problem of the External World Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, have all employed their genius and skill to prove the existence of a material world; and with very bad success. Poor untaught mortals believe undoubtedly, that there is a sun, moon, and stars; an earth, which we inhabit; country, friends, and relations, which we enjoy; land, houses, and moveables, which we possess. But philosophers, pitying the credulity of the vulgar, resolve to have no faith but what is founded upon reason. They apply to philosophy to furnish them with reasons for the belief of those things which all mankind have believed, without being able to give any reason for it. And surely one would expect, that, in matters of such importance, the proof would not be difficult: but it is the most difficult thing in the world. For these three great men, with the best good will, have not been able, from all the treasures of philosophy, to draw one argument, that is fit to convince a man that can reason, of the existence of any one thing without him. —Thomas Reid

3.0 Introduction The main purpose of this chapter is to understand how Thomas Reid understood what we now call ‘the problem of the external world’: the problem of how we can have knowledge of a material world if we have non-inferential knowledge of nothing but the subjective contents of our own minds (e.g.—our ideas, impressions, representations, sense-data). Reid maintains that this problem is insoluble, because he is convinced that external world sceptics are right about one thing: mind-independent things are unquestionably beyond our ken if we do not encounter them directly in perception. Accordingly, I submit that Reid’s brand of common sense realism is best seen not as a solution to the problem of the external world, but as a denial of the Cartesian assumptions which made that problem seem possible and urgent in the first place. It will expedite matters if we begin with a schematic reconstruction of Reid’s basic argument for common sense realism—an argument whose basic ingredients, as we shall see in Chapter 4, were artfully recycled by Dugald Stewart and Sir William Hamilton. The argument’s opening move is simple: either the existence of the material world is

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   73 self-evident, or the existence of the material world is not self-evident; and if its existence is not self-evident, then either it can be made evident, or it cannot be made evident. This leaves us with three basic positions: A. Common Sense Realism: The existence of the material world is self-evident or non-inferentially justified for us. This view is endorsed by Reid as well as Lord Kames, and we may call it common sense realism, since it denies that the ordinary person’s belief in external things requires any philosophical proof or inferential justification. According to Reid, this thesis was one to which the vast majority of pre-Cartesian philosophers subscribed. B. Representative Realism: The existence of the material world is not self-­ evident, but it can be made evident. This is the view which Reid attributes to Descartes and Locke. We may call their view representative realism, because they contend that what is known directly are our subjective representations of external things, and that we know external things only through our subjective representations. C. Scepticism: The existence of the material world is not self-evident, and it cannot be made evident. This is the view which Reid attributes to Berkeley and Hume, although their positions differ significantly. For present purposes, we may refer to this third option simply as scepticism, since it denies that knowledge of a mind-independent world is possible. Reid is convinced that Option B, when thought through to the bitter end, becomes indistinguishable from Option C. He therefore concludes that only two options are really available to us: common sense realism and scepticism, or Options A and C.1 And there is no good reason to take Option C seriously, because arguments for it rest on the  untenable theory of ideas, which Reid characterizes as “[t]he hypothesis . . . That nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives it: That we do not really perceive things that are external, but only certain images or pictures of them imprinted upon the mind, which are called impressions and ideas” (IHM Dedication, 4). Option A, on the other hand, should be taken very seriously indeed, because we cannot coherently doubt any belief which is the immediate and necessary effect of our constitution, and there is ample evidence that one direct and necessary effect of our constitution is an obstinate conviction that the objects which we immediately perceive under standard perceptual conditions exist independently of perception. And if our constitution truly compels us to believe that we directly perceive a mind-independent world, the existence of that world must be treated as a first principle—treated, that is to say, as a principle for which proof is neither necessary (precisely because it is an epistemically foundational belief or intrinsically credible judgment) nor possible (because no ­propositions which we could use as premises in a proof of this proposition will be more evident than the proposition which the proof is supposed to establish). Reid concludes that it is perfectly reasonable for us to believe in material objects without any logical proof, and that the so-called

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

74  Reid and the Problem of the External World ‘problem of the external world’ is an epistemological bogeyman or phantom, a childish myth which modern philosophy must outgrow. If the problem of the external world is a myth, however, it is certainly a very resilient one, and many eminent and sophisticated thinkers have believed whole-heartedly in its reality. Where did it come from, this enduring and seductive riddle, and what is the secret of its extraordinary power and longevity? What are its underlying assumptions, and why have so many philosophers of the first rank been content to accept them? For answers to these questions, we turn without further ado to Reid.

3.1  The Cartesian Reformation in Philosophy According to Reid, the problem of the external world, far from being a perennial problem of philosophy, is a peculiarly modern puzzle which was virtually unknown to the ancient Greeks and the medieval schoolmen.2 To be more specific, Reid maintains that Descartes was the first major philosopher to take the view that the existence of trees and rocks is no better than an uncouth superstition or plebeian prejudice unless it can be established by rigorous reasoning or proof. The Aristotelians or Peripatetics, in contrast, took it for granted that external objects existed; according to their system, the reliability of sense-perception was a first principle, and the existence of the material world encountered in perception was as plain and undeniable as the existence of anything could be.3 By refusing to follow their lead in this matter, Descartes not only broke dramatically with philosophy’s past; he also re-defined philosophy’s agenda for his successors. Reid believes this historical shift or sea-change is hugely significant, and he alludes to it many times in the Inquiry and the Essays on the Intellectual Powers: [B]efore the time of Descartes, it was taken for a first principle, that there is a sun and a moon, an earth and sea, which really exist, whether we think of them or not. Descartes thought that the existence of those things ought to be proved by argument; and in this he has been followed by Malebranche, Arnauld, and Locke.  (EIP 6.4, 453–4) We do not find that any Peripatetic thought it incumbent upon him to prove the existence of a material world; but every writer upon the Cartesian system attempted this, until Berkeley clearly demonstrated the futility of their arguments; and thence concluded, that there was no such thing as a material world; and that the belief of it ought to be rejected as a vulgar error.  (IHM 7, 210) The Peripatetic, taking it for granted that bodies and their qualities do really exist, and are such as we commonly take them to be, inferred from them the nature of his sensations . . . The Cartesian, on the contrary, thinks, that the existence of body, or of any of its qualities, is not to be taken as a first principle; and that we ought to admit nothing concerning it, but what, by just reasoning, can be deduced from our sensations.  (IHM 7, 209) Since the time of Descartes, Philosophers have very generally thought that the existence of external objects of sense requires proof, and can only be proved from the existence of their ideas.  (EIP 2.7, 106; cf. EIP 2.9, 128)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   75 They were taught by Descartes, and by all that came after him, that the existence of the objects of sense is not self-evident, but requires to be proved by arguments; and although Descartes, and many others, had laboured to find arguments for this purpose, there did not appear to be that force and clearness in them which might have been expected in a matter of such importance.  (EIP 2.10, 138) It was this theory of ideas that led Descartes, and those that followed him, to think it necessary to prove, by philosophical arguments, the existence of material objects. And who does not see that philosophy must make a very ridiculous figure in the eyes of sensible men, while it is employed in mustering up metaphysical arguments, to prove the that there is a sun and a moon, an earth and a sea: Yet we find these truly great men, Descartes, Malebranche, Arnauld, and Locke, seriously employing themselves in this argument. Surely their principles led them to think, that all men, from the beginning of the world, believed the existence of these things upon insufficient grounds, and to think that they would be able to place upon a more rational foundation this universal belief of mankind. But the misfortune is, that all the laboured arguments they have advanced, to prove the existence of those things we see and feel, are mere sophisms: Not one of them will bear examination.  (EIP 2.14, 186) [A]ll modern philosophers seem to agree, that the existence of the objects of sense is not self-evident, because some of them have endeavoured to prove it by subtile reasoning, others to refute it. Neither of these can consider it as self-evident.  (EIP 2.20, 231)

Why did Descartes deny that the existence of a mind-independent physical world is one of the first principles of philosophy? We cannot hope to answer this question correctly, Reid opines, unless we remember what Descartes was reacting against: the philosophical outlook of Aristotle and the Peripatetics, who declared certain propositions to be first principles which were actually nothing of the kind, and whose systems rested on foundations which contained ‘many vulgar prejudices and rash judgments’. As long as the philosophy of Aristotle prevailed, it was held as a fixed point, that all proof must be drawn from principles already taken for granted. We must observe, however, that, in that philosophy, many things were assumed as first principles, which have no just claim to that character; such as, that the earth is at rest; that Nature abhors a vacuum; that there is no change in the heavens above the sphere of the moon; that the heavenly bodies move in circles, that being the most perfect figure; that bodies do not gravitate in their proper place; and many others. The Peripatetic philosophy, therefore, instead of being deficient in first principles, was redundant; instead of rejecting those that are truly such, it adopted, as first principles, many vulgar prejudices and rash judgments: And this seems, in general, to have been the spirit of ancient philosophy.  (EIP 6.7, 513; EIP 6.4, 454; BAL 713)

As far as Reid is concerned, Aristotle and his followers were absolutely right in thinking that philosophy cannot dispense with first principles; that is to say, with elementary propositions which are evident in and of themselves, and for which argument is neither possible nor necessary. What is more, the Peripatetics showed a healthy respect for the authority of common sense,4 and their firm attachment to its tenets prevented

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

76  Reid and the Problem of the External World them from becoming sceptics: “The old system admitted all the principles of common sense as first principles, without requiring any proof of them; and, therefore, though its reasoning was commonly vague, analogical, and dark, yet it was built upon a broad foundation, and had no tendency to scepticism” (IHM 7, 210). Unfortunately for Western philosophy, some of the propositions which Aristotle and his followers identified as first principles were not actually first principles; some of them, alas, were not even true. As a result, the logical solidity and integrity of philosophy’s foundations were seriously compromised, and much of what was built upon them was ready to totter and collapse. Descartes, understandably troubled by this discovery, concluded that philosophy needed to put its house in order—that it had to start from scratch, to make a fresh start, to rebuild from the ground up. But where and how should one begin the hard work of reconstruction? What propositions are philosophers entitled to assume without proof as their starting-points, and to employ as first principles or ultimate premises? Reid credits Descartes with seeing what was needed to solve this problem: a principled way of distinguishing propositions which are truly self-evident and basic from those which are mere pretenders or impostors. Determined to build anew on epistemically impeccable foundations and “cautious to avoid the snare in which Aristotle was taken, of admitting things as first principles too rashly” (EIP 6.7, 514), Descartes resolved not to accept anything as a first principle unless it was indubitable or absolutely ­certain. This dramatic and self-denying resolution, put into practice via the method of hyperbolic doubt, did away with countless prejudices which had previously been able to pass themselves off as self-evident truths or as indispensable axioms of thought. Intending to build a system upon a new foundation, he began with a resolution to admit nothing but what was absolutely certain and evident. He supposed that his senses, his memory, his reason, and every other faculty to which we trust in common life, might be fallacious; and  resolved to disbelieve every thing, until he was compelled by irresistible evidence to yield assent.  (IHM 7, 208) Being sensible of how apt we are to be led astray by prejudices of education, he thought the only way to avoid error, was, to resolve to doubt of every thing, and hold every thing to be uncertain; even those things which he had been taught to hold as most certain, until he had such clear and cogent evidence as compelled his assent.  (EIP 2.8, 115)

To wash away the thick mud of custom and tradition, to cleanse and purify the intellect sullied by habit and prejudice, to fortify and prepare the mind for the reception of truth—this, in Reid’s eyes, was what Descartes hoped to achieve by cultivating the art of doubt.5 And let no one think that the revival of this art was a small service to have rendered to philosophy, because scholasticism in the period immediately prior to Descartes was in a truly pitiable state—full of empty jargon, rife with sterile verbal disputes, and abounding in dogmatic appeals to Aristotle, whose authority was so

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   77 widely acknowledged that he was referred to as ‘the Philosopher’. This was a caricature or ghastly parody of philosophy, says Reid, and its practitioners learned almost nothing from it apart from “the art of speaking learnedly, and disputing subtilely, without producing any invention in human life” (EIP 2.8, 114). Philosophy thus needed a ­radical reformation—one which would put an end not only to Aristotle’s reign as il maestro di color che sanno, but also to the obscurantist and pedantic cast of mind produced by the uncritical study of his works. Such was the philosophy of the schools of Europe, during many ages of darkness and barbarism that succeeded the decline of the Roman empire; so that there was great need of a reformation in philosophy as well as in religion. The light began to dawn at last; a spirit of inquiry sprang up, and men got the courage to doubt of the dogmas of Aristotle, as well as of the decrees of Popes. The most important step in the reformation of religion was to destroy the claim of infallibility, which hindered men from using their judgment in matters of religion: And the most important step in the reformation of philosophy was to destroy the authority, of which Aristotle had so long had peaceable possession. The last had been attempted by Lord Bacon and others, with no less zeal than the first by Luther and Calvin.  (EIP 2.8, 114–15)

According to Reid, Descartes reformed philosophy chiefly by raising the question of method, inviting philosophers to think hard about what they were doing and how they were doing it. That the authority of the natural light of reason exceeds that of the Philosopher and his dry-as-dust commentators; that the standards of argument in philosophy should be modelled on those employed in mathematics; that clear and distinct ideas are better than ‘hard words and dark notions’; that doubt is needed to safeguard the rights of reason: all these ideas were championed persuasively by Descartes, and their diffusion has produced a new sensibility whose conspicuous ­virtues are widely and rightly prized: The triumph of the Cartesian system over that of Aristotle, is one of the most remarkable revolutions in the history of philosophy . . . The authority of Aristotle was now no more. That reverence for hard words and dark notions, by which men’s understanding had been strangled in early years, was turned into contempt, and every thing suspected which was not clearly and distinctly understood. This is the spirit of the Cartesian philosophy, and is a more important acquisition to mankind than any of its particular tenets; and for exerting this spirit so zealously, and spreading it so successfully, Descartes deserves immortal honour.  (EIP 2.8, 125)

Descartes was right to rebel against a decadent scholasticism, Reid thinks, and the Cartesian campaign to reform philosophy from the ground up was undoubtedly a move in the right direction. Yet on the matter of first principles, the Cartesian reformation proved to be as disappointingly one-sided as the scholastic philosophy which it combated and eventually supplanted. “Men rarely leave one extreme without running into the contrary” (BAL 708; EIP 2.8, 120; EIP 6.4, 454; EIP 6.7, 518; EAP 4.3, 275; EAP 4.11, 357): this maxim of Reid’s is beautifully illustrated by l’affaire Descartes, a  meta-philosophical French farce in which the hero reacts against one unsound

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

78  Reid and the Problem of the External World extreme (an excess of first principles) only to embrace its opposite (a deficiency of first principles), thereby missing the golden mean of intellectual virtue. Until this elusive mean is achieved and the proper balance between extremes is struck, the philosophical reformation promised by Descartes is just that—a noble promise, an unfinished p ­ roject, an ambitious work in progress. Men have always been prone, when they leave one extreme to run into the opposite; and this spirit in the ancient philosophy, to multiply first principles beyond reason, was a strong presage, that, when the authority of the Peripatetic system was at an end, the next reigning system would diminish their number beyond reason. This accordingly happened in that great revolution of the philosophical republic brought about by Descartes. That truly great reformer in philosophy, cautious to avoid the snare in which Aristotle was taken, of admitting things as first principles too rashly, resolved to doubt of every thing, and to with-hold his assent, until it was forced by the clearest evidence.  (EIP 6.7, 514)

The truth about first principles, Reid is firmly persuaded, lies somewhere in between the diametrically opposed stances of the ancients and the moderns, the Peripatetics and the Cartesians. For if the Peripatetics did not doubt nearly enough, the Cartesians have doubted far too much; and if the ancients saw first principles where there were none, myopic moderns can barely see the first principles which are right under everyone’s nose. Indeed, Descartes was so circumspect and suspicious, so determined not to be duped or bamboozled, so reluctant to embrace ordinary human convictions, that he overlooked many self-evident truths (such as the independent existence of things encountered in perception) which earlier thinkers had recognized as first principles without any second thoughts or scrupulous reservations. Being a mathematician, moreover, Descartes was influenced by his fondness for elegant and economical solutions; and the unfortunate effects of his grand passion for parsimony, especially where axioms and self-evident truths were concerned, are readily apparent to discerning readers of his philosophical works. There is, no doubt, a beauty in raising a large fabric of knowledge upon a few first principles. The stately fabric of mathematic knowledge, raised upon the foundation of a few axioms and definitions, charms every beholder. Descartes, who was well acquainted with this beauty in the mathematical sciences, seems to have been ambitious to give the same beautiful simplicity to his system of philosophy; and therefore sought only one first principle as the foundation of all our knowledge, at least of contingent truths. (EIP 6.7, 516; cf. EIP 2.8, 115; IHM 7, 210–11)

Reid’s verdict? The Cartesian system resembles an edifice whose foundations, though solid enough in their way, are unnervingly narrow and scandalously incomplete: “The modern system has narrowed the foundation so much, that every superstructure raised upon it appears top-heavy” (EIP 6.7, 518). But what exactly were Descartes’s foundations made of, and why did Reid think them unstable and too narrow? It is time to take a closer look at the minimalist substructure of the Cartesian system as Reid understood it.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   79

3.2  The Argument from the All or None Thesis According to Reid, the philosophy of Descartes officially rests on only one first principle of contingent truths: the assumption that the testimony of consciousness is inherently trustworthy. My external senses or perceptions may mislead me, says Descartes, so I may be wrong about how things stand in the world outside my mind (assuming that such a world exists); but I cannot be wrong about what is directly present to my mind—my thoughts, sensations, feelings, and the like. If I think that I am in pain, then I am in pain; if I think that I am thinking of Geneva, I am thinking of Geneva; if I think that I am angry, I am angry; and so on. Doubt can never get a foothold in this domain, Cartesians confidently avouch, because no distinction between appearance and reality can be drawn in the sphere of pure subjectivity: The new system admits only one of the principles of common sense as a first principle; and pretends, by strict argumentation, to deduce all the rest from it. That our thoughts, our sensations, and every thing of which we are conscious, hath a real existence, is admitted in this system as a first principle; but every thing else must be made evident by the light of reason. Reason must rear the whole fabric of knowledge upon this single principle of consciousness.  (IHM 7, 210)

What is meant here by ‘consciousness’? What Reid has in mind is roughly equivalent to what later philosophers called ‘self-consciousness’ or ‘introspection’.6 Consciousness is a word used by Philosophers, to signify that immediate knowledge which we have of our present thoughts and purposes, and, in general, of all the present operations of our minds. Whence we may observe, that consciousness is only of things present . . . As that consciousness by which we have a knowledge of the operations of our own minds, is a different power from that by which we perceive external objects, and as these different powers have different names in our language, and, I believe, in all languages, a Philosopher ought carefully to preserve this distinction, and never to confound things so different in their nature. (EIP 1.1, 24; cf. EIP 6.5, 470)

Consciousness, then, is that intellectual power or cognitive faculty which gives you direct access to the contents and operations of your own mind at any given instant (e.g.—that you are thinking about Geneva, that you are in pain, that you are angry).7 The knowledge yielded by this inward-looking faculty is supposed to be ‘immediate’ in two senses. In the first place, such knowledge is held to be psychologically immediate, inasmuch as beliefs about my current sensations and thoughts are cognitively spontaneous beliefs—beliefs, that is to say, which are simply and suddenly thrust upon me, as opposed to being reached through a process of inference or argument.8 In the second place, such knowledge is epistemically immediate, inasmuch as beliefs about the contents and operations of one’s own mind are supposed to be basic or foundational beliefs which are justified non-inferentially and in their own right, as opposed to being justified in virtue of their logical or inferential relations to other beliefs. Because Descartes thinks that consciousness alone can be trusted without proof or supporting argument, the official starting-point or foundation of his philosophy

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

80  Reid and the Problem of the External World consists of nothing but the bare data of consciousness: one’s own thoughts and ­sensations, mental states and episodes, ideas and impressions. The Cartesian system therefore works from the ‘inside out’, as it were, moving from the subjective to the objective, from mind to world, from image to original, from thought to external object. Virtually all modern philosophers have been Cartesians in this respect, Reid observes, because their systems have proceeded from this radically subjectivist starting-point. But to come to the system of Descartes, concerning the human understanding; it was built, as we have observed, upon consciousness as its sole foundation, and with ideas as its materials; and all his followers have built upon the same foundation and with the same materials. (IHM 7, 212) And so far has his authority prevailed, that those who came after him have almost universally followed him in this track. This, therefore, may be considered as the spirit of modern philosophy, to allow of no first principles of contingent truths but this one, that the thoughts and operations of our own minds, of which we are conscious, are self-evidently real and true; but that every thing else that is contingent is to be proved by argument.  (EIP 6.7, 516) The Philosophers I have hitherto mentioned, after the time of Descartes, have all followed his method, in resting upon the truth of their own thoughts as a first principle, but requiring arguments for the proof of every other truth of a contingent nature . . .9  (EIP 6.7, 519) The other writers I have mentioned, after Descartes, may, I think, without impropriety, be called Cartesians: For though they differ from Descartes in some things, and contradict him in others, yet they set out from the same principles, and follow the same method, admitting no other first principle with regard to the existence of things but their own existence, and the existence of those operations of mind of which they are conscious, and requiring that the existence of a material world, and the existence of other men and things, should be proved by argument. (EIP 6.7, 525)

To appreciate why Reid thinks the Cartesian starting-point is too narrow, we need to introduce what I shall call the All or None Thesis. This Reidian thesis states that there are only two internally consistent or coherent attitudes you can have towards your natural belief-forming faculties: either (a) you think that you are entitled to trust all of them—consciousness, memory, perception, and reason—without proof, or (b) you think that you are entitled to trust none of them without proof.10 According to Option (a), it is reasonable for us to follow our instincts and to trust our fallible faculties without any supporting argument, believing what they tell us unless we have some specific reason for doubting their deliverances. According to Option (b), we are not entitled to assume that there is any truth in human faculties, and the fact that we trust them implicitly may be nothing but a practical joke played on us by an impish Demiurgos. Option (a) thus represents the natural standpoint of untutored common sense; Option (b), the artificial standpoint of radical philosophical scepticism. Suppose for the sake of argument that Reid’s All or None Thesis is correct, and that consistency requires us to choose between Options (a) and (b). It follows that Descartes has tried to do what cannot be done—to accept neither (a) nor (b), to pick and choose

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   81 among our natural faculties, to judge them by a double standard, to trust some of them (consciousness) without argument while looking askance at others (such as perception). Such invidious contrasts are unjustifiable, Reid maintains, because they are ultimately arbitrary: we cannot give a reason for trusting one of our natural faculties which is not a reason for trusting all the rest, nor can we give a reason for distrusting one of our natural faculties which is not a reason for distrusting all the rest. For it must always be remembered that every one of our faculties is fallible and limited, and that none of them is perfect or invulnerable to the thousand natural shocks which flesh is heir to: Reason, says the sceptic, is the only judge of truth, and you ought to throw off every opinion and every belief that is not grounded on reason. Why, Sir, should I believe the faculty of reason more than that of perception; they came both out of the same shop, and were made by the same artist; and if he puts one piece of false ware into my hands, what should hinder him from putting another?  (IHM 6.20, 169) [T]he faculties of consciousness, of memory, of external sense, and of reason, are all equally the gifts of Nature. No good reason can be assigned for receiving the testimony of one of them, which is not of equal force with regard to the others. The greatest Sceptics admit the testimony of consciousness, and allow that what it testifies is to be held as a first principle. If therefore they reject the immediate testimony of sense or memory, they are guilty of an inconsistency . . .  (EIP 6.4, 463) The imagination, the memory, the judging and reasoning powers, are all liable to be hurt, or even destroyed, by disorders of the body, as well as our powers of perception; but we do not on this account call them fallacious. Our senses, our memory, and our reason, are all limited and imperfect: This is the lot of humanity: But they are such as the Author of our being saw to be best fitted for us in our present state. Superior natures may have intellectual powers which we have not, or such as we have, in a more perfect degree, and less liable to accidental disorders: But we have no reason to think that God has given fallacious powers to any of his creatures: This would be to think dishonourably of our Maker, and would lay a foundation for universal scepticism.  (EIP 2.22, 243–4; cf. 243)

Reid’s point is not that Descartes is wrong to trust consciousness; it is that Descartes is wrong to trust consciousness and not trust perception, memory, and reason as well. For what is so special or authoritative about consciousness and its dictates? Why should introspection alone be favoured with our trust, and implicitly relied upon, while the rest of our ordinary faculties are treated as guilty until they can be proven innocent? As Reid frequently reminds us, it is not as if anyone can prove that consciousness is not inherently deceitful or mendacious: Can any man prove that his consciousness may not deceive him? No man can: nor can we give a better reason for trusting to it, than that every man, while his mind is sound, is determined, by the constitution of his nature, to give implicit belief to it, and to laugh at, or pity the man who doubts its testimony.  (IHM 1.3, 17) We cannot prove the existence of our minds, nor even of our thoughts and sensations. (IHM 5.8, 72)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

82  Reid and the Problem of the External World If a man should take it into his head to think or to say that his consciousness may deceive him, and to require a proof that it cannot, I know of no proof that can be given him; he must be left to himself as a man who denies first principles, without which there can be no reasoning. Every man finds himself under a necessity of believing what consciousness testifies, and everything that hath this testimony is taken as a first principle.  (EIP 1.2, 41–2) If I am asked to prove that I cannot be deceived by consciousness; to prove that it is not a fallacious sense; I can find no proof. I cannot find any antecedent truth from which it is deduced, or upon which its evidence depends. It seems to disdain any such derived authority, and to claim my assent in its own right.  (EIP 6.5, 470) We cannot give a reason why we believe even our sensations to be real and not fallacious; why we believe what we are conscious of; why we trust any of our natural faculties. We say, it must be so, it cannot be otherwise. This expresses only a strong belief, which is indeed the voice of Nature, and which therefore in vain we attempt to resist.  (EIP 6.6, 497)

But if you cannot prove that consciousness is not untrustworthy, why do you trust its testimony? Like his good friend Kames, Reid maintains that in the end all we can say is that ‘the constitution of our nature’ is such that we find the testimony of consciousness intrinsically credible, and that we are determined ‘to give implicit belief to it’. Does this mean that our belief in the veracity of consciousness must be true? No; but if this natural and inescapable belief is erroneous, our basic sense of what is true and what is false cannot be relied upon, and our constitution must be deemed untrustworthy and fallacious. Although this deeply pessimistic judgment may be true for all we know (we obviously cannot disprove it, since arguments against it are question-begging), it leaves no room in logical space for its own justification, and anyone who believes it cannot think she is justified in believing anything.11 It follows that any philosopher who rejects the latter thought must conclude that the belief in consciousness is indubitable in a double sense: first, because it is an instinctive and psychologically irresistible conviction; and second, because we could never coherently believe that we had good reasons to doubt it. And since everything we have just said about our faith in consciousness can also be said about our faith in our other natural faculties, it follows that perception, reason, and memory must be put on the same basic level as consciousness. He who plays favourites with his faculties thus sins against consistency, and Reid believes this grievous sin was unquestionably committed by Descartes: It might have been objected to this first principle of Descartes, how do you know that your consciousness cannot deceive you? You have supposed, that all you see, and hear, and handle, may be an illusion. Why therefore should the power of consciousness have this prerogative, to be believed implicitly, when all our other powers are supposed fallacious? To this objection, I know no other answer that can be made, but that we find it impossible to doubt of things of which we are conscious. The constitution of our nature forces this belief upon us. This is true, and is sufficient to justify Descartes, in assuming, as a first principle, the existence of thought, of which he was conscious.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   83 He ought, however, to have gone further in this track, and to have considered whether there may not be other first principles, which ought to be adopted for the same reason. But he did not see this to be necessary, conceiving that, upon this one first principle, he could support the whole fabric of human knowledge.  (EIP 6.7, 515; cf. EIP 2.8, 115)

To sum up: Descartes was right to be disturbed by the sterility and opacity of much late scholastic thought, right to reduce the number of first principles in philosophy, and right to think that the veracity of consciousness should be officially recognized as one of them. But Descartes was wrong to think that the veracity of consciousness was the only first principle which philosophy needed to acknowledge. Admit the reliability of one natural belief-forming faculty, Reid thinks, and you must admit the reliability of them all; honour the claims of consciousness, and you must honour the corresponding claims of perception, reason, and memory. And—here Reid speaks to us as a defender of common sense realism—if Descartes had only broadened the logical foundations of his system in this way, there would never have been any such thing as ‘the problem of the external world’: the problem, that is, of how knowledge of objects existing independently of consciousness can be inferred or derived from the immediately known data of consciousness. That problem, the reader will recall, is predicated on the  representationist assumption that we do not know material objects directly or ­non-inferentially but only (if at all) through the intervening medium of our ideas or impressions, which are the sole items we know directly or non-inferentially. Yet why should it be granted that we know our own minds directly, but do not know the material world outside them with equal directness? If the veracity of consciousness is a first principle, we are immediately justified in believing that the objects of consciousness (e.g.—our sensations and thoughts) exist. But if the veracity of perception is a first principle, we are immediately justified in believing that the ordinary objects of perception (e.g.—trees and rocks) exist. And we cannot claim the veracity of consciousness as a first principle without claiming the same about perception, if the All or None Thesis is true.12 So let us call this anti-Cartesian line of thought the Argument from the All or None Thesis. Like Kames’s Argument from Perceptual Reliability, Reid’s Argument from the All or None Thesis is an attempt to show that we do not need to prove the existence of the external world of matter any more than we need to prove the existence of the internal world of mind.13 To repeat: if consciousness can be trusted without argument, perception can be trusted without argument; if perception can be trusted without argument, we are non-inferentially justified in believing that the objects of our ordinary perceptions exist; and if we are non-inferentially justified in believing that the objects of such perceptions exist, we are non-inferentially justified in believing that there exists a mind-independent world peopled with familiar entities: forests and mountains, rivers and fields, books and loaves of bread. To be sure, this argument assumes that the objects of perception are material things existing independently of consciousness, instead being of mind-dependent ideas or impressions. Yet this is no mere assumption; as we shall see in Section 3.5, Reid attacks the theory of ideas forcefully and from

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

84  Reid and the Problem of the External World multiple angles. And if he is right both about the theory of ideas and about our right to believe without proof in perception’s reliability, his case for common sense realism seems very promising. But more of this anon; what we need to do now is ask how Descartes thought our belief in the external world could be vindicated if we have direct knowledge of nothing but the facts of consciousness. Once we have outlined the Cartesian solution to the problem of the external world, we can explain what Reid thought was wrong with it; and once we have explained that, we will have a deeper understanding of Reid’s common sense realism.

3.3  The Cartesian Solution to the Problem of the External World The most fundamental datum of consciousness for Descartes is summed up in his ­oft-quoted formula cogito, ergo sum: ‘I think; therefore I am’. As a Cartesian meditator, I can doubt that there is a God, or that I have a body, or that a material world exists; and yet as long as I am thinking (and to doubt is to think), I cannot doubt that I, as mind or thinking thing, exist. Moreover, Descartes thinks that this fact, being absolutely indubitable and foundational, can be used to rebuild our conceptual scheme from the ground up, and in Meditations of First Philosophy (1641) he argues that knowledge of self (Meditation II) eventually yields knowledge of God (Meditations III and V), and knowledge of God eventually yields knowledge of the material world (Meditation VI). Since the last sort of knowledge was the first casualty of the method of doubt in Meditation I, the Meditations can be read as a story of loss and recovery, where what we lost through the felix culpa of scepticism finally comes back to us in a purified and improved form. If Descartes is to be believed, the last thing we come to know through philosophical argument is a proposition which, in our pre-philosophical naïveté, we thought we knew without any argument at all: that middle-sized dry goods exist independently of perception and are usually more or less as we take them to be. The well-known proof of this proposition which Descartes advances in Meditation VI can be reconstructed as follows. We have a priori reasons for thinking that there exists a God, or an absolutely perfect being; we also have a priori reasons for thinking that an absolutely perfect being cannot be a deceiver. Yet God would surely be a deceiver if my God-given faculties were inherently fallacious; that is to say, if perception or reason naturally led me to make mistakes which I could never detect or correct. It follows that I am entitled to believe that there exists a material world which causes my perceptions, and that the basic features of things in that world correspond to qualities which I clearly and distinct apprehend. To be more specific, I am entitled to believe that physical objects really have primary qualities such as shape or size; but I am not entitled to believe that physical objects really have secondary qualities such as colour or taste, since such qualities exist only as fugitive sensations in our minds.14

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   85 As countless commentators have observed, Descartes’s solution to the problem of the external world takes the form of a deus ex machina, with a non-deceiving God guaranteeing a basic correspondence between mind and world, subject and object, representations and reality, ideas and things. It is a remarkably elegant piece of logical legerdemain, but does it actually work? Not according to Reid, who finds it “far-fetched, and not very cogent” (EIP 2.10, 148).15 Yet Reid appears to have no real quarrel with its  main premises. Why, then, is he so unimpressed by Descartes’s anti-sceptical argument, and what do his reservations tell us about his own approach to the problem of the external world? 1.  In the first place, Reid cannot give his unqualified assent to the Cartesian argument’s conclusion, because his understanding of the distinction between p ­ rimary and secondary qualities differs significantly from what we find in Descartes.16 According to Reid, both Descartes and Locke drew this distinction with the help of a resemblance criterion which had its roots in the theory of ideas, for they maintained that our ideas of primary qualities (such as shape or extension) actually resemble something in bodies, whereas our ideas of secondary qualities (such as colour or taste) do not. Drawing inspiration from Berkeley,17 Reid argues that the CartesianLockean resemblance criterion won’t work. Since sensations can resemble nothing but sensations, there can be no resemblance between sensations and primary q ­ ualities if the latter are the sort of thing which realists like Descartes and Locke took them to be: perceiver-independent features of real things. Hence if the Cartesian-Lockean resemblance criterion is correct, Berkeley was absolutely right: there are no qualities existing in things themselves, no properties existing apart from minds and perceivers. So the old contrast between primary and secondary qualities evaporates, and ‘matter [is] stript of all its qualities’: Descartes and Locke inferred, that sound, taste, smell, colour, heat, and cold, which the ­vulgar took to be qualities of body, were not qualities of body, but mere sensations of the  mind. Afterwards the ingenious Berkeley, considering more attentively the nature of sensation in general, discovered, and demonstrated, that no sensation whatever could possibly resemble any quality of an insentient being, such as body is supposed to be: and hence he inferred, very justly, that there is the same reason to hold extension, figure, and all the primary qualities, to be mere sensations, as there is to hold the secondary qualities to be mere sensations. Thus, by just reasoning upon the Cartesian principles, matter was stript of all its qualities . . .  (IHM 7, 209–10; cf. IHM 2.6, 34, IHM 5.5, 62; EIP 2.16, 200; EIP 2.17, 210)

Unlike Berkeleyan idealists and naïve realists, Reid is convinced that there is a real distinction between primary and secondary qualities; the problem, he thinks, is that Cartesians and Lockeans have drawn that distinction in the wrong way. Rejecting their resemblance criterion, Reid draws the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in terms of the different sorts of conceptions which our constitution permits us to form of them. His main claim is that the conceptions of primary qualities given

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

86  Reid and the Problem of the External World to  us by our senses are ‘direct and distinct’, whereas the conceptions of secondary ­qualities given to us by our senses are merely ‘relative and obscure’: [T]here is a real foundation for the distinction of primary from secondary qualities; and that they are distinguished by this, that of the primary we have by our senses a direct and distinct notion; but of the secondary only a relative notion, which must, because it is only relative, be obscure; they are conceived only as the unknown causes or occasions of certain sensations with which we are well acquainted.  (EIP 2.17, 202, cf. 201; cf. IHM 5.7, 67)

What does it mean to say that our conceptions of secondary qualities, unlike our conceptions of the primary ones, are relative? A relative notion of a thing, we are told, is one which “gives us no conception of what the thing is, but of what relation it bears to something else” (EIP 2.17, 202; cf. 201). Put more formally, a relative notion of X is a notion of X only as X stands in some relation, R, to something else, Y, with which we are acquainted. In the case of the secondary qualities of bodies, X stands for any secondary quality, R for causality, and Y for sensations of some specific type. To say that our notions of secondary qualities are relative and obscure, therefore, is to say that such qualities can only be thought of by us as “unknown causes or ­occasions of the sensations to which we give the same names” (IHM 5.1, 54; cf. IHM 5.1, 55; IHM 5.4, 61; emphasis mine).18 In such cases, both the quality in the object and the sensation it produces in us are referred to as X: as redness, sweetness, bitterness, heat, and so forth. Drawing the primary/secondary quality distinction in this way, Reid believes, allows us to resolve an apparently intractable dispute between the philosophers and the vulgar concerning the status of secondary qualities. Ask a modern philosopher if heat is truly in the fire, and you will be assured that it is not; ask a non-philosopher the same question, and you will hear the opposite answer expressed with equal conviction. Yet their dispute can be resolved quite easily and amicably once we realize that we give one and the same name to the secondary quality in the fire and to the sensations which that quality occasions in us. If by ‘heat’ you mean the sensation of heat, then heat is definitely not in the fire; but who ever thought that any sensation was in the fire? Since a sensation can only exist in a mind or sentient being, to ­suppose that heat in this sense is in the fire would be to suppose—absurdly—that the fire itself feels heat: “The philosopher says, there is no heat in the fire, meaning that the fire has not the sensation of heat. His meaning is just; and the vulgar will agree with him, as soon as they understand his meaning” (EIP 2.17, 205–6). If, on the other hand, all you mean by ‘heat’ is the unknown quality or power which causes sensations of heat in us, then heat is definitely in the fire, because “there is really a quality in the fire, of which the proper name is heat; and the name of heat is given to this quality, both by philosophers and the vulgar, much more frequently than to the sensation of heat” (EIP 2.17, 206). Once we understand Reid’s approach to the primary/secondary quality distinction, we can appreciate why he cannot endorse the kind of representative realism which he

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   87 attributes to Descartes. (a) Because Cartesian realism is wedded to the theory of ideas, it ends up drawing the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in the wrong way—namely, in terms of whether or not our ideas of qualities resemble anything in material objects. (b) Because Cartesian realism draws the primary/secondary quality distinction in terms of resemblance, it ends up treating secondary qualities as mere ideas or sensations, when in reality they are unknown powers in things to produce certain sensations in us. Reid explicitly recognizes that Locke was well aware of the  latter point,19 and this is one reason why Reidian common sense realism may be fruitfully viewed as an attempt to retain Locke’s firm commitment to a material world  while rejecting the doctrine which compromised Locke’s defence of that commitment—to wit, the theory of ideas.20 2.  The existence of a material world can be justly inferred from the Cartesian premise that my senses can be trusted, Reid observes, only if the immediate objects of sense-perception are material objects or mind-independent things—Meerschaum pipes and Turkish slippers, billabongs and coolibah trees. However, Descartes thinks that  perception’s immediate objects are purely mental items or subjective entities called ‘ideas’: Sometimes [Descartes] argues, that our senses are given us by God, who is no deceiver; and therefore we ought to believe their testimony. But this argument is weak; because, according to his principles, our senses testify no more but that we have certain ideas: And if we draw conclusions from this testimony, which the premises will not support, we deceive ourselves. To give more force to this weak argument, he sometimes adds, that we have by nature a strong propensity to believe that there is an external world corresponding to our ideas. (EIP 2.10, 148; cf. EIP 2.22, 252)

According to Reid, Descartes’s allegiance to the theory of ideas prevents him from proceeding directly from his claim about the reliability of perception to his desired conclusion. To get around this problem, Descartes falls back on the commonsensical thought that realism is natural or irresistible—that (to quote Reid) “we have by nature a strong propensity to believe that there is an external world corresponding to our ideas” (EIP 2.10, 149). Thus an appeal to our natural convictions, Reid thinks, is what really gets the job done in Meditation VI. Since the falsity of our irresistible belief in ordinary material objects would imply that God was a deceiver, Descartes concludes that there must exist an external world which is more or less as we take it to be. Before we explain where Reid thinks this line of reasoning goes awry, we should note that he agrees with Descartes about one thing—to wit, that we have a natural and  irresistible propensity to believe in a material world. Indeed, Reid talks much more about this propensity than Descartes does, and he stresses that philosophy is absolutely powerless to combat it. Let a thousand philosophers scrutinize our belief in particular things existing independently of perception and thought; let sceptics and idealists expose its groundlessness with relish, and smile patronizingly at the gullibility of the unreflective mob; let metaphysicians raise a ruthless army of objections, determined

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

88  Reid and the Problem of the External World to destroy our naïve confidence in our senses—let them do all this, remarks Reid, for it will avail them nothing. Their golden deductions and pretty syllogisms will convert no one; and whenever these clever disputants leave the seclusion of the library or the study, they will conduct themselves like everyone else—playing backgammon, making merry with their friends, keeping away from precipices, and steering clear of mad dogs and Englishmen in the midday sun. Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret: you may drive out nature with a pitchfork—or a razor-sharp argument—and yet she will always return: imposing, implacable, and victorious. The idea that our belief in a material world is an irrepressible and ineradicable judgment of nature—a judgment which even ‘the greatest sceptic’ can never shake off—appears frequently in Reid’s major works, beginning with An Inquiry into the Human Mind: To what purpose is it for philosophy to decide against common sense in this or any other ­matter? The belief of a material world is older, and of more authority, than any principles of philosophy. It declines the tribunal of reason, and laughs at all the artillery of the logician. It retains its sovereign authority in spite of all the edicts of philosophy, and reason itself must stoop to its orders. Even those philosophers who have disowned the authority of our notions of an external material world, confess, that they find themselves under a necessity of submitting to their power. Methinks, therefore, it were better to make a virtue of necessity; and, since we cannot get rid of the vulgar notion and belief of an external world, to reconcile our reason to it as well as we can: for if Reason should stomach and fret ever so much at this yoke, she cannot throw it off; if she will not be the servant of Common Sense, she must be her slave.  (IHM 5.7, 68–9) That we have clear and distinct conceptions of extension, figure, motion, and other attributes of body, which are neither sensations, nor like any sensation, is a fact of which we may be as certain, as that we have sensations. And that all mankind have a fixed belief of an external material world, a belief which is neither got by reasoning nor education, and a belief which we cannot shake off, even when we seem to have strong arguments against it, and no shadow of an argument for it, is likewise a fact, for which we have all the evidence that the nature of the thing admits.  (IHM 5.8, 76) I am aware, that this belief which I have in perception, stands exposed to the strongest batteries of scepticism. But they make no great impression upon it. The sceptic asks me, Why do you believe the existence of the external object which you perceive? This belief, Sir, is none of my manufacture; it came from the mint of Nature; it bears her image and superscription; and, if it is not right, the fault is not mine: I even took it upon trust, and without suspicion.  (IHM 6.20, 168–9)

The themes touched on in these excerpts from the Inquiry—the overwhelming naturalness of realism, its groundlessness and its indispensability, the irrelevance of arguments pro et contra, the incessant and irresistible pressure of perception, and the sceptic’s humiliating discovery that he cannot incarnate or embody his theory—are also found in Essays on the Intellectual Powers: Although some writers on this subject have disputed the authority of the senses, of memory, and of every human faculty; yet we find, that such persons, in the conduct of life, in pursuing

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   89 their ends, or in avoiding dangers, pay the same regard to the authority of their senses, and other faculties, as the rest of mankind. By this they give us just ground to doubt of their candour in their professions of scepticism. This, indeed, has always been the fate of the few that have professed scepticism, that, when they have done what they can to discredit their senses, they find themselves, after all, under a  necessity of trusting to them. Mr. Hume has been so candid as to acknowledge this; and it is no less true of those who have not shown the same candour: For I never heard that any sceptic run his head into a post, or stept into a kennel, because he did not believe his eyes.  (EIP 1.2, 46) It is evident, that a man who did not believe his senses could not keep out of harm’s way an hour of his life; yet, in all the history of philosophy, we never read of any sceptic that ever stepped into the fire or water because he did not believe his senses, or that showed in the conduct of life, less trust in his senses than other men have. This gives us just ground to apprehend, that philosophy was never able to conquer that natural belief which men have in  their senses; and that all their subtile reasonings against this belief were never able to ­persuade themselves. It appears, therefore, that the clear and distinct testimony of our senses carries irresistible ­conviction along with it, to every man in his right judgment.  (EIP 2.5, 99) Many eminent Philosophers, thinking it unreasonable to believe, where they could not show a reason, have laboured to furnish us with reasons for believing our senses; but their reasons are very insufficient, and will not bear examination. Other Philosophers have shewn very clearly the fallacy of these reasons, and have, as they imagine, discovered invincible reasons against this belief; but they have never been able either to shake it in themselves, or to convince others.  The statesman continues to plod, the soldier to fight, and the merchant to export and import, without being in the least moved by the demonstrations that have been offered of the non-existence of those things about which they are so seriously employed. And a man may as soon, by reasoning, pull the moon out of her orbit, as destroy the belief of the objects of sense.  (EIP 2.20, 230) It is not more evident that mankind have a conviction of the existence of a material world, than that they have the conviction of some degree of power in themselves, and in others; every one over his own actions, and the determinations of his will: A conviction so early, so general, and so interwoven with the whole of human conduct, that it must be the natural effect of our constitution, and intended by the Author of our being to guide our actions. It resembles our conviction of the existence of a material world in this respect also, that  even those who reject it in speculation, find themselves under a necessity of being ­governed by it in their practice; and thus it will always happen when philosophy contradicts first principles.  (EIP 6.5, 480; cf. 476–7)

In the last passage, Reid draws a suggestive parallel between two natural convictions or first principles: our belief in the existence of a material world, and our belief that we are free and morally responsible agents.21 This parallel reappears in Essays on the Active Powers, where Reid points out that these beliefs share several noteworthy features possessed by first principles: early appearance, psychologically irresistibility, universal acceptance, practical indispensability, and indemonstrability.22

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

90  Reid and the Problem of the External World If the belief of our having active power be necessarily implied in those rational operations we have mentioned, it must be coeval with our reason; it must be as universal among men, and as necessary in the conduct of life, as those operations are. We cannot recollect when it began. It cannot be a prejudice of education, or of false philosophy. It must be a part of our constitution, or the necessary result of our constitution, and therefore the work of God. It resembles, in this respect, our belief of the existence of a material world; our belief that those we converse with are living and intelligence beings; our belief that those things did really happen, which we distinctly remember; and our belief that we continue the same identical persons. We find difficulty in accounting for our belief in these things; and some philosophers think they have discovered good reasons for throwing it off. But it sticks fast, and the greatest sceptic finds, that he must yield to it in his practice, while he wages war with it in speculation. (EAP 4.6, 308)

Near the end of the same book, there is a passage about the problem of the external world which reveals something important about Reid’s attitude towards modern philosophers and their disdain for our natural convictions. Ever since the days of Descartes, Reid suggests, philosophers have distrusted nature instead of treating her as an ally in their pursuit of knowledge; loath to take natural convictions at face value, they have looked at most of them with suspicion unless they could confirm them with demonstrations of their own devising; jealous of their independence and proud of their powers of reasoning, they have paid insufficient attention to those lowly and spontaneous commitments which all humans beings have by our constitution. And what has been the result of this deplorable ingratitude and arrogance, this shameful lack of natural piety? Modern metaphysicians, puffed up with presumption, find themselves compelled to believe in something which, because it cannot be established by reasoning, they can only regard as unreasonable. Nature’s gifts thus become burdens for haughty souls who hold we are our own: When we perceive an external object by our senses, we have a sensation conjoined with a firm belief of the existence and sensible qualities of the external object. Nor has all the subtility of metaphysics been able to disjoin what nature has conjoined in our constitution. Descartes and Locke endeavoured, by reasoning, to deduce the existence of external objects from our sensations, but in vain. Subsequent philosophers, finding no reason for this connection, endeavoured to throw off the belief of external objects as being unreasonable; but this attempt is no less vain. Nature has doomed us to believe the testimony of our senses, whether we can give a good reason for doing so or not.  (EAP 5.7, 462)

On the basis of these passages from the Inquiry and the two Essays, we may surely attribute to Reid the Kamesian view that our belief in the mind-independence of the direct objects of ordinary perception is an instinctive and universal conviction, a truly natural and irresistible commitment for which we are not responsible. According to this view, to be human is to be a perceptual realist; for our belief in the independent

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   91 existence of what we sense is a direct and necessary effect of our constitution, not the product of habit or the result of the association of ideas.23 According to Descartes, however, the overwhelming naturalness of our belief in material objects does not in itself vindicate that belief; for it is perfectly possible that an idle evil demon, bored with eternity and in sore need of a good laugh, may have implanted in us an irresistible propensity to assent to self-evident falsehoods as fully and unreservedly as if they were self-evident truths. This is why Descartes thinks we must bring God into epistemology: only a perfect and non-deceiving being, he believes, can guarantee the reliability of our belief-forming faculties and the soundness of our natural convictions. Reid, for his part, refuses to use God to refute external world scepticism, and we will never understand his common sense realism unless we understand what lies behind this refusal.24 3.  Descartes’s anti-sceptical strategy is inspired by a hope which Reid deems chimerical: that we can vindicate our cognitive faculties and our natural convictions by putting a philosophical foundation underneath them. According to Reid, the problem with this hope is a purely logical one: since any attempt to demonstrate the veracity of our faculties effectively presupposes the very thing we are trying to demonstrate, there can be no non-circular argument for self-trust.25 This problem of circularity is not just a problem for Descartes’s God-centred argument in Meditation VI, of course; it is a problem for any would-be validation of our faculties. Because every argument for the reliability of our faculties is fated to begin where it should end, we can never satisfy the sceptic who asks for a proof that our constitution or make-up is naturally attuned to truth: If a Sceptic should build his scepticism upon this foundation, that all our reasoning and judging powers are fallacious in their nature, or should resolve at least to with-hold assent until it be proved that they are not; it would be impossible by argument to beat him out of his strong hold, and he must even be left to enjoy his scepticism. Descartes certainly made a false step in this matter; for having suggested this doubt among others, that whatever evidence he might have from his consciousness, his senses, his memory, or his reason, yet possibly some malignant being had given him those faculties on purpose to impose upon him; and therefore, that they are not to be trusted without a proper voucher: To remove this doubt, he endeavours to prove the being of a Deity who is no deceiver; whence he concludes, that the faculties he had given him are true and worthy to be trusted. It is strange that so acute a reasoner did not perceive, that in this reasoning there is evidently a begging of the question. For if our faculties be fallacious; why may they not deceive us in this reasoning as well as in others? And, if they are to be trusted in this instance without a voucher, why not in others? Every kind of reasoning for the veracity of our own faculties, amounts to no more than taking their own testimony for their veracity; and this we must do implicitly, until God gives us new faculties to sit in judgment upon the old; and the reason why Descartes satisfied himself with so weak an argument for the truth of his faculties, most probably was, that he never seriously doubted of it.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

92  Reid and the Problem of the External World If any truth can be said to be prior to all others in the order of nature, this seems to have the best claim; because in every instance of assent, whether upon intuitive, demonstrative, or probable evidence, the truth of our faculties is taken for granted, and is, as it were, one of the premises on which our assent is grounded. (EIP 6.5, 480–1; EIP 6.7, 516–17; EIP 7.4, 517, 563; EAP 3.6, 237; BAL 713)26

What Descartes and many other moderns have overlooked, Reid complains, is the possibility that self-trust is epistemically basic or foundational—that we are indeed entitled to trust our faculties, but not on the basis of any argument or inference. The thought underpinning this complaint was epigrammatically expressed by Wittgenstein in On Certainty: “It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back” (Wittgenstein 1969: §471; emphasis mine). In Reid’s opinion, this is essentially what Descartes and his followers have done: instead of ‘beginning at the beginning’ by acknowledging that the mind-independence of the world which we encounter in perception is self-evident for us, they have tried ‘to go further back’—to demonstrate what is axiomatic, to treat what is ultimate and primitive as if it were derivative, to prove what is epistemically foundational and basic. Yet when epistemologists try to go further back in this way, Reid observes, they inevitably reason in circles large or small, arguing from premises which are no more ­evident—no less foundational or epistemically basic—than the propositions they vainly hope to justify: [A]s first principles differ from deductions or reasoning in the nature of their evidence, and must be tried by a different standard when they are called into question, it is of importance to know to which of these classes a truth which we would examine belongs. When they are not distinguished, men are apt to demand proof for everything they think fit to deny. And when we attempt to prove, by direct argument, what is really self-evident, the reasoning will always be inconclusive; for it will either take for granted the thing to be proved, or something not more evident; and so, instead of giving strength to the conclusion, will rather tempt those to doubt of it who never did so before.  (EAP 5.1, 361) [V]ery ingenious men, such as Descartes, Malebranche, Arnauld, Locke, and many others, have lost much labour, by not distinguishing things which require proof, from things which, though they may admit of illustration, yet being self-evident, do not admit of proof. When men attempt to deduce such self-evident principles from others more evident, they always fall into inconclusive reasoning: And the consequence of this has been, that others, such as Berkeley and Hume, finding the arguments brought to prove such first principles to be weak and inconclusive, have been tempted first to doubt of them, and afterwards to deny them.  (EIP 1.2, 41) One is never in greater danger of transgressing against the rules of logic, than in attempting to prove what needs no proof.  (EIP 7.4, 564)

Unlike Aristotle and his followers, modern philosophers have measured our belief in the external world by the wrong yardstick or standard—the standard which applies to non-foundational or derived beliefs—because they have failed to distinguish

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   93 properly between first principles (which are epistemically basic or foundational) and non-foundational beliefs (which can only be made evident by argument). What modern philosophers desperately need, therefore, is an account of first principles which rejects the one-sided positions of the Peripatetics and the Cartesians while managing to incorporate and integrate the vital truths contained by each. And this is precisely what Reid believes his own meta-philosophy of common sense supplies: a synthesis of ancient and modern insights, a more perfect union of old and new, a coherent framework in which perception, introspection, reason, and memory are equally respected. When considered in the light of this irenic ambition, Reid’s catalogue of common sense principles can be appreciated for what it is: not a reactionary attempt to subvert the Cartesian reformation of philosophy, but a brave and creative attempt to continue it. 4.  The point which must not be lost sight of is this: Reid’s profound dissatisfaction with the Cartesian reply to scepticism ultimately stems from his belief that Descartes has tried to answer a question which should never have been asked in the first place. To understand why Reid thinks the Cartesian problem of the external world is ill-posed, we need to recall that problem’s dependence upon the thesis of epistemic asymmetry, according to which our knowledge of material objects, unlike our knowledge of our own thoughts and sensations, is epistemically non-foundational or derived.27 Since the Cartesian philosopher takes it for granted that my mind’s contents are all I can know directly, she concludes that I will remain trapped inside my own mind unless I can infer the existence of an objective reality from the existence of my subjective representations. Such a proof would be more precious than rubies, but where on earth is one to be found? This is the Cartesian problem of the external world in a nutshell. From Reid’s point of view, the problem with this problem is its uncritical and indefensible dependence on the epistemic asymmetry thesis. Since the inherent trustworthiness of perception and the inherent trustworthiness of consciousness are equally entitled to the status of first principles, we have direct knowledge of thoughts and of things, of mind and of world, if we have knowledge of either.28 Yet if we have direct knowledge of things as well as of thoughts, we are not imprisoned inside our own minds; and if we are not imprisoned inside our own minds, we do not need God’s help to escape from them. Since we have always had immediate knowledge of mind-independent things through perception, there is no need for us to think our way out of our minds and into the world; and since this knowledge was never lost, it does not need to be recovered or reconstructed à la Descartes. As far as Reid is concerned, then, the riddle with which Cartesians have tormented themselves—‘I know my own mind, but how can I ever prove that there is a world external to it?’—is factitious and confused, and its unreality is a direct consequence of the arbitrary starting-point which its posers have chosen. In order to doubt our knowledge of the external world, sceptics must take a great deal for granted; and some of their presuppositions are no more credible—and no less vulnerable to attack—than the things they profess to doubt.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

94  Reid and the Problem of the External World

3.4  Scepticism and The Way of Ideas According to Reid, solving the problem of the external world is “the most difficult thing in the world” (IHM 1.3, 18). Why? His argument is easily summarized. If we have immediate knowledge of nothing but our own ideas, we can have knowledge of material objects if and only if such knowledge can be derived from the subjective data of consciousness. Although Descartes and Locke were confident that such a derivation was possible, they were mistaken; for there is no valid inference from appearance to reality, and any move from ‘ideas in the mind’ to ‘things without the mind’ involves a logic-defying salto mortale. It follows that material objects cannot be known at all unless they are known immediately in perception. If philosophers start with nothing but ideas, they shall end with nothing but ideas: the truth of this proposition, Reid concludes, is unassailable.29 The first philosopher brave enough to publish this discovery was “the ingenious Berkeley” (IHM 7, 209), whose incisive critique of Lockean representative realism has never been satisfactorily answered for one very good reason: it is unanswerable. The present age, I apprehend, has not produced two more acute or practised in this part of philosophy, than the Bishop of Cloyne, and the author of the Treatise of human nature. The first was no friend to scepticism, but had that warm concern for religious and moral principles which became his order: yet the result of his inquiry was, a serious conviction, that there is no such thing as a material world; nothing in nature but spirits and ideas; and that the belief of material substances, and of abstract ideas, are the chief causes of all our errors in philosophy, and of all infidelity and heresy in religion. His arguments are founded upon the principles which were formerly laid down by Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, and which have been very generally received. And the opinion of the ablest judges seems to be, that they neither have been, nor can be confuted; and that he hath proved by unanswerable arguments what no man in his senses can believe.  (IHM 1.5, 19–20) Bishop Berkeley hath proved, beyond the possibility of reply, that we cannot by reasoning infer the existence of matter from our sensations: and the author of the Treatise of human nature hath proved no less clearly, that we cannot by reasoning infer the existence of our own or other minds from our sensations.  (IHM 5.7, 70–1) We ought, however, to do this justice both to the Bishop of Cloyne and to the author of the Treatise of human nature, to acknowledge, that their conclusions are justly drawn from the doctrine of ideas, which has been so universally received. (IHM 5.8, 75; cf. IHM 5.4, 61; IHM 7, 210; IHM 7, 212) In the new philosophy, the pillars by which the existence of a material world was supported, were so feeble, that it did not require the force of a Samson to bring them down; and in this we have not so much reason to admire the strength of Berkeley’s genius, as his boldness in publishing to the world an opinion, which the unlearned would be apt to interpret as the sign of a crazy intellect. A man who was firmly persuaded of the doctrine universally received by Philosophers concerning ideas, if he could but take courage to call in question the existence of a material world, would easily find unanswerable arguments in that doctrine.  (EIP 2.10, 141)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   95 Berkeley, I think, is reputed the first who had the daring resolution to give up the material world altogether, as a sacrifice to the received philosophy of ideas.  (EIP 2.10, 151) For if it be true, that, by our senses, we have the knowledge of our sensations only, then [Berkeley’s] system must be admitted, and the existence of a material world must be given up as a dream. No demonstration can be more invincible than this. If we have any knowledge of a material world, it must be by the senses; But, by the senses, we have no knowledge but of our sensations only; and our sensations have no resemblance of any thing that can be in a material world. The only proposition in this demonstration which admits of doubt is, that, by our senses, we have knowledge of our sensations only, and nothing else. (EIP 2.11, 156–7; cf. EIP 6.5, 475)

According to Reid, Berkeley demonstrated that if we accept the epistemological framework of Cartesianism, we must abandon the belief in the mind-independent world which our ideas purport to represent. How did Berkeley reach this conclusion? Only two of his arguments can be mentioned here.30 Argument 1: If we can know Lockean material objects, Berkeley reasons, we must know them in one of two ways: either by means of our senses, or by means of reason. To know material objects in the first way would be to perceive them directly; but all we ever perceive directly, as Locke himself admits, are our own ideas. To know material objects in the second way would be to infer their existence from our ideas; yet this cannot be done, since there is no necessary connection between ideas and objects, appearance and reality, representations and things. Hence a mind-independent world, if it existed, would be totally unknowable; hidden behind a veil of ideas, it would be something we could never have any reason to believe in. Representative realism, it must therefore be concluded, leads to external world scepticism.31 Argument 2: Does this mean we are stuck with veil of ideas scepticism? No, because there is a second way in which Locke’s representative realism self-destructs. If ideas are the only entities present to the mind, we cannot think of anything except ideas and what resembles them; and since nothing can resemble ideas except other ideas, we cannot think of anything but ideas.32 But if we can think of nothing but ideas, we cannot even think of a material world or of Locke’s primary qualities; and if we cannot think of these things, we can no longer think of our ideas as representations of a mind-independent reality. Scepticism is no longer a threat, then, because it is no longer intelligible; without the thought of a world external to mind, the thought that our ideas could reflect or fail to reflect that world is drained of content. On the basis of these and other arguments, Berkeley espoused a form of subjective idealism which asserted that there are no things existing without the mind, that to be is to be perceived, that Lockean material substance is a myth, and that physical objects are bundles of sensible qualities or sets of ideas. Reid grants that Berkeley’s principal claims follow logically from the theory of ideas; so if Berkeley’s conclusions are absurd or otherwise objectionable (as Reid believes), the fault must lie with the theory which foisted them upon us. However, opposing the theory of ideas means swimming against the current of history, since a short list of the theory’s leading adherents—Descartes,

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

96  Reid and the Problem of the External World Malebranche, Arnauld, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume—reads like a veritable Who’s Who of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy. Indeed, Reid himself was content to accept the theory of ideas (and Berkeley’s idealism) until he was about half-way through this life’s journey: If I may presume to speak my own sentiments, I once believed this doctrine of ideas so firmly, as to embrace the whole of Berkeley’s system in consequence of it; till, finding other consequences to follow from it, which gave me more uneasiness than the want of a material world, it came into my mind, more than forty years ago, to put the question, What evidence have I for this doctrine, that all the objects of my knowledge are ideas in my own mind? From that time to the present, I have been candidly and impartially, as I think, seeking for the evidence of this principle, but can find none, excepting the authority of Philosophers. (EIP 2.10, 142; cf. IHM Dedication, 3–5; RC 88)

What were the mature Reid’s reasons for repudiating ‘this doctrine of ideas’? Since our concern in this chapter is not with the finer points of Reid’s philosophy of perception,33 we shall confine ourselves to making five observations. a. In the first place, Reid observes that the theory of ideas “is directly contrary to  the universal sense of men who have not been instructed in philosophy” (EIP  2.14, 172; cf. EIP 6.5, 478). Souls innocent of the slightest philosophy instinctively believe that they immediately perceive material objects, not ideas or impressions; and this fact reminds us that the theory of ideas is remote from our ordinary way of thinking about perception. Not only that, but the fact that non-philosophers by and large do not accept the theory of ideas is evidence that the theory is not a first principle; for first principles, being the direct effects of our constitution, have been believed by virtually all people down through the ages: “I conceive, that the consent of ages and nations, of the learned and unlearned, ought to have great authority with regard to first principles, where every man is a competent judge” (EIP 6.4, 464; cf. EIP 1.2, 45). b. In the second place, we find that philosophers have held many incompatible views about ideas, though they agree that nothing is more evident or better known to us than ideas: “[P]hilosophers, notwithstanding their unanimity as to the existence of ideas, hardly agree in one thing concerning them. If ideas be not a mere fiction, they must be, of all objects of human knowledge, the things we have best access to know, and to be acquainted with; yet there is nothing about which men differ so much” (EIP 2.14, 184). But if nothing is ever present to the mind but ideas, and if it is essential to ideas that they are as they appear to us, how can there be so much fundamental and intractable disagreement about their nature? Such persistent differences of opinion are easily explained or accounted for, however, if ideas are mere fictions or philosophers’ inventions. And this is what Reid maintains: “I believe ideas . . . to be a mere fiction of philosophers” (EIP 1.1, 31). c. In the third place, we have been given no good reason to think that the theory of ideas is true. Since the proposition that the immediate objects of perception

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   97 are ideas is not self-evident, it seems we should not believe it unless it can be justly inferred from some propositions which are self-evident to us: “Selfevident propositions are those which appear evident to every man of sound understanding who apprehends the meaning of them distinctly, and attends to them without prejudice. Can this be said of this proposition, that all the objects of our knowledge are ideas in our own minds? I believe, that, to any man uninstructed in philosophy, this proposition will appear very improbable, if not absurd” (EIP 2.10, 141–2). What we need, therefore, is some convincing proof of the theory, some cogent and rigorous demonstration of its truth. However, we find that only a handful of philosophers have ever deigned to argue for the thesis that ideas are the immediate objects of perception, and their arguments are ‘too weak to support the conclusion’: “[T]he authors who have treated of ideas, have generally taken their existence for granted, as a thing which could not be called in question; and such arguments as they have mentioned incidentally, in order to prove it, seem too weak to support the conclusion” (EIP 2.14, 174; cf. 174–87).34 The popularity enjoyed by this theory is thus a scandal to philosophy: “I cannot help thinking, that the whole history of philosophy has never furnished an instance of an opinion so unanimously entertained by Philosophers upon so slight grounds” (EIP 2.14, 184). d. In the fourth place, the theory of ideas explains little or nothing: “[I]deas do not make any of the operations of the mind to be better understood, although it was probably with that view that they have been first invented, and afterwards so generally received” (EIP 2.14, 184). We perceive public objects in the external world of matter, the partisans of the ideal theory plead, by perceiving private objects in the internal world of mind—purely mental items or subjective ­entities to which philosophers have given the name ‘ideas’. However, there is a problem: since “[t]his power of perceiving ideas is as inexplicable as any of the powers explained by it” (EIP 2.14, 185), the theory’s explanans turns out to be no less mysterious than its explanandum. Something we do not understand is explained in terms of something else which we do not understand—this, at the end of the day, is what the theory of ideas has to tell us about the nature of sense-perception. e. In the fifth place, Berkeley and Hume have shown us that the theory of ideas has paradoxical and absurd consequences: “[T]he natural and necessary consequences of it furnish a just prejudice against it to every man who pays a due regard to the common sense of mankind” (EIP 2.14, 185). Not only does the theory of ideas not explain anything about perception, it also leads us to deny the existence of the very fact it was introduced to explain—namely, that there is a material world which we cannot help perceiving and thinking about in certain ways. Yet the existence of this mundane fact is surely much more evident or apparent to us than the existence of ideas in the philosopher’s sense of that term.35

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

98  Reid and the Problem of the External World Our fifth point needs to be amplified, because it is closely tied to Reid’s interpretation of the history of modern philosophy. As he sees it, the theory of ideas initially seemed to be a perfectly respectable doctrine, and its deep-seated hostility towards common sense was not apparent in the work of Descartes and Locke (apart, that is, from the fact that it appeared to reduce secondary qualities to ideas in the mind).36 The theory’s subversive tendencies first made themselves known in the works of Berkeley, who inferred from it two theses which we mentioned at the beginning of this section. The first of these, it will be recalled, was that we cannot have knowledge of anything other than ideas (since we do not perceive anything but ideas, and material objects cannot be inferred from them); the second, that we cannot even think of anything outside the mind which ideas could represent or resemble (since ideas can resemble nothing but ideas). And things went from bad to worse, Reid thinks, when Hume argued that what we call the self is a mere bundle of perceptions, not an immaterial substance existing independently of them. The Humean case against this Cartesian conception of the mind ultimately rests on two premises, both of which presuppose the theory of ideas: since all ideas must be derived from impressions, and since there is no impression answering to the idea of the Cartesian self or ego, it follows that the self cannot be thought of as a thing in its own right. Only particular perceptions truly exist, and the mind or self traditionally held to house them has been exposed as an insubstantial fiction: Mr Hume . . . adopts the theory of ideas in its full extent; and, in consequence, shews that there is neither matter nor mind in the universe; nothing but impressions and ideas. What we call a body, is only a bundle of sensations; and what we call the mind, is only a bundle of thoughts, passions, and emotions, without any subject.  (EIP 2.12, 162) There is nothing in nature but minds and ideas, says the Bishop, nay, says Mr Hume, there is nothing in nature but ideas only; for what we call a mind is nothing but a train of ideas connected by certain relations between themselves.  (EIP 2.14, 173; cf. EIP 6.5, 473)

Anyone looking for a dramatic example of revisionary metaphysics need look no further. Ideas, which began their career in Locke’s employ as lowly servants and humble messengers, have become conquistadores and masters of the universe; now the brutal and swaggering imperialists of Being, they callously refuse to recognize the ontological rights of other entities. Reid, who chronicles their gradual rise to power in his Inquiry, wryly observes that ideas ‘seem to have something in their nature unfriendly to other existences’: Ideas seem to have something in their nature unfriendly to other existences. They were first introduced into philosophy, in the humble character of images or representatives of things; and in this character they seemed not only to be inoffensive, but to serve admirably well for explaining the operations of the human understanding. But since men began to reason clearly and distinctly about them, they have by degrees supplanted their constituents, and undermined the existence of every thing but themselves. First, they discarded all secondary qualities of bodies; and it was found out by their means, that fire is not hot, nor snow cold, nor honey sweet; and, in a word,

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   99 that heat and cold, sound, colour, taste, and smell, are nothing but ideas or impressions. Bishop Berkeley advanced them a step higher, and found out, by just reasoning, from the same principles, that extension, solidity, space, figure, and body, are ideas, and that there is nothing in nature but ideas and spirits. But the triumph of ideas was completed by the Treatise of human nature, which discards spirits also, and leaves ideas and impressions as the sole existences in the universe. What if at last, having nothing else to contend with, they should fall foul of one another, and leave no existence in nature at all? This would surely bring philosophy into danger; for what should we have left to talk or to dispute about?  (IHM 2.6, 33–4)

Once upon a time, Reid thinks, philosophers who respected the authority of common sense judgments could be forgiven for endorsing the theory of ideas. But those days of intellectual innocence are behind us: now that we have become acquainted with the valid arguments of Berkeley and Hume, the sordid truth about the theory of ideas should be apparent to any philosopher of good will and sound mind. The thesis that ideas are the immediate objects of perception is a sophisticated prejudice masquerading as an axiom, a hypothesis dressed up as a fact; it is a solution which multiplies questions instead of answering them, a theory which annihilates phenomena instead of accounting for them; and its widespread acceptance owes almost nothing to argument, and almost everything to tradition and authority—“the authority of philosophers”, to be precise (EIP 2.10, 142; EIP 2.11, 161; IHM Dedication, 5). The ironic aspect of this state of affairs is not lost on Reid, and he trusts that it will not be lost on us. For what we have discovered, he believes, is that the very philosophers who have insisted on their right to doubt everything in heaven and on earth have founded their own systems on a dogma which none of them is willing to question, despite the fact that it is a baseless hypothesis whose implications are preposterous: “It might have been expected, that a Philosopher who was so cautious as not to take his own existence for granted without proof, would not have taken it for granted, without proof, that every thing he perceived was only ideas in his own mind. But if Descartes made a rash step in this, as I apprehend he did, he ought not to bear the blame alone. His successors have still continued in the same track” (EIP 2.8, 126–7). Hence there is a kind of poetic justice in the fact that this theory, to which wary philosophers gave an uncharacteristically warm welcome, has proved the ruin of their systems: “The theory of ideas, like the Trojan horse, had a specious appearance both of innocence and beauty; but if those philosophers had known that it carried in its belly death and destruction to all science and common sense, they would not have broken down their walls to give it admittance” (IHM 5.5, 75–6; cf. IHM 1.7, 23).

3.5  Perception as Fact and Mystery If the popular account of perception given by the theory of ideas is false, what account does Reid propose to put in its place? None; when it comes to the matter of our perception of matter, Reid’s motto is one made famous by Newton: Hypotheses non fingo. Why

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

100  Reid and the Problem of the External World does he take this line? Simple: he is sceptical about the very idea that the basic facts of perception can be fully explained or comprehended. To be sure, Reid thinks we can identify some of the fixed principles of our constitution with the help of extensive experience and patient observation; but he denies that we can account for these principles, since they are fundamental and original givens implanted in us by nature or God.37 This is why we must always remain an enigma to ourselves in the end, and why an honest philosophy must leave room for the mystery which inhabits the heart of ordinary things. Perception is a case in point. Although no one really doubts that we perceive physical objects, no one understands how we do so: There is no phænomenon in nature more unaccountable, than the intercourse that is carried on between the mind and the external world: there is no phænomenon which philosophical spirits have shown greater avidity to pry into, and to resolve.  (IHM 6.6, 91) It is therefore more agreeable to good sense, and to sound philosophy, to rest satisfied with what our consciousness and attentive reflection discover to us of the nature of perception, than by inventing hypotheses, to attempt to explain things which are above the reach of the human understanding. I believe no man is able to explain how we perceive external objects, any more than how we are conscious of those that are internal. Perception, consciousness, memory, imagination, are all original and simple powers of the mind, and parts of its constitution. For this reason, though I have endeavoured to show, that the theories of philosophers on this subject are ill-grounded and insufficient, I do not attempt to substitute any other theory in their place.  (EIP 2.16, 193; cf. 185) The perception of external objects is one main link of that mysterious chain which connects the material world with the intellectual. We shall find many things in this operation unaccountable; sufficient to convince us, that we know but little of our own frame; and that a perfect comprehension of our mental powers, and of the manner of their operation, is beyond the reach of our understanding.  (EIP 2.1, 71) In what manner the notion of external objects, and the immediate belief in their existence, is produced by means of our senses, I am not able to show, and I do not pretend to show. If the power of perceiving external objects in certain circumstances, be a part of the original constitution of the human mind, all attempts to account for it will be vain. No other account can be given of the constitution of things, but the will of him that made them; as we can give no reason why matter is extended and inert, why the mind thinks, and is conscious of its thoughts, but the will of him who made both; so I suspect we can give no other reason why, in certain circumstances, we perceive external objects, and in others do not.  (EIP 2.6, 100–1) We perceive material objects and their sensible qualities by our senses; but how they give us this information, and how they produce our belief in it, we know not.  (EIP 3.2, 257) Our original faculties are all unaccountable . . . He only who made them, comprehends fully how they are made, and how they produce in us not only a conception, but a firm belief and assurance of things which it concerns us to know.  (EIP 3.2, 258)

The idea that perception is ultimately mysterious is reinforced by Reid’s distinction between perception and sensation.38 Reid thinks that philosophers have misunderstood

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   101 perception partly because they have confounded it with sensation, and they have confounded sensation with perception partly because sensation statements (such as ‘I feel a pain’) and perception statements (such as ‘I see a tree’) have the same grammatical form.39 Nevertheless, we must not be misled by this superficial similarity, because there is an important difference between these two types of statements: “[I]n the first, the distinction between the act and the object is not real but grammatical; in the second, the distinction is not only grammatical but real” (IHM 6.20, 168). That is to say, perception “hath always an object distinct from the act by which it is perceived; an object which may exist whether it be perceived or not” (IHM 6.20, 168). What is more, perception always involves a conception of its object as well as a non-inferential belief in that object’s present existence.40 Perception, as we here understand it, hath always an object distinct from the act by which it is perceived; an object which may exist whether it be perceived or not . . . I know this also, that the perception of an object implies both a conception of its form, and a belief of its present existence. I know, moreover, that this belief is not the effect of argumentation and reasoning; it is the immediate effect of my constitution.  (IHM 6.20, 168) Sensation, taken by itself, implies neither the conception nor belief of any external object. It supposes a sentient being, and a certain manner in which that being is affected, but it supposes no more. Perception implies an immediate conviction and belief of something external; something different both from the mind that perceives it, and from the act of perception. Things so different in their nature ought to be distinguished; but by our constitution, they are always united. Every different perception is conjoined with a sensation that is proper to it. (EIP 2.16, 199; cf. EIP 1.1, 36–7)

Now, what about sensations? What role do they play in our perception of external things? Reid holds that sensations function as signs of external objects and their ­qualities; that is, as inputs or triggers which ‘suggest’ to the mind a conception of a thing and a belief in its present existence. Since ‘suggestion’ in Reid’s sense does not involve reasoning, qualities of objects are suggested by sensations without being inferred from them; and since one item can signify another without resembling it, ­sensations can function as the signs of perception’s objects despite the fact that they do not resemble mind-independent things. How is this supposed to work, this spinning of the coarse straw of sensation into the lustrous gold of perception? Reid’s reply is ­disarmingly candid: nobody really knows. Suggestion is not an explanation, it turns out, so much as it is a name for a mystery that is familiar but unfathomable. It is evident to us that certain sensations generate certain perceptions, and it is also evident that we can form conceptions of things which neither resemble sensations nor can be inferred from them. How this happens, we do not know; we know only that it does: How a sensation should instantly make us conceive and believe the existence of an external thing altogether unlike to it, I do not pretend to know; and when I say that the one suggests the other, I mean not to explain the manner of their connection, but to express a fact, which everyone may be conscious of; namely, that, by a law of our nature, such a conception and belief constantly and immediately follow the sensation.  (IHM 5.8, 74)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

102  Reid and the Problem of the External World How or when I got such first principles, upon which I build all my reasoning, I know not; for I had them before I can remember: but I am sure they are parts of my constitution, and that I cannot throw them off. That thoughts and sensations must have a subject, which we call ourself, is not therefore an opinion got by reasoning, but a natural principle. That our sensations of touch indicate something external, extended, figured, hard or soft, is not a deduction of our reason, but a natural principle. The belief of it, and the very conception of it, are equally parts of our constitution. If we are deceived in it, we are deceived by Him who made us, and there is no remedy.  (IHM 5.7, 72)

At bottom, what Reid is saying is roughly this: sensations are inputs, perceptions are outputs, and our constitution is the mysterious mechanism or black-box which magically converts the former into the latter.41 Although we cannot fully account for this secret process of conversion, we also cannot question its basic reliability or trustworthiness; this would be tantamount to doubting the fundamental and innate principles of the human mind, and we know no good can come of that. Instead of letting intellectual pride and self-centredness blind us, each of us must make our peace with the truth: we are obliged to trust what we cannot understand, and are fated to put our faith in powers whose true nature eludes us.42 Once we appreciate the full extent of our ignorance and vulnerability, we will grow humble in the face of what is familiar, and our anxious curiosity about fundamentals will be replaced by a wisely silent wonder. All this was well expressed by Reid’s most famous student, Dugald Stewart, in a passage which deserves to be better known: But although Dr. Reid has been at much pains to overturn the old ideal system, he has not ventured to substitute any hypothesis of his own in its place. And indeed he was too well acquainted with the limits prescribed to our philosophical inquiries, to think of indulging his curiosity in such unprofitable speculations. All, therefore, that he is to be understood as aiming at, in his inquiries concerning our perceptive powers, is to give a precise state of the fact, divested of all theoretical expressions; in order to prevent philosophers from imposing on themselves any longer by words without meaning, and to extort from them an acknowledgment, that with respect to the process of nature in perception, they are no less ignorant than the vulgar. According to this view of Dr. Reid’s reasonings on the subject of perception, the purpose to which they are subservient may appear to some to be of no very considerable importance; but the truth is, that one of the most valuable effects of genuine philosophy, is to remind us of the limited powers of the human understanding; and to revive those natural feelings of wonder and admiration at the spectacle of the universe, which are apt to languish in consequence of long familiarity. The most profound discoveries which are placed within the reach of our researches, lead to a confession of human ignorance; for while they flatter the pride of man, and increase his power, by enabling him to trace the simple and beautiful laws  by which physical events are regulated, they call his attention at the same time to those  general and ultimate facts which bound the narrow circle of his knowledge, and which by evincing to him the operation of powers, whose nature must for ever remain unknown, serve to remind him of the insufficiency of his faculties to penetrate the secrets of the universe.  (SW 2: 108–9; cf. SW 10: 289–91)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   103 What exactly is Stewart saying about Reid’s philosophy of perception? From our present point of view, four of Stewart’s observations seem especially important. (a)  Although Reid attempts to identify the facts of perception (he gives ‘a precise state of the fact, divested of all theoretical expressions’), he does not pretend to explain those facts, because this would involve him in ‘unprofitable speculations’. Why are such speculations ‘unprofitable’? Because we can never account fully for the facts in question. (b) Because Reid denies we can fully account for these facts, his reflections on perception conclude with a quasi-Socratic ‘confession of human ignorance’. What we have learned is that there are certain facts about perception whose sufficient reason we cannot know; and this knowledge of our own lack of knowledge forces us to confront ‘the limited powers of the human understanding’ and ‘the insufficiency of [our] faculties to penetrate the secrets of the universe’. (c) Since philosophers ultimately cannot understand perception, they must not put on airs and pretend that they do: ‘[W]ith respect to the process of nature in perception, they are no less ignorant than the vulgar.’ Instead of laying claim to some deep esoteric insight into perception’s nature, the Reidian philosopher will openly admit that he, like the rest of humanity, ultimately finds himself in the dark.43 (d) Finally, Reid’s discovery that the phenomena of sense-perception are ultimately unaccountable should fill those who have assimilated it with ‘natural feelings of wonder . . . at the spectacle of the universe’. Why? Because Reid has shown that the mundane is always tinged with mystery, that our quotidian commitments are inscrutable, and that the foundations of reason cannot be rationalized. Instead of encouraging complacency about our ordinary view of the world, the p ­ hilosophy of common sense invites us to look at everyday phenomena in a new way, to view commonplace things with eyes not numbed by custom, and to return (if only for a time) to a prelapsarian state of ‘wonder and admiration’.44

3.6  How to Be a Common Sense Realist We shall now try to sum up Reid’s common sense realism by listing its central ­commitments. Several of these theses—particularly (1), (2), (3), (4), and (11)—figure prominently in the writings of Dugald Stewart and Sir William Hamilton, and we shall encounter them again in Chapter 4. 1. We cannot help trusting our senses; indeed, believing in their testimony is as natural and necessary to human beings as breathing.45 Does the Reidian common sense realist think that this fact proves that our faculties of sense-perception are trustworthy? No, but he points out that there is no way for us to question our natural faith in perception without questioning our natural faith in the faculties used to question our faith in perception. It follows that perceptual scepticism is both theoretically indefensible (since it cannot be coherently argued for) and practically idle (since it cannot be lived). This point applies, mutatis mutandis, to scepticism about our natural faculties of reason, memory, and introspection.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

104  Reid and the Problem of the External World 2. Can we prove that a material world exists? Absolutely not, but no proof of this is needed; the existence of the material world is a first principle for us if the existence of anything is. That is to say, if we are not immediately justified in believing that we directly perceive a mind-independent world, we are not immediately justified in believing anything. But if we are not immediately justified in believing anything, there can be no reasoning, no philosophy, and—a fortiori—no arguments for scepticism. To put it another way: since the ordinary person’s cognitively spontaneous belief in the reality and mind-independence of what we perceive under standard conditions is the direct effect of principles which we have by our very constitution, philosophers are constrained to regard this belief as inherently reasonable or intrinsically credible. 3. Pace Descartes and Locke, our belief that there is a material world about which we know a fair amount cannot be reconciled with the view that ideas are the objects of thought and perception; for if nothing were ever present to the mind but ideas or impressions, a mind-independent world would be both unknowable and inconceivable. Unknowable, because it would be hidden away behind a veil of representations; inconceivable, because we could think of nothing but mind-dependent entities. The truth of these two conditionals was conclusively established by Berkeley and Hume, who were the first authors to show that the theory of ideas drives its adherents out of realism’s verdant Eden. 4. Despite its vogue among philosophers, the theory of ideas is an unsupported hypothesis which only provides us with the illusion of understanding.46 What is worse, the theory of ideas forces its adherents to deny the phenomena which it was expected to illuminate; for when we look through this theory’s magical lens, the familiar facts which we apprehended without its aid suddenly vanish in a thick and sulphurous puff of smoke. Philosophy can do better, however, if it humbly and consistently follows Nature’s lead. Instead of beginning with the artificial assumption that ideas or impressions are what we directly perceive, we should set out from our instinctive conviction that we perceive mind-independent things—apples and oranges, folios and fjords, burnished thrones and the firm-set earth. On this view, physical objects are not seen through a glass darkly, but face to face; external and extended things, not pale mental duplicates of them, are what perceivers typically apprehend.47 The material world is thus no pale posit or hypothesis, but a reality directly encountered, a datum whose existence is beyond a reasonable doubt. 5. Far from solving the problem of perception, the sensation/perception distinction actually deepens it, and throws its logical contours into sharper relief by forcing us to face up to two stubborn facts. Fact 1: We can perceive and conceive of mind-independent things (e.g.—qualities, material substances) which neither resemble our sensations nor can be inferred from them. Fact 2: We cannot fully account for Fact 1. Since our failure to explain a phenomenon is no argument

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   105 against its existence, common sense realists think it best to confess that we cannot get to the bottom of the human mind, and to admit that we cannot say why its original principles and basic powers are as they are.48 6. We cannot help believing that properties or qualities must belong to an independent subject, and our instinctive commitment to this way of thinking about real things is reflected in the grammatical forms of subject and predicate (e.g.— ‘The apple is round and red’).49 Since we find ourselves compelled by nature to believe that ordinary physical objects exist in their own right as material substances and as bearers of sensible qualities, the common sense realist concludes that Locke was right and that Berkeley was wrong: there is a real distinction between a substance and its attributes, and a physical object is not reducible to a bundle of properties or a congeries of qualities. 7. Some of the qualities or properties which belong to material substances are primary (e.g.—extension, figure, motion), and some are secondary (e.g.—­ colour, smell, taste). Since so-called ‘naïve’ realists regard all the sensible ­qualities of bodies as primary qualities, they effectively deny the reality of this distinction. This is one reason why common sense realism must not be confused with naïve realism; it is also one reason why common sense realists cannot be­confused with their Peripatetic ancestors, despite the fact that both Reid and Aristotle take the independent existence of the objects we perceive as a first principle.50 8. Although Cartesian and Lockean representative realists were right to draw the primary/secondary distinction, they drew that distinction in a way which depended upon the theory of ideas. Since common sense realists have forsworn the ideal system, they must find a new, non-representationalist way to distinguish primary and secondary qualities. Their modest proposal, which they claim is based on no dubious hypotheses or eccentric speculations, is that the conceptions of primary qualities which our senses give us are clear and distinct, whereas the conceptions of secondary qualities which our senses give us are obscure and relative.51 9. Although both primary and secondary qualities are signified or suggested by sensations which do not resemble them, the role played by sensation in the two cases is different. In the case of primary qualities, sensations serve almost exclusively as signs, and we typically take almost no notice of them unless they happen to be unusually painful and pleasant. In contrast, we do pay attention to the sensations which signify secondary qualities, and these sensations enter into the content of our conceptions of the qualities they signify.52 This difference is the logical flipside of the thesis that the conceptions of secondary qualities which we have by our senses are only relative (i.e.—known to us only as the causes of certain sensations), unlike our conceptions of ­primary qualities.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

106  Reid and the Problem of the External World 10. Secondary qualities, it must be stressed, are real qualities of bodies. To be more precise, Locke was quite right when he asserted that secondary qualities are  unknown powers in things which are responsible for producing certain sensations in us.53 The fact that we use the same name (e.g.—‘heat’) to refer both to the secondary quality and the sensations it produces in us may create some confusion, but it also gives us a way of reconciling the apparently opposed opinions of the vulgar (who believe that heat—meaning the power which produces sensations of heat in us—is in the fire) and the philosophers (who plead that heat—meaning the sensation of heat itself—is not in the fire).54 11. Does the common sense realist regard himself as an innovator or ‘setter-up of new notions’, in the words of Berkeley’s Philonous (Berkeley 1713: 3, 208)? Quite the opposite; he thinks that he is only making explicit the Weltbild to which all of us are naturally and irrevocably committed. That is to say, reflective common sense realists think that their view is not so much a philosophical theory or a metaphysical discovery as it is a clear and careful articulation of what human beings have always and everywhere taken for granted about the physical world and our knowledge of it. Because common sense realism thus seeks to excavate our actual conceptual scheme instead of replacing it with something radically new, it belongs to the tradition of descriptive (as opposed to revisionary) metaphysics pioneered by Aristotle.

3.7  Reid and Kames There is no need to speak at length about the basic similarities between the Reidian and Kamesian defences of realism; by this point, the attentive reader has probably ­discovered most of them on her own. According to both Kames and Reid, (a) we are entitled to believe in the external world, even though we cannot demonstrate its existence; (b) we are entitled to trust our perceptual faculties without any proof of their reliability, because our powerful faith in them is the direct and spontaneous expression of our shared nature; and (c) we should reject the dominant theory of ideas, according to which nothing can be directly perceived except the contents of our minds (ideas, impressions, subjective representations).55 These three parallels are striking and strong, and they remind us that a fair amount of what Reid says in support of realism had already been said in some form by Kames in the first edition of Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion. On the other hand, we have seen that Reid’s plea for realism contains at least four important new elements: (a) a systematic account of philosophy’s first principles (the so-called ‘principles of common sense’) which includes a defence of the very un-Kamesian All or None Thesis;56 (b) a much more detailed and ambitious critique of the theory of ideas; (c) the introduction of a new distinction between sensation and perception, according to which sensations signify or suggest qualities; and (d) the thought that the primary/secondary quality distinction should be drawn in terms of

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   107 the different sorts of conceptions which our constitution allows us to form of them on the basis of sensory input. Where the subject of common sense realism is concerned, therefore, it seems fair to say that Kames is to Reid as promise is to performance, or as the heady inspirations of youth are to the disciplined achievements of maturity. The first writer, eagle-eyed, spotted a diamond in the rough; but the second author, labouring patiently, transformed it into a crown jewel.

3.8  ‘A Scandal to Philosophy’ In a well-known passage from the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant described what he referred to as ‘a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general’: It still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.  (Kant 1781: B xl)

From Kant’s point of view, what is truly scandalous is the fact that philosophy has not been able to prove the existence of external things. Why does Kant believe that this is ‘a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general’? Simple: he assumes (and here he shows that he is one of Descartes’s descendants) that unless we have ‘a satisfactory proof ’ that trees and rocks exist, our belief in ordinary things becomes a matter of faith or mere belief, instead of constituting knowledge.57 From a Reidian point of view, Kant’s so-called ‘scandal’ is nothing of the kind. The real scandal, Reid would have informed Kant, is that modern philosophers ever thought a proof of ‘the existence of things outside us’ was needed.58 And why did they think that such a proof was necessary? The answer is clear: because they unwisely embraced various versions of the theory of ideas, and rashly turned their backs on the undeniable platitudes of common sense. This sort of foolish and irresponsible conduct is indeed a scandal to philosophy, at least from a Reidian point of view. Yet Reid is confident that a satisfactory solution is available, provided we have the humility and the courage to accept it. If modern philosophers can swallow their pride and admit that philosophy’s true foundations are the laws of our shared constitution, we may become what we have always been, at least outside of the lecture hall and the seminar room: unabashed common sense realists who swear by our senses and who treat the material world’s existence as self-evident. The sooner philosophers make that liberating collective confession, the sooner the problem of the external world will fade away and be forgotten, like a bad Cartesian dream at daybreak.

Notes 1. Sir William Hamilton reached the same conclusion (DPL 194). 2. Reid would agree with Myles Burnyeat’s claim that “Greek philosophy does not know the problem of proving in a general way the existence of an external world. That problem is

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

108  Reid and the Problem of the External World a  modern invention . . . [T]he Greeks never posed the problem of the existence of an external world in the general form we have known it since Descartes” (Burnyeat 1982: 19, 23). Contrast this with Dugald Stewart’s remark in “The Idealism of Berkeley”: “It is well known to all who have the slightest acquaintance with the history of philosophy, that among the various topics on which the ancient Sceptics exercised their ingenuity, the question concerning the existence of the Material World was always a favourite subject of disputation” (SW 5: 87). 3. This is Reid’s fifth first principle of contingent truths: “That those things do really exist  which we distinctly perceive by our senses, and are what we perceive them to be” (EIP 6.5, 476). 4. “The Peripatetic [system] . . . adopted as first principles those which mankind have always rested upon in their most important transactions” (EIP 6.7, 518). 5. See Descartes (1637: 25–8, 34–5), (1641: 76), (1644: 160). 6. According to Dugald Stewart, consciousness is analogous to perception: “[A]s our knowledge of the material world is derived entirely from our External Senses, so all our knowledge of the Human Mind is derived from Consciousness” (SW 5: 55; cf. SW 2: 13–14). 7. Compare this with Campbell’s understanding of consciousness, outlined in Section 1.8. 8. The term ‘cognitively spontaneous beliefs’ was coined by Laurence Bonjour (1976), (1985). 9. The ‘philosophers . . . hitherto mentioned’ include Arnauld, Malebranche, Norris, Berkeley, Collier, and Hume (EIP 6.7, 514–18). 10. Does this mean that Reid thinks it is logically impossible that only some of our natural faculties are reliable? Certainly not. What the All or None Thesis asserts is that we could never be epistemically justified in believing that some but not all of our natural cognitive faculties are reliable. For more on Reid’s argument for the All or None Thesis, see Lehrer (1989), DeRose (1989), Wolterstorff (2001), Rysiew (2002), de Bary (2002), and Magnus (2008). 11. According to Alvin Plantinga (1993), (2011), this self-condemning judgment—G. K. Chesterton described it as “a thought that stops thought” (Chesterton  1908: 56; cf. Chesterton 1933: 94–5)—is entailed by evolutionary naturalism. See Kroeker (2014) for an interesting examination of Plantinga’s ‘Reidian discourse’. 12. Stewart’s summary of Reid’s argument is admirably concise: “The belief which accompanies Consciousness, as to the present existence of its appropriate phenomena . . . rests on no foundation more solid than our belief of the existence of external objects” (SW 5: 57–8). 13. Here I paraphrase Keith Lehrer: “Our knowledge of the internal world of mental operations and our knowledge of the external world of physical processes are treated symmetrically. Both are taken for granted as a starting point for philosophical reflection” (Lehrer 1989: 21). 14. See Descartes (1641: 113–16). Versions of this argument can also be found in Descartes (1637: 39–40; 1644: 189). 15. Descartes’s argument is summarized by Reid in several places; see EIP 2.8, 115–16; EIP 2.10, 148–9; EIP 6.7, 515–16. 16. For more on Reid’s understanding of this distinction, see Lehrer (1978), McKitrick (2002), and Van Cleve (2011). 17. Specifically from Berkeley’s Likeness Principle: the thesis that “an idea can be like nothing but an idea” (Berkeley 1710: §8, 27) or—as Reid reformulates it—that a sensation can resemble nothing but another sensation.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   109 18. Stewart, too, maintains that secondary qualities “are only conceived as the unknown causes of known sensations” (SW 5: 116). 19. “Mr. Locke . . . distinguished the sensation from the quality in the body, which is the cause or occasion of that sensation, and showed that there neither is nor can be any similitude between them . . . This account of secondary qualities I take to be very just; and if Mr. Locke had stopped here, he would have left the matter very clear” (EIP 2.17, 207; emphasis mine). 20. As Lehrer notes, “[Reid’s] realism concerning perception . . . is inspired by Locke” (Lehrer 1989: 7). For a stimulating discussion of what Reid inherited from Locke and what he rejected, see Nichols (2003). 21. For more on this parallel and its implications, see McDermid (1999), (2010). For detailed examinations of Reid’s theory of action, see Rowe (1991), Yaffe (2004), and Harris (2005). 22. Although Kames also held that our belief in external objects and our belief in free will were both natural beliefs, he was only willing to take the first belief at face value. Reid, taking his stand on the All or None Thesis, rejects Kames’s position and insists that all our natural beliefs are in the same boat. From a Reidian point of view, Kames has made the same sort of mistake as Descartes—that of picking and choosing arbitrarily among first principles. 23. Our disposition to trust the testimony of our senses is an inescapable feature of the human condition: “There are some points of belief so necessary, that, without them, a man would not be the being which God made him. These may be opposed in speculation, but it is impossible to root them out. In a speculative hour they seem to vanish, but in practice they resume their authority” (EAP 4.6, 309). 24. Some commentators, such as Daniels (1974), have claimed that Reid, like Descartes, attempts to justify our basic confidence in our own faculties by appealing to God. For a thoughtful treatment of this topic, see de Bary (2002), Chapters 5 and 10. 25. For a classic discussion of Reid and epistemic circularity, see Alston (1986); cf. Alston (1993), Sosa (2009), Thébert (2015), and Van Cleve (2015). For an exploration of the idea of self-trust, see Lehrer (1997). 26. Beattie makes a similar point about the Cartesian anti-sceptical strategy: “In a word, you pretend to prove the truth of our faculties, by an argument which evidently and necessarily supposes their truth . . . We must believe our faculties to be true, before we can be convinced, either by proof, or by intuitive evidence” (EOT 2.2, 144; 2.2, 175). 27. My use of the term asymmetry thesis is inspired by Lehrer, who attributed a symmetry thesis to Reid (Lehrer 1989: 20–1, 27, 288). 28. “It is a good argument ad hominem, if it can be shewn, that a first principle which a man rejects, stands upon the same footing with others which he admits” (EIP 6.4, 463). For an echo of this, see McCosh (1865: 330). 29. As Keith DeRose (2009) notes, D. M. Armstrong (1961), one of the leading defenders of direct realism in the twentieth century, reached the same conclusion. 30. John Greco (1995) has called these ‘the evidential argument’ and ‘the inconceivability argument’, respectively; see also Greco (2004). 31. See Berkeley (1710: §18–§20, 31–2). 32. “[A]n idea can be like nothing but another idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure” (Berkeley 1710: §8, 27). 33. Anyone interested in the finer points of Reid’s philosophy of perception should read Nichols (2007) and Van Cleve (2015). Shorter treatments of Reid’s critique of the theory of ideas are offered by Grave (1960), Chapters 1 and 2; Daniels (1974), Chapter  4; Lehrer

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

110  Reid and the Problem of the External World (1989), Chapters 2 and 7; Wolterstorff (2001), Chapters 2, 3, and 4; and de Bary (2002), Chapters 6 and 7. Also helpful are the articles by Van Cleve (2004), Falkenstein (2004), and Greco (1995), (2004). 34. Reid’s defence of the claim that there are no good arguments for the ideal theory is examined in Van Cleve (2015), Chapter 3. 35. Early in the Inquiry we find Reid playing the role of philosophical prosecutor, briskly listing the charges against the ideal theory: “[T]hat no solid proof has ever been advanced of the existence of ideas; that they are a mere fiction and hypothesis, contrived to solve the phænomena of the human understanding; that they do not at all answer this end; and that this hypothesis of ideas or images of things in the mind, or in the sensorium, is the parent of those many paradoxes so shocking to common sense, and of that scepticism, which disgrace our philosophy of the mind, and have brought upon it the ridicule and the contempt of sensible men” (IHM 2.4, 28). The reader can see for herself how much overlap there is between the items on this list and the five objections which are developed in Essay 2, Chapter 14 of the Essays on the Intellectual Powers (“Reflections on the common theory of ideas”). 36. See Section 3.3, Observation (1). 37. For a sustained exploration of this theme in Reid’s philosophy, see Wolterstorff (2001), Chapter 10. 38. Reid’s distinction was much admired by Schopenhauer (1859 II: 20–1). For more on the Reid–Schopenhauer connection, see McDermid (2001); for more on Schopenhauer’s idealism and its relation to the sensation/perception distinction, see McDermid (2002), (2003), (2012). For Hamilton’s thoughts on the distinction, see HSD 876–88. 39. Stewart follows Reid when he speaks of “the confusion between the terms Sensation and Perception which has produced the ideal theory” (SW 7: 164, cf. 167; SW 2: 14). 40. As James Van Cleve points out, “Reid’s official characterization of perception involves three elements—conception, belief, and immediacy” (Van Cleve 2004: 106). 41. See the reference to “a natural kind of magic” in the Inquiry (IHM 5.4, 60). 42. “I am persuaded, that the unjust live by faith as well as the just . . . ” (IHM Dedication, 4; cf. Hebrews 10:38). There is an echo of this in Hamilton: “[A]s we did not create ourselves, and are not even in the secret of our creation; we must take our existence, our knowledge upon trust” (DPL 62). René van Woudenberg (1999) has explored the role which natural faith or trust plays in the philosophy of Reid and in the thought of the Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). According to van Woudenberg, Reid and Kuyper defend versions of foundationalism which are strikingly similar. For more on the anti-Cartesian foundationalism developed by Reid, see Vernier (1976). 43. This is another example of Reid’s commitment to epistemological egalitarianism, first mentioned in Section 1.4. On the theme of darkness in Reid, see Wolterstorff (2001), Chapter 10. 44. Though I am sympathetic to the idea that Reid was a mysterian of sorts, I think Copenhaver (2006) makes a good case for a non-mysterian interpretation. 45. Reid’s point was nicely re-stated by Beattie: “[W]e believe in the testimony of external sense, not because we can prove it to be true, but because the law of our nature determines us to believe in it without proof ” (EOT 1.2, 35; cf. 1.2, 38–9; 2.2, 157; 2.2, 169–70; 2.2, 173–4).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

reid and the problem of the external world   111 46. Reid claimed that his critique of the theory of ideas was his major contribution to philosophy. In a letter to James Gregory, he writes: “The merit of what you are pleased to call my philosophy, lies, I think, chiefly, in having called in question the common theory of ideas, or images of things in the mind, being the only objects of thought” (RC 88). 47. There is at the very least an apparent tension between Reid’s commitment to direct realism, on the one hand, and his distinction between sensation and perception, on the other. How, commentators have often asked, can Reid be classified as a direct realist if he maintains that our perception of external or material things is mediated by our sensations, which are internal or subject-dependent entities? Apart from differences in nomenclature, isn’t this Reidian view disturbingly similar to a form of old-fashioned representative realism in which our perception of the external world is mediated by our ideas? Two clusters of questions have dominated the lively and growing literature on this topic: (1) What exactly is ‘direct realism’, and what kinds of mediation are compatible with it? (2) What is the nature of Reidian sensations, in what way(s) is perception mediated by them, and how are they different from ideas? For answers, see Anderson (1935), Winch (1953), Duggan (1960), Cummins (1974), Immerwahr (1978), Madden (1986), Pappas (1989), DeRose (1989), Copenhaver (2000), (2004), Buras (2002), (2005), (2008), Van Cleve (2004), and Wolterstorff (2006). 48. That is to say, we may uncover laws which govern the mind, but—to quote Rebecca Copenhaver—“the search for ultimate causes is ultimately hopeless” (Copenhaver 2006: 449, cf. 451–2, 457). 49. Belief in substance is one of Reid’s first principles of necessary truths: “That the qualities which we perceive by our senses must have a subject, which we call body, and that the thoughts we are conscious of must have a subject, which we call mind” (EIP 6.6, 495). The second half of this metaphysical principle contains the germ of Reid’s answer to Humean scepticism about the self. 50. Aristotle and his followers, Reid remarks, “made no distinction between primary and secondary qualities” (IHM 5.8, 73; cf. EIP 2.17, 206). And this was a retrograde step, Reid adds, because the distinction had already been drawn by Democritus (IHM 5.5, 62; IHM 5.8, 73; EIP 2.17, 206). 51. See EIP 2.17, 202–3. 52. As Jennifer McKitrick puts it, “[s]ensations are semantic constituents of secondary-quality terms” (McKitrick 2002: 488). 53. Secondary qualities, Locke asserts, “are nothing in the Objects themselves, but Powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary Qualities, i.e. by the Bulk, Figure, Texture, and Motion of their insensible parts, as Colours, Sounds, Tastes, etc.” (Locke 1690: 2.8.10, 15). 54. According to the Scottish-Australian philosopher John Anderson (1893–1962), Reid overlooks a deeper disagreement between the philosophers and the vulgar—namely, that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities drawn by the former is not accepted by the latter, who naturally believe that the redness and roundness of an apple have the same metaphysical status: “[Reid] is quite wrong as to its being the common sense view that the object is coloured in a sense in which it does not resemble the appearance of colour to us, but, on the contrary, it is the common sense view, granted the possibility of error in particular cases, that the appearance of colour to us is the colour of

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

112  Reid and the Problem of the External World the object” (Anderson 1935: 143). Anderson’s influence on the intellectual life of Australia, his adopted country, is discussed in Chapter 1 of Grave (1984) and in Chapters 1 and 2 of Franklin (2003). 55. The reader who reviews Section 2.4 will realize that Kames anticipated at least three of Reid’s principal objections to the theory of ideas: Objections (a), (b), and (d), as described in Section 3.4. 56. Kames, it will be recalled, did not think that all our natural feelings or beliefs are trustworthy. See Sections 2.0 and 2.6. 57. Sir William Hamilton had the following response to Kant’s complaint: “But the philosopher who deemed it ‘a scandal to philosophy and human reason’ to found the proof of a material world—in itself to us a matter of supreme indifference—on belief; on belief, on feeling, afterwards established the proof of all the highest objects of our interest—God—Free Will—and Immortality” (HSD 793). 58. Recall Heidegger’s remark in Being and Time: “The ‘scandal of philosophy’ does not consist in the fact that this proof is still lacking up to now, but in the fact that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again” (Heidegger 1927: 205).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

4 Stewart and Hamilton Defenders of the Faith It was chiefly in consequence of the sceptical conclusions which Bishop Berkeley and Mr. Hume had deduced from the ancient theories of perception, that Dr. Reid was led to call them in question; and he appears to me to have shewn, in the most satisfactory manner, not only that they are perfectly hypothetical, but that the suppositions they involve are absurd and impossible. His reasonings on this part of our constitution, undoubtedly form the most important accession which the philosophy of the human mind has received since the time of Mr. Locke. —Dugald Stewart

The Scottish School of Philosophy is distinctively characterised by its opposition to all the destructive schemes of speculation;—in particular, to Scepticism, or the uncertainty of knowledge; to Idealism, or the non-existence of the material world; to Fatalism, or the denial of a moral universe. Reid has the merit of originating this movement, and Stewart the honour of continuing, and promoting, and extending it. —Sir William Hamilton

4.0 Introduction How did the cause of common sense realism fare in Scotland in the decades immediately following Thomas Reid’s death in 1796? In this chapter, we shall take a look at the contributions of the two Edinburgh-based philosophers we met at the very end of Chapter 1: Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) and Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856). When we compare what Stewart and Hamilton have to say about our knowledge of a mind-independent world, three things quickly become apparent. First, Stewart and Hamilton are self-consciously Scottish thinkers who believe there is a national tradition in philosophy which can be defined and defended.1 This idea is new; there is really nothing like it in Kames or Reid. Second, both Stewart and Hamilton draw heavily, if selectively, on the work of Thomas Reid, whom they regard as the Scottish common sense philosopher par excellence: a perceptive and subtle mind whose books are full of acute observations, powerful arguments, and fruitful suggestions.2 Third, Stewart’s approach to the problem of the external world is less intellectually

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

114  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith adventurous than what we find in Hamilton. Convinced that Reid’s case for common sense realism was practically the Last Word on the subject, Stewart was content for the most part to expound Reid’s arguments, to comment on their historical importance, to forestall various objections to them, and to make only minor emendations.3 In short, Stewart’s manner was not that of a free-wheeling inquirer in hot pursuit of new truth in epistemology or metaphysics; it was rather that of a fervent disciple who believes that the truth in these domains is already his, and who feels compelled to communicate it to others in an unadulterated form.4 Less of a disciple and more of an innovator, the ambitious Hamilton attempted something difficult and hitherto untried—namely, to arrive at a synthesis of the insights of Reid and Kant, each of whom was a forceful critic of the modern empiricist picture of mind and knowledge.5 At first blush (and perhaps not only at first blush), this might seem to be the most quixotic of philosophical projects, for how could anyone hope to fuse two doctrines as fundamentally opposed as common sense realism (which claims that the objects of immediate perception are mind-independent things) and transcendental idealism (which claims that the objects of immediate perception are mind-dependent appearances or phenomena)? Hamilton, alas, was never able to answer this question to his critics’ satisfaction, and this is one reason why his reputation collapsed within three decades of his death.6 Nevertheless, his career forms an important episode in the history of Scottish common sense realism for three reasons. First, Hamilton was the first Scot to place the problems of realism and perception at the centre of philosophy.7 Second, his quasi-Kantian doctrine of the so-called ‘relativity of knowledge’ put old-fashioned forms of common sense realism on the defensive.8 Third, Hamilton’s willingness to learn from Kant and from the post-Kantian idealists opened up Scottish philosophy to a host of foreign authors and fresh influences. In the fullness of time, the last two developments converged and contributed to a backlash against common sense realism in Scotland—a backlash we shall explore in Chapters 5 and 6, where the arguments of James Frederick Ferrier, Hamilton’s friend and protégé, will be examined in detail.

4.1  Stewart and Common Sense Realism Anyone who wants to get a good sense of how Dugald Stewart approached the problem of the external world should read “The Idealism of Berkeley”, a lively and pellucid piece included in Philosophical Essays (1810). Let us consider three important passages from this essay: The attempt of Berkeley to disprove the existence of the Material World, took its rise from the attempt of Descartes to demonstrate the truth of the contrary proposition. Both undertakings were equally unphilosophical; for, to argue in favour of any of the fundamental laws of human belief is not less absurd than to call them into question. In this argument, however, it must be granted, that Berkeley had the advantage; the conclusion which he formed being unavoidable, if the common principles be admitted on which they both proceeded. It was reserved for

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  115 Dr. Reid to show, that these principles are not only unsupported by proof, but contrary to incontestable facts; nay, that they are utterly inconceivable, from the manifest inconsistencies and absurdities which they involve.  (SW 5: 88) The observations which have been made on the scope of Berkeley’s argument may serve, at the same time, to illustrate that of Dr. Reid’s reply to it, which has been, in general, strangely misunderstood. In order to have a just idea of this, it is necessary always to bear in mind, that it is not directed against the sceptical suggestions of the Pyrrhonists, but against Berkeley’s inferences from Locke’s principles; or rather, against the principles from which these inferences were deduced. The object of the author is not to bring forward any new proofs that Matter does exist, nor (as has been often very uncandidly affirmed) to cut short all discussion upon this question, by an unphilosophical appeal to popular belief; but to overturn the pretended ­demonstration, that Matter does not exist, by exposing the futility and absurdity of the principles which it assumes as data. That from these data (which had been received, during a long succession of ages, as incontrovertible articles of faith) both Berkeley and Hume have reasoned with exceptional fairness, as well as incomparable acuteness, he acknowledges in every page of his works; and only asserts, that the force of their conclusion is annihilated by the falseness and inconsistency of the hypothesis on which it rests.  (SW 5: 90–1) While Reid, however, in his controversy with Hume and Berkeley, thus opposes argument to argument, he does not follow the example of Descartes, in attempting to confirm our belief of the existence of matter, by the aid of deductive evidence. All such evidence, he justly observes, must necessarily take for granted some principles not more certain nor more obvious than the thing to be proved; and therefore, can add nothing to its authority with men who have duly weighed the nature of reasoning and of demonstrative proof. Nor is this all. Where scepticism is founded on a suspicion of the possible fallibility of the human faculties, the very idea of correcting it by an appeal to argument is nugatory; inasmuch as such an appeal virtually takes for granted the paramount authority of those laws of belief which the sceptic calls into question. The belief, therefore, of the existence of Matter, is left by Dr. Reid on the very same footing on which Descartes found it; open, as it then was, and as it must forever remain, to the sceptical cavils which affect equally every judgment which the human mind is capable of forming; but freed completely from those metaphysical objections which assailed it, as at variance with the conclusions of philosophy.  (SW 5: 92)

The style in these three paragraphs is so elegant and polished that the casual reader may not realize that Stewart has just made five substantial observations about Reidian common sense realism. 1.  Stewart thinks that Reid’s defence of common sense realism rests on two fundamental premises. Premise 1: We cannot help believing in the independent existence of the physical world, because such a conviction is the direct expression of ‘a fundamental law of human belief ’.9 Premise 2: The fundamental laws of human belief can neither be called into question nor supported with reasons: ‘[T]o argue in favour of any of the fundamental laws of human belief is not less absurd than to call them into question.’ Conclusion: The mind-independence of the world apprehended in perception cannot be doubted, and it is perfectly reasonable for us to believe in material things without any supporting argument or philosophical demonstration of their existence.10

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

116  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith 2.  According to Stewart, Reid thinks that the main problem with Descartes and Berkeley is that both rejected Premise 1: the thesis that belief in material objects is the direct and unavoidable expression of a fundamental law of our constitution. Convinced that knowledge of mind was epistemically prior to knowledge of matter, Descartes and Berkeley took the ‘unphilosophical’ view that our belief in the existence of a material world was epistemically non-foundational or derivative—the sort of belief, that is to say, which could either be supported or subverted by a philosopher’s arguments. 3.  Although Reid and Descartes are both realists, Stewart points out that Reid is unlike Descartes (and like Berkeley) in that he thinks that realism cannot be supported by argument: ‘The object of the author is not to bring forward proofs that Matter does exist . . . [He] does not follow the example of Descartes, in attempting to confirm our belief of the existence of matter, by the aid of deductive evidence.’11 However, Reid is unlike both Berkeley and Descartes in that he thinks that the material world’s existence is as ‘certain’ and ‘obvious’ to us as anything can be. If Reid is right about this (and Stewart has no doubt that he is), no non-circular proof of the material world’s existence is possible, because any such proof would have to depend on things which are no more evident to us than the proof ’s conclusion. 4.  According to Stewart, Reid sees that Berkeley’s idealist conclusion is inescapable (‘unavoidable’) if we accept the ‘common principles’ about perception on which Berkeley’s reasoning depends: the theory of ideas, according to which nothing mind-independent is ever present to the mind.12 Yet Reid also sees that Berkeleyan idealism contradicts a fundamental law of human belief, which is why he concludes that the ‘common principles’ about perception which philosophers have favoured must be erroneous (‘futile’ or ‘absurd’). Here Reid truly broke new ground, because he was the first philosopher to show that the ideal theory was both ‘unsupported by proof ’ and ‘contrary to incontestable facts’.13 If Reid is right about this (and Stewart, once again, is confident that he was), all sceptical arguments which appeal to a representative theory of perception are ipso facto unsound and can safely be ignored. 5.  Nevertheless, Stewart points out that Reid does not think that it is possible to disprove or refute the thesis of scepticism, because Reid recognized that any attempt to vindicate our faculties by discursive means ‘virtually takes for granted the paramount authority of those laws of belief which the sceptic calls into question’. Since philosoph­ ical reasoning is powerless to establish the truth or the falsity of the sceptical thesis, and since we cannot help trusting the fundamental laws of human belief, the issue of radical scepticism must remain open in one sense yet idle in another: ‘The belief, therefore, of the existence of Matter, is left by Dr. Reid on the very same footing on which Descartes found it; open, as it then was, and as it must forever remain, to the sceptical cavils which affect equally every judgment which the human mind is capable of forming; but freed completely from those metaphysical objections which assailed it, as at variance with the conclusions of philosophy.’ This, then, is the bottom line for Reid—and for Stewart.14

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  117 Is this all Stewart has to say about scepticism, common-sensism, and the problem of the external world? Not quite; two additional theses of substance need to be explored. Both theses, the reader will observe, are presented as refinements of Reid’s views. 6.  Although Stewart thinks we cannot doubt that a material world can be known directly in perception, he denies that we can ever know matter’s inner nature or true essence. Why? Because Reid’s meticulous analysis of the human mind has revealed that the only notions we can form of matter and mind are relative ones. The notions we annex to the words Matter and Mind, as is well remarked by Dr. Reid, are merely relative. If I am asked, what I mean by Matter? I can only explain myself by saying, it is that which is extended, figured, coloured, moveable, hard or soft, rough or smooth, hot or cold;— that is, I can define it in no other way than by enumerating its sensible qualities. It is not matter, or body, which I perceive by my senses; but only extension, figure, colour, and certain other qualities which the constitution of my nature leads me to refer to something which is extended, figured, and coloured. The case is precisely similar with respect to Mind. We are not immediately conscious of its existence, but we are conscious of sensation, thought, and volition; operations which imply the existence of something which feels, thinks, and wills. Every man, too, is impressed with an irresistible conviction, that all these sensations, thoughts, and volitions belong to one and the same being; to that being which he calls himself; a being which he is led, by the constitution of his nature, to consider as something distinct from his body, and as not liable to be impaired by the loss or mutilation of any of his organs.  (SW 2: 46–7; cf. SW 5: 5–6) Our notions of both body and mind are merely relative; that is, we can define the former only by the qualities perceived by our senses, and the latter by the operations of which we are conscious.  (SW 2: 17; cf. SW 2: 13) [M]atter as well as mind is known to us by its qualities and attributes alone, and . . . we are totally ignorant of the essence of either.  (SW 2: 48) We are conscious of sensation, thought, desire, and volition; but we are not conscious of the existence of Mind itself . . .  (SW 3: 41; cf. SW 5: 58) [A]s our notions of mind and body are merely relative, we know the one only by its sensible qualities, and the other by the operations of which we are conscious . . . (SW 7: 163–4; cf. SW 6: 69)

As these passages indicate, Stewart thinks Reid has shown that our faculties of consciousness and perception can only apprehend phenomena or qualities, not substances or bearers of qualities.15 This means that when you enter most intimately into what you call yourself, you are never immediately conscious of mind; all you are ever aware of are mental phenomena (thoughts, desires, volitions, sensations) which, by an unalterable law of your nature, lead you to believe spontaneously and firmly in the existence of something which thinks and has experiences. It also means that when you look round the world and contemplate the whole and every part of it, you are never immediately conscious of matter; all you are ever aware of are sensible qualities (extension, figure, colour, and so on) which, by an unalterable law of your nature, lead you to believe spontaneously and firmly in the existence of something extended, figured, and coloured.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

118  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith But if our irresistible belief in substances is not based on direct acquaintance with them, Stewart reasons, we must conclude that what Mind and Matter are in themselves must forever remain an inscrutable mystery to creatures with our constitution. And this discovery of our own ignorance in the face of the mundane, this knowledge of what we cannot know about the apparently commonplace, is one more proof of philosophy’s power “to remind us of the limited powers of the human understanding and to revive those natural feelings of wonder and admiration at the spectacle of the universe, which are apt to languish in consequence of long familiarity” (SW 2: 109).16 7.  According to Stewart, Reid’s ‘principles of common sense’ are not actually prin­ ciples in the strict and proper sense of the term. His argument for this claim rests on two premises. Premise 1: Principles are propositions which function as premises; that is, they are data from which new knowledge may be deduced or derived.17 Premise 2: Yet no such consequences can be deduced from any truth of common sense, all of which are “perfectly barren in themselves” (SW 3: 45). Conclusion: Common sense truths are not reasoning’s first principles or ultimate premises. Corollary: Philosophers who follow Reid need to give common sense truths a new title or name—one which accurately reflects their distinctive function and status. Stewart suggests such truths should henceforth be called “the fundamental laws of human belief ” (SW 3: 45, 47; SW 5: 88; SW 10: 275, 304), although he also refers to them as “the primary elements of human reason” (SW 3: 45), “the constituent elements of human reason” (SW 3: 50, cf. 49), “the common reason of mankind” (SW 5: 91), “the essential principles of the human understanding” (SW 5: 91), “elemental truths” (SW 3: 37), and “metaphysical or transcendental truths” (SW 3: 44). The belief which all men entertain of the existence of the material world, (I mean their belief of its existence independently of that of percipient beings), and their expectation of the continued uniformity of the laws of nature, belong to the same class of ultimate or elem­ ental laws of thought, with those which have just been mentioned [i.e.—the belief that consciousness is trustworthy, the belief that one exists, the belief that memory is trustworthy]. The truths which form their objects are of an order so radically different from what are commonly called truths, in the popular acceptation of that word, that it might perhaps be useful for logicians to distinguish them by some appropriate appellation, such, for example, as that of metaphysical or transcendental truths. They are not principles or data . . . from which any consequences can be deduced; but form a part of those original stamina of human reason, which are equally essential in the pursuits of science, and to all the active concerns of life.  (SW 3: 44) From such proposition as these—I exist; I am the same person to-day that I was yesterday; the material world has an existence independent of my mind; the general laws of nature will continue, in future, to operate uniformly as in time past—no inference can be deduced, any more than from the intuitive truths prefixed to the Elements of Euclid. Abstracted from other data, they are perfectly barren in themselves; nor can any possible combination of them help the mind forward one single step in its progress. It is for this reason that, instead of calling them, with some other writers, first principles, I have distinguished them by the title of fundamental

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  119 laws of human belief: the former word seeming to me to denote, according to common usage, some fact, or some supposition, from which a series of consequences may be deduced. (SW 3: 45–6, cf. 47)

One noteworthy implication of Stewart’s view is that the meta-philosophy of common sense cannot be defended by means of the epistemic regress argument used by both Reid and Campbell.18 Although Stewart thinks this argument for first principles is logically valid, he maintains that it is irrelevant in the present context; for if Reid’s intuitive truths are not principles, they obviously cannot be first principles. Our belief in the independent existence of material objects, our assurance of own existence and identity across time, our faith in nature’s constancy, our confidence in memory: these are not Ur-premises from which we reason, but reason’s constituent elements; not data for thought, but thought’s laws or necessary conditions. If the account given of these laws of belief be just, the great argument which has commonly been urged in support of their authority, and which manifestly confounds them with what are properly called principles of reasoning, is not at all applicable to the subject; or at least does not rest the point in dispute on its right foundation. If there were no first principles, (it has been said,) or in other words, if a reason could be given for everything, no process of deduction could possibly be brought to a conclusion. This remark is indisputably true; but it only proves (what no logician of the present times will venture to deny) that the mathematician could not demonstrate a single theorem, unless he were first allowed to lay down his definitions; nor the natural philosopher explain or account for a single phenomenon, unless he were allowed to assume, as acknowledged facts, certain general laws of nature. What inference does this afford in favour of that particular class of truths to which the preceding observations relate, and against which the ingenuity of modern sceptics has been more particularly directed? If I be not deceived, these truths are still more intimately connected with the operations of the reasoning faculty than has been generally imagined; not as the principles from which our reasonings ultimately set out, and on which they ultimately depend, but as the necessary conditions on which every step of the deduction tacitly proceeds; or rather (if I may use the expression) as essential elements which enter into the very composition of reason itself.  (SW 3: 46–7)

Although Stewart denies that Reid’s common sense truths are first principles or foundational beliefs, he does not deny that they enjoy privileged status. Yet how, exactly, is their status to be understood? Stewart’s answer is clear: such elemental commitments are authoritative and ultimate not because they support or ground the rest of our beliefs, but because they are elements which ‘enter into the very composition of reason itself ’ and ‘form a part of those original stamina of human reason, which are equally essential in the pursuits of science, and to all the active concerns of life’. And it is precisely because these ‘transcendental truths’ or ‘fundamental laws’ are innate and indispensable that they remain invisible until an encounter with an intrepid sceptic makes us aware of them: “It is only at that period of our intellectual progress, when scientific arrangements and metaphysical refinements begin to be introduced, that they become objects of attention to the mind, and assume the form of propositions”

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

120  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith (SW 3: 47). We may therefore conclude that philosophical scepticism, far from being an intellectual dead-end, is a medium or mirror through which human reason comes to know itself. It might be asked why Stewart doesn’t devote more space in his voluminous writings to the problems of realism, scepticism, and idealism. The main answer, I think, is fairly clear: Stewart believes that the long and bloody battle for the external world has finally been won. Thanks to Reid, philosophers no longer need to be afraid of scepticism, idealism, or the way of ideas; these false friends of truth, who once threatened to conquer our thoughts and overrun philosophy, have been forced to surrender to the Grande Armée of common sense (or ‘the fundamental laws of human belief ’). Since the war between sophistry and philosophy is now over, it only remains for a honey-tongued herald to bring the good news of realism’s triumph to the civilian population, and to summarize the victorious general’s strategy for the edification of future generations. And Stewart, of course, is that herald: not the hero who has accomplished great and unprecedented things, but the messenger whose well-chosen words are needed to keep the memory of the hero’s deeds alive.19

4.2  Hamilton and the Relativity of Knowledge Sir William Hamilton’s philosophical interests, it seems fair to say, were much narrower than those of Dugald Stewart or Thomas Reid. For unlike his many-sided Enlightenment predecessors, Hamilton was a philosophical hedgehog, not a philosophical fox;20 a specialist with a vengeance, he was first and foremost an epistemologist convinced that philosophy’s central task was to distinguish between subject and object, and to identify the contributions which each of these elements makes to our knowledge. We find a clear statement of this meta-philosophical thesis near the beginning of his posthumously published Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic: Subject, as we have seen, is a term for that in which the phænomena revealed to our observation, inhere,—what the schoolmen have designated the materia in qua. Limited to the mental phenomena, subject, therefore, denotes the mind itself; and subjective, that which belongs to, or proceeds from, the thinking subject. Object, on the other hand, is a term for that about which the knowing subject is conversant,—what the schoolmen have styled the materia circa quam; while objective means that which belongs to, or proceeds from, the object known, and not from the subject knowing; and thus denotes what is real in opposition to what is ideal,—what exists in nature, in contrast to what exists merely in the thought of the individual. Now, the great problem of philosophy is to analyse the contents of our acts of knowledge, or cognitions,—to distinguish what elements are contributed by the knowing subject, what ­elements are contributed by the object known.  (LML 1: 159–60, cf. 146)

How exactly do the subjective and the objective fit together in our knowledge of the world? This is ‘the great problem of philosophy’, and Hamilton’s solution to it comes

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  121 in the form of a doctrine which made him famous: the thesis that our knowledge of reality is always relative or conditioned.21 To understand what Hamilton meant by this, we need to acquaint ourselves with some of his remarks about the nature and limitations of human knowledge. Caveat lector: brevity is most emphatically not Hamilton’s strong suit. Our knowledge, whether of mind or matter, can be nothing more than a knowledge of the relative manifestations of an existence, which in itself it is our highest wisdom to recognise as beyond the reach of philosophy.  (DPL 14) We are wholly ignorant of existence in itself:—the mind knows nothing except in parts, by quality, and difference, and relation; consciousness supposes the subject contradistinguished from the object of thought; the abstraction of this contrast is a negation of consciousness; and the negation of consciousness is the annihilation of thought itself.  (DPL 19) All that we do know of self,—all that we may intuitively know of non-self, is only relative. Existence absolutely and in itself, is to us as zero; and while nothing is, so nothing is known to us, except those phases of being which stand in analogy to our faculties of knowledge. These we call qualities, phænomena, properties, etc.  (DPL 53) Mind and matter exist to us only in their qualities: and these exist to us only as they are known by us,—i.e. as phenomena.  (DPL 59) Our whole knowledge of mind and matter is relative,—conditioned,—relatively conditioned. Of things absolute and in themselves, be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, or know them only as incognisable . . . All that we know is phenomenal—phenomenal of the unknown.  (DPL 608) . . . the great axiom, that all human knowledge, consequently that all human philosophy, is only of the relative or phænomenal. In this proposition, the term relative is opposed to the term absolute; and, therefore, in saying that we know only the relative, I virtually assert that we know nothing absolute,—nothing existing absolutely; that is, in and for itself, and without relation to us and our faculties.  (LML 1: 136–7, cf. 137–8, 61) We know mind and matter not in themselves, but in their accidents or phænomena. (LML 1: 140) Thus our knowledge is of relative existence only, seeing that existence in itself, or absolute existence, is no object of knowledge. But it does not follow that all relative existence is relative to us; that all that can be known, even by a limited intelligence, is actually cognisable by us. We must, therefore, more precisely limit our sphere of knowledge, by adding, that all we know is known only under the special conditions of our faculties. This is a truth likewise generally acknowledged . . . Now this principle, in which philosophers of the most opposite opinions equally concur, divides itself into two branches. In the first place, it would be unphilosophical to conclude that the properties of existence necessarily are, in number, only as the number of our faculties of apprehending them; or, in the second, that the properties known, are known in their native purity, and without addition or modification from our organs of sense, or our capacities of intelligence.  (LML 1: 140–1)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

122  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith [I]t is evident that nothing exists for us, except in so far as it is known to us, and that nothing is known to us, except certain properties or modes of existence, which are relative or analogous to our faculties. Beyond these modes we know, and can assert, the reality of no existence. (LML 1: 141) The universe may be conceived as a polygon of a thousand, or a hundred thousand, sides or facets,—and each of these sides or facets may be conceived as representing one special mode of existence. Now, of these thousand sides or modes all may be equally essential, but three or four only may be turned towards us or be analogous to our organs.  (LML 1: 142) Before leaving this subject, it is perhaps proper to observe, that had we faculties equal in number to all the possible modes of existence, whether of mind or matter, still would our knowledge of mind or matter be only relative. If material existence could exhibit ten thousand phænomena, and if we possessed ten thousand senses to apprehend these ten thousand phænomena of material existence,—of existence absolutely and in itself, we should be then as ignorant as we are at present. But the consideration that our actual faculties of knowledge are probably wholly inadequate in number to the possible modes of being, is of comparatively less importance than the other consideration to which we now proceed,—that whatever we know is not known as it is, but only as it seems to us to be . . .  (LML 1: 145–6) From what has been said, you will be able, I hope, to understand what is meant by the propos­ ition, that all our knowledge is only relative. It is relative, 1°, Because existence is not cognisable, absolutely and in itself, but only in special modes; 2°, Because these modes can be known only if they stand in a certain relation to our faculties; and, 3°, Because the modes, thus relative to our faculties, are presented to, and known by, the mind only under modifications determined by these faculties themselves.  (LML 1: 148) [A]ll our knowledge of mind and matter is merely relative. We know, and can know, nothing absolutely and in itself: all that we know is existence in certain special forms and modes, and these, likewise, only in so far as they may be analogous to our faculties.  (LML 1: 153) All the qualities both of mind and matter, are therefore only known to us as relations—we know nothing in itself.  (HSD 965)

Hamilton’s main claim in these passages seems to be that we cannot know things as they are apart from us or in themselves (i.e.—we cannot know things ‘absolutely’); all we can ever know are phenomena, or things as they are related to us and our faculties of knowledge (i.e.—we can only know things ‘relatively’). This Kantian-sounding thesis is supported by no fewer than three distinct lines of argument,22 which I shall call the Argument from Existence, the Argument from Analogous Faculties, and the Argument from Subjective Conditions. The following summaries of these arguments should help readers to spot statements of them in the raft of passages cited above. 1. The Argument from Existence: We cannot know absolute existence or existence per se, but only particular modes or relative manifestations of existence: properties, qualities, attributes, or phenomena. It follows that mind and matter, taken in themselves as substances or as things existing apart from the qualities which they manifest, are completely beyond our ken.23

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  123 2. The Argument from Analogous Faculties: Since there may perfectly well be modes of existence for which human beings have no corresponding or analogous faculty, we are not entitled to claim that our knowledge of things is absolute or complete. Human knowledge, it thus must be conceded, may forever fail to comprehend reality’s luxuriant richness or plenitude. 3. The Argument from Subjective Conditions: Since objects can be known only if they conform to conditions and laws imposed by the knowing subject, a subject can know objects only as they are related to the subject. Yet if it is possible for a subject to know objects only as they are related to the subject, it is impossible for any subject to know objects as they are in themselves. The order or sequence in which Hamilton’s three arguments have been presented is not a matter of indifference: Hamilton’s second argument is apparently intended to answer a question raised by his first argument, just as his third argument is apparently intended to answer a question raised by his second. To see how this is supposed to work, let us descend to the level of particulars. According to Hamilton’s Argument from Existence, only modes or relative manifestations of existence are knowable—“Existence absolutely and in itself, is to us as zero” (DPL 53)—which implies that our knowledge of substances is relative in the sense identified by Reid and Stewart.24 Yet here an impatient critic, sympathetic to the views of Hamilton’s two predecessors, may ask: ‘If we can know all the modes of existence, and modes alone are knowable, then our knowledge leaves nothing to be desired. What, then, is the point of saying that our knowledge is merely relative?’ Hamilton addresses this worry with his second argument: the Argument from Analogous Faculties. We are not entitled to assume that we can know all of existence’s modes, he now claims, because human beings may lack the faculties needed to apprehend certain modes, and it would be unbecomingly dogmatic not to take this possibility seriously: “[I]t would be unphilosophical to conclude that the properties of existence necessarily are, in number, only as the number of our faculties of apprehending them” (LML 1: 141). Fine, counters our imaginary critic; but what follows from this line of reasoning? Instead of showing that knowledge per se is necessarily incomplete and relative, the Argument from Analogous Faculties shows only that human knowledge may always be incomplete and relative (since it is limited by our peculiar constitution and its blind-spots). But what if there existed an ideal non-human knower equipped with faculties needed to detect absolutely all the modes of things? The knowledge of such a God-like subject, it is clear, would not be limited in the way human knowledge most likely is (i.e.—by the merely contingent lack of one or more analogous faculties). And since the very idea of such a God-like knower is not self-contradictory or logically impossible, it seems that there cannot be anything inherently objectionable or absurd about the very idea of absolute knowledge— even if it is granted that our knowledge must always be relative or all-too-human. Does this objection stop Hamilton in his tracks, or even give him pause? No; he claims that even if a knower possessed faculties corresponding to absolutely all of

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

124  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith existence’s modes, her knowledge would still not be absolute: “[H]ad we faculties equal in number to all the possible modes of existence . . . still would our knowledge of mind or matter be only relative” (LML 1: 145, cf. 153). And why would the knowledge possessed by such a God-like subject still be only relative and not absolute? This is where Hamilton plays his dialectical ace in the hole: the Argument from Subjective Conditions. If a subject can only ever know an object as it is related to a subject, objects in themselves can never be known by any subject, even a God-like one; accordingly, the thesis that things in themselves are absolutely unknowable follows directly from a necessary truth about the very nature or structure of knowledge. The bottom line, then, is that all knowledge is necessarily relative simply in virtue of being subjectively conditioned. The moral which Hamilton draws from the Argument from Subjective Conditions is that knowledge itself has logically fixed and unalterable limits, and that there is such a thing as absolutely irremediable ignorance. And this conclusion is of the greatest importance, because knowledge of knowledge’s necessary limits is in a sense the highest knowledge of which philosophy is capable: “[T]he consummation of our philosophy is ignorance . . . This ‘learned ignorance’ is the rational conviction by the human mind of its inability to transcend certain limits; it is the knowledge of ourselves,—the science of man” (DPL 601). To eschew the extremes of absolute knowledge and absolute ignorance, to steer clear of a haughty dogmatism without falling into a hopeless scepticism, to avoid both gnostical presumption and agnostical apathy—this is the middle path which a virtuous philosophy must follow, the elusive via media which Western thinkers from Socrates to Nicholas of Cusa to Kant have valiantly tried to define and defend.25 Despite its apparent novelty, therefore, Hamilton’s doctrine of the relativity of knowledge can be seen as an attempt to put old wine in new bottles, where the wine consists in Greek and Christian ideas about the relationship between self-knowledge and intellectual humility. Hamilton’s doctrine of knowledge’s relativity, it should be noted in passing, has important implications for the philosophy of religion.26 For if conditioned phenomena are all that can ever be known, it stands to reason that God can never be known; he can only be believed in, and treated as a mysterious and incomprehensible object of faith. Here Hamilton distances himself from the Scottish tradition (both Reid and Stewart were firm believers in natural theology) and takes up a position whose Kantian provenance is plain.27 Hamilton goes well beyond Kant, however, when he intimates that such agnosticism actually deepens religious faith because its adoption by reflective believers logically requires them to embrace an outlook which is at once deeply mystical and unimpeachably orthodox. For once we know that God cannot be known or comprehended, we know that he is above any conception we can form of him; and yet if we know that our paltry thoughts can never do him justice, we also know that the worship of anything we can fathom is no better than idolatry. Hence the intellectually sophisticated believer (i.e.—the Hamiltonian philosopher) will readily assent to the proposition that God’s ways are not our ways, and she will second St Augustine’s view that a God who can be understood is no God.28

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  125

4.3  Hamilton and Natural Realism If Hamilton’s doctrine of the relativity of knowledge is correct, our knowledge is necessarily confined to the realm of mere phenomena or appearances. Now, isn’t this equivalent to the sceptical thesis that we cannot really know mind-independent objects? Not according to Hamilton, whose Janus-faced philosophy serves two masters. When writing about the extent to which our knowledge of objects is conditioned by subject-sided factors, Hamilton finds his inspiration chiefly in Kant; but he finds his inspiration chiefly in Reid when writing about sense-perception and its immediate objects. Why does Hamilton side with Reid and not Kant on the subject of sense-perception? The answer is that only Reid broke with the theory of ideas and dared to criticize ‘the previous doctrine of philosophers, that the mind has no immediate knowledge of any existence external to itself ’: There is a strong general analogy between the philosophies of Reid and Kant; and Kant, I may say, was a Scotsman by proximate descent. Both originate in a recoil against the Scepticism of Hume; both are equally opposed to the Sensualism of Locke; both vindicate with equal zeal the moral dignity of man; and both attempt to mete out and to define the legitimate sphere of our intellectual activity. There are, however, important differences between the doctrines, as might be anticipated from the very different characters of the men; and while Kant surpassed Reid in systematic power and comprehension, Reid excelled Kant in the caution and security of his procedure. There is, however, one point of difference in which it is now acknowledged, even by the representatives of the Kantian philosophy, that Kant was wrong. I allude to the doctrine of Perception,—the doctrine which constitutes the very corner-stone of the philosophy of Reid . . . Kant, admitting, without question, the previous doctrine of philosophers, that the mind has no immediate knowledge of any existence external to itself, adopted it without hesitation as a principle,—that the mind is cognisant of nothing beyond its own modifications, and that what our natural consciousness mistakes for an external world, is only an internal phenomenon, only a mental representation of the unknown and inconceivable. Reid, on the contrary, was fortunately led to question the grounds on which philosophers had given the lie to the natural beliefs of mankind; and his inquiry terminated in the conclusion, that there exists no valid ground for the hypothesis, universally admitted by the learned, that an immediate knowledge of material objects is impossible.  (LML 1: 396–7; emphasis mine; cf. 401–2)

And why is Hamilton so sure that Kant’s understanding of perception is fundamentally flawed, and that Reidian common sense realism is correct? This question is shorthand for another one: Why is Hamilton so sure that sense-perception can be counted on to yield immediate knowledge of things which exist independently of perception? His answer to this question is built upon a simple logical observation: either the immediate object of perception can be a reality external to the percipient mind, or the immediate object of perception can only be an ideal object in the mind itself. If you maintain that the immediate object of perception can be an external reality, Hamilton thinks that you are ipso facto committed to the thesis of natural realism or natural dualism.29 (Realism, because you think that what is perceived exists in its own

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

126  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith right, independently of perception; dualism, because you are convinced of the reality of mind and of matter; and natural, because non-philosophers and philosophers alike instinctively believe that an extra-mental reality is immediately apprehended in cases of veridical perception.) If, on the other hand, you maintain that the immediate object of perception is an ideal object in the mind, Hamilton thinks you are committed to one of two possible forms of idealism: cosmothetic or absolute. According to cosmothetic idealism, there exists an extra-mental reality which we know indirectly or mediately, through our subjective representations of it; according to absolute idealism, there is no such reality, and our perceptions have no ‘external prototype’. Since cosmothetic idealists (unlike their absolute brethren) maintain that there exists a mind-independent world lying beyond our immediately known representations, Hamilton also refers to them as hypothetical realists. According to Hamilton’s classificatory scheme, then, there are three basic positions which philosophers of perception need to consider: natural realism, hypothetical realism, and absolute idealism.30 Why does Hamilton think we should reject the second and third positions, and opt for natural realism? His argument rests on an appeal to what he calls ‘the fact of the Duality of Consciousness’: the fact that each of us, in perception, seems to be immediately aware both of ourselves and of something quite different from ourselves. [W]e are immediately conscious in perception of an ego and a non-ego, known together, and known in contrast to each other. This is the fact of the Duality of Consciousness. It is clear and manifest. When I concentrate my attention in the simplest act of perception, I return from my observation with the most irresistible conviction of two facts, or rather of two branches of the same fact;—that I am,—and that something different from me exists. In this act, I am conscious of myself as the perceiving subject, and of an external reality as the object perceived; and I am conscious of both existences in the same indivisible moment of intuition. The knowledge of the subject does not precede, nor follow, the knowledge of the object,—neither determines, neither is determined by, the other. Such is the fact of perception revealed in consciousness, and as it determines mankind in general in their almost equal assurance of the reality of an external world, as of the existence of their own minds. Consciousness declares our knowledge of material qualities to be intuitive or immediate,—not representative or mediate. Nor is the fact, as given, denied even by those who disallow its truth. So clear is the deliverance, that even the philosophers who reject an intuitive perception, find it impossible not to admit, that their doctrine stands decidedly opposed to the voice of consciousness,—to the natural convictions of mankind. (LML 1: 288–9; DPL 53–4; HSD 744, cf. 745) We may, therefore, lay it down as an undisputed truth, that consciousness gives, as an ultimate fact, a primitive duality;—a knowledge of the ego in relation and contrast to the non-ego; and a knowledge of the non-ego in relation and contrast to the ego. The ego and non-ego are, thus, given in an original synthesis, as conjoined in the unity of knowledge, and, in an original antithesis, as opposed in the contrariety of existence. In other words, we are conscious of them in an indivisible act of knowledge together and at once,—but we are conscious of them as, in themselves, different and exclusive of each other.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  127 Again, consciousness not only gives us a duality, but it gives its elements in equal counterpoise and independence. The ego and non-ego,—mind and matter, are not only given together, but in absolute coequality. The one does not precede, the other does not follow; and, in their mutual relation, each is equally dependent, equally independent. Such is the fact as given in and by consciousness.  (LML 1: 292)

Now that we understand what Hamilton means by ‘the fact of the Duality of Consciousness’, we can reconstruct his defence of natural realism, which we may call the Argument from the Testimony of Consciousness. Premise 1:  Consciousness declares that each of us, in perception, is immediately and simultaneously aware of two independent and equally real elements: ego and non-ego, self and not-self, subject and object, mind and material things. (This is ‘the fact of the Duality of Consciousness’.) Premise 2:  Philosophers have no choice but to take all the ultimate and original data of consciousness at face value and to accept them without proof or supporting argument. ____________________________________________________________________ .: Conclusion:  Philosophers may take it for granted that each of us, in perception, is immediately and simultaneously aware of two independent and equally real elements: ego and non-ego, self and not-self, subject and object, mind and material things. Hence philosophers cannot deny or doubt that we immediately perceive real qualities of material things. [From 1, 2] The Argument from the Testimony of Consciousness appears valid, but are its two premises defensible? According to Hamilton, Premise (1) is so obvious that even natural realism’s most brilliant and determined foes—Berkeley and Hume, for example—realize that there is no point in contesting it: The fact that consciousness does testify to an immediate knowledge by mind of an object different from any modification of its own, is thus admitted even by those philosophers who still do not hesitate to deny the truth of the testimony . . .  (LML 1: 291–2, cf. 278–9, 289–91) That consciousness, in perception, affords us, as I have stated, an assurance of an intuitive cognition of the non-ego, is not only notorious to everyone who will interrogate consciousness as to the fact, but is, as I have already shown you, acknowledged not only by cosmothetic idealists, but even by absolute idealists and sceptics.  (LML 2: 116)

Natural realism’s adversaries, Hamilton concludes, are consequently committed to two claims. Their first claim is that consciousness does indeed testify to an immediate knowledge of things external to the mind. Their second claim is that the testimony of consciousness cannot be trusted in this instance, because the immediate object of perception, which we are naturally and spontaneously disposed to regard as mindindependent, is in reality a mere modification of mind. To justify the latter claim, philosophers have argued that an intuitive or direct knowledge of a mind-independent

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

128  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith world is impossible—that no one can ever immediately perceive anything except mind-dependent ideas or impressions.31 Hamilton notes that this view of perception, according to which perception’s immediate objects are not external things but mental representations, has been accepted by almost all modern thinkers: “No opinion has perhaps been so universally adopted in the various schools of philosophy, and more especially of modern philosophy, as the doctrine of Representative Perception” (LML 2: 134; cf. LML 1: 223–4, 278, 295; DPL 192). What about Premise (2), which asserts that philosophy must accept all the original data of consciousness? Hamilton’s argument for this premise can, I think, be reconstructed as follows. Step 1: Philosophy ultimately rests upon the primary data or fundamental facts of consciousness: “Consciousness is to the philosopher what the Bible is to the theologian. Both are revelations of the truth,—and both afford the truth to those who are content to receive it, as it ought to be received, with reverence and submission . . . [A]s all philosophy is evolved from consciousness, so, on the truth of consciousness, the possibility of all philosophy is dependent” (LML 1: 83, 285, cf. 266–7; HSD 746; DPL 84). Step 2: If philosophers reject one of the fundamental facts of consciousness, they must reject all the facts of consciousness: “But if consciousness be false in its testimony to one fact, we can have no confidence in its testimony to any other . . . [T]he falsity of one fact of consciousness being admitted, the truth of no other fact of consciousness can be maintained. The legal brocard, Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, is a rule not more applicable to other witnesses than to consciousness” (LML 1: 279, 283, cf. 286, 299; HSD 746, 750; DPL 85–6). Echoing Reid’s All or None Thesis, Hamilton contends that there is no middle ground here: either we must accept all the fundamental and original facts of consciousness, or we must forswear the lot. Step 3: It follows that philosophy subverts or destroys itself if it repudiates even a ­single fundamental fact of consciousness: “If the absolute and universal veracity of consciousness be once surrendered, every system is equally true, or rather all are equally false; philosophy is impossible, for it has now no instrument by which truth can be discovered,—no standard by which it can be tried; the root of our nature is a lie” (LML 1: 283; cf. LML 2: 116). Step 4: What, then, should we do? The testimony of consciousness must be taken at face value unless there is good reason to doubt it; and because nothing is more basic or fundamental for us than the testimony of consciousness, there can be no reason to doubt its veracity unless its consciousness contradicts itself—unless, that is to say, it can be shown that “consciousness tells different tales,— that its evidence is contradictory,—that its data are repugnant” (LML 1: 277, cf. 400; DPL 84; HSD 745). Step 5: The testimony of consciousness should therefore be taken at face value by philosophers unless its evidence is contradictory. Yet it has never been shown that the evidence of consciousness is contradictory or incoherent: “No attempt to show that the data of consciousness are (either in themselves, or in their necessary consequences) mutually contradictory, has yet succeeded: and the presumption in favour of the truth of consciousness and the possibility of philosophy has, therefore, never been redargued” (HSD 746; cf. LML 1: 277).32 Conclusion: Hypothetical realism

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  129 and absolute idealism are too sophisticated and too artificial to be true, because their advocates must twist or distort the testimony of consciousness in order to make it conform to their pet theories. Since philosophy commits suicide when it contradicts said testimony, philosophers have no choice but to take all the fundamental facts of consciousness at face value—to accept them without proof and without question, without demonstration and without reservation (Premise 2). And since one of those basic facts is the fact of the Duality of Consciousness (Premise 1), philosophers have no choice but to embrace natural realism: the view that perception can be counted on to yield some immediate knowledge of material things existing independently of perception. Is Hamilton’s Argument from the Testimony of Consciousness supposed to be a proof of natural realism? Of course not; what Hamilton is trying to show is that natural realism is too evident to admit either of proof or of doubt. As the reader will recall, the defences of common sense realism advanced by Hamilton’s Scottish predecessors—Kames, Reid, and Stewart—had the same basic aim. All four authors reason roughly as follows: philosophy is possible only if we take certain sorts of things for granted, and since we are entitled to take for granted our immediate perception of a mind-independent world if we are entitled to take anything for granted, any attempt to put common sense realism on the defensive effectively calls into question the very foundations of philosophy. This means that any attack on common sense realism will turn out to be self-defeating, since the view’s would-be critics will find themselves without any premises or principles from which they can reason.

4.4  Hamilton’s Critique of Hypothetical Realism The conclusion of the Argument from the Testimony of Consciousness is that we should be natural realists. Yet the vast majority of philosophers, Hamilton glumly observes, now espouse some form of hypothetical realism—a position which he describes as “the most vacillating, inconsequent, and self-contradictory of all systems” (HSD 749; cf. DPL 55).33 What exactly does Hamilton think is wrong with this rival form of realism? Here are five of his criticisms, all of which have a recognizably Reidian flavour. 1. Since the hypothetical realist maintains that “we have no immediate knowledge of anything beyond the states or modifications of our own minds” (LML 1: 278), the hypothetical realist effectively rejects the testimony of consciousness: “This doctrine is contradictory of the fact to which consciousness testifies,—that the object of which we are conscious in perception, is the external reality as existing, and not merely its representation in the percipient mind” (LML 1: 278). Yet if we refuse to accept one datum of consciousness, we must turn our back on all of them, and this means turning our back on philosophy itself. It follows that hypothetical realism, notwithstanding the favour it has found with philosophers,

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

130  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith is a positively anti-philosophical doctrine: “The first act of hypothetical realism is thus an act of suicide” (DPL 62; cf. LML 2: 116). 2. Unlike the humble natural realist (who accepts that the facts of consciousness are ultimate and thus refrains from trying to account for them), the more ambitious hypothetical realist tries to explain how we can perceive and know a mind-independent world. Yet her much vaunted hypothesis—a theory of representative perception, according to which our perception of external things is mediated by our perception of mental entities—is not “a whit more intelligible than the fact which it displaces” (i.e.—the fact that we immediately perceive external things) (LML 2: 137). Indeed, her hypothesis multiplies mysteries and miracles beyond necessity, for how can the mind possibly represent what it does not know (LML 2: 137, cf. 142; cf. HSD 821)? The hypothetical realist’s account of perception, we must conclude, “explains nothing, it renders nothing comprehensible” (LML 2: 137; DPL 62). 3. According to Hamilton, “the fact which a legitimate hypothesis explains, must be within the sphere of experience” (LML 2: 141; cf. DPL 64). However, external things fall outside our experience if the representative theory of perception is true: “The fact of an external world, for which the cosmothetic idealist would account, transcends, ex hypothesi, all experience, being unknown in itself, and a mere hyperphysical assumption” (LML 2: 141). Since the representative hypothesis thus attempts to explain a fact which it has thrust outside the charmed circle of our experience, the representative hypothesis must be deemed illegitimate or unsatisfactory. The same accusation cannot be made against natural realism, since the natural realist does not place the external world beyond the mind’s immediate reach. 4. Here is a closely related problem. A hypothesis or would-be explanation is ­legitimate, we are told, only if “the fact or facts, in explanation of which it is devised, be ascertained really to exist, and be not themselves hypothetical” (LML 2: 138; cf. LML 1: 169–70; DPL 63). However, the representative hypothesis calls into question the very fact which it was introduced to explain—to wit, that there is an external world which we can perceive and know. For if we immediately perceive nothing but our representations, we cannot know that there is an ­external world unless we know that our representations of it are accurate; but we cannot know that our representations of the world are accurate, or that they correspond to the way things are independently of us, unless we have representation-independent access to that world.34 Since we lack this kind of access if the representative hypothesis is true, the hypothetical realist is not entitled to believe in a mind-independent world: “[T]he hypothesis of a Representative Perception . . . begins by denying the veracity of consciousness, and ends, when carried to its legitimate issue, in absolute idealism, in utter scepticism” (LML 2: 144, cf. 139). Hence the hypothetical realist cannot take it for granted that the fact which her hypothesis seeks to explain is indeed a fact: “The cosmothetic idealist thus begs the fact which he would explain” (LML 2: 139).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  131 5. Can’t the hypothetical realist vindicate her belief in a mind-independent reality by appealing to the authority of our common sense beliefs? Consider the following argument for realism—an argument which Hamilton attributes to Thomas Brown (1778–1820),35 a hypothetical realist who succeeded Dugald Stewart as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh: A.  We naturally believe in a material world. B.  Natural beliefs cannot be doubted or denied.

.: C.  The material world’s existence can be taken for granted. [From A, B] If Hamilton is to be believed, there are two very serious problems with this argument. In the first place, there is the issue of logical consistency. What right has the hypothetical realist to endorse this argument’s second premise when she has already denied one of our natural convictions—namely, our natural conviction that we immediately perceive a mind-independent reality? Surely there is a double standard at work here: “[H]aving already virtually given up, or rather positively rejected, the testimony of consciousness, when consciousness deposed to our immediate knowledge of external things,—how can he even found upon the veracity of that mendacious principle, when bearing evidence to the unknown existence of external things?” (LML 1: 279, cf. 280; DPL 89–90). In the second place, it looks as though the hypothetical realist has no right to her first premise, either. Ask yourself: Why do human beings believe that an external world exists? The answer seems perfectly clear to Hamilton, who points out that we believe in material objects only because we naturally believe that we immediately perceive them: “Why do mankind believe in the existence of an outer world? They do not believe in it as in something unknown; but, on the contrary, they believe it to exist, only because they believe that they immediately know it to exist. The former belief is only as it is founded on the latter” (LML 1: 280; DPL 86–7, 192; HSD 749–50). However, if our belief in the existence of an external world derives all of its justification from our belief that we immediately perceive that world, a philosopher who dismisses the latter belief is surely not entitled to affirm the former: “Of all absurdities, therefore, the greatest is to assert,—on the one hand, that consciousness deceives us in the belief that we know any material object to exist; and, on the other, that the material object exists, because, though on false grounds, we believe it to exist” (LML 1: 280; DPL 194). Hypothetical realism is absolutely hopeless, Hamilton concludes, both because it leads ineluctably to scepticism and because it is a house divided logically against itself. On the one hand, hypothetical realists embrace realism because they think that realism is the natural or common sense view; on the other hand, they advance a theory of perception which directly contradicts common sense and which leaves us without any reason to believe in the external things which we ordinarily take ourselves to perceive. Like Reid, Hamilton comes away from his encounter with this rival position convinced

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

132  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith of two things: that we can have knowledge of mind-independent objects only if we know them immediately in perception, and that common sense realism is the only kind of realism worthy of the name: “The scheme of Natural Realism (which it is Reid’s honour to have been the first, among not forgotten philosophers, virtually and intentionally, at least, to embrace), is thus the only system, on which the truth of consciousness and the possibility of knowledge can be vindicated” (DPL 66–7).

4.5  A Northern Ozymandias A present-day reader who has been schooled exclusively in the ways of analytic philosophy will almost certainly grow weary and irritable after perusing twenty pages of Hamilton’s prolix prose, unless the gods have given her the patience of a saint or the imperturbability of a Stoic. A pompous and pedantic exhibitionist who preferred obscure quotations to trenchant arguments, a derivative thinker whose modus operandi was bricolage and bluff, a self-styled ‘logician’ who failed to see that his project of reconciling Reid and Kant was worthy of the village circle-squarer, a metaphysician whose revisionary aspirations conflicted with his descriptive duties: this is probably how many analytically trained philosophers would think of Hamilton, if they thought of him at all. As it is, practically no one bothers with Hamilton anymore, and one suspects that the vast majority of those present-day philosophers who have heard of him know his name only because John Stuart Mill wrote a damn’d thick, square book—An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1865)—in which he attempted to show, not merely that some of Hamilton’s characteristic doctrines were mistaken, but that Hamilton himself was a bad philosopher whose influence needed to be counteracted.36 Mill’s monumental tome became Hamilton’s moss-covered tomb: because of the book’s existence, historians know that a long-winded Scottish logic-chopper named Hamilton lived and thought, but they also know that the poor man is dead as a doornail, and they can see for themselves that no wreaths have been laid on his grave in many a year. What is more, the colossal wreck of Hamilton’s reputation is now rather hard to find, lying as it does in a lonely corner of philosophy’s maze-like, moon-washed necropolis. Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.37

This sad state of affairs would have shocked Hamilton’s admiring contemporaries in Britain, North America, and Continental Europe, for they regarded him as a great man whose name would figure prominently in future histories of philosophy.38 A peerless athlete of the intellect, a heroic thinker gifted with rare powers of analysis and synthesis, a polymath with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Western intellectual history, and the first noteworthy academic philosopher in Britain to take a serious interest in Kantian and post-Kantian thought,39 Hamilton was supposed to possess the

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  133 kind of mind which could build a much-needed bridge between the down-to-earth style of British philosophy, on the one hand, and its high-flying and more speculative Continental counterpart, on the other. Not only that, but he was a charismatic teacher, an inspiring lecturer, a magnetic maître penseur; and more than a few philosophically-minded Scottish students, ensorcelled by his intelligence, credited him with teaching them how to think.40 Consider this fulsome encomium, written in 1856 after Hamilton’s death: Morally and intellectually, Sir William Hamilton was among the greatest of the great. I knew him in his glorious prime, when his bodily frame was like a breathing intellect, and when his soul could travel, as on eagles’ wings, over the tops of all the mountains of knowledge . . . Without a boast, I may say that I knew him better than any other man ever did. For years together scarcely a day passed in which I was not in his company for hours, and never on this earth may I expect to live such happy hours again . . . These are memories I love to cherish. I have learnt more from him than from all other philosophers put together—more, both as regards what I assented to and what I dissented from. His contributions to philosophy have been great; but the man himself was greater far. I have studied both. I approve of much in the one; in the other I approve of all. He was a giant in every field of intellectual action. I trust that I have profited by whatever is valuable in the letter of his system: at any rate, I venture to hope that, from my acquaintance, both with himself and his writings, I have imbibed some small portion of his philosophic spirit; and that spirit, when left freely to itself, was as gentle as the calm, and yet, also, as intrepid as the storm.  (SP 15–16)

Who was the author of this eloquent and apparently heart-felt tribute? None other than Hamilton’s friend James Frederick Ferrier (1808–64), the first notable British idealist of the nineteenth century and the greatest Scotch metaphysician since Thomas Reid. In the next two chapters, we shall examine the ferocious dialectical war which Ferrier waged against common sense and natural realism.

Notes 1. As Paul Wood (2015a: 432), (2015b: 454–5) has pointed out, Stewart led the way; the second part of his history of modern European philosophy—“A Dissertation Exhibiting the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Philosophy Since the Revival of Letters in Europe” (1815, 1821)—devotes an entire chapter to “Metaphysical Philosophy in Scotland” (SW 1: 427–74). See also Hamilton’s “Fragments on the Scottish Philosophy” (LML 1: 392–404). 2. Neither Stewart nor Hamilton had a great deal to say about the other early Scottish common-sensists we met in Chapter 1: Oswald, Beattie, or Campbell. As far as they are concerned, Reid is the heart and soul of the Scottish common sense tradition. For Stewart’s views on Beattie, see Wood (2012) and Sher and Wood (2012). For an examination of Stewart’s influential but unbalanced depiction of Reid, see Wood (1985). 3. On Stewart’s disagreements with Reid, see Robinson (1989), Friday (2005), and Mortera (2012). 4. This is consistent with René Wellek’s characterization of Stewart as “the high priest of Scottish philosophy” (Wellek 1931: 40).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

134  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith 5. For the record, Stewart read Kant—though not in German—and attempted to come to terms with the critical philosophy. See Wellek (1931: 40–9), Friday (2005) and Mortera (2012). 6. For critiques, see Section 1 of Stirling (1865), Chapters 2 and 3 of Mill (1865), and Lecture 5 of Seth Pringle-Pattison (1899). On the collapse of Hamilton’s reputation, see Graham (2015b: 49–51). 7. This was because Hamilton put the problems of realism and perception at the very centre of epistemology, and epistemology at the very centre of philosophy. 8. Hamilton seems not to have realized this. 9. This term of art was proposed by Stewart, who thought that the old-fashioned expression ‘principles of common sense’ was more trouble than it was worth (SW 3: 44–50; SW 5: 91–2; SW 10: 275, 303–8). Richard Sher and Paul Wood have suggested that Stewart’s term ‘fundamental laws of human belief ’ was inspired by the example of Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), Stewart’s teacher, who spoke of ‘the laws of the understanding’ (Sher and Wood 2012: 95). 10. See SW 3: 44. 11. “Dr. Reid, who first called the Ideal Theory into question, offers no argument to prove that the material world exists; but considers our belief of it as an ultimate fact in our nature. It rests on the same foundation with our belief of the reality of our sensations, which no man has disputed” (SW 2: 19; SW 3: 52). 12. See SW 3: 53; SW 5: 417–18; SW 7: 165; SW 10: 255–6. 13. As we mentioned in Section 3.6, this was Reid’s own view; see RC 88. 14. It should be noted that Stewart also endorses (a) Reid’s sensation/perception distinction (SW 2: 14) and (b) Reid’s way of drawing the primary/secondary quality distinction (SW 2: 18). 15. It has been claimed, and with good reason, that Stewart stresses this point more than Reid did: “Reid maintained in a loose way, that we do not know substance, but qualities; and Stewart wrought this doctrine into a system” (McCosh 1875: 266; cf. James 1890 I: 347–8). The rudiments of this doctrine, it would appear, are already present in ovo in Kames; see EPM 2.3, 247–52. 16. One noteworthy corollary of the Reidian relativity thesis, Stewart thinks, is that materialism is untenable. For if we cannot know what Matter is in itself, he asks, what can we possibly explain by reference to its essence? See SW 2: 48; SW 7: 163–4. 17. See SW 3: 36–8, cf. 49. 18. See Sections 1.2 and 1.8. 19. I am not suggesting that Stewart’s account should be taken at face value. As Paul Wood has pointed out, “[t]he image of Reid created by Stewart conflicts with both the perceptions of contemporaries and the evidence of Reid’s surviving manuscripts . . . Stewart’s portrait of Reid reflects his academic and political predicament in Edinburgh at the turn of the nineteenth century, and his own philosophical preoccupations” (Wood 1985: 305, 318). 20. For more on the contrast between intellectual foxes (who know many things) and hedgehogs (who know one great thing), see Berlin (1953). 21. Later popularized by two English thinkers: Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and Henry Longueville Mansel (1820–71). Writing in 1865, John Stuart Mill described the relativity thesis as “[t]he doctrine which is thought to belong in the most especial manner to Sir W. Hamilton, and which was the ground of his opposition to the transcendentalism of the later French and German metaphysicians” (Mill 1865: 4).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith  135 22. Thus I agree completely with Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, who observed that Hamilton’s argument for the relativity thesis “appears to me to combine several lines of thought, from each of which it derives a certain degree of plausibility” (Seth Pringle-Pattison 1899: 156; cf. 157–86). 23. As Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison notes, this argument for the relativity of knowledge can be seen as an extension of the view endorsed by Stewart (see SW 2: 17) that substances are unknowable in themselves, and that we can only know their properties or qualities (Seth Pringle-Pattison 1899: 186). Almost two decades before the publication of Seth PringlePattison’s book, James McCosh had observed that “Sir William Hamilton connected the qualitative theory of Stewart with the phenomenal theory of Kant. In doing so he was guilty . . . of a great and inexcusable blunder” (McCosh 1875: 266). 24. See Section 3.3, Observation (1) for Reid’s distinction between relative and direct conceptions. 25. See DPL 601–11. 26. Although Hamilton himself had little to say about religion, the theological implications of his philosophy were of great interest to some of his disciples, the most eminent of whom was Henry Longueville Mansel, the first Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics at Oxford University and later Dean of St Paul’s. Mansel’s Bampton Lectures The Limits of Religious Thought (1858) were criticized by John Stuart Mill; see Mill (1865), Chapter 7. 27. In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant argued that all the classic metaphysical arguments for God’s existence—the ontological, the cosmological, and the physico-theological—are flawed in principle, because reason cannot transcend the limits of possible experience. In the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), however, Kant argued that faith in a Supreme Being is a ‘postulate of practical reason’, meaning that the moral life and the call of duty are not fully intelligible to us without it. 28. See DPL 603. 29. The term ‘natural realism’ was resurrected by Hilary Putnam (1999), who makes no reference to Hamilton. 30. For Hamilton’s classificatory scheme, see DPL 54–5, 193 and HSD 748–9, 816–19. Compare this with Options A, B, and C identified in Section 3.1. 31. For Hamilton’s criticisms of arguments for a representative theory, see LML 2: 116–33. 32. But what if it could be shown that consciousness contradicts itself? According to Hamilton, this would effectively spell the end of philosophy, since “[p]hilosophy is . . . wholly dependent upon consciousness; the possibility of the former supposing the trustworthiness of the ­latter” (HSD 746). 33. According to Mill, “if there be a doctrine of his philosophy which [Hamilton] has laboured at beyond any other, against, as he affirms, nearly all philosophers, it is, that the thing we perceive is the real thing which exists outside us, and that the perceiving mind is in direct contact with it, without any intermediate link whatever” (Mill 1865: 27–8). 34. For more on this argument, see Chapter 1 of McDermid (2006). 35. See Dixon (2015) for an overview of Brown’s thought and career. 36. In his Autobiography, Mill explains that he attacked Hamilton partly because Mill felt that the prestige of the common sense philosophy, which relied on innate and undeniable ­principles, could be exploited by social and political conservatives: “There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep seated prejudices” (Mill 1873: 171; cf. 171, 201–4). Hamilton’s admirers, we should add, were neither faint-hearted nor quick to accept defeat. James McCosh, for one, fired off a feisty and lengthy reply—An Examination of

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

136  Stewart and Hamilton: Defenders of the Faith Mr. J.S. Mill’s philosophy, Being a Defence of Fundamental Truths (1866)—which, interestingly enough, is by no means uncritical of Hamilton’s philosophy. Another philosopher who took up the cudgels for Hamilton was Henry Longueville Mansel, whose The Philosophy of the Conditioned: Comprising some Remarks on Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy and on Mr. J.S. Mill’s Examination of that Philosophy (1866) appeared the same year as McCosh’s apologia. 37. Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”, in Hutchinson (1923: 546). 38. Gordon Graham reminds us how highly Hamilton was regarded by his well-placed admirers: “Hamilton was included in the series of Philosophical Classics, edited by William Knight, Professor of Philosophy at St Andrews, and thus bizarrely ranked alongside Descartes, Berkeley, Locke, Kant, and Hegel” (Graham 2003: 343). 39. To be sure, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859), and Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) were also enthusiastic about German idealism, and their writings on this subject were certainly not without influence in the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, none of them was a member of the academic establishment. See Chapters 3 and 4 of Wellek (1931) for a discussion of these authors and their relation to Kant. 40. According to Gordon Graham, “[i]t is in his contribution to the activity of philosophy, and not to its repository of texts, that Hamilton’s accomplishment is to be found” (Graham 2015b: 65).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

5 Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism The chief aim of the historian of philosophy ought to be, to give a continuity or organised connection to the different parts of his narrative. But to do this, he must endeavour to certify in his own consciousness, and as the indigenous growth of his own mind, the speculations of antecedent thinkers. He may not agree with these speculations; but he ought, above all things, to understand what they mean—what they are in their spirit, and not merely in the letter. —James Frederick Ferrier

5.0 Introduction The iconoclastic Scottish idealist James Frederick Ferrier (1808–64) occupied the Chair of Civil History at the University of Edinburgh from 1842 until 1845, and the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews from 1845 until 1864. An  acute reasoner and a forceful stylist, Ferrier was the author of several works remarkable for their ambition and élan: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness (1838–9), Institutes of Metaphysic: The Theory of Knowing and Being (1854, with a second ­edition appearing in 1856), Scottish Philosophy: The Old and the New (1856), Lectures on Greek Philosophy (1866), and a number of trenchant essays from the 1840s, including “The Crisis of Modern Speculation” (1841), “Berkeley and Idealism” (1842), and “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense” (1847).1 For the most part, these works—witty, argument-rich, and written with panache and pugnacity— still make for very good reading. But who today has heard of their author, let alone glanced at his works?2 Suppose an indifferent reader, knowing nothing of Ferrier or his body of work, were to ask whether anything of worth would be lost if it were permanently consigned to oblivion. What would be a good way of persuading such a sceptical interlocutor of Ferrier’s merits as a philosopher, bearing in mind that the system expounded in his magisterial Institutes of Metaphysic is a closed book to her at this stage?3 Here is one promising possibility: invite her to begin with the study of Ferrier’s critique of the common sense realism advanced by his much more celebrated compatriot Thomas Reid. There is, I think, a good deal to be said in favour of this approach, and my aim in this chapter is to say it as clearly and as carefully as I can.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

138  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism

5.1  ‘As helpless as a whale in a field of clover’ The year 1846 saw the publication of The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D., edited by Sir William Hamilton. The book’s subtitle proudly announced that this scholarly edition contained ‘Copious Notes and Supplementary Dissertations by the Editor’, in addition to the full text of Reid’s own writings. This, alas, was not false advertising: Hamilton’s notes are nothing if not copious, and his supplementary essays offer extended commentary on a wide range of topics in epistemology and metaphysics. Indeed, the ­editorial material is so substantial, so conspicuously erudite, so full of the voluble Hamilton’s own opinions and quibbles, that to some readers it may seem as if the ­editor has shamelessly upstaged his author. It may very well be true, as the oft-quoted apothegm has it, that all Western philosophers are footnotes to Plato;4 but the Reid who appears in Hamilton’s ‘copious notes and supplementary dissertations’ is in grave danger of becoming a mere footnote to Hamilton himself. Ferrier did not object to this scholarly saturnalia, because he was absolutely ­convinced of two things: first, Reid was a massively overrated mediocrity; second, Hamilton was “[m]orally and intellectually . . . among the greatest of the great” (FW 1: 555).5 The following year, Ferrier published a dense and lengthy article in Blackwood’s Magazine—“Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense”—in which he insinuated that Reid was unworthy of the heroic efforts made on his behalf by Hamilton: Although Dr Reid does not stand in the very highest rank of philosophers, this incomparable edition of his works goes far to redress his deficiencies, and to render his writings, taken in connection with the editorial commentaries, a most engaging and profitable study. It is probable that the book derives much of its excellence from the very imperfections of the textual author. Had Reid been a more learned man he might have failed to elicit the unparalleled erudition of his editor; had he been a clearer and closer thinker, Sir William Hamilton’s vigorous logic and speculative acuteness would probably have found a narrower field for their display. On the whole, we cannot wish that Reid had been either more erudite or more perspicacious, so pointed and felicitous is the style in which his errors are corrected, his thoughts reduced to greater precision, his ambiguities pointed out and cleared up, and his whole system set in its most advantageous light, by his admiring though by no means idolatrous editor. (FW 3: 407–8)

Poor old Dr Reid, we are given to understand, was neither much of a thinker nor much of a scholar; and by far the best thing about The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D. is Hamilton’s contribution: the aforementioned ‘Copious Notes and Supplementary Dissertations’. Subtle and learned, clear yet deep, acute but bold, Hamilton is everything that the pedestrian Reid is not; and to blame Hamilton for not making Reid look brilliant would be like blaming a person for not making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.6 Indeed, if Hamilton can be blamed for anything in this connection, Ferrier opined in 1856 (the year of Hamilton’s death), it is for taking Reid’s philosophy of common sense seriously, and for devoting himself so passionately to its refinement and propagation:

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  139 For thirty years past, I have been of opinion that the dedication of his [i.e.—Hamilton’s] powers to the service of Dr Reid was a perversion of his genius, that this was the one mistake in his career, and that he would have done far better if he had built entirely on his own foundation. Every one must admit that, in his elaborate discussions on Dr Reid, he has written much which, both as criticism and as history, is of the highest philosophical importance, and that the student of speculation not only may study these disquisitions with advantage, but must master them if he would be a proficient in the science. But, nevertheless, I have taken the liberty of telling him in conversation and in print, that “all his expositorial ingenuity has not succeeded in conferring upon that writer even the lowest degree of scientific intelligibility,” meaning by scientific, the progressive deduction of one truth from another, in an ordered sequence. (FW 1: 556–7; cf. 496; SP 17)

Almost a decade after the publication of “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense”, we find Ferrier making the same negative point—that Reid is a superficial and confused philosophaster—in the Institutes of Metaphysic. This time Ferrier is much more explicit, and his words drip with venomous condescension and corrosive scorn. His main point is hard to miss: far from being a natural kind, Reidian common sense is a contrived and arbitrary category, an artificial ‘middle term’ which is a hybrid of speculative reason and vulgar prejudice. But no true philosopher, Ferrier remarks, can serve two masters: But Dr Reid, honest man, must not be dealt with too severely. With vast good intentions, and  very excellent abilities for everything except philosophy, he had no speculative genius ­whatever—positively an anti-speculative turn of mind, which, with a mixture of shrewdness and naïveté altogether incomparable, he was pleased to term “common sense;” thereby proposing as arbiter in the controversies in which he was engaged, an authority which the learned could not well decline, and which the vulgar would very readily defer to. There was good policy in this appeal. The standard of the exact reason did not quite suit him, neither was he willing to be immortalised as the advocate of mere vulgar prejudices; so that he caught adroitly at this middle term, whereby he was enabled, when reason failed him, to take shelter under popular opinion; and when popular opinion went against him, to appeal to the higher evidence of reason. Without renouncing scientific precision when it could be attained, he made friends of the mammon of unphilosophy. What chance had a writer like David Hume, with only one string to his bow, against a man who thus avowed his determination to avail himself, as occasion might require, of the plausibilities of uncritical thinking, and of the refinements of logical reflection? This amphibious method, however, had its disadvantages.7 At home in the submarine abysses of popular opinion, Dr Reid, in the higher regions of philosophy, was as helpless as a whale in a field of clover. He was out of his proper element. He blamed the atmosphere: the fault lay in his own lungs. Through the gills of ordinary thinking he expected to transpire the pure ether of speculation, and it nearly choked him. His fate ought to be a warning to all men, that in philosophy we cannot serve two mistresses. Our ordinary moods, our habitual opinions, our natural prejudices, are not compatible with the verdicts of our speculative reason.  (FW 1: 494–5)

According to Ferrier, Reid’s talents as a philosopher were slight, his method unsound, his achievements negligible, his reputation inflated, and his influence baleful. But why, we naturally want to know, did Ferrier take such a dim view of the pride of the

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

140  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism Scottish common sense school? Our answer to this question is structured around four theses which, though endorsed by Reid’s admirers and imitators, were all strenuously contested by Ferrier: Thesis 1:  That Reid was the first noteworthy opponent of the ‘representationist’ doctrine of perception that dominates modern philosophy from Descartes to Hume. Thesis 2:  That Reid vanquished representationism, and ably defended a doctrine of immediate (or ‘intuitive’) perception. Thesis 3:  That Reid simultaneously put paid to idealism and to veil of ideas scepticism. Thesis 4:  That Reid vindicated realism by appealing to the plain and undeniable dictates of common sense. Because of the renaissance of interest in Reid’s philosophy in the last twenty-five years, Theses 1–4 still find a receptive audience in some quarters. This fact would have ­dismayed Ferrier greatly; for when he looked upon the image of Reid revered by his countrymen, all he saw was a crude idol which deserved to be shattered and pulverized. Yet how exactly did Ferrier reach this iconoclastic conclusion? Our investigation starts with an examination of his attack on Thesis 1.

5.2  Reid and Berkeley on Intuitive Perception According to Ferrier, Thesis 1 is false for two reasons: first, because anti-­ representationism was in circulation years before the sun’s rays shone on Reid in Aberdeen; s­ econd, because Reid was really not an anti-representationist at all, though he has long been identified as one by disciples and detractors alike. Let us begin with the question of historical priority. Although Ferrier grants that Reid “was among the first to say and to write that the representative theory of perception was false and erroneous” (FW 3: 417–18), he maintains that Reid “was not the first” (FW 3: 417). That honour must go to Berkeley, whom Ferrier describes as “the first who distinctly promulgated a doctrine of intuitive perception, although he seldom gets credit for having done so”  (FW 1: 489). Berkeley had preceded him in denouncing most unequivocally the whole theory of representationism. The reason why Berkeley does not get the credit of this is, because his performance is even more explicit and cogent than his promise. He made no phrase about refuting the theory, he simply refuted it. Reid said the business, but Berkeley did it.  (FW 3: 417–18)

Why does Ferrier think that Berkeley beat Reid to the anti-representationist punch? His argument, I think, may be summarized as follows. As a representative theory of perception has it, we do not perceive material objects directly; all we are immediately aware of are mental intermediaries or go-betweens—mere representations of objects, that is, as opposed to objects themselves. Hence representationists maintain that some tertium quid—‘ideas, representations, phantasms, or species’—always interposes itself between mind and world:

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  141 The representative theory is that doctrine of perception which teaches that, in our intercourse with the external universe, we are not immediately cognisant of real objects themselves, but  only of certain mental transcripts or images of them, which, in the language of the ­different philosophical schools, were termed ideas, representations, phantasms, or species. According to this doctrine we are cognisant of real things, not in and through themselves,  but in and through these species or representations. The representations are the immediate or proximate, the real things are the mediate or remote, objects of the mind. The existence of the former is a matter of knowledge, the existence of the latter is merely a matter of belief.  (FW 3: 413–14)

What do we find when we open Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) or Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713)? We make the acquaintance of an ingenious upstart who is determined to break with the entrenched idea that our perceptions are mere representations of real things. We are ‘immediately cognisant of real objects themselves’, Berkeley assures us, because we are immediately cognisant of our perceptions or ideas; and real things, far from being occult entities inaccessible to sense, are nothing over and above appearances.8 Berkeley’s idealist position thus synthesizes and integrates the standpoint of ordinary common sense (according to which we are directly aware of middle-sized dry goods) with the standpoint of modern philosophy (according to which nothing but perceptions are ever before the mind). This point was driven home by Philonous, Berkeley’s doppelgänger, at the very end of the Three Dialogues: I do not pretend to be a setter-up of new notions. My endeavours tend only to unite and place in a clearer light that truth, which was before shared between the vulgar and the philosophers: the former being of opinion, that those things they immediately perceive are the real things; and  the latter, that the things immediately perceived are ideas which exist only in the mind. Which two notions put together, do in effect constitute the substance of what I advance. (Berkeley 1713: 3, 208)

Some realist philosophers—and Lord Kames was one of them, as we learned in Chapter 2—have complained that “Berkeley discredited the testimony of the senses” (FW 3: 303).9 According to Ferrier, this accusation is absolute nonsense: Berkeley’s philosophy actually restores one’s faith in our senses, whose testimony Berkeley respected as few modern philosophers ever have done. Our senses can be trusted to yield knowledge of real things, Berkeley reasons, for one very simple reason: things are appearances, and appearances are what our senses perceive. Thus when Berkeley denies the existence of matter, he is not denying the existence of anything encountered in experience or apprehended by perception; all he denies is an airy and ridiculous fiction invented by certain philosophers: In what sense, then, was it that Berkeley denied the existence of matter? He denied it not in the sense in which the multitude understood it, but solely in the sense in which philosophers ­understood and explained it. And what was it that philosophers understood by matter? They understood by it an occult something which, in itself, is not touched, not seen, not heard, not smelled, and not tasted; a phantom-world lying behind the visible and tangible universe, and

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

142  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism which, though constituting in their estimation the sum and substance of all reality, is yet never itself brought within the sphere or apprehension of the senses.  (FW 3: 296) Berkeley . . . contended, with the whole force of his intellect, for the inviolable identity of objects and the appearances of objects. The external world in itself, and the external world in relation to us, was a philosophic distinction which he refused to recognize. In his creed, the substantive and the phenomenal were one.  (FW 3: 301) So far, then, there does not appear to be much justice in the ordinary allegation, that Berkeley discredited the testimony of the senses, and denied the existence of the material universe. He merely denied the distinction between things and their appearances, and maintained that the thing was the appearance, and that the appearance was the thing.  (FW 3: 302–3)

Far from casting aspersions on the veracity of our senses, Berkeley seeks to exonerate them by upholding the opinion of the multitude, who have no doubt that ‘those things they immediately perceive are the real things’. The people who are truly guilty of  slandering or traducing our senses, according to Berkeley and Ferrier, are the philosophers who find this popular opinion hopelessly naïve: the reprobate representationists, the Cartesian and Lockean realists, the mad champions of matter, the delirious substance-enthusiasts.10 For if one thinks (as they do) that our perceptions are reflections of matter in the medium of mind, and that appearances are shadows cast by physical things, then how our senses can yield knowledge of trees and rocks must forever remain a mystery to us—a mystery, indeed, which passeth all understanding. In short, thinking of perceptions as representations, as mere appearances or epistemic intermediaries, inevitably leads to scepticism. No philosopher knew this better than Berkeley, says Ferrier: The doctrine that the realities of things were not made for man, and that he must rest satisfied with their mere appearances, was regarded, and rightly regarded by him [Berkeley], as the parent of scepticism, with all her desolating train. He saw that philosophy, in giving up the reality immediately within her grasp, in favour of a reality supposed to be less delusive, which lay beyond the limits of experience, resembled the dog in the fable, who, carrying a piece of meat across a river, let the substance slip from his jaws, while, with foolish greed, he snatched at its shadow in the stream. The dog lost his dinner, and philosophy let go her secure hold upon the truth.11 He therefore sided with the vulgar, who recognise no distinction between the reality and the appearance of objects, and, repudiating the baseless hypothesis of a world existing unknown and unperceived, he resolutely maintained that what are called the sensible shows of things are in truth the very things themselves.  (FW 3: 297)

The historical record, Ferrier concludes, speaks for itself: Berkeley repudiated representative theories of perception more than a half-century before the publication of Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense: “Berkeley thus accomplished the very task which, fifty or sixty years afterwards, Reid laboured at in vain. He taught a doctrine of intuitive, as distinguished from a doctrine of representative, perception . . . ” (FW 1: 490; cf. 492). Consequently, Reid’s devotees must concede that Thesis 1 is made not with the hard and stubborn fact of history, but with the thin tissue of fiction.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  143 In order to grasp what Ferrier hopes to gain by subverting Thesis 1, the pride and prejudice of his Scottish audience must be borne in mind. If you have always been taught to think that the rejection of representative theories of perception is the pivotal episode in early modern epistemology—and this, according to Ferrier, is essentially what Reid and his propagandists (notably Dugald Stewart) have encouraged generations of Scottish students to think—then you shall place the first anti-representationist on a pedestal.12 But if Ferrier is right about Thesis 1, you now have no choice but to conclude that Berkeley is the real hero of early modern epistemology, from which it follows that it was an Irish bishop—not a Scottish dominie—who vindicated our belief in the power of our senses to grasp reality.13 At the end of this line of thought, a paradox patiently awaits: Thomas Reid, when judged by the standards inculcated by the Scottish Common Sense School which he inspired, turns out to be a much less important figure than that School’s admirers are wont to maintain. For how can Reid’s anti-representationist reflections on perception be deemed truly revolutionary or ground-breaking, if representationism was Berkeley’s bête noire? At this point a critic may try to defend Reid by reminding us that Berkeley and Reid attacked representationism in markedly different ways. According to Berkeley, representationism is wrong because our perceptions or ideas are not representations of a mind-independent material world; after all, there are no perception-independent things for perception to represent. According to Reid, representationism is wrong, not because there isn’t a mind-independent material world, but because there are no representations or ideas standing between that world and our minds. Once we bear this contrast in mind, our critic assures us, we may conclude that even if Reid was not the first anti-representationist sans phrase, he was the first anti-representationist of  a certain logical stripe or type—namely, one who waged war on The Way of Ideas  and who defended intuitionism without abandoning realism. Hence Reid actually broke new ground—and, some commentators would say, rather fertile ground at that. Does Ferrier have a reply to our critic’s argument? Yes. However, understanding that reply means coming to grips with Ferrier’s second and more philosophically rewarding objection to Thesis 1: the claim that Reid was not an anti-representationist at all.

5.3  Metaphysicians or Psychologists? For Ferrier as for Hamilton, philosophy’s central question, the axis around which its abstruse inquiries invariably spin, is the relation between subject and object, between mind and world: “The great endeavour of philosophy, in all ages, has been to explain the nature of the connection which subsists between the mind of man and the external universe” (FW 3: 261).14 One promising way of addressing this question, Ferrier thinks, is to ponder a familiar but ill-understood fact: the fact of perception.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

144  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism The perception of a material universe, as it is the most prominent fact of cognition, so has it given rise to the problem which has been most agitated by philosophers. This question does not relate to the existence of the fact. The existence of the perception of matter is admitted on all hands. It refers to the nature, or origin, or constitution of the fact.  (FW 3: 409–10)

What does it mean to say that the question about the perception of matter ‘refers to the nature, or origin, or constitution of the fact’, and not to ‘the existence of the fact’? That is to say, what exactly are we asking when we ask about the nature, origin, or ­constitution of perception? Ferrier’s answer comes in the form of a formidable string of rhetorical questions: Is the perception of matter simple and indivisible, or is it composite and divisible? Is it the ultimate, or is it only the penultimate, datum of cognition? Is it a relation constituted by the concurrence of a mental or subjective, and a material or objective element; or do we impose upon ourselves in regarding it as such? Is it a state or modification of the human mind? Is it an effect that can be distinguished from its cause? Is it an event consequent on the presence of real antecedent objects? These interrogations are somewhat varied in their form, but each of them embodies the whole point at issue, each of them contains the cardinal question of philosophy. The perception of matter is the admitted fact. The character of this fact, that is the point which speculation undertakes to canvass, and endeavours to decipher.  (FW 3: 410)

In this dense and antithesis-laden passage, Ferrier frames a dramatic dilemma. Either (a) the fact of perception is simple and indivisible, an ultimate datum, not a relation between a ‘mental or subjective’ element and a ‘material or objective’ element, and not a modification of the human mind caused by ‘real antecedent objects’ existing in their own right; or (b) the fact of perception is composite and divisible, a penultimate datum admitting of analysis, a relation between a ‘mental or subjective’ element and a ‘material or objective’ element, and a modification of the human mind caused by ‘real antecedent objects’. Ferrier’s next move is to point out that Option (a) is embraced by those whom he honours with the title of ‘metaphysicians’, whereas Option (b) is favoured by those he styles ‘psychologists’: Psychology and metaphysic are thus radically opposed to each other in their solutions of the highest problem of speculation. Stated concisely, the difference between them is this:—psychology regards the perception of matter as susceptible of analytic treatment, and travels, or endeavours to travel, beyond the given fact; metaphysic stops short in the given fact, and there makes a stand, declaring it to be an indissoluble unity.  (FW 3: 411–12)

Because Option (b) implies that I am cognizant of material objects, not in and through themselves, but only in and through my perceptions of them, Option (b) leads to a representative theory of perception. For proponents of (b) will tell me that when I ­perceive a material object—a tree, let us say—there are two distinct objects of consciousness: a mediate or remote object existing independently of my mind (the tree itself), and an immediate or proximate object existing in my mind (my perception of the tree).15 This distinction is the defining feature of representative theories of perception: “[I]t is the very essence and definition of a representative theory of perception

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  145 to recognise, in perception, a remote as well as a proximate object of the mind” (FW 3: 415). Since Option (b) foists this distinction between remote and proximate objects on us, it follows that embracing (b) is tantamount to embracing representationism: “[T]he theory of representationism necessarily arises out of an analysis of the perception of matter” (FW 3: 416). Now, what does this have to do with Reid? Instead of declaring the perception of matter to be an ‘indissoluble unity’, Reid regarded it as ‘susceptible of analytic treatment’. In other words, Ferrier maintains that Reid embraced Option (b). Did Dr Reid go to work analytically in his treatment of the perception of matter? Undoubtedly he did. He followed the ordinary psychological practice. He regarded the datum as divisible into perception and matter. The perception he held to be an act, if not a modification of our minds; the matter he regarded as something which existed out of the mind and irrespective of all perception. Right or wrong, he resolved, or conceived that he had resolved, the perception of matter into its constituent elements, these being a mental operation on the one hand and a material existence on the other.  (FW 3: 416)

Ferrier’s conclusion seems as inescapable as it is unorthodox: since “the theory of representationism necessarily arises out of an analysis of the perception of matter” (FW 3: 416), and since “Reid analysed or accepted the analysis of this fact” (FW 3: 417), “it follows as a necessary consequence that Reid, far from having overthrown the ­representative theory, was himself a representationist” (FW 3: 417; cf. 413, 418).16 This commitment to perceptual representationism means that Reid must be numbered among the benighted psychologists, instead of winning admission to the worshipful company of metaphysicians. Here is another way of making Ferrier’s point. If I maintain that perceptions are immediately before the mind, and if I also maintain that material objects exist independently of perception, it looks as if I am thereby compelled to recognize two objects in  perception: an immediate or proximate object (my perception, understood as a mere ‘modification of mind’) and the mediate or remote object (the tree itself, existing ‘out of mind and irrespective of all perception’). The instant I countenance these two objects, however, I have ipso facto become a representationist. Intuitionism is no longer an option for me if I am a realist about the physical world, because intuitionists will have nothing to do with mediate or remote objects of perception; trees and rocks, our intuitionists insist, are apprehended directly, not via some mythical tertium quid immediately before the mind. Since this denial of mediate objects is an integral part of intuitionism—since “[a] doctrine of intuitionism implies that the mind in perceiving matter has only one, namely, a proximate object” (FW 3: 418)—it follows that the only way to be a consistent intuitionist is to close the gap between perception and matter by  ceasing to think of them as two separate and distinct existences. According to Ferrier, the force of this point was fully appreciated by Berkeley, who realized that we can immediately perceive real things if and only if such things are mind-dependent.17 Unfortunately for Scottish philosophy, Reid never realized this, and his attempts to conjoin intuitionism and realism were doomed from the start:

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

146  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism In regard to the second end which Dr. Reid is supposed to have overtaken—the establishment of a doctrine of intuitive as opposed to a doctrine of representative perception—it is unnecessary to say much. If we have proved him to be a representationist, he cannot be held to be an ­intuitionist. Indeed, a doctrine of intuitive perception is a sheer impossibility upon his principles. A doctrine of intuition implies that the mind in perceiving matter has only one, namely, a proximate object. But the analysis of the perception of matter always yields, as its result, a remote as well as a proximate object. The proximate object is the perception, the remote object is the reality. And thus the analysis of the given fact necessarily renders abortive every endeavour to construct a doctrine of intuitive perception. The only basis for a doctrine of intuitive perception which will never give way, is a resolute forbearance from all analysis of the fact. Do not tamper with it, and you are safe.  (FW 3: 418–19)

What have we discovered so far? According to Ferrier, Thesis 1 is refuted by two facts: first, Reid was not the original anti-representationist, as Stewart had maintained, because Berkeley got there first; second, Reid was not an anti-representationist at all, because he was committed to Option (b), from which representationism is but a corollary. Note, however, that more than the falsity of Thesis 1 follows from this second claim. For if Reid was indeed a representationist (albeit a representationist malgré lui), Thesis 2 cannot possibly be correct, because it attributes a doctrine of intuitive perception to him: “If we have proved him to be a representationist, he cannot be held to be an intuitionist” (FW 3: 418). So Thesis 1 and Thesis 2, Ferrier concludes, are false. What remains of that flattering portrait of Reid with which we began? Nothing but Theses 3 and 4. And this pair of propositions, Ferrier is about to argue, ultimately fares no better than Theses 1 and 2.

5.4  Hypothetical Realism and its Discontents Ferrier’s next gambit—one learned from Berkeley (who deployed it with aplomb against Locke’s representative realism) and from Hamilton (who used it against hypothetical realism)—is to exploit the tension between a representative theory of perception, on the one hand, and metaphysical realism, on the other. The argument can be outlined as follows. According to realism, there is a world of material objects existing independently of our minds and perceptions; according to representationism, our perceptions are the proximate object of mind, and are supposed to function as an interface between mind and world. Although there is no logical inconsistency between these two doctrines, their conjunction creates an epistemological problem which appears insoluble. The difficulty, starkly stated, is this: How is knowledge of realism’s world possible, if representationism is true? That is to say, how can I have knowledge of material objects existing independently of perception, assuming I am acquainted with nothing but my own perceptions? For if matter is always the remote, and never the proximate, object of mind, then matter is in danger of becoming a gratuitous and empty hypothesis, a Something-I-Know-Not-What, a bare x concealed behind an opaque veil of perception. In that case, however, matter’s postulation creates more

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  147 problems than it solves; so why should anyone believe in it? This is the gist of Berkeley’s well-founded complaint, lodged in Section 86 of the Principles of Human Knowledge: [W]e have been led into very dangerous errors, by supposing a twofold existence of the objects of sense, the one intelligible, or in the mind, the other real and without the mind: whereby unthinking things are thought to have a natural subsistence of their own, distinct from being perceived by spirits. This, which, if I mistake not, hath been shewn to be a most groundless and absurd notion, is the very root of scepticism; for so long as men thought that real things subsisted without the mind, and that their knowledge was only so far forth real as it was conformable to real things, it follows, they could not be certain that they had any real knowledge at all. For how can it be known, that the things which are perceived, are conformable to those which are not perceived, or exist without the mind?  (Berkeley 1710: §86, 61–2)

Here is a fact for connoisseurs of irony to savour: perceptions, though introduced as an interface between the mind and a world ‘without the mind’, end up obscuring the very things they were supposed to reveal, sundering the domains they were meant to  unite, creating a doubt-haunted chasm instead of a knowledge-bearing bridge. Expressed more prosaically, the point is that the representative theory of perception, grounded in Option (b), leads to the conclusion that a mind-independent material world is utterly beyond our ken.18 Two options are open to us: we may retain our belief in that material world while admitting we lack knowledge of it, or we may endeavour to dodge scepticism by denying that such a purely hypothetical world exists. Such was the drift of Berkeley’s reasoning, and Ferrier happily follows his predecessor’s lead in this matter. For if we accept representationism, he claims, we must ultimately accept one of three positions: hypothetical realism, idealism, or scepticism.19 The immediate knowledge of an external universe being disproved, its reality was straightaway called in question. For the existence of that which is not known immediately, or as it is in itself, requires to be established by an inference of reason. Instead, therefore, of asking, How is the intercourse carried on between man’s mind and the external world? the question came to be this, Is there any real external world at all? Three several systems undertook to answer this question: Hypothetical Realism, which defended the reality of the universe; Idealism, which denied its reality; and Scepticism, which maintained that if there were an external universe, it must be something very different from what it appears to us to be.  (FW 3: 266)

Hypothetical or representative realism, though “a great favourite with philosophers” (FW 3: 266),20 flagrantly violates the vulgar conviction that we can directly perceive trees and rocks and blades of grass: “To the man who thought and felt with the mass, the universe was no hypothesis, no inference of reason, but a direct reality he had immediately before him” (FW 3: 267). That is to say, the ordinary person believes in an external world because he believes he immediately perceives it; but if the second of these beliefs is false (as hypothetical realism declares), the first belief is fatally undermined and falls to the ground. So the ordinary person’s belief in thistles and whistles is robbed of its justification by hypothetical realism, though this was definitely not the

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

148  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism intention of that doctrine’s defenders: “This system was designed to reconcile ­common sense with philosophy, but it certainly had not the desired effect. The convictions of common sense repudiated the decrees of so hollow a philosophy. The belief which this system aimed at creating was not the belief in which common sense rejoiced” (FW 3: 266–7). (Hamilton, as we saw in Chapter 4, used a similar argument.)21 What is more, hypothetical realism engages in mystery-mongering, because hypothetical realists never adequately explain how material objects can be  known on the basis of our perceptions, or how a mind-independent world can be apprehended through the medium of subjective representations. For these ­reasons, hypothetical realism leaves us questioning the reality of the external world it posits, and forces us to doubt the existence of whatever we cannot know directly. Scepticism lieth at the hypothetical realist’s door, Ferrier concludes, and there is no escape from it. One way of responding to this crisis of doubt is to deny that the hidden and ­independent world of hypothetical realism is a necessary or plausible posit. And this, Ferrier notes, is exactly what old-fashioned idealists did: “Idealism did not care to conciliate common sense; but it maintained that if we must have recourse to an hypothesis to explain the origin of our perceptions, it would be simpler to say that they arose in conformity with the original laws of our constitution, or simply because it was the will of our Creator that they should arise in the way they do” (FW 3: 267). A second way of responding to hypothetical realism’s collapse is to allow that a mind-independent world exists while denying that knowledge of it is possible. And this response, we are reminded, is the one embraced by philosophical sceptics: “Scepticism assumed various modifications, but the chief guise in which it sought to outrage the convictions of mankind was, by first admitting the reality of an external world, and then by proving that this world could not correspond with our perceptions of it . . . Thus, man’s primary convictions, which taught him that the universe was what it appeared to be, were placed in direct opposition to the ­conclusions of his reason, which now informed him  that it must be something very different from what he took it for” (FW 3: 267–8). Scepticism and idealism thus appear to be our only options, once we acknowledge that the compromise of hypothetical realism has broken down. Having thus surveyed and mapped the logical landscape, Ferrier concludes that Option (b) is a primrose path leading to the broad wide way of representationism, beyond which there lies nothing but a pair of philosophical coal-pits: scepticism (which says that we can know nothing of matter) and idealism (which says that matter does not exist). Here is his lucid description of how this dialectic unfolds: Scepticism and idealism dog representationism, and representationism dogs the analysis of perception of matter, just as obstinately as substance is dogged by shadow. More explicitly stated, the order in which they move is this: The analysis divides the perception of matter into perception and matter—two separate things. Upon this, representationism declares, that the perception

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  149 is the proximate, and that the matter is the remote, object of the mind. Then scepticism declares, that the existence of the matter which has been separated from perception is problematical, because it is not the direct object of consciousness, and is consequently hypothetical. And, last of all, idealism takes up the ball and declares that this hypothetical matter is not only problematical, but that it is non-existent. These are the perplexities which rise up to embarrass reason whenever she is weak enough to accept from philosophers their analysis of the perception of matter. They are only the just punishment of her infatuated facility. But what has Reid done to extricate reason from her embarrassments?  (FW 3: 420)

Ferrier’s final query is surely apposite. If Reid accepts representationism, and if accepting representationism requires one to choose between scepticism or idealism, then it looks as if Reid is fated to fall into one of our asphyxiating coal-pits— philosophy’s answer to the Slough of Despond—never to be seen or heard from again. We know it  wasn’t supposed to end that way; as Ferrier reminds readers, “Reid’s leading design was to overthrow scepticism and idealism” (FW 3: 413). If Ferrier’s argument is on the right track, however, Reid’s campaign against these two doctrines was compromised from the very start—compromised, that is to say, from the moment when Reid, unaware of Option (b)’s unwelcome implications, unwisely prised perception and matter apart. When looked at in this light, the future of Thesis 3 seems far from bright.

5.5  The Common Sense Argument for Realism It might be objected that Reid can still vindicate realism with the help of his not-so-secret weapon: the primitive and inexpugnable convictions of common sense. Here is how Ferrier characterizes this common-sensist counter-strategy: When scepticism and idealism doubted or denied the independent existence of matter, how did Reid vindicate it? He faced about and appealed boldly to our instinctive and irresistible belief in its independent existence.  (FW 3: 421)

The common sense argument for realism which Ferrier attributes to Reid has two premises. Major Premise:  Our common sense convictions—our most primitive, instinctive, natural, and irresistible beliefs—are undeniable. Minor Premise:  It is a common sense conviction that matter exists independently of perception. __________________________________________________________________ .: Conclusion:  Our natural belief in realism—understood as the doctrine that matter exists ­independently of perception—is undeniable. In light of Ferrier’s later reputation as an outspoken and implacable opponent of ­common sense philosophy,22 it is worth noting that in “Reid and the Philosophy of

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

150  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism Common Sense” he claims he cannot side with critics who target this argument’s Major Premise, which asserts that our common sense convictions are above suspicion: We join issue with Dr Reid in maintaining that our nature is not rooted in delusion, and that the primitive convictions of common sense must be accepted as infallible. If the sceptic admits that we have a natural belief in the independent existence of matter, there is an end to him: Dr Reid’s victory is secure.  (FW 3: 421–2)

From Ferrier’s perspective, the trouble with the common sense argument isn’t with its Major, but rather with its Minor, Premise. But what, exactly, does he think is wrong with the latter assumption? Is Ferrier’s complaint merely that the evidence for the Minor Premise is insufficient—that we have not been given good reasons to regard a belief in the independent existence of matter as a common sense conviction or as a ‘fundamental law of human belief ’? No; this criticism is too flat-footed and pedestrian for Ferrier.23 The crux of his reply isn’t that we are not perfectly justified in accepting the Minor Premise; it’s that we are perfectly justified in denying it, because we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that belief in the independent existence of matter is not a common sense conviction. No one believes in matter per se, Ferrier declares, because no one can believe in it: Matter in its independent existence, matter per se, is matter disengaged in thought from all perception of it present or remembered. Now, does any man believe in the existence of such matter? Unquestionably not. No man by any possibility can . . . For observe what such a belief requires as its condition. A man must disengage in thought, a tree, for instance, from the thought of all perception of it, and then he must believe in its existence thus disengaged. If he has not disengaged, in his mind, the tree from its perception (from its present perception, if the tree be before him; from its remembered perception, if it be not before him), he cannot believe in the existence of the tree disengaged from its perception; for the tree is not disengaged from its perception. But unless he believes in the existence of the tree disengaged from its perception, he does not believe in the independent existence of the tree, in the existence of the tree per se. Now, can the mind by any effort effect this disengagement? The thing is an absolute impossibility. The condition on which the belief hinges cannot be purified, and consequently the belief itself cannot be entertained.  (FW 3: 422–3)

Ferrier’s objection can be reconstructed as follows: F1.  To believe in matter per se—that is to say, in matter existing independently or apart from perception—is to believe in ‘matter disengaged in thought from all perception’. F2.  But no one can believe in matter ‘disengaged’ or ‘liberated’ (FW 3: 433) in thought from perception of it. __________________________________________________________________ .: F3.  No one can believe in matter per se, or matter existing independently or apart from perception. [F1, F2] The premise we want to focus on is (F2): the claim that no one can believe in matter ‘disengaged’ or ‘liberated’ in thought from perception of it. The reason no one can do

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  151 this, we are given to understand, is that no one can think of matter as it is apart from all perception; that is to say, no one can possibly disengage or liberate matter from ­perception in thought: “The condition on which the belief hinges cannot be purified, and consequently the belief itself cannot be entertained” (FW 3: 422–3). The core of Ferrier’s strategy, then, is to argue that realism is incredible because it is inconceivable, unbelievable because unthinkable. As he puts it, “we cannot believe in the existence of  matter liberated from perception, for no power of thinking will liberate matter from  perception; therefore we cannot believe in the existence of matter per se” (FW 3: 433–4). Readers of “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense” may find themselves puzzled and vexed by the fact that Ferrier appears to take it for granted that matter cannot be disengaged from perception in thought. Emphatic assertions of this inconceivability principle abound in his essay; but little or no argument, it seems, is offered in support of it. Yet this principle, as we have just learned, is the cornerstone of Ferrier’s argument against the Minor Premise of the common sense argument for realism. What are we to make of this lacuna? Is Ferrier guilty of philosophical negligence, of being culpably cavalier or complacent? Not at all; the logical lacuna to which we have alluded is not real, but merely apparent. When we study Ferrier’s Philosophical Works with care, we discover that he laid the groundwork for his inconceivability principle in two stimulating essays from the early 1840s: “The Crisis of Modern Speculation” (1841) and “Berkeley and Idealism” (1842).

5.6  Realism and the Inconceivability Principle One of Ferrier’s main targets in “The Crisis of Modern Speculation” and “Berkeley and Idealism” is a view we may call generic realism, according to which garden-variety physical objects exist independently of our minds and perceptions. Philosophers who embrace generic realism (and they are legion, as history testifies) are duty-bound to draw a hard-and-fast distinction between trees and stones, on the one hand, and our perceptions of trees and stones, on the other; duty-bound to draw a distinction, that is to say, “between objects as they are in themselves, and objects as they are in our perceptions of them . . . between real objects and our perceptions of objects” (FW 3: 263–4). All this may sound quite trite and innocent, even dull; but Ferrier assures us that it is nothing of the kind, because he maintains that the razor-sharp dichotomy wielded by generic realists—a dichotomy which brutally severs mind from world, subject from object, perception from matter, ‘mere’ appearances from real things—does not possess anything like the authority attributed to it by generations of philosophers. Thanks to the heroic labours of recent philosophers, readers of “The Crisis of Modern Speculation” are informed, we now know that the realist’s ruthless dualism, far from being an intuitive or self-evident given, is actually unthinkable.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

152  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism It was reserved for the genius of modern thought to disprove the distinction in question, or at least to qualify it most materially by the introduction of a directly antagonist principle. By a more rigorous observation of facts, modern inquirers have been led to discover the radical identity of the subjective and the objective of human consciousness, and the impossibility of thinking them asunder.  (FW 3: 269)

One consequence of this ‘radical identity of the subjective and the objective’ is that to think the objective is necessarily to think the subjective along with it; that is to say, the objective cannot be thought except through the thought of the subjective.24 Light, for example, can be thought only by and through the thought of seeing, sound can be thought only by and through the thought of hearing, and the same is true of other sense modalities and their respective objects.25 In sum, our constitution is such that we cannot think a mere object; since we can never think away the subject, or abolish it in our thought, the very least we can think is an object-related-to-a-subject. At this point, however, a critic may interject: ‘When we think of the universe as it was eons ago, before any sentient creatures were around to mind it, aren’t we thinking of a purely objective world—a world of objects totally divorced from subjects?’ Not so fast, retorts Ferrier: if a philosopher claims that he can think of a purely objective world, he should be able to describe that world—“to tell us something about it” (FW 3: 307; cf. 272–3). As soon as our realist has told us something about it, however, we shall have proof that he was not really thinking of a purely objective world at all; he only thought he was thinking of it: “We cannot, and we do not think it; we only think that we think it” (FW 3: 312). For in attempting to describe his selfless and deserted world, with all its unsensed scenes and secrets, our critic will find himself attributing properties or qualities to it that can only be thought through the thought of a subject. A man declares that if he were annihilated the universe would still exist. But what universe would still exist? The bright, the green, the solid, the sapid, the odiferous, the extended, the figured universe would still exist. Certainly it would. But this catalogue comprises the series of your perceptions of the universe, and this is not what we want; this is precisely what you undertook not to give us. In mixing up the thought of these perceptions with the universe, ­professedly thought to exist independently of them, you have transgressed the stipulated terms of the question, the conclusion from which is that, in supposing yourself annihilated, you did not suppose yourself annihilated, you took yourself back into being in the very same breath in which you puffed yourself away into nonentity.  (FW 3: 307–8)

What happens, then, when we try to invest our thought of an unminded objective world with some concrete content? We discover that what we are really thinking of is not a world of mere objects, but a world of objects related to some subject; not a realm of things without the mind, but a realm of things appearing to a mind posited perforce by our thought. Yet if we coyly refuse to describe the world we have in mind— as when we intone the phrase ‘matter per se’ sonorously, as if it were a mantra—our world becomes a bare x, ‘a something about which nothing can be said’; and a something

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  153 about which nothing can be said, as Wittgenstein observed in the Philosophical Investigations, is as good as nothing.26 Despite the fervent asseverations of generic realists—and here they, like Job, may be charged with multiplying words without knowledge—we must conclude that the world cannot truly be thought unless a mind is thought along with it, that the objective is inconceivable unless conceived in union with the subjective, and that matter cannot be liberated or disengaged from perception in thought. This is why Ferrier believes that we must reject the Minor Premise of the common sense argument outlined in Section 5.5. Very well: suppose we cannot decouple matter from perception in thought, and we cannot conceive of a world existing independently of perception. Does this mean that the external universe would not exist if there were no minds—that there would be no objects without subjects, no wine-dark sea or gnarled olive trees without percipients? That is apparently what Berkeley thought, and this is one reason why Ferrier wishes to distance himself from him: We are aware that this is the favourite conclusion of idealism as commonly understood, and it is a conclusion not altogether uncountenanced by the reasonings of Berkeley himself. But still the form of idealism which espouses any such conclusion is unguarded and shortsighted in the extreme. The ampler and more wary system refuses to have anything to do with it; for this system sees that, when the question is attempted to be answered in the negative, the conditions of its statement are not one whit more faithfully discharged than they were when a reply was ­supposed to be given to it in the affirmative.  (FW 3: 310–11)

According to Ferrier, readers who have followed his train of thought carefully will refrain from asking whether a mindless world is conceivable, because they will appreciate that this question is ill-posed or nonsensical. Why is it nonsensical? Because the question assumes that we can abolish the subject in thought while thinking of something—the absence of all phenomena—which can only be thought through the thought of a subject: [F]or let us try the point. Let us say that, man being annihilated, there would no longer be any external universe; that is to say, that there would be universal colourlessness, universal silence, universal impalpability, universal tastelessness, and so forth. But universal colourlessness, ­universal silence, universal impalpability, universal tastelessness, and so forth, are just as much phenomena requiring, in thought, the presence of an ideal percipient endowed with sight and hearing and taste and touch, as their more positive opposites were phenomena requiring such a percipient.  (FW 3: 311; 314; cf. FW 1: 507–8)

Two crucial truths have now been unearthed. In the first place, we cannot think any positive objective phenomena—astrolabes or lyres, scimitars or samovars, the Alhambra or Machu Picchu—unless a subject or percipient is thought along with them. In the second place, we cannot think the absence of all phenomena—the objective phenomena of colourlessness, silence, impalpability, tastelessness, and odourlessness—unless a subject or percipient is thought along with them. It follows from these two claims that the self or subject can never be thought away, and that matter-apart-from-mind and

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

154  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism no-matter-apart-from-mind are equally inconceivable. Such is the substance of Ferrier’s metaphysical position, to which he affixes several unlovely labels—“genuine speculative idealism” (FW 3: 308), “absolute real idealism” (FW 3: 315), and “real objective idealism” (FW 3: 319)—all of which are evidently intended to keep readers from confusing it with Berkeley’s subjective idealism.

5.7  Five Morals What does Ferrier think follows from his critique of the Minor Premise of the common sense argument for realism, apart from that premise’s falsity? I believe we are encouraged to draw five morals.   1.  To say that the problem with the common sense argument is the Minor Premise, not the Major Premise, is to say that common sense cannot come to realism’s ­rescue, not because common sense convictions lack authority, but because it is not a common sense conviction that matter per se exists. Ferrier’s point, in other words, is that ‘common sense realism’ is a contradiction in terms. Since common sense is not on the side of realism, common sense philosophers are not bound ex officio to defend realism; if anything, they are bound to renounce it now that they know matter per se is literally beyond belief. And this opens up the possibility of a Berkeleyan rapprochement between common sense and idealism. 2. To say that the Minor Premise is false is also to accuse Reid of being a criminally inept common-sensist, one who simply doesn’t understand what common sense says: “[I]n reference to this problem, the apparently Common Sense convictions of Dr Reid are not the really Common Sense convictions of mankind” (FW 3: 432; cf. 427, 453–4). The question we must ask ourselves now, then, is this: Can Reid be trusted not to falsify the testimony of common sense? Such falsification is no peccadillo, Ferrier remarks; the subornation of perjury, when our witness is common sense, is “one of the gravest errors of which a philosopher can be guilty” (FW 3: 427; cf. 453–4). 3. We now know that we cannot believe in matter per se. But since matter per se is the only type of matter dreamt of in the philosophy to which Option (b) leads, and since we know that Reid is committed to (b), it follows that we cannot believe in matter at all (cf. FW 3: 428, 443) as long as we emulate Reid and adopt the psychological analysis of perception. Because this sort of analysis ultimately calls into question the existence of the very fact it originally aspired to understand,27 it must be judged to end not with a resounding bang, but with an incoherent and self-incriminating whimper. Its pathetic echo and its dying fall remind us that analysis in philosophy has its limits, and that in this sphere—as in others—we murder to dissect.   4. Because we know that realism is incredible because it is inconceivable, we know that the Minor Premise is false, and we also know that the conclusion of

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  155 the common sense argument cannot be true. Hence we know that the common sense argument for realism cannot possibly succeed. Yet this argument was all that stood between Reid and the coal-pits of scepticism and idealism. Since we know that Reid’s ‘leading design’ has thus come to naught, we may conclude that a robust denial of Theses 3 and 4 is warranted. And, since we have already discredited Theses 1 and 2, this means that the basis of Reid’s great reputation has finally been demolished. To vary the metaphor: the Emperor of Common Sense has no clothes, and his philosophical nakedness should be apparent to anyone who has not been deceived by the speeches of obsequious courtiers or dazzled by the incandescent glare of tradition. 5. Once we have understood why the Minor Premise is untenable, we can turn our backs on Option (b), the psychological analysis of perception, and embrace Option (a) for the best of reasons. Instead of analysing the fact of perception by  dividing perception from matter, we should regard that fact as a simple and indivisible datum; instead of trying to wrench subject and object apart in thought, we should acknowledge their radical identity and essential inseparability; instead of embracing a causal representative theory of perception, we ought to opt for some form of intuitionism;28 and instead of siding with the impossibly ambitious psychologists, who dream of a dualism-driven science of the human mind, we must ally ourselves with the more sober and down-to-earth metaphysicians. Once we have done all this, we shall find ourselves favourably predisposed towards the metaphysical theory of perception which Ferrier sketches at the end of “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense”.

5.8  Solving the Problem of Perception “In taking up the problem of perception,” Ferrier tells his readers, “all that metaphysic demands is the whole given fact” (FW 3: 447). And just what is ‘the whole given fact’ whose nature we are asked to elucidate? What we need to attend to here is not the perception of matter, Ferrier observes, but our apprehension of the perception of matter. These two facts are different, and we cannot automatically conclude that our apprehension of the perception of matter must be unanalysable simply because the perception of matter is unanalysable: “[T]he fact which we are now considering is a totally different fact . . . and it does not follow that metaphysic will also declare this fact to be ultimate and indecompoundable” (FW 3: 447–8). Hence the question we now need to wrestle with is a new one: Is our apprehension of the perception of matter an ultimate and indivisible datum, or is it susceptible of analysis? According to Ferrier, our apprehension of the perception of matter can be divided into two components: a subjective component (our apprehension) and an objective component (the perception of matter). The first half of Ferrier’s proposed analysis may strike us as unobjectionable, but what about the second half? That is to say, why should we ­suppose that the perception of matter is wholly objective, or “altogether independent of us” (FW 3: 453)?

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

156  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism When you ask yourself what you really believe about the perception of matter, Ferrier reminds us, you will realize one thing which you do not believe about it—namely, that it can be divided into a subjective component (perception) and an objective component (matter). You cannot believe this, because doing so would require you to believe in matter liberated from perception in thought, and that is a feat whose impossibility has already been demonstrated. Yet that demonstration, Ferrier declares, now leads us somewhere new. If the perception of matter is a simple and indivisible datum, a fact “not subject to partition” (FW 3: 452), then “[w]e cannot place part of it in our own minds and part of it out of our own minds . . . Wherever we place it, then, we must place it whole and undivided” (FW 3: 452). The perception of matter must consequently be either wholly objective or wholly subjective. But which is it? To answer this question, Ferrier appeals directly to the dictates of common sense. His reasoning is not hard to follow: the claim that the perception of matter is a mere state or modification of one’s own mind must be rejected, because it clashes with our ‘natural beliefs’ or ‘primitive convictions’: The question, then, which we have to refer to our natural belief, and abide the answer whatever it may be, is this: Is the perception of matter (taken in its integrity, as it must be taken), is it a modification of the human mind, or is it not? We answer unhesitatingly for ourselves, that our belief is that it is not. This “confession of faith” saves us from the imputation of subjective ­idealism, and we care not what other kind of idealism we are charged with. We can think of no sort of evidence to prove that the perception of matter is a modification of the human mind, or that the human mind is its proper and exclusive abode; and all our belief sets in towards the opposite conclusion. Our primitive conviction, when we do nothing to pervert it, is, that the perception of matter is not, either wholly or in part, a condition of the human soul; is not bounded in any direction by the narrow limits of our intellectual span; but that it “dwells apart,” a mighty and independent system, a city fitted up and upheld by the everlasting God. (FW 3: 454–5)

Notice that Ferrier invokes common sense only after Option (b) has been discarded. It is because Reid didn’t wait long enough—because he tried to force common sense to answer a question internal to the representationist scheme imposed by Option (b)—that he ended up falsifying the testimony of common sense. Such, at any rate, is Ferrier’s contention: His [Reid’s] appeal to the convictions of common sense was premature. He appealed to this belief without allowing scepticism and idealism to run their full course; without allowing them to confound the psychological analysis, and thus bring us back to a better condition by compelling us to accept the fact, not as given in the spurious analysis of man, but in the eternal synthesis of God. The consequence was, that Reid’s appeal came to naught. Instead of interrogating our belief as to the objective existence of the perception of matter (the proper question), the question which he brought under its notice was the objective existence of matter per se, matter minus perception. Now, matter per se, or minus perception, is a thing which no belief will countenance. Reid, however, could not admit this. Having appealed to the belief, he was compelled to distort its evidence in his own favour, and to force it, in spite of itself, to

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  157 bear testimony to the fact which he wished it to establish. Thus Dr Reid’s appeal not only came to naught, but, being premature, it drove him, as has been said and shown, to falsify the primitive convictions of our nature. Scepticism must indeed be terrible when it could thus hurry an honest man into a philosophical falsehood.  (FW 3: 453–4)

We can now see just how far Reid was from the truth: our natural belief about matter is “not a belief in the independent existence of matter per se, but it is a belief in the independent existence of the perception of matter which [we are] for the time participating in” (FW 3: 455).29 Assuming that our natural beliefs—beliefs which Ferrier, employing a quasi-Reidian phrase, calls ‘the convictions we have received from God Himself ’—are beyond epistemic reproach, we can conclude that the indivisible fact of the perception of matter is wholly objective. And once we have assimilated this conclusion, we shall find ourselves committed to a theory of perception which qualifies as a form of intuitionism because it leaves no room for mediate or remote objects of perception: This metaphysical theory of perception is a doctrine of pure intuitionism: it steers clear of all the perplexities of representationism; for it gives us in perception only one, that is, only a proximate object; this object is the perception of matter, and this is one indivisible object. It is not, and cannot be, split into a proximate and remote object. The doctrine, therefore, is proof against all the cavils of scepticism. We may add, that the entire objectivity of this datum (which the metaphysical doctrine proclaims) makes it proof against the imputation of idealism, at least every species of absurd or objectionable idealism.  (FW 3: 456)

Let us pause for a moment and ponder what we have just been told. Our author credits himself with advancing a doctrine of intuitive perception, backed up by common sense, which is capable of subverting two doctrines that have haunted modern philosophy: veil of ideas scepticism, on the one hand, and ‘every species of absurd or objectionable idealism’, on the other. Does this sound familiar? Of course it does; these are the very labours which Reid, the Heracles of Scottish common sense, was supposed to have completed. Hence the moral of the final section of “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense” comes through loud and clear, at least for those with ears to hear: Ferrier has succeeded where Reid failed. For Ferrier takes himself to have outlined the correct solution to the problem of perception—a problem Reid was right to be puzzled by, but whose true nature he failed to comprehend. Nor is this all that Ferrier takes himself to have achieved. His theory of perception, readers are told, builds a road from the province of epistemology to the kingdom of theology: “This doctrine is chiefly valuable on account of the indestructible foundation which it affords to the a priori argument in favour of the existence of God” (FW 3: 457). The ‘a priori argument’ referred to here may be fairly characterized as an idealist-driven cosmological proof in which we start with a contingent (because mind-dependent) physical world and finish with a Divine Mind on whom that world ultimately depends for its existence. To be more specific, Ferrier’s starting-point is that (pace Reid and the psychologists) “[m]atter is the perception of matter” (FW 3: 457). Now we have already shown with the help of common sense that the perception of matter, being

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

158  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism objective, exists independently of our minds: “The perception of matter does not belong to man; it is no state of the human mind, man merely participates in it” (FW 3: 457). However, we also know that the perception of matter cannot exist independently of all minds: “[P]erceptions without an intelligence in which they inhere are inconceivable and contradictory” (FW 3: 457). Therefore, there must exist a God—a “Divine mind” or “everlasting intellect” (FW 3: 457)—to whom such universe-constituting perceptions belong.30 If this line of thought is sound, Ferrier’s doctrine of perception has removed not one  epistemic barrier, but two: the barrier between mind and world exploited by ­epistemological scepticism, and the barrier between world and God exploited by religious scepticism. Needless to say, all of this is very much in the spirit of Berkeley, whom Ferrier acclaims as “the greatest metaphysician of his own country (we do not mean Ireland; but England, Scotland, and Ireland), at the very least” (FW 3: 458; emphasis mine). Taking everything into account, it seems reasonable to conclude that Berkeley was to Ferrier more or less what Reid was to Hamilton: an inspired and inspiring author whose principal doctrines were basically correct, but whose insights needed to be fine-tuned and reformulated.31

5.9  From Reid to Hamilton Although it is easy to get the impression that Reid is Ferrier’s sole target in “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense”, readers should be open to the possibility that Ferrier’s attack is also meant to refute certain doctrines held by Hamilton. We are alerted to this possibility when, at the very beginning of the essay, Ferrier insinuates that some of his criticisms of Reid’s Works may also apply to the works of Reid’s ­venerable and brilliant editor: And should some of our shafts glance off the editor’s own opinions, he has only himself to blame for it. If we see a fatal flaw in the constitution of all, and consequently of his, psychology, it was his writings that first opened our eyes to it . . . He has taught those who study him to think, and he must stand the consequences, whether they think in unison with himself or not. (FW 3: 409)

Two points have a special claim on our attention in this connection. In the first place, it should be noted that Hamilton’s own interpretation of Reid is very similar to the interpretation which Ferrier sets out to demolish in “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense”. Hamilton, as readers of his ‘Copious Notes and Supplementary Dissertations’ know only too well, is fond of portraying Reid as a foe of scepticism, an exponent of an intuitionist doctrine of perception, an enthusiastic apologist for ­natural realism, and the merciless scourge of hypothetical realists.32 Yet if Ferrier is basically right about Theses 1–4, Hamilton’s interpretation of Reid is an embarrassing blunder which ought to be flung into the outer darkness, where hapless exegetes wail and gnash their teeth.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  159 The broader historical significance of Ferrier’s implied rejection of Hamilton’s interpretation of Reid cannot be appreciated unless we recall what motivated Hamilton’s Edinburgh Review article of 1830, “Philosophy of Perception”—one of the most celebrated and influential of his early publications.33 Though ostensibly a review of Theodore Jouffroy’s (1796–1842) French edition of Reid’s works (just as “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense” is ostensibly a review of Hamilton’s edition of Reid), Hamilton’s essay is actually a no-holds-barred critique of Thomas Brown’s contention, advanced in Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1822), that Reid was not an intuitionist or a natural realist.34 Hamilton, incensed by what he regarded as the philosophical equivalent of heresy, fills page after purple page with eloquent invective, finely-drawn distinctions, a quiverful of anti-representationist arguments, and— Hamilton being Hamilton—abundant proofs of his unparalleled erudition. In addition to declaring Brown’s heterodox interpretation anathema, Hamilton belittles Brown’s scholarship, questions his dead opponent’s knowledge of Reid’s works, and casts aspersions on his powers of reasoning.35 All in all, it is quite a performance: passionate, self-assured, and full of spleen and subtlety. A dialectical and rhetorical tour de force, “Philosophy of Perception” did much to fix a certain image of Hamilton in the minds of philosophically-minded Scots. The image was that of an immensely learned and sophisticated thinker who, though conversant with the best in recent foreign speculation, had remained loyal to his own country’s philosophy of common sense, and who was prepared to defend a version of that ­philosophy against all comers. Yet if Ferrier was right about Reid, we must conclude that Hamilton’s triumph over Thomas Brown’s ghost in 1830 was a sham, because what Brown had said in 1822—that Reid was unwittingly committed to representationism and hypothetical realism—is essentially what Ferrier was saying in 1847. If Ferrier and Brown are right, Hamilton’s career-making essay, so full of sound and fury, ultimately signifies nothing; dazzling but empty, spectacular yet hollow, it is the bombastic ­performance of a virtuoso who has lost his way. In the second place, it should be noted that Ferrier’s veiled attack on Hamilton is not confined to exposing the flaws in the latter’s interpretation of Reid. Since the basic epistemological and metaphysical theses attributed to Reid by Hamilton qua interpreter are claims to which Hamilton himself upholds qua philosopher of perception, Ferrier’s objections to those Reidian theses apply with equal force to Hamilton’s own philosophy. It follows that if Ferrier’s critique of Reid is correct, Hamilton (like Reid) is guilty of trying to do two things which cannot be done: 1. The first of these hopeless tasks is that of vindicating realism about the physical world. According to Hamilton’s Argument from the Testimony of Consciousness, we do not need to prove that realism is true, because realism is ‘natural’. That is to say, we are entitled to believe in independently existing things of which we have immediate knowledge, since belief in such things is a primary datum of consciousness which we have no good reason to doubt. We know very well what

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

160  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism Ferrier would say about this line of thought, because he has already said it: there can be no belief (‘natural’ or otherwise) in the immediate perception of material objects existing apart from perception, because the very idea of matter existing apart from perception is inconceivable. Hence there is nothing natural about realism or about Hamilton’s subject–object dualism, and we will no longer see realism of any kind as a live option once we understand why this is so. 2. The second impossible task attempted by Hamilton is that of showing that we can accept realism without accepting representationism. From Ferrier’s perspective, however, there is absolutely no reason to think that Hamiltonian ­natural realism fares any better in this respect than Reid’s misbegotten attempt to combine intuitionism with realism. As we saw in Section 5.4, Ferrier’s argument is short and sweet: you cannot be a realist unless you turn psychologist and grant that the objects of perception (trees, say) are distinct from your perceptions of them, yet the moment you grant that the objects of perception are distinct from your perceptions of them, you have exchanged intuitionism for a form of representationism.36 Realism thus leads to a form of representationism, and the conjunction of representation and realism yields hypothetical realism (or ‘cosmothetic idealism’, for those who speak fluent Hamiltonese). Since Hamilton is a realist, it follows that Hamilton must be a hypothetical realist—and by now we do not need to be told where hypothetical realism leads philosophers unwise enough to embrace it. The irony in this, of course, is that hypothetical realism was the very doctrine championed by Hamilton’s nemesis Thomas Brown—and the very doctrine against which Hamilton inveighed with such vehemence and asperity in “Philosophy of Perception”. To sum up: if Ferrier’s critique of Reid is sound, then Hamilton is indeed Reid’s true successor, but not in anything like the way that Hamilton hoped or imagined. Determined to vindicate the realism espoused by his illustrious predecessor, Hamilton set about purifying various Reidian doctrines of adventitious errors, reworking and rehearsing old arguments for them, answering objections, and drawing ever-finer distinctions. According to Ferrier, however, this apologetic project was doomed from the start for one very simple reason: the way of thinking about the relation between mind and world which Hamilton inherited from Reid was fundamentally and irremediably flawed. Since no amount of finesse can make sense out of what is essentially nonsense, and since ingenuity can never convert incoherence into truth, it must be concluded that Hamilton’s conscientious attempts to repair Reid’s flawed framework were a tragic waste of Hamilton’s time and talents. Hamilton’s misplaced devotion to Reid has cost Scottish philosophy very dearly, Ferrier suggests, because it has prevented Hamilton from realizing his great potential as a speculative thinker. Instead of using his gifts to create a system of his own, Hamilton has spent most of his professional life defending an old and hopelessly lost  cause with ingenuity; instead of venturing into terra incognita like a solitary

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  161 explorer who chooses to live dangerously, he has remained comfortably at home in the company of friends, warming himself by the dying fire of tradition, deferring to the customs and traditions of his native heath, and engaging in the philosophical equivalent of ancestor-worship. Haunted by the thought of what Hamilton might have accomplished had he only been willing to strike out on his own, Ferrier discreetly suggests that the story of his friend’s career can be read as a cautionary tale: “For thirty years past, I have been of opinion that the dedication of his [Hamilton’s] powers to the ­service of Dr Reid was a perversion of his genius, that this was the one mistake in his career, and that he would have done far better if he had built entirely on his own foundation” (FW 1: 556). Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. What are we to conclude from this? If Ferrier is right in thinking that Reid’s scheme is fundamentally unsound, the tradition of Scottish common sense realism has no future; intellectually insolvent, it must declare bankruptcy and close up shop for good. But does Scottish philosophy have a future, according to Ferrier? Yes, provided it  has the courage to re-invent itself, and to approach questions about the relation between mind and world from a new point of view. Sapere aude: if Scotland’s metaphysicians make this motto their own, their thinking will no longer be impoverished by common sense, but will prosper under the guidance of pure reason.

5.10  What’s Past is Prologue We cannot study James Frederick Ferrier’s animadversions on the home-grown ‘philosophy of Common Sense’ without being reminded of several important truths about Scottish philosophy which are sometimes forgotten or overlooked: that modern philosophy in Scotland cannot be identified with the brilliant contributions made ­during the Scottish Enlightenment, let alone with the well-known work of the Scottish common sense school; that philosophy in Scotland continued to thrive and grow throughout the nineteenth century;37 that there are significant continuities of concern (if not always of doctrine) between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish ­philosophy; and, finally, that Scotland’s finest philosophers during the Victorian era were men of independent mind, unafraid to criticize their illustrious Scottish predecessors or contemporaries. Such independence of mind was one of Ferrier’s most conspicuous gifts, and it allowed him to write a fascinating book—the Institutes of Metaphysic: The Theory of Knowing and Being—whose rigorous but little-known argument for idealism is the subject of our next chapter.

Notes 1. As readers of Lectures on Greek Philosophy quickly learn, Ferrier’s method as an historian of philosophy is to approach the problems which confronted a particular thinker by putting himself in that philosopher’s shoes. W. R. Sorley has put it very well: “As a historian of philosophy Ferrier did not pretend to exceptional research; but he had a remarkable power

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

162  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism of entering into the mind of earlier thinkers and of giving a living presentation of their views” (Sorley 1920: 284). G. F. Stout made a similar observation: “[Ferrier’s] dominating interest lay in discovering not so much what his author said, as what from his own point of view his author ought to have said” (Stout 1911: 155). As the remarks of Stout and Sorley suggest, Ferrier’s approach to the history of philosophy has its drawbacks as well as its virtues, and anyone who wishes to weigh Ferrier’s judgments of historical figures should not be blind to either. The relevance of this to the subject of the present chapter—Ferrier’s interpretation of Reid—is too plain to call for any additional comment. 2. On Ferrier’s life and times, see the informative and readable biography by Haldane (1899). That Ferrier has not been entirely forgotten is due in large part to the work of a handful of scholars, including Davie (1964), (1967), (2001), Thomson (1964), Mayo (1969/2007), Haldane (1998), (2001), Broadie (2009), Keefe (2007a), (2007b), (2007c), (2014), (2015), and Graham (2011). 3. According to the late T. L. S. Sprigge (1932–2007), a leading authority on the idealist tradition in English-speaking philosophy (see Sprigge (1983), (1993), (2006)), Ferrier’s Institutes of Metaphysic is “a fine, much neglected work, presenting an idealism that lies somewhere between that of Berkeley and the German Idealists” (Sprigge  1998: 668; cf. 667). 4. “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Whitehead 1929: 63). 5. Ferrier’s paean to Hamilton can be found in his 1856 pamphlet, Scottish Philosophy: The Old and The New (SP 15–16; cf. FW 1: 555–6). 6. Compare Ferrier’s “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense” with Alexander Campbell Fraser’s (1819–1914) “Hamilton and Reid: Theory of Perception” (1848), a review which appears as Chapter II in Fraser (1856). In sharp contrast to Ferrier, Fraser celebrates Reid’s achievements and extols the virtues of the common sense approach. 7. Why is Reid’s method “amphibious”? Presumably because it allows him to move freely between two distinct levels of thought, one of which (speculative reason) happens to be higher than the other (vulgar prejudice). 8. A succinct formulation of this train of thought—what Samuel Rickless calls ‘the First Simple Argument’ for idealism (Rickless 2013: 121)—can be found in Berkeley (1710: §4, 25); see also the discussion of ‘the inconsistent triad’ in Brewer (2011), Chapters 1 and 2. 9. See Sections 2.3 and 2.5. 10. See Berkeley (1710: §101, 68). On the relation between Berkeley’s idealism and common sense, see Roberts (2007), Chapter 6. 11. Hamilton, it should be noted, had used this very fable to illustrate the predicament which hypothetical realists had created for themselves (DPL 67). 12. See Section 4.1 13. Berkeley was made bishop of Cloyne in 1734. 14. According to Gordon Graham, “Ferrier shares with Hamilton a largely unspoken assumption that the question of mind and world lies at the heart of philosophy. This assumption signalled a move away from the much broader conception of moral philosophy as both psychological and social inquiry, which . . . is characteristic of Ferguson, Hume, Adam Smith, and even Reid in part” (Graham 2011). This seems absolutely correct. 15. In the “Crisis of Modern Speculation”, Ferrier claims that “the least exceptionable form” of  representationism—the form adopted by Reid’s adversaries—is the thesis that our

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the myth of scottish common sense realism  163 perceptions are distinct from physical objects: “We are far from thinking that any of its authors adopted or promulgated this doctrine under that gross form against which Dr. Reid and other philosophers have directed their shafts . . . All that philosophers meant was, that we had perceptions of objects, and that these perceptions were not the objects themselves” (FW 3: 264–5; emphasis mine; cf. FW 1: 297–9). 16. Note that Ferrier, unlike some of Reid’s critics, does not argue that Reid’s sensation/perception distinction is incompatible with intuitionism. 17. This is why Ferrier says that Berkeley “taught it [i.e.—intuitionism] on the only grounds on which such a doctrine can be maintained” (FW 1: 490). 18. See Section 3.4, where we noted that Reid thoroughly approved of this Berkeleyan argument. 19. A similarly unappetizing menu of possibilities, the reader will remember, was outlined by Hamilton as part of his defence of natural realism. See Section 4.3. 20. Recall Hamilton’s remarks, quoted in Section 4.4, about hypothetical realism’s enormous popularity among modern philosophers. 21. See Section 4.4, Observation (5). 22. For more on this, see Section 6.9. 23. However, a version of this more modest objection to the argument from common sense was formulated by Lord Monboddo in Antient Metaphysics (1779–99): “I aver, that by far the greater part of mankind act according to the appearances the sense presents to them, without considering whether these appearances are from without or from within; or, in other words, whether the object have any real existence. In short, they have no opinion upon the subject” (AM I: 5.6, 416; cf. 417). 24. Another consequence is that the subjective cannot be thought except through the thought of the objective: “[I]t is impossible to think of seeing without thinking of light, or of ­hearing without thinking of sound” (FW 3: 276). 25. See FW 3: 274–5. 26. See Wittgenstein (1953: §304). 27. Note the formal parallel with the theory of ideas, which was accused of undermining what it was supposed to explain. See Section 3.4, Observation (e). 28. In “The Crisis of Modern Speculation”, the falsity of causal representative theories of perception is deduced from the radical identity of the subjective and the objective: “[W]hen we say that the object is the cause of our perception, we merely say that that which, when thought, becomes one with our perception, is the cause of our perception” (FW 3: 286). 29. The adequacy of Ferrier’s solution to the problem of perception was questioned by G. F. Stout (1911: 163–6). One of Stout’s complaints was this: Ferrier says we apprehend or ­participate in the perception of matter, but these two terms are not logically equivalent. The first term is to be preferred to the second, Stout contends, because the claim that we participate in the perception of matter leads to solipsism: “If to be or to become known to me is to be or to become part of my existence it is clear that I cannot know anything which is not included in my own existence. I can never know anything besides myself, or even think of the possibility of there being anything besides myself ” (Stout 1911: 164). 30. See Berkeley (1710: §90–§94, 63–5), (1713: 2, 152). 31. For this reason, George Elder Davie’s succinct description of “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense” as “a manifesto in favour of Berkleianism” seems perfectly justified (Davie 2001: 193). And Ferrier’s interest in Berkeley is historically significant in more than

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

164  Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism one sense; for according to Sorley (1920: 284) and Metz (1938: 247), Ferrier was the first nineteenth-century philosopher to appreciate Berkeley as a constructive metaphysician, instead of seeing him as a sceptic or a maker of paradoxes. 32. This is not to say that Hamilton believes that Reid’s arguments on any of these questions are entirely satisfactory or unproblematic. Even a cursory look at Hamilton’s interminable ‘notes and dissertations’ reveals that he was ready and willing—perhaps a bit too ready and too willing—to criticize Reid’s views on these and related matters. 33. See DPL 38–97. 34. See Brown (1822), especially Chapter 26 (“On Dr. Reid’s Supposed Confutation of the Ideal System”), Chapter 27 (“Examination of Dr. Reid’s Supposed Confutation of Idealism”), and Chapter 28 (“On Dr. Reid’s Supposed Proof of a Material World”). See Dixon (2015: 34–8) for an examination of Brown’s critique of Reid. 35. In the words of Alexander Campbell Fraser, “Brown was the bête noire of Hamilton, who pursued him with relentless logic as a faithless representative of the tradition of Reid” (Fraser 1904: 63). For more on Hamilton’s attack on Brown, see Dixon (2015). 36. A similar line of thought can be found in the notebooks of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99): “To say we perceive external objects is contradictory; it is impossible for man to go outside himself. When we believe we are seeing objects we are seeing only ourselves. We can really perceive nothing in the world except ourselves and the changes that take place in us” (Hollingdale 1990: 123, Notebook H §35). 37. As Gordon Graham has noted, “[i]t is a striking fact that while Scottish philosophy of the eighteenth century is studied to the point of being a major academic industry, Scottish philosophy of the nineteenth century is not only neglected but virtually unknown” (Graham 2003: 333; cf. Devine 2006: 296). For recent discussions of post-Enlightenment Scottish philosophy, see Broadie (2009), (2012) and Graham (2003), (2011).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

6 Ferrier and the Foundations of Idealism Every question in philosophy is the mask of another question; and all these masking and masked questions require to be removed and laid aside, until the ultimate but truly first question has been reached. Then, but not till then, is it possible to decipher and resolve the outside mask, and all those below it, which come before us in the first instance. —James Frederick Ferrier

6.0 Introduction Like Caesar’s Gaul, Ferrier’s Institutes of Metaphysic is divided into three parts. Section I, entitled ‘The Epistemology, or Theory of Knowing’ (FW 1: 77–402), advances twentytwo propositions about the nature of knowledge and the constitution of its objects; Section II, ‘The Agnoiology, or Theory of Ignorance’ (FW 1: 403–49), defends eight propositions about the nature of ignorance and the constitution of its objects; and Section III, ‘The Ontology, or Theory of Being’ (FW 1: 451–526), puts forward eleven propositions about the nature of reality. In addition to these three sections, the Institutes contains a substantial ‘Introduction’ (FW 1: 1–75), in which Ferrier’s meta-philosophical perspective is eloquently expounded, and a brief ‘Summary and  Conclusion’ (FW 1: 526–43), which sums up the book’s central argument or philosophical plot. What is that plot? First-time readers of the Institutes of Metaphysic may wish to  think of it as the story of an old-fashioned quest in which the Holy Grail is ­nothing less than insight into the nature of ‘Being in itself ’ or ‘Absolute Existence’.1 According to our Scottish teller of metaphysical tales, Absolute Existence is either that which we know, or that of which we are ignorant. But what is knowledge, and what attributes must an object possess in order to be knowable? And what is ­ignorance, and what attributes must an object possess in order to be ignorable? These parallel sets of questions are taken up in the Epistemology (Section I) and the Agnoiology (Section II), respectively.2 When we compare the conclusions of Sections I and II, we discover something significant: our two paths converge,

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

166  ferrier and the foundations of idealism f­orming a royal road which leads straight to the elusive Grail. For whether we travel the well-trod route of the Epistemology or blaze the Agnoiology’s fresh and grassy trail, we can be sure of one thing: provided we persevere and follow reason faithfully, we shall enter the kingdom of the Ontology (Section III), and its secrets shall be revealed to us. Stripped of fanciful conceits and metaphorical adornments, the central argument of the Institutes can be broken down into three main steps. The first step, taken in the Epistemology, is to establish that an object must possess a certain feature—for the time being, let us call it F—in order to be something we can know. The second step, taken in the Agnoiology, is to establish that an object must possess F in order to be something we can be ignorant of. The third and final step, taken in the Ontology, is to establish that Absolute Existence must either be something we can know or something of which we can be ignorant. Once these three propositions are securely in place, we can conclude that Absolute Existence must be F. This divide-and-conquer strategy is made explicit in the book’s Introduction: The epistemology has fixed what alone any intelligence can know. The agnoiology has fixed what alone any intelligence can be ignorant of—consequently Absolute Existence being either that which we know, or that which we are ignorant of (and it shall be demonstrated that there is no other alternative), it must respond either to the result of the epistemology, or to the result of the agnoiology. But if the result of the epistemology and the result of the agnoiology are coincident (and their coincidence shall be demonstrated), then it matters not whether Absolute Being be that which we know, or that which we are ignorant of; we can demonstratively fix its character all the same; we can screw it down, whichever of them it be; we can attach to it a predicate, which is all that is wanted, and which is all that philosophy promises as her ultimate bestowal on mankind.  (FW 1: 51)

But what is F—the as-yet-unnamed attribute necessarily possessed both by what we know and by what we are ignorant of? That is the question of questions, and it is only when we grasp the implications of Ferrier’s answer to it that our thoughts veer away from realism and gravitate towards idealism.

6.1  Ferrier’s Master Argument for Idealism In the three central sections of the Institutes, Ferrier slowly unfolds an intricate argument for a form of idealism which affirms that “the only true, and real, and independent Existences are minds-together-with-that-which-they-apprehend” (FW 1: 511; SP 20). The following reconstruction, I think, captures the drift of his reasoning: P1.  If Absolute Existence is that which we know, it must be the synthesis of subject and object. P2.  If Absolute Existence is that of which we are ignorant, it must be the synthesis of subject and object.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  167 P3.  Either Absolute Existence is that which we know, or Absolute Existence is that of which we are ignorant. ____________________________________________________________________ .: C.  Absolute Existence must be the synthesis of subject and object: “Absolute Existence is the synthesis of the subject and object . . . the concretion of the ego and non-ego; in other words, the only true, and real, and independent Existences are minds-together-with-that-which-they-apprehend” (FW 1: 511). [From P1–P3] Let us call this Ferrier’s Master Argument for Idealism.3 Four observations about it are immediately in order. The first of these observations concerns the argument’s conclusion; the second, the status of its premises; the third and fourth, their justification. 1.  In the first place, the Master Argument’s conclusion is not Ferrier’s final destination in the Institutes of Metaphysic. His final destination is theism, which can be derived from C via a version of the cosmological argument ex contingentia mundi. For if Absolute Existence consists in a synthesis of subject and object, objects do not exist independently or in their own right; they are contingent or dependent beings, and can exist only in union with a subject or mind which apprehends them. Material objects thus have no independent or absolute being: oceans and peat bogs, dirks and spires, the Elgin Marbles or the Plains of Abraham—none of these things can exist apart from all subjects or minds. However, it is quite evident to anyone whose outlook is not hopelessly anthropocentric that such things can exist apart from our minds; after all, the world existed long before we came into it, and it is possible that there are worlds in which finite minds like ours are entirely absent. Consequently, there must be an all-knowing necessary Being, a Mind eternal and infinite existing in union with  all things. And this is the gist of Proposition XI of the Ontology—the very last proposition advanced in the Institutes of Metaphysic: “All absolute existences are contingent except one; in other words, there is One, but only one, Absolute Existence which is strictly necessary; and that existence is a supreme, and infinite, and everlasting Mind in synthesis with all things” (FW 1: 522).4 Why only one Mind, you ask? Here Ferrier reaches for Ockham’s Razor: reason “never postulates more than is necessary” (FW 1: 522–3), and we only need to posit one omniscient mind in order to square two truths. The first of these truths is that the universe must always be minded; the second, that the universe need not be minded by us: To save the universe from presenting a contradiction to all reason, intelligence must be postulated in connection with it; because everything except the synthesis of subject and object is contradictory, is that of which there can be no knowledge. (Props. I. II., Epistemology), and no ignorance (Prop. VIII., Agnoiology). But more than one intelligence does not require to be postulated; because the universe is rescued from contradiction as effectually by the supposition of one intelligence in connection with it, as by the supposition of ten million, and reason never postulates more than is necessary. Therefore all absolute existences are contingent except one; in other words, there is One, but only one, Absolute Existence which is strictly necessary; and that existence is a supreme, and infinite, and eternal Mind in synthesis with all things. (FW 1: 522–3)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

168  ferrier and the foundations of idealism Thus if the Master Argument is sound, we end up with a form of idealism from which theism is but a corollary. It is clear that this line of thought (which Ferrier pressed into service at the very end of “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense”) owes a good deal to Berkeley, whose so-called ‘continuity argument’ put a new spin on an old argument for God’s existence—the argument from contingent or dependent beings.5 For if idealism is true, Berkeley argued, physical objects are not merely dependent beings, as the old cosmological argument had said; they are mind-dependent beings. But do physical objects depend on our minds for their existence? This sounds far-fetched, to put it mildly. (Do we really believe that our bedroom furniture is annihilated when we shut our eyes at night, only to pop back into existence conveniently when we wake up in the morning?) From a Berkeleyan point of view, therefore, the fact of the physical world’s continued existence from moment to moment is proof that there exists a necessary being who is an infinite, omnipresent, and all-perceiving spirit. The tree in the quad, the craters on the dark side of the moon, the rooftop at midnight, the fallen and forgotten walls of Troy—these things continue to exist when we are not around to perceive them, because they are always perceived by an eternal Mind in whom they live and move and have their being; a Mind which, like Argus with his hundred eyes, is a peerless and patient observer of creation.6 The similarities between this line of reasoning and Ferrier’s are obvious, even if Ferrier’s argument is rooted in considerations about the nature of knowledge instead of the nature of perception. (We will have much more to say about the difference this difference makes in Section 6.4.)7 2.  In the second place, Ferrier recognizes that none of the Master Argument’s three premises—P1, P2, and P3—is self-evident, and that each of them must be ­established by means of argument. Hence C, a conclusion which is also a premise, rests on premises which are also conclusions; that is to say, on propositions which have been inferred from better-known claims. But what kind of inferences and what kind of claims will do the trick? A committed rationalist, Ferrier maintains that ­philosophy is a purely a priori discipline, that its premises and conclusions must be necessary truths, that the only form of reasoning it can employ is deduction, and that its arguments must be proofs or demonstrations in the strict and proper sense of the term.8 Hence if Ferrier is to practise what he preaches, he must defend each of the Master Argument’s premises with nice knock-down arguments whose premises are truths of reason.9 3.  Ferrier’s proof of P3 is an argument from elimination which is predicated upon the following trilemma: Either Absolute Existence is that which we know, or Absolute Existence is that of which we are ignorant, or Absolute Existence is neither that which we know nor that of which we are ignorant (FW 1: 454). Since Ferrier maintains that the third alternative can be ruled out on a priori grounds, he infers that P3 must be true: “Absolute Existence is either that which we know, or that which we are ignorant of ” (FW 1: 469). On what grounds is the third alternative ruled out? Ferrier’s sub-argument can be thrown into the logical shape of a dilemma. Either what we neither know nor are

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  169 ignorant of is knowable, or it is not. First Horn: If what we neither know nor are ignorant of were knowable, it could not be that which we neither know nor are ignorant of. For if something is knowable, “we must either know it or be ignorant of it” (FW 1: 461). Yet if we know it, it is not the case that we neither know it nor are ignorant of it; and if we are ignorant of it, it is not the case that we neither know it nor are ignorant of it. Therefore, what we neither know nor are ignorant of cannot be knowable. Second Horn: If what we neither know nor are ignorant of is not knowable, it can only be what Ferrier calls ‘the contradictory’, since “everything except the contradictory is knowable” (FW 1: 460; cf. 459, 461–3).10 Yet Absolute Existence, whatever else may be said about it, is most definitely not the contradictory: “There is no absurdity or contradiction involved in the supposition that something (whatever it may be) really and truly, and absolutely exists” (FW 1: 464). Conclusion: Absolute Existence cannot be that which we neither know nor are ignorant of. Hence Absolute Existence must either be that which we know or that which we are ignorant of. And this proposition is equivalent to P3. 4. Ferrier’s arguments for P1 and P2 depend more directly upon the so-called ‘Primary Law or Condition of All Knowledge’, a (putatively) self-evident and necessary truth which is the foundation of his entire system and—not coincidentally—the very first proposition advanced in the Institutes.11 Here is Ferrier’s canonical formulation of this Law, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the starting-point of Hamilton’s Argument from Subjective Conditions: Along with whatever any intelligence knows, it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognisance of itself . . . Self or the “me” is the common centre, the continually known rallying-point, in which all our cognitions meet and agree. It is the ens unum, et semper cognitum, in omnibus notitiis. Its apprehension is essential to the existence of our, and of all, knowledge.  (FW 1: 79) The apprehension of oneself by oneself is the most general and essential circumstance on which knowledge depends . . . The knowledge of self is the running accompaniment to all our knowledge. It is through and along with this knowledge that all other knowledge is taken in.  (FW 1: 80–1)

We can see that Ferrier, like Reid, maintains that philosophy must rest on a firm logical foundation of first principles or fundamental laws. However, Ferrier’s startingpoint is a decidedly Cartesian one: the foundation of philosophy, readers of the Institutes are told, consists of a single undeniable truth or axiom about self-consciousness, the Law of All Knowledge.12 And the similarity between our two rationalists does not end there; for Ferrier believes, just as Descartes did, that his fundamental proposition about self-consciousness has far-reaching philosophical implications. Since no object can possibly be known by a subject unless the subject knows itself along with the object, what is known is never an object by itself or per se; all any subject can ever know is an object in union with a subject. Since there cannot be ignorance where there cannot be knowledge (this is ‘The Law of All Ignorance’ enunciated and defended in the Agnoiology), we can never be ignorant of an object by itself or per se; all any subject can ever be ignorant of is an object in union with a subject. It follows that if Absolute

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

170  ferrier and the foundations of idealism Existence is something we know, it must consist in a synthesis of object and subject; and if Absolute Existence is something we are ignorant of, it must also consist in a synthesis of object and subject. Take these two conditionals (which are logically equivalent to P1 and P2, respectively), add the thesis that Absolute Existence must either be something we know or something we are ignorant of (as per P3), and you must conclude that Absolute Existence—what exists truly, absolutely, independently, non-parasitically, or in its own right—consists in a synthesis of subject and object. It follows that “the mere material world, has no real and absolute existence” (SP 28), no true and independent being. Citadels and sepulchres, lochs and lotus blossoms, whisky decanters and Wagner tubas—such entities do not and cannot exist in their own right, in splendid isolation from all subjects.13 This concludes our précis of the main argument of the Institutes of Metaphysic; and if our purpose in this chapter were simply to trace the logical contours of Ferrier’s big picture, we could probably stop at this point. Since God and the Devil are in the details, however, we must go deeper. We shall consequently spend the remainder of this chapter refining our understanding of the two most important propositions of Ferrier’s Institutes: the Law of All Knowledge (the proposition that a subject cannot know objects without knowing itself along with them) and the Law of All Ignorance (the proposition that we can be ignorant only of what some subject can know).

6.2  The Law of All Knowledge Defended: Part I Does Ferrier give us any reason to think that the Primary Law and Condition of All Knowledge is true? Yes, and there are three things he would say to readers who doubt that proposition or who demand that a proof of it be given. In the first place, Ferrier would remind his sceptical interlocutor that the Primary Law and Condition of All Knowledge is an axiom—a self-evident truth or first principle—and that such propositions by their very nature cannot be directly demonstrated: “Strictly speaking, the proposition cannot be demonstrated, because, being itself the absolute starting-point, it cannot be deduced from any antecedent data” (FW 1: 88). Once we appreciate that the Law of All Knowledge is an axiom, therefore, we will see that the critic’s request for a demonstration is misplaced, and we will conclude that any reader who refuses to accept the Law only because no proof of it has been given has failed to  appreciate that proposition’s claim to foundational status. Since the Law of All Knowledge is philosophy’s true starting-point or first word, sceptics who demand that a positive proof of that Law be given are not beginning at the beginning; instead, they are trying ‘to go further back’.14 This brings us to our second point. Although Ferrier acknowledges that the Law of All Knowledge cannot be demonstrated because it is an axiom, he nevertheless thinks that “it may be explained in such a way as to leave no doubt as to its axiomatic character” (FW 1: 88). The ‘explanation’ which follows on the heels of this announcement takes

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  171 the form of an indirect proof or reductio: suppose the Law of All Knowledge is false, the reader is told, and you will soon find yourself confronted by a contradiction. For if you deny that self-consciousness is essential to knowledge, you will eventually arrive at the conclusion that “knowledge can be, without being knowledge” (FW 1: 529). Since this conclusion violates the law of identity—“It is tantamount to the assertion that a thing is not what it is—that ‘A is not A’ ” (FW 1: 529; cf. 21)—our original supposition must be false. Hence the Law of All Knowledge must be true. This accurately describes the form of Ferrier’s indirect proof of the Law, but what about that proof ’s content? What exactly are Ferrier’s premises, and what sequence of logical moves is supposed to deliver the desired conclusion? Here is the passage we need to scour and comb for clues: If it were possible for an intelligence to receive knowledge at any one time without knowing that it was his knowledge, it would be possible for him to do this at all times. So that an intelligent being might be endowed with knowledge without once, during the whole term of his existence, knowing that he possessed it. Is there not a contradiction involved in that supposition? But if that supposition be a contradiction, it is equally contradictory to suppose that an intelligence can be conscious of his knowledge, at any single moment, without being conscious of it as his. A man has knowledge, and is cognisant of perceptions only when he brings them home to himself. If he were not aware that they were his, he could not be aware of them at all. Can I know without knowing that it is I who know? No, truly. But if a man, in knowing anything, must always know that he knows it, he must always be self-conscious. And therefore reason establishes our first proposition as a necessary truth—as an axiom, the denial of which involves a contradiction, or is, in plain words, nonsense.  (FW 1: 88)

There is more than one way of reconstructing the serpentine line of argument which slowly winds its way through the lush grass of this paragraph. Nevertheless, the following reconstruction strikes me as a plausible interpretation of Ferrier’s reasoning: 1.  If the Law of All Knowledge is false, it is possible for a subject to have knowledge of an object without knowing herself along with that object. 2.  If it is possible for a subject to have knowledge of an object without knowing herself along with that object, it is possible for a subject to have knowledge without knowing whose knowledge it is. .: 3.  If the Law of All Knowledge is false, it is possible for a subject to have knowledge without knowing whose knowledge it is. [From 1, 2] 4.  Yet that is absurd: it is impossible for a subject to have knowledge and not know whose knowledge it is. ____________________________________________________________________________

.: 5.  The Law of All Knowledge must be true. [From 3, 4] This argument appears to be logically valid: (5) follows from (3) and (4), and (3) follows from (1) and (2). But are the argument’s premises true? Let us see if we can piece together Ferrier’s case for (1), (2), and (4).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

172  ferrier and the foundations of idealism a. That premise (1) is true should be evident to anyone who has understood the Law of All Knowledge. Deny this Law, and you are automatically committed to thinking that objects can be known by a self-oblivious subject, or that a subject can apprehend an object without apprehending herself along with it. Yet if a subject can apprehend an object without apprehending herself along with it, a subject can have knowledge of an object without knowing herself along with that object. b. What about premise (2)? If a subject can have knowledge of objects without knowing herself along with those objects, a subject can have knowledge of her perceptions or cognitions—can be conscious of such items, or be acquainted with them—without knowing herself along with them. But if you can know your perceptions without knowing yourself, you can know your perceptions without knowing them as yours. Hence the denial of the Law of All Knowledge brings in its train the idea that a subject can have knowledge (perceptions, cognitions) without knowing whose knowledge it is. c. As for premise (4), Ferrier thinks its truth is undeniable and self-evident. No one can possibly be conscious of a cognition or perception, he openly avows, without knowing that this cognition or perception is hers: “[I]t is . . . contradictory to suppose that an intelligence can be conscious of his knowledge, at any single moment, without being conscious of it as his. A man has knowledge, and is cognisant of perceptions only when he brings them home to himself. If he were not aware that they were his, he could not be aware of them at all” (FW 1: 88; emphasis mine). In other words, awareness of cognitions or perceptions as one’s own is a necessary condition of being aware of them at all; nothing can be a cognition or perception for me unless I know it to be mine. If Ferrier is right about this, it is impossible for a subject to have knowledge and not know whose knowledge it is, in which case it must be granted that “reason establishes our first proposition as a necessary truth—as an axiom, the denial of which involves a contradiction, or is, in plain words, nonsense” (FW 1: 88). In the third place, Ferrier is prepared to turn the tables on his interlocutors and ask them what they propose as an alternative to the Law of All Knowledge. His question, to be more specific, is this: Do his critics think it could be the case that subjects are initially conscious of nothing but objects, and that they only become conscious of themselves through their consciousness of objects? This account of self-consciousness has indeed found defenders, as Ferrier points out: A theory of self-consciousness, opposed to the doctrine advanced in our first proposition, has been sometimes advocated. It reduces this operation to a species of reminiscence: it affirms that we are first cognisant of various sensible impressions, and are not conscious of ourselves until we reflect upon them afterwards.  (FW 1: 85)

This theory of self-consciousness may seem like a promising alternative to the Law of  All Knowledge. Nevertheless, Ferrier thinks the proposed theory is incoherent, because it “supposes us to recollect certain impressions to have been ours, after they

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  173 have been experienced, which we did not know to be ours when they were experienced” (FW 1: 85). And this supposition makes no sense, because “[a] man cannot remember what never happened” (FW 1: 85). Spelled out more fully, Ferrier’s reasoning runs as follows. I can remember impressions as having been mine, he contends, only if I knew them as mine when I experienced them; but I couldn’t know them as mine when I experienced them unless I originally apprehended myself along with them. I can remember impressions as having been mine, therefore, only if I was self-conscious in the first place—only if, that is to say, I apprehended my ego from the get-go, along with whatever impressions came my way. Yet this is exactly what adherents of the rival theory of self-consciousness are committed to denying; as far as they are concerned, in the beginning there was no self-consciousness, only a selfless consciousness of objects. If their theory were true, Ferrier observes, I could never remember impressions as having been mine; but if I cannot remember impressions as having been mine, their theory cannot be true. Hence this rival account of self-consciousness is no rival at all, because it is internally inconsistent: If the impressions were not known to be ours at the time, they could not subsequently be remembered to have been ours, because their recollection would imply that we remembered an antecedent connection between ourselves and them; which connection, however, had no place in our former experience, inasmuch as this theory declares that no self was in the first instance apprehended;—therefore, if the impressions are recognised on reflection to have been ours, they must originally have been known to be ours. In other words, we must have been conscious of self at the time when the impressions were made.  (FW 1: 85–6)

We have now identified the three major moves which constitute Ferrier’s front-line defence of the Law of All Knowledge. The First Move: A demonstration or direct proof of the Law is neither necessary nor possible, since the Law is an axiom or self-evident truth—the first principle of philosophy, in fact. The Second Move: Although a direct proof of the Law of All Knowledge is out of the question, an indirect proof of it can be given, since the negation of the Law leads directly to a formal contradiction. The Third Move: The alternative account of self-consciousness espoused by Ferrier’s opponents can be ruled out on the grounds that it is self-contradictory.

6.3  The Law of All Knowledge Defended: Part II Ferrier’s defence of the Law of All Knowledge is far from over, however, because he anticipates a number of additional objections to the first principle of his system. His replies are worth reconstructing, because they clarify and build out his basic position. Objection 1:  The Law of All Knowledge is supposed to be an a priori truth which applies to our experience. Nevertheless, our experience flatly contradicts the proposition that “[t]he knowledge of self is the running accompaniment to all our knowledge” (FW 1: 81). Far from being intensely self-conscious beings, it is clear that “during the greater part of our lives we take but little notice of ourselves” (FW 1: 81). Reply: This objection, Ferrier thinks, rests on a simple misunderstanding. What the Law of All Knowledge

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

174  ferrier and the foundations of idealism asserts is that every subject conscious of objects is always self-conscious to some degree or to some extent—that “man (or any other intelligence) is never altogether incognisant, is never totally oblivious, of himself ” (FW 1: 81; emphasis mine). What the Law does not assert or imply is that a subject’s self-consciousness must form a large or conspicuous part of his total consciousness at any given moment. Consequently, the fact that consciousness of self is typically only a small fraction of one’s total consciousness at any instant is consistent with the Law of All Knowledge: “Nine hundred and ninety-nine parts of our attention may be always devoted to the thing or business we have in hand: it is sufficient for our argument if it be admitted that the thousandth part, or even a smaller fraction, of it is perpetually directed upon ourselves” (FW 1: 82). Objection 2:  Yet aren’t there times when we really are ‘altogether incognisant’ or ‘totally oblivious’ of ourselves? Doesn’t our experience contain moments in which we are aware of objects without being aware of ourselves in any way? Reply: Experience, Ferrier avers, definitely answers this question in the negative. We can never be aware of perceptions or thoughts without being aware of them as ours, and this awareness of them as ours—this “latent reference of one’s perceptions and thoughts to oneself as the person who experiences them” (FW 1: 82; cf. 87)—must be regarded as incontrovertible proof of self-consciousness. Since we always find that our consciousness of objects is accompanied by some consciousness of self, it must be concluded that the  Law of All Knowledge is “corroborated by experience” and not merely “not overthrown” by it (FW 1: 87; cf. 74, 81). Objection 3:  How are we to account for the fact that our consciousness of self is almost always so faint and feeble, so inchoate and dim? Can this be explained convincingly in a way which is consistent with the Law of All Knowledge? Reply: Ferrier proffers two explanations of this fact, and both of them tally with the Law of All Knowledge: [T]he slight degree of notice which we usually take of ourselves is sufficiently explained,— without its being necessary to resort to the hypothesis that the oversight is ever total,—by means of these two circumstances—the operation of the law of familiarity, and the fact that the ego is no object of sensible experience.  (FW 1: 85)

Let us take these two points in order. First Explanation: Nothing is more familiar to us  than ourselves, and this familiarity breeds the epistemological equivalent of contempt—to wit, inattention: “We are constantly present to ourselves,—hence we scarcely notice ourselves. We scarcely remark the condition of our knowledge, so unremittingly do we obey it . . . This is the inevitable consequence of our close familiarity, our continual intimacy, our unbroken acquaintance with ourselves” (FW 1: 83; cf. FW 1: 549, FW 3: 487). The paradox is plain and potent: self, precisely because it is ubiquitous or ever-present in knowledge, quickly becomes all but invisible to us.15 Second Explanation: We are apt to attend primarily to the changing perceptual element

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  175 (as opposed to the ever-present intellectual element) in our knowledge: “[T]he part of our knowledge which consists of things of sense always naturally attracts our attention much more forcibly than that part of it which is apprehended by the intellect merely” (FW 1: 84).16 Since one’s ego or self is not known by means of sense-perception—“that which we call ‘I’ is the object of intellect alone. We are never objects of sense to ­ourselves. A man can see and touch his body, but he cannot see and touch himself ” (FW 1: 84)—we tend to overlook it, and end up concentrating almost exclusively on the objects of perception. Objection 4:  The Law of All Knowledge is supposed to be the absolute starting-point or first principle of philosophy. But why should anyone think it possesses this foundational status? Reply: The short answer is that Ferrier thinks philosophy must start with epistemology, and epistemology must start with a question about the essence of knowledge: “What is the one feature which is identical, invariable, and essential in all the varieties of our knowledge? What is the standard factor which never varies while all else varies? What is the ens unum in omnibus notitiis?” (FW 1: 74). Since the Law of All Knowledge is the correct answer to this question, that Law can be identified as “the foundation of the whole system, and as the single staple on which all the truths subsequently to be advanced depend” (FW 1: 86). Hence it is only fitting that it appear as Proposition I of Section I in the Institutes of Metaphysic, since propositions in that book are presented in order of logical priority.17 Objection 5:  But why should we suppose that philosophy must start with epistemology? This Cartesian commitment to the primacy of epistemology is not self-evident; what evidence or arguments speak in its favour? Reply: Here we must advert to Ferrier’s definition of philosophy as “the attainment of truth by way of reason” (FW 1: 3, cf. 1–2).18 What is meant by ‘truth’ here is soon made clear: “Truth is—what is. Whatever absolutely is, is true. There can be no doubt about that” (FW 1: 47). Assuming this equation of Truth and Being is correct, philosophy’s original question—‘What is truth?’—can now be reformulated simply as ‘What is?’19 Answering that question is the task of ontology or ‘the science of what truly is’, which Ferrier defines as “the division [of philosophy] which has for its object the problem, What is true being—absolute existence?” (FW 1: 47). However, a tenable ontology must be preceded by a sound epistemology, which Ferrier defines as “the doctrine or theory of knowing, just as ontology is the doctrine or theory of being . . . the science of true knowing” (FW 1: 48). The question, in its shortest form, is, What is? And the parrying answer is—What is, is what is known. But that answer, while it sends away from us, in the mean time, the ontological question, instantly brings before us a new question, or rather new section of questions—this: But what is known, and what is knowing? This movement determines another whole section of philosophy . . . This division explores and explains the laws both of knowing and of the known—in other words, the conditions of the conceivable; laying out the necessary laws, as the laws of all knowing, and all thinking, and the contingent laws as the laws of our knowing and of our thinking. This section of the science is properly termed the EPISTEMOLOGY—the

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

176  ferrier and the foundations of idealism doctrine or theory of knowing, just as ontology is the doctrine of theory of being . . . It answers the general question, “What is knowing and the known?”—or more shortly, “What is knowledge?” The ontology cannot be approached, or even looked at, until this division has been thoroughly explicated.  (FW 1: 48–9)

Since the maxim ‘Whatever is, is what is known’ leads nowhere in ontology unless we already understand the nature of knowing and the nature of knowledge’s objects, the problem of Being cannot be solved unless the problem of Knowledge is solved first: “It is clear that we cannot declare what is—in other words, cannot get a footing on ontology— until we have ascertained what is known—in other words, until we have exhausted all the details of a thorough and systematic epistemology . . . [W]e cannot pass to the problem of absolute existence, except through the portals of the solution to the problem of knowledge” (FW 1: 49). The bottom line, then, is that epistemology is prior to ontology; and since nothing is prior to epistemology, epistemology is first philosophy. With these preliminary reflections behind us, we are now in a position to pose “the first question of philosophy—the only first question which it can have” (FW 1: 75)— namely, ‘What is knowledge?’ Ferrier thinks that it would be a capital mistake to leave this question in its present form, however, because unwary readers might think they are simply being invited to list different kinds of human knowledge, to traffic in instances and particulars, to trot out examples of various things which we happen to know. As readers of Plato’s Theaetetus will no doubt recall, this is how Theaetetus responded when he was asked about knowledge, only to have Socrates reproach him for missing the point: “I did not ask you what things there is a knowledge of,—but what knowledge itself is” (FW 1: 69; cf. 72–3).20 Ferrier wholeheartedly agrees with Socrates: since we are philosophers and not list-makers, we must realize that the question ‘What is knowledge?’ asks us to lay bare the very structure of knowing, to specify what all instances of knowledge have in common, to identify some element that is “necessary or essential to the constitution of every datum of cognition” (FW 1: 74). For the discipline of philosophy is ultimately concerned not with particulars, but with universals; not with the varieties of human knowledge, but with the character or structure of knowledge as such; not with the innumerable examples of a thing, but with its nature or essence. True philosophers hunger for the living bread of necessity, Ferrier believes, not the cold stones of contingency; their lungs crave the aether of the a priori, not the noxious fog of fact; and all of them are bound, as the obedient servants of Reason, to pursue the underlying and unchanging One instead of acquiescing in the apparent and mutable Many.21 For these reasons, the fundamental question of epistemology—‘What is knowledge?’— should be re-stated along the following lines, lest its distinctively philosophical drift remain obscure: “What is the one feature which is identical, invariable, and essential in all the varieties of our knowledge? What is the standard factor which never varies while all else varies? What is the ens unum in omnibus notitiis?” (FW 1: 74). Objection 6:  We have seen that Ferrier presents the Law of All Knowledge as the answer to the fundamental question of epistemology: ‘What is knowledge?’ However,

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  177 this so-called ‘fundamental question’ assumes that there is “one feature which is identical, invariable, and essential in all the varieties of our knowledge” (FW 1: 74). Have we been given any reason to think this assumption or presupposition is true? Reply: If we can answer the question ‘What is knowledge?’ correctly, Ferrier points out, we will automatically know that the assumption in question is true: “That there is such a point, is proved by the fact that such a point has been found” (FW 1: 73–4). And no one can deny that if we discover what all cognitions as such have in common, we will have established that there actually is some “essential rallying-point in all our cognitions” (FW 1: 73), or some “one feature which is identical, invariable, and essential in all the varieties of our knowledge” (FW 1: 74). It follows that Objection 6 is a logical dead-end if the Law of All Knowledge is the right answer to epistemology’s fundamental question. To be sure, Ferrier’s critic is still free to object that the Law of All Knowledge is the wrong answer to that question. Note, however, that this objection shifts the focus of debate: instead of discussing whether we have the right to ask a certain question, we would be discussing what the right answer to that question is. What if there is no ‘essential rallying-point in all our cognitions’ (FW 1: 73), no unifying or common element which runs like a logical red thread through all instances of knowing? According to Ferrier, this would spell the end of philosophy as a discipline: “If there is no such point, or if no such point can be found, no philosophy is possible” (FW 1: 73). Why does he think this? Recall his reply to Objection 4: philosophy is possible only if epistemology is possible, and epistemology is possible only if there is an answer to its fundamental question, What is knowledge? Unless there is some Law of All Knowledge, therefore, there can be no philosophy; and this consequence, the reader hardly needs to be told, would be a catastrophe not only for Ferrier’s system, but for any system of philosophy. So a rival philosopher who is disposed to maintain that there is no ‘essential rallying-point in all our cognitions’ must, it seems, draw one of two conclusions: either (a) that philosophy is necessarily bankrupt (in which case she, too, goes out of the philosophy business), or (b) that some of Ferrier’s meta-philosophical claims are false (in which case she must explain where his arguments for those claims go awry).22

6.4  The Law of All Knowledge Defended: Part III Was Ferrier the first idealist to discover this fundamental truth about knowledge’s essential nature? No, and he admits this without any hesitation or hint of chagrin: “[W]e find anticipations of this first proposition in the writings of the philosophers of Germany. It puts in no claim to novelty . . .” (FW 1: 94).23 However, Ferrier is quick to add that none of the German idealists—Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel—formulated the Law of All Knowledge correctly, and none of them appreciated its true significance. Kant had glimpses of the truth; but his remarks are confused in the extreme in regard to what he calls the unity (analytic and synthetic) of consciousness. This is one of the few places in his

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

178  ferrier and the foundations of idealism works from which no meaning can be extracted. In his hands the principle answered no purpose at all. It died in the act of being born, and was buried under a mass of subordinate considerations before it can be said to have even breathed. Fichte got hold of it, and lost it—got hold of it, and lost it again, through a series of eight or ten different publications, in which the truth slips through his fingers when it seems just on the point of being turned to some account. Schelling promised magnificent operations in the heyday of his youth, on a basis very similar to that laid down in this first proposition. But the world has been waiting for the fulfilment of these promises,—for the fruits of that exuberant blossom,—during a period of more than fifty years . . . Hegel,—but who has ever yet uttered one intelligible word about Hegel? Not any of his countrymen,—not any foreigner,—seldom even himself. With peaks, here and there, more lucent than the sun, his intervals are filled with a sea of darkness, unnavigable by the aid of any compass, and an atmosphere, or rather vacuum, in which no human intellect can breathe. Hegel had better not be meddled with just at present. It is impossible to say to what extent this proposition coincides, or does not coincide, with his opinions; for whatever truth there may be in Hegel, it is certain that his meaning cannot be wrung from him by any amount of mere reading, any more than the whisky which is in bread—so at least we have been informed—can be extracted by squeezing a loaf into a tumbler. (FW 1: 94–6)

This passage contains a number of tendentious and patronizing remarks to which many scholars of German idealism would take very strong exception. Without denying that these advocates for the mighty dead may be quite right to complain that their clients have been unfairly maligned, we shall not take their side in this dispute. Nor, for that matter, shall we take Ferrier’s: this particular patch of scholarly territory is not our turf, and we prudently refuse to trespass on it in the present work. Happily, there is no need for us to do so, since our primary concern here is not with the (in)adequacy of Ferrier’s interpretations of the German idealists, but with his formulation of the Law of All Knowledge, a Law which he believes—rightly or wrongly—his great German predecessors only half-understood. To be more precise, the question we need to think about is this: Why does Ferrier believe that his formulation of the Law of All Knowledge is an improvement on the ‘anticipations’ of it which he finds in Kant and the post-Kantians? Although he does not address this question directly, it is abundantly clear that he thinks his formulation has at least three things going for it. a. In the first place, the formulation of the Law of All Knowledge in the Institutes is succinct and perspicuous. Eschewing jargon and mystery-mongering, Ferrier states the basal truth of epistemology clearly and concisely—so clearly and concisely, in fact, that even a tyro can understand the Law’s drift without much difficulty. This is dramatically unlike the fear and trembling which many beginners in philosophy (and some non-beginners!) experience when they open the more cryptic tomes of the German idealists.24 b. Moreover, there is an explicit recognition in the Institutes that the Law of All Knowledge is the true and proper starting-point of philosophy: not a corollary or a conclusion from logically prior premises, not a promising surmise or a fruitful postulate, but an unassailable axiom or self-evident principle on which

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  179 any system worthy of the name must rest. Not only that, but we also know exactly why the Law must be our starting-point: because philosophy must begin with epistemology, and the Law of All Knowledge is an answer to epistemology’s most fundamental question. c. Finally, a sustained and painstaking attempt is made in the Institutes to trace the Law’s implications in a systematic manner; that is, to draw out all its logical consequences, to identify the premises necessary for such derivations, and to contrast each major proposition of the Institutes with a counterproposition which indicates what our ordinary thinking says about whatever question is under discussion.25 There are at least three ways, then, in which Ferrier thinks that Kant and the German idealists failed to do justice to the Law of All Knowledge. But what about Berkeley—“the greatest metaphysician of his own country (we do not mean Ireland; but England, Scotland, and Ireland), at the very least” (FW 3: 458)—did Ferrier think that his old idealist hero had a good grasp of epistemology’s fundamental truth? Ferrier’s answer to this question is a heavily qualified Yes, and we cannot hope to understand his formulation of the Law of All Knowledge until we come to terms with those qualifications. According to the Law of All Knowledge, nothing objective can possibly be known unless some subjective element is known along with it. Now, what does this thesis mean in concrete terms? When I look at yonder lamppost, for instance, what is the subjective element that must enter into my knowledge of it? Is it consciousness of my ego or self? Is it consciousness of my sensory data, my perceptions, my modes of perceptual apprehension? Or is it consciousness of self and consciousness of sensory data? In order to address these questions properly, Ferrier draws a sharp distinction between the necessary conditions of knowledge and the contingent conditions of our knowledge; that is to say, between conditions to which all possible knowledge is subject because they are constitutive of knowledge as such, and conditions to which human knowledge is subject but to which the knowledge of non-human intelligences (if such there be) may possibly not be subject (FW 1: 384–5; cf. 299).26 It should go without saying that Ferrier takes self-consciousness to be a necessary condition of knowledge: according to Proposition I of the Epistemology, no subject—not even God himself— could know yonder lamppost without being conscious of itself along with the lamppost.27 In contrast, Ferrier thinks that the input of our senses is not a necessary condition of knowledge: whereas no subject could know a lamppost without knowing itself along with the lamppost, it is possible that some subject with a different constitution could know the lamppost without seeing it, touching it, hearing it, smelling it, or tasting it. To put the point in a slightly different way: if there were intelligences equipped with modes of apprehension unlike ours, such intelligences might very well know lampposts without knowing them as we do (i.e.—by means of our five senses), but they could not know lampposts without knowing themselves along with the lampposts. Hence

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

180  ferrier and the foundations of idealism self-consciousness is the only subjective element in anyone’s knowledge which is truly essential or necessary to knowledge as such: But the question is, What is the subjective part which must be apprehended whenever any subjective counterpart is apprehended? . . . One part of the subjective contribution (the ego) enters necessarily into the constitution of cognition (a man must know himself along with all that he knows); another part of the subjective contribution (the senses) enters only contingently into the constitution of cognition (a man might possibly know things in other ways than those of seeing, touching, etc.)  (FW 1: 395)

According to Ferrier, Berkeley failed to distinguish properly between knowledge’s necessary conditions and its contingent conditions. To be more specific, Berkeley seems to have been under the impression that the contribution of our senses was a necessary condition of knowledge—a condition essential to knowledge as such and binding on all possible intelligences. The system of Bishop Berkeley, also, was vitiated by the absence of this analysis, or by the neglect to distinguish the necessary from the contingent conditions of cognition . . . He saw that something subjective was a necessary and inseparable part of every object of cognition. But instead of maintaining that it was the ego or oneself which clove inseparably to all that could be known, and that this element must be thought of along with all that is thought of, he rather held that it was the senses, or our perceptive modes of cognition, which clove inseparably to all that could be known, and that these required to be thought of along with all that could be thought of.  (FW 1: 397–8)

Suppose we grant Ferrier’s point, and concede that Berkeley didn’t realize that the contribution of our senses to knowledge is contingent and potentially all-too-human. Does this oversight really matter? It matters a great deal, because two of Berkeley’s biggest blunders in metaphysics are direct logical consequences of it. 1. The first of these blunders is this, that Berkeley “missed, though only by a hair’sbreadth, the reduction of matter per se to a contradiction—an achievement which, until it is effected, speculation can accomplish nothing” (FW 1: 399). From the fact that matter per se is unknowable by us, it follows that matter per se is unknowable by all possible intelligences only if what keeps us from knowing it would also keep any possible intelligence from knowing it. This means that our argument for the unknowability of matter per se by us will not prove that matter per se is unknowable by all possible intelligences unless that argument rests on some truth(s) about knowledge’s necessary conditions. Yet Berkeley’s argument really rests on a claim about  knowledge’s contingent conditions: matter per se is unknowable, he urges, because all we can ever know is an object in union with subjective elements contributed by our senses. Berkeley’s argument against the existence of matter per se is therefore logically invalid. Here is another way of making Ferrier’s point. If the only subjective element in human knowledge is contributed by our senses, and if the contribution of our senses is

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  181 merely a contingent condition of knowledge, we cannot conclude that a subjective element is essential to all knowledge. However, if we cannot conclude that a subjective element must enter into the constitution of all knowledge as its necessary condition—if we do not know that no object can be known by any intelligence unless some subjective element is always known along with the object—how can we know that matter per se is unknowable, not only by us, but by all (possible) intelligences? The answer is that we cannot know anything of the sort. But if we cannot know that matter per se is unknowable by all intelligences, what logical right do we have to conclude that matter per se cannot possibly exist? Our case against matter per se collapses, therefore, unless there is some subjective element which enters of necessity into the very constitution of knowledge. This is crux of the matter, and Berkeley’s spirited polemic against realism is marred by his failure to grasp this point: [Berkeley] saw that every object of our cognition must contain and present a subjective element. But he neither declared what that element was, nor did he clearly show that all intelligence was necessarily subject to the same law, and that every object of all cognition must involve a subjective or non-material ingredient. Hence he failed to reduce matter per se to the condition of a contradiction; because if matter can be known per se by any possible intelligence—if it can, in any circumstances, be apprehended without some subjective ingredient being apprehended along with it—we are not entitled to set it down as the contradictory in itself. To fix it as this, it must be fixed as the absolutely and necessarily and universally unknowable. Berkeley’s system scarcely rises to this position. He has nowhere made out clearly that matter per se is the contradictory to all intelligence, although he may have shown with sufficient distinctness that it is the contradictory to our intelligence.  (FW 1: 491; cf. 397–8, 420–1)

This is the bad news. The good news is that Ferrier has solved this problem—a problem he thinks Berkeley wasn’t even aware of—by formulating the Law of All Knowledge correctly: “Along with whatever any intelligence knows, it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognisance of itself ” (FW 1: 79). If an intelligence cannot possibly know any object without apprehending itself in synthesis with that object, self-consciousness must be a necessary condition of knowledge of objects; and if self-consciousness is a necessary condition of knowledge of objects, no intelligence can know matter without knowing itself along with matter. Hence matter per se cannot be known by any intelligence, human or non-human. And if it can be shown that matter per se is unknowable by all possible intelligences, matter per se can easily be reduced to a contradiction by his Master Argument, because it can be shown that “everything except the contradictory is knowable” (FW 1: 460). 2. The assumption that human senses are necessary conditions of knowledge has a second embarrassing consequence—namely, that God himself must have senses like ours, and that the Supreme Being must see, touch, taste, smell, and hear things as we do: [Berkeley’s ontology], when tried by the test of a rigorous logic, will be found to invest the Deity—the supreme mind, the infinite ego, which the terms of his system necessarily compel

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

182  ferrier and the foundations of idealism him to place in synthesis with all things—with human modes of apprehension, with such senses as belong to man—and to invest Him with these, not as a matter of contingency, but as a matter of necessity.  (FW 1: 398, cf. 399)

This bizarre-sounding proposition about God’s nature is one which Berkeley, an Anglican priest, would presumably have been loath to endorse. Be that as it may, Ferrier points out that the thesis that God necessarily has sensitive modes of apprehension akin to our own can be deduced from the assumptions Berkeley makes about knowledge’s nature. To be precise: if our modes of sensory apprehension are indeed necessary conditions of knowledge, all would-be knowers or possible intelligences must be equipped with them—and Berkeley’s God is the knower or intelligence par excellence. Ferrier’s response to this line of thought is straightforward. Since Berkeley’s views about the essential nature or structure of knowledge lead logically to an absurd conclusion—that God must possess specifically human modes of apprehension—we know that at least one of Berkeley’s assumptions about knowledge must be mistaken. And it is perfectly plain to Ferrier which of Berkeley’s assumptions we must jettison: the assumption that our peculiar modes of sensory apprehension are not contingent conditions of knowledge, but conditions essential or necessary to knowledge as such. We already know this assumption is false, Ferrier reminds us, because we have established that self-consciousness is the only subjective element in knowledge which is truly essential to it: Our only safety lies in the consideration—a consideration which is a sound, indeed inevitable logical inference—that our sensitive modes of apprehension are mere contingent elements and conditions of cognition; and that the ego or subject alone enters, of necessity, into the composition of everything which any intelligence can know. By occupying this ground, we neither require, on the one hand, to invest the Deity with such senses as ours; nor, on the other hand, to assign matter an existence irrespective of all intelligence.  (FW 1: 398)

Armed with this distinction between the necessary and contingent conditions of knowledge, Ferrier thinks he can formulate a new and improved version of Berkeley’s continuity argument—a version whose God will not be objectionably anthropomorphical. The core of Ferrier’s argument for theism was presented in Section 6.1: since no object can exist apart from some knowing subject, and since the material world can exist apart from finite subjects, the material world must exist in union or synthesis with an infinite and eternal subject, a supreme and all-knowing Mind. We have no reason to think this Divine Mind must know objects by means of our modes of sensory apprehension, however, because we understand—as Berkeley did not—that sense-perception, unlike self-consciousness, is not a necessary condition of knowledge.28 If Ferrier’s account of knowledge’s necessary conditions is correct, Berkeley turns out to be the Moses of idealism: an inspired leader who blazed a trail through the wilderness of materialism and atheism, a far-seeing visionary who glimpsed philosophy’s Promised Land but was prevented from entering it himself. According to this way of

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  183 looking at the history of modern philosophy, metaphysicians should follow in Berkeley’s footsteps at the beginning of their journey, but they will reach the land of milk and honey only if they leave Berkeley’s empiricism behind and rely instead on reason alone. And this is an accurate description of what Ferrier has attempted to do in the Institutes of Metaphysic.29

6.5  From the Law of All Knowledge to the Law of All Ignorance Suppose that Ferrier is right, and that the Primary Law and Condition of All Knowledge is correct. What substantive truths about knowledge follow? The first thing Ferrier deduces from the Law of All Knowledge is a Hamiltonian thesis about the constitution of knowledge’s objects: The object of knowledge, whatever it may be, is always something more than what is naturally and usually regarded as the object. It always is, and must be, the object with the addition of oneself,—object plus subject,—thing, or thought, mecum. Self is an integral and essential part of every object of cognition.  (FW 1: 97; cf. 530)

If objects can only be apprehended by a subject who apprehends itself along with them, what is known is never a mere object; it is always an object and a subject, both of which are apprehended together in a single indivisible act of cognition. Although we can discriminate or distinguish these two elements, what we cannot do—not because our intellectual powers are feeble, but because the thing itself is impossible—is separate the objective and the subjective in cognition, pull them asunder in thought, and think one without the other.30 The objective part of the object of knowledge, though distinguishable, is not separable in cognition from the subjective part, or the ego; but the objective part and the subjective part do together constitute the unit or minimum of knowledge.  (FW 1: 105; cf. 530–1)

If the minimum of knowledge—the very least any intelligence can know or cognize in a single act of knowing—is an object-plus-a-subject, then objects per se can never be known; for to know an object per se would be to know it by itself, out of relation to a subject.31 It follows that matter per se must be absolutely unknowable: The whole material universe by itself, or per se, is a mere collection of objects without a subject or self. But it was proved in Proposition II that the only objects which can possibly be known are objects plus a subject or self. Therefore the whole material universe by itself, or per se, is of necessity absolutely unknowable.  (FW 1: 121)32

As Ferrier notes, this thesis about the unknowability of matter per se inserts a razor-sharp stone in the common sense realist’s shoe. For if the material universe by itself cannot be known, we cannot infer the existence of matter per se from our knowledge of matter per se: “Therefore no argument in favour of the existence of matter per se can be

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

184  ferrier and the foundations of idealism deduced from our knowledge of matter per se—because we have, and can have, no such knowledge” (FW 1: 125).33 Hence the natural realist’s argument from knowledge to existence—‘Matter per se must exist, because we have knowledge of it’—can be dismissed, since its premise is incompatible with the Law of All Knowledge.34 Nevertheless, Ferrier admits that nothing we have heard so far entitles us to deny the existence of matter per se: “Of course, no conclusion is deducible from these premises to the effect that matter per se does not exist” (FW 1: 125). However, this admission seems to create a very serious problem for his system; for how can our ontology—that is, our account of Absolute Existence’s nature—possibly be reckoned satisfactory if it must be derived from our epistemology, and our epistemology cannot establish either the existence or the non-existence of matter per se? Ferrier, acutely aware of this difficulty, acknowledges that we cannot proceed directly from claims about the constitution of knowledge (epistemology) to claims about the constitution of Absolute Existence (ontology) because we cannot take it for granted that Absolute Existence is an object of knowledge. Once the propositions of the Epistemology have been demonstrated, all we can conclude is that Absolute Existence must possess whatever attributes are essential to any object of knowledge if Absolute Existence is knowable. But what if Absolute Existence lies beyond the reach of intelligence? This possibility cannot be ruled out at this stage of the argument, because we are no strangers to ignorance, and it would be extremely presumptuous to assume that knowledge of Absolute Existence is our intellectual birthright. Absolute Being may be, very possibly, that which we are ignorant of. Our ignorance is excessive— it is far more extensive than our knowledge. This is unquestionable. After we have fixed, then, the meaning, the conditions, the limits, the object, and the capacities of knowledge, it still seems quite possible, indeed highly probable, that absolute existence may escape us, by throwing itself under the cover, or within the pale, of our ignorance. We may be altogether ignorant of what is, and may thus be unable to predicate anything at all about it. This is a most confounding obstacle to our advance. It has indeed, as yet, brought every inquirer to the dust, and thrown back every foot that has attempted to scale the hitherto unbreached and apparently impregnable fastnesses of ontology.  (FW 1: 50)

The possibility that Absolute Being is ‘that which we are ignorant of ’ is consequently a massive stumbling block to our project. How can the aspiring ontologist get around it? Should she simply present her ontological theses in hypothetical or conditional form, and claim that she knows what Absolute Existence must be if it is knowable? This pessimistic approach strikes Ferrier as premature and unwarranted. In his eyes, the only possible way forward is to analyse the concept of ignorance, to understand its relation to the concept of knowledge, and to identify its possible objects and its necessary limits. And this ambitious project—that of working out an agnoiology, or a theory of ignorance—is one which Ferrier thinks no previous philosopher has undertaken: “There have been many inquiries into the nature of knowledge: there has been no inquiry into the nature of ignorance. This section of the science has positively no forerunner; it

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  185 is an entire novelty in philosophy” (FW 1: 406; cf. 50–1, 548).35 This is not to say that philosophers have completely ignored ignorance; in fact, Ferrier thinks they have had a good deal to say about it. Unfortunately, most of what they have said has been profoundly unsatisfactory, because they have approached the subject in the wrong spirit and from the wrong angle. Instead of seeking to understand the nature of ignorance qua metaphysicians, they have been content to bemoan its existence and extent qua moralists: [P]hilosophers hitherto have been satisfied with making our ignorance a theme for moral declamation, instead of making it a subject for metaphysical inquiry. Its quantity has distracted their attention from its quality. “Heu, quantum est quod nescimus!” exclaim they pathetically. “What an immensity of ignorance is ours!” True; but these whinings will never teach us what ignorance is, what its law is, and what its object is: and this alone is what we, as searchers after truth, are interested in finding out.36 To tell us how much a thing is, will never teach us what it is, as our psychologists, moralising on the boundless of human ignorance, seem to suppose. (FW 1: 437)

It is clear what Ferrier thinks must be done: instead of lamenting our ignorance with fine Latin phrases, we need to think harder about its essential nature. And it is only when philosophers are prepared to do that—only when overwrought rhetoric is replaced by logical analysis, and wild jeremiads give way to well-crafted syllogisms— that we will discover a truth which can be used to prove that ignorance is not, as we feared, “an insurmountable barrier to the advance of metaphysics into the region of ontology” (FW 1: 407). This crucial truth, which Ferrier christens ‘The Law of All Ignorance’, appears as Proposition III of the Agnoiology: We can be ignorant only of what can possibly be known; in other words, there can be an ignorance only of that of which there can be a knowledge . . . This truth is the key to the whole philosophy of ignorance. When we consider it well, we discover that the supposition that we can be ignorant of that which is absolutely and necessarily unknowable to all intelligence, is as extreme a violation of the law of contradiction as it is possible to conceive.  (FW 1: 412, 415–16)

Unlike the Law of All Knowledge, the Law of All Ignorance is not an axiomatic or self-evident proposition; instead, it is a theorem which must be demonstrated. Ferrier’s pithy proof begins with a conditional premise: if there could be ignorance of what absolutely no intelligence could know, he says, there would be ignorance which could not in principle be removed. Yet all ignorance is possibly remediable, and we can prove this in two ways. Argument 1: A defect can be defined as “[t]he deprivation of anything whose possession is consistent with the nature of the Being which wants it” (FW 1: 405). Ignorance is an intellectual defect or imperfection, therefore, because it consists in “a deprivation of knowledge” (FW 1: 405), and knowledge is something consistent with the nature of an intelligent being. But “all defects are remediable, otherwise they would not be defects” (FW 1: 410). Therefore, all ignorance must be remediable in principle. Argument 2: Alternatively, if some ignorance could not possibly be remedied, then

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

186  ferrier and the foundations of idealism “some kind of knowledge would be inconsistent with the nature of all intelligence, to wit, the knowledge by which the ignorance in question might be remedied” (FW 1: 410). But that is quite impossible: “No kind of knowledge is absolutely inconsistent with the nature of all intelligence” (FW 1: 410). Therefore, all ignorance must be remediable in principle.37 Yet if all ignorance must be remediable in principle, the Law of All Ignorance must be true: “[T]here can be an ignorance only of that of which there can be a knowledge” (FW 1: 412). Ferrier’s characterization of ignorance as “an intellectual defect, imperfection, privation, or shortcoming” (FW 1: 405) draws on the classical metaphysical language of privation, and we would do well to reflect on the significance of this for a moment. When medieval philosophers such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas defined evil as a privation, what did they have in mind? Instead of equating privations with mere absences or simple lacks, these authors understood privations to be a special kind of lack or absence—roughly, the lack or absence of a good which a thing ought to have in virtue of being the kind of thing that it is. St Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) makes this point with exemplary clarity in the Summa Theologiae: Evil implies the absence of good. But not every absence of good is evil. For absence of good can be taken in a privative and in a negative sense. Absence of good, taken negatively, is not evil; otherwise, it would follow that what does not exist is evil, and also that everything would be evil, through not having the good belonging to something else; for instance, a man would be evil who had not the swiftness of the roe, or the strength of a lion. But the absence of good, taken in a privative sense, is an evil; as, for instance, the privation of sight is called blindness.  (ST 1.48.3; cf. ST 1.49.1, SCG III.6–7)

To say that ignorance is a privation of knowledge, then, is not to say that ignorance is the simple absence of knowledge; were that equation sound, it would follow that I am ignorant that 2 + 2 = 5. Yet the absurdity of that conclusion is plain to all: “No man can know that two and two make five,—but just as little can any man be ignorant of this” (FW 1: 415; cf. 458). Since 2 + 2 = 5 is the denial of a necessary truth of reason, no intelligence could possibly know it; and since no intelligence could possibly know it, the fact that I do not know it can scarcely be described as a failure to know it. But that is what ignorance essentially involves—a failure to know.38 This is why ignorance in the strict (privative) sense of the term must be distinguished from what Ferrier calls nescience: Ignorance, properly so called—that is, the ignorance which is a defect—must not be confounded with a nescience of the opposites of the necessary truths of reason; in other words, with a nescience of that which it would contradict the nature of all intelligence to know. Such nescience is no defect or imperfection—it is, on the contrary, the very strength or perfection of reason; and therefore such nescience is not to be regarded as ignorance.  (FW 1: 414; cf. 536–7, 548–9)

Unlike nescience, ignorance is an intellectual privation or defect, because only in cases of ignorance is there something which the subject has failed to know. To say that one

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  187 has failed to know something which absolutely no intelligence could possibly know is consequently arrant nonsense; and if no one can fail to know what no one could ever know, there can be ignorance only of what is knowable by some intelligence. And the latter proposition is logically equivalent to the Law of All Ignorance: “We can be ignorant only of what can possibly be known; in other words, there can be an ignorance only of that of which there can be a knowledge” (FW 1: 412). According to Ferrier, the philosophical importance of the Law of All Ignorance can hardly be overestimated: “This is the most important proposition in the agnoiology: indeed, with the exception of the first of the epistemology, it is the most fruitful and penetrating proposition in the whole system . . . These two instruments cut deep and far—they lay open the universe from stem to stern” (FW 1: 412–13). It is not difficult to see why he attaches such importance to it: if we cannot be ignorant of what cannot be known, any possible object of ignorance must be F if any possible object of knowledge must be F. Thanks to the Law of All Ignorance, then, we are able to state our conclusions about the character of Absolute Existence in an unconditional or non-hypothetical form (i.e.—regardless of whether Absolute Existence is something we know, or something of which we are ignorant). Hence the problem described at the beginning of this section—how to make the transition from epistemology to ontology—has finally been solved. We now know that we can be ignorant only of the synthesis of subject and object; for nothing can be known save that synthesis, and there can be ignorance only of what can be known. Moreover, since Absolute Existence is either what we know or what we are ignorant of, Absolute Existence must be the synthesis of subject and object, the union of self with thing. With this discovery, we have come to the end of our ontological quest; for we now possess the answer to philosophy’s ultimate question— What is truth? The solution of the ontological problem affords . . . an answer to the ultimate question of Philosophy—What is truth?—(See Introduction, §60.) Whatever absolutely is, is true. The question, therefore, is—But what absolutely is? And the answer, as now declared, is, that object plus subject is what absolutely is—that this, and this alone, truly and really exists. This synthesis, accordingly, is THE TRUTH: the Ground—below which there is neither anything nor nothing.  (FW 1: 513)

Ferrier regards this idealistic conclusion as an expression of a deep and precious insight which was already well-developed by Plato’s day. The ancient insight in question— “the highest truth which Philosophy seeks to establish . . . the sublimest lesson she can teach” (FW 1: 167–8; cf. 515–16)—is that the limits of knowledge and the limits of reality are ultimately one and the same; that to be, strictly speaking, is to be a possible object of knowledge. Plato’s genius intuited and embraced this profound truth, but he  did not demonstrate it; for he was convinced of its correctness more by happy inspiration than by sound ratiocination. This state of affairs is clearly unsatisfactory, we are told, because “[w]hat was wanted was a demonstration: for unreasoned truth is an alien in philosophy” (FW 1: 168). The truth which Plato apprehended is no longer

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

188  ferrier and the foundations of idealism an alien in philosophy, however, because the author of the Institutes of Metaphysic has given us what Plato couldn’t: a rigorous and apodictic demonstration of “the coincidence of the known and the existent—the equation of Knowing and Being” (FW 1: 168).

6.6  Against Things-in-Themselves: Beyond Kant and Hamilton Ferrier is not slow to point out that the Law of All Ignorance has another important implication: if we can be ignorant only of what is knowable, Kant and Hamilton were dead wrong to say that we are ignorant of things-in-themselves or of objects per se. The argument which led to their sceptical-sounding conclusion, the reader will remember, ran roughly as follows: since our knowledge of objects is necessarily conditioned by subject-derived forms or principles, there can be no knowledge of things as they are an sich or in themselves, that is, of things apart from the subjective conditions to which objects of our knowledge must conform. Hence our knowledge of the world must be regarded as relative and forever imperfect, inasmuch as we can only know things as they present themselves to us through the medium of our constitution or our ­faculties of knowledge. Many philosophers have seen that the human mind cannot know things by and in themselves, because it can know them only as modified and supplemented by its own faculties of cognition; in other words, that it can know them only as seen things, as touched things, and so forth— some subjective contribution being always added to the thing, and the total object apprehended being thus a composite product made up of a part which was objective and a part which was subjective. Hence they concluded, very rashly and inconsiderately, that we were ignorant of the objective part per se, or separated from the subjective part . . . They gave out that we were ignorant of matter per se, of things by and in themselves. This conclusion is more particularly embraced and insisted upon by Kant.  (FW 1: 423–4; cf. 550)

This line of thought supports a principled and austere form of philosophical agnosticism, according to which human cognition can never penetrate to the core of reality. In Kantian terms, this means that all we can ever know are mere appearances or phenomena; in Hamiltonian terms, it means that our knowledge is always relative and only of something conditioned. The way the world is absolutely or in itself, apart from the way it is for us, thus lies permanently beyond our ken; its inner being or intrinsic nature must always remain an enigma, a mystery, a bare inaccessible x, so far as we are concerned. If Kant and Hamilton are right, ignorance of Absolute Existence is a fate which no inquirer can escape, and the hand of speculative philosophy is powerless to pull back the velvet curtain of appearances. Ferrier is absolutely convinced that they are wrong about this, and he thinks he has identified the Achilles’ heel of their reasoning. We cannot be ignorant of objects per se, because we cannot be ignorant of what no intelligence

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  189 could ever know (as per the Law of All Ignorance), and no intelligence could ever know  objects per se, since it is a condition of knowing any object that the subject knows itself along with the object (as per the Law of All Knowledge). Hence Kant and Hamilton were quite right in thinking that we cannot know objects per se, but quite wrong about two related matters of considerable importance. In the first place, although they believed the right thing—that we cannot know objects per se—they seem to have believed it for the wrong reason. The real reason we cannot know objects per se has nothing to do with our contingent and specifically human modes of knowing, and everything to do with the logical structure of knowledge itself or with knowledge’s necessary conditions. We cannot know objects per se, that is, not because our faculties are imperfect or all-too-human, but because no intelligence can possibly know objects per se, the impossibility of such knowledge being a straightforward corollary of the Primary Law and Condition of All Knowledge: “[O]ur incompetency to know matter per se is due to no such cause [i.e.—the supposed imperfection or weakness of human cognitive faculties], but is attributable to the essential structure of all intelligence, and to the necessary laws of all cognition” (FW 1: 425; cf. 422). In the second place, Ferrier thinks that Kant and Hamilton erred when they moved directly from the true premise that we cannot know objects per se to the conclusion that we are ignorant of objects per se. It may well be asked: How could two such seasoned reasoners start with a fact, only to end with a falsehood an instant later? Ferrier’s answer is that their argument is actually an enthymeme—that it depends upon on a second premise which has not been made explicit. This unstated premise— that we can be ignorant of what cannot possibly be known—is the negation of the Law of All Ignorance. This conclusion, however, rests on an assumption which contradicts the strongest and most essential principles of reason. It is founded on the assumption that these things may possibly be known as they are, by and in themselves, and out of relation to all intelligence. This premise must be postulated by those who maintain that we are ignorant of material things per se; because it would be manifestly absurd to assert that we could be ignorant of what could not possibly be known.  (FW 1: 424)39

Lacking an agnoiology, Kant and Hamilton failed to grasp the Law of All Ignorance; and because they were ignorant of ignorance’s nature, they drew a false conclusion (that we are ignorant of objects per se) from a true premise (that objects per se are unknowable by us).40 Readers of Ferrier’s Institutes know better: since we understand that ‘we can be ignorant only of what can possibly be known’, we know there can be no ignorance of things-in-themselves, precisely because such things cannot possibly be known by any intelligence—even by an omniscient God or Divine Mind. Since ignorance is the privation of knowledge, and since we cannot be deprived of knowledge where no knowledge was to be had in the first place, we cannot be ignorant of “the universe as it exists by and in itself ” (FW 1: 425). Any philosopher who thinks otherwise is the victim of an inadequate agnoiology, the victim of an inadequate epistemology, or both.41

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

190  ferrier and the foundations of idealism Readers familiar with the arguments expounded in Section 6.5 will understand why unknowable things-in-themselves and their ilk must be dismissed as a philosophical fantasy fit only for immature minds. It is time for modern philosophy to put away such childish things, Ferrier believes, and this means that Kant’s half-hearted idealism and Hamilton’s half-hearted realism should be packed up in straw-padded crates, carted off to a dark corner of the attic, and promptly forgotten.

6.7  Where Did Reid Go Wrong? As we have just seen, Ferrier thinks that metaphysics cannot grow up until it stops living in the long shadows cast by Immanuel Kant and Sir William Hamilton. Yet Kant and Hamilton, he thinks, do not pose the greatest threat to Scottish philosophy; that dubious honour must go to Thomas Reid, the famous purveyor of realism and the Scottish common sense philosopher par excellence. Let us see, then, where the author of the Institutes thinks his celebrated countryman went astray. That Ferrier thinks Reid’s metaphysical realism is demonstrably false should go without saying. Matter per se does not exist, Ferrier maintains, and anyone who denies this has not yet understood the Master Argument for idealism. Since Absolute Existence is a synthesis or union of subject and object, objects divorced from s­ ubjects have no absolute or independent existence; accordingly, the material things encountered in our perceptual experience—grains of sand, distant stars, and everything in between— have no ‘clear, detached, emancipated, substantial, genuine, or unparasitical Being’. The problem with realists, we might say, is that they have mistaken a part (object) for the whole (object plus subject), and that they have bowed down before this fragment of reality, building sacrificial altars to the greater glory of matter per se. If there is such a thing as idolatry in philosophy, realism would seem to be an outstanding example of it. Is that the end of the story? Far from it: Ferrier believes that Reidian realism is a  symptom of a deeper problem, a manifestation of an underlying condition or philosophical infirmity which is highly contagious. To drop the metaphor, common sense realism can and should be seen as the logical product of certain basic confusions and delusions. Here are three of them. 1.  In the first place, Reid’s philosophy does not begin where it should: with epistemology. To be more precise: Reid puts the ontological cart before the epistemological horse, because he makes a non-trivial assertion about what exists in its own right—matter per se—before he attends to the nature of knowledge and what is known. This ­methodological gaffe is the first ‘crisis’ or pitfall of philosophy: “Philosophy has three crises. First, when the nature of Being, or the question, What is? is proposed for ­solution before the nature of Knowing, or the question, What is known? is taken into consideration . . . During the first period there is most error, for the whole method is wrong; the order of procedure is inverted” (FW 1: 166; cf. 52–3). To say that ‘the order

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  191 of procedure is inverted’ is a roundabout way of saying that epistemology is first ­philosophy, and that we are not allowed to draw any conclusions about reality’s constitution until we have analysed knowledge’s conditions and the constitution of its objects.42 Another way of formulating Ferrier’s complaint is to say that Reid’s epistemology does not start with the ground-floor question “What is the one feature which is identical, invariable, and essential in all the varieties of our knowledge?” (FW 1: 74). But (the objection goes on) if your epistemology does not begin with this question, your philosophy does not begin at the very beginning; and if your philosophy does not begin at the very beginning, unexamined assumptions about Being can creep into the foundation of your system and compromise its integrity. Ferrier thinks Reid’s philosophy has been compromised in precisely this way, because one of the main problems of Reid’s theory of knowledge—the problem of how there can be knowledge of material objects existing independently of mind—takes it for granted that metaphysical realism is correct. Once the thesis of realism goes by the board, therefore, so does Reid’s problem: since there can be no question of whether we can know mind-independent things if there are no mind-independent things to know, we must conclude that the riddle on which Reid and others have spilled so much ink is spurious or ill-posed. Instead of facing a problem which demands a solution, we find ourselves confronted by an insubstantial reflection of an ontological illusion—namely, the idea that banyan trees and boulders exist in their own right, entirely apart from all subjects, selves, intelligences, or egos. 2.  Moreover, when we scrutinize the details of Reid’s reply to this ill-posed problem, two facts immediately leap out at us. In the first place, Reid’s “ultimate object was to vindicate the absolute existence of the material universe” (FW 1: 493); in the second place, he sought to vindicate belief in ‘the absolute existence of the material universe’ by advancing a doctrine of intuitive perception. According to this interpretation, Reid’s argument for realism moved directly from knowledge to existence: we can know that matter per se exists, because we can and do perceive matter per se. Since to say that we perceive matter per se is to say that “material realities stand face to face with the mind, without anything more standing there along with them” (FW 1: 493), Reid professes a form of perceptual intuitionism which contradicts the Law of All Knowledge: [Reid’s intuitionism] runs counter to every law of human knowledge, both contingent and necessary. Whenever we know material things, we are cognisant of our own senses (sight and touch, etc.) as well: it thus runs counter to the contingent laws. Again, whenever we know material things, we know ourselves as well: it thus runs counter to the necessary laws. This doctrine of intuitive perception, therefore, is a theory which sets at defiance every law of intelligence, and which consequently fails to overtake either of the aims which its author had in view.  (FW 1: 494)

As soon as we accept the Law of All Knowledge, we must reject the argument that matter per se exists because we perceive it, because that Law states that material objects

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

192  ferrier and the foundations of idealism are never known by themselves or per se. Yet if we never know material objects per se, what logical right have we to infer from our (non-existent) knowledge of them that they exist per se? To draw that conclusion would be to commit a “monstrous fallacy” (FW 1: 124) or to advance a “monstrous paralogism” (FW 1: 493): [F]or what kind of logic would there be in the argument—material things are known to exist, not by themselves, but only in connection with something else, therefore they exist by themselves, or out of connection with everything else? Unless, then, we are to charge Dr Reid with this monstrous paralogism, we must suppose him to have held that we apprehend material things without apprehending anything else at the same time.  (FW 1: 493–4)

If this is right, Reid faces a fatal dilemma. First Horn: If he maintains that we can know material objects face to face, without knowing anything else along with them, he runs afoul of the Primary Law or Condition of All Knowledge. Second Horn: If he admits that we cannot know material things without knowing something else along with them, his argument for realism becomes a blatant non sequitur. Conclusion: Deny a necessary and self-evident truth, or engage in outrageous sophistry—these, according to Ferrier, are Reid’s only options. 3. What about the critique of representationism for which Reid is so well known? Ferrier has two things to say about this. In the first place, he claims that Reid’s ­position is not really all that different from that of his so-called adversaries: “The representationists held that real objects stand face to face with the mind quite as decidedly as Dr Reid did, or as any sane man could do—that is to say, they held that it was our perceptions of these things which were immediately present to our minds” (FW 1: 297–8; cf. 298–9). In the second place, Ferrier believes that representationism contained a fruitful truth which Reid totally failed to appreciate: “The truth contained in the doctrine of representative perception is this, that it is an approximate, though imperfect, enunciation of the necessary law of all reason, which declares that nothing objective can be apprehended unless something subjective be apprehended as well” (FW 1: 299; cf. 395). True, representationists have mutilated this ‘law of all reason’ almost beyond recognition, because they mistakenly identified the subjective element in knowledge with a mind-dependent representation of a mind-independent material object. But the reader of the Institutes surely knows better than to repeat their jejune mistake: Now, a doctrine of intuitive perception can be established on reasonable grounds; now, the downfall of representationism is insured. A doctrine of intuitive perception arises, indeed, of its own accord, out of the data which have been laid down. Matter, or the external thing, is just as much the immediate object of a man’s mind as he himself is the immediate object of his mind, because it is part and parcel of the total presentation which is before him. Thus the material universe is neither representative of something else, nor is it represented by anything else. It is representative of nothing except itself; and we apprehend it intuitively— the consideration being borne in mind that we always do and must apprehend ourselves along with it.  (FW 1: 506)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  193 Ferrier thus defends a doctrine of intuitive perception, according to which ‘[m]atter, or the external thing, is just as much the immediate object of a man’s mind as he himself is the immediate object of his mind.’ How does this theory of perception differ from the doctrine to which Reid officially subscribed, according to which material objects per se can be intuitively apprehended? In the first (epistemological) place, Ferrier thinks that the intuitive apprehension of objects per se violates the Law of All Knowledge. You can indeed perceive and know an apple directly; but since you can only perceive and know it in synthesis or union with the ego or self, what is immediately before your mind is always a whole composed of two aspects or elements, one of which is objective and one of which is subjective. In the second (ontological) place, Ferrier reminds us that matter has no absolute existence, no true and independent being. Since no one can possibly know material objects per se, no one can be ignorant of them either (recall the Law of All Ignorance). Yet Absolute Existence, according to P3 of the Master Argument, “is either that which we know or that which we are ignorant of ” (FW 1: 469). Hence apples and oranges and lemons are not (pace Reid) mind-independent objects. In the end, the line Ferrier takes about perception is roughly this: intuitionism is true, realism is false, and Reid’s account of perception unwisely wedded the former doctrine to the latter. This ill-conceived union ought to be dissolved, and intuitionism should seek a divorce—or, better yet, an annulment—on the ground of irreconcilable differences.

6.8  Why Philosophy Does Not Depend on Common Sense The most radical and dramatic of Ferrier’s criticisms is that Reid’s case for realism wrongly assumes that philosophy must treat the dictates of common sense as its first principles or foundational truths. Since ordinary or natural thinking comes down on the side of realism, the Reidian common-sensist argues, our commitment to natural realism cannot be undermined by philosophy. We are therefore justified in believing that the world of middle-sized dry goods exists independently of us, and that our perceptions of that world are accurate on the whole and for the most part. Ferrier makes short work of this argument. If the Master Argument’s characterization of Absolute Existence is correct, the world of generic realism—a world of material objects thought to exist absolutely or in themselves, independently of all subjects and  apart from all intelligences—must be dismissed as an impossible dream. Yet that dream is built into our ordinary way of thinking about reality, and it serves as a presupposition of psychology.43 It follows that if the Master Argument is sound, the metaphysic implicit in both common sense and its refined extension, the ‘science of the human mind’, is completely untenable. The Master Argument thus supports the following meta-philosophical moral: the apparent truisms of common sense, far

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

194  ferrier and the foundations of idealism from being sacrosanct or off-limits, may be violently overthrown by the a priori arguments of philosophers. Isn’t the very idea of such a revolutionary coup objectionable? To suppose that it is objectionable is to assume that philosophy has an obligation to yield, defer, or subordinate itself to common sense. Yet according to Ferrier, philosophy’s raison d’être is to question what we ordinarily take for granted, to see through ubiquitous myths and seductive half-truths, and to expose the confusions and illusions implicit in our natural modes of thought. From this point of view, which is that of a revisionary metaphysician, a philosophy which was content to describe and endorse ordinary ways of thinking—a philosophy truly determined to leave everything as it is—would be no philosophy at all: [P]hilosophy exists only to correct the inadvertencies of man’s ordinary thinking. She has no other mission to fulfil; no other object to overtake; no other business to do. If man naturally thinks aright, he need not be taught to think aright. If he is already, and without an effort, in possession of the truth, he does not require to be put in possession of it. The occupation of philosophy is gone: her office is superfluous: there is nothing for her to put hand to. Therefore philosophy assumes, and must assume, that man does not naturally think aright, but must be taught to do so; that truth does not come to him spontaneously, but must be brought to him by his own exertions.  (FW 1: 32–3; emphasis mine)

The sentiments expressed in this passage are diametrically opposed to the spirit of Reid’s meta-philosophy of common sense—a meta-philosophy whose elements were also endorsed by James Oswald, James Beattie, and George Campbell.44 The most basic thoughts of that meta-philosophy are two: first, that philosophy is to common sense as superstructure is to substructure, or as tree is to root; second, that because the first principles of common sense are the foundational presuppositions of philosophy, philosophers cannot coherently doubt them or call them into question. Yet according to Ferrier, philosophy is to common sense not as superstructure is to substructure or as tree is to root, but rather as cure is to disease, as light is to ­darkness, as correction is to error, or as reform is to corruption. In other words, common sense is not what supports, sustains, or nourishes philosophy; common sense is what philosophy, if it is to flourish, must extirpate, transcend, or supplant. Why? Because the stuff of which common sense is made is not real thought, but only apparent thought; that is to say, it does not represent what we actually think, but only what we think we think.45 Since the claims of common sense are shot through with contradictions and falsehoods, we cannot really think them or believe them, though we may pay them lip service; and since philosophy’s truths are necessary truths, we cannot help thinking them if we truly think things through. Two things follow: first, that the thesis of realism is not a real or a possible thought, but only an apparent one; second, that your image of yourself as a devotee of mind-independent matter is a feeble piece of self-deception, a mere prejudice of the nursery, a superstition of which reason alone can disabuse you.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  195 Ultimately, then, the ‘philosophy of common sense’ is an oxymoron, since it is a­ nti-philosophical to require philosophy to submit to the spontaneous dogmas of natural thinking without giving it the opportunity to question them. If ordinary thinking is made sovereign and if vulgar opinion decrees that matter per se exists, who is the philosopher to disagree? No valid complaint can be lodged, no principled protest made, so long as common sense is taken as the touchstone of truth in metaphysics.46 However, this Reidian way of looking at things betrays a fundamental confusion about ‘the vocation of philosophy’: The truth is, that Dr Reid mistook, or rather reversed, the vocation of philosophy. He supposed that the business of this discipline was, not to correct, but to confirm the contradictory inadvertencies of natural thinking. Accordingly, the main tendency of his labours was to organise the irrational, and to make error systematic. But even in this attempt he has only ­partially succeeded.  (FW 1: 495–6) Another point of difference—indeed the fundamental difference—between the two Scottish philosophies, the Old and the New, is this, that while I hold that philosophy exists for the sole purpose of correcting the natural inadvertencies of loose, ordinary thinking—that this is her true and proper vocation; the old school, on the contrary, are of the opinion that philosophy exists for the very purpose of ratifying, and, if possible, systematising these inadvertencies. This is held by Reid and his followers to be the proper business of metaphysical science.  (SP 12; emphasis mine; cf. FW 3: 467)

According to the old Scottish philosophy represented by Reid and Stewart, philosophy’s first principles are found among the platitudes of common sense: that I exist, that I am the same person I was yesterday, that there are physical objects, that there are other minds, that our natural belief-forming faculties are basically trustworthy, and so on. However, Ferrier denies that these commonplaces can be among the first principles of philosophy on the grounds that they are not truths in philosophy: “[M]y system deals with first truths of a very different order; and it denies, that the first truths of the old Scottish school are truths of philosophy at all. This is one very fundamental point of difference between the old and the new Scottish system of metaphysics; and I am not at all ashamed to confess it” (SP 10; cf. 11–12; FW 3: 429–30). This distinction between mere truths, on the one hand, and truths in philosophy, on the other, is elucidated with the help of a homely parallel worthy of Socrates. The ordinary woman or man, Ferrier observes, knows many things about salt which are well worth knowing: that salt is white, for example, or that it is gritty, or that it can be used to season different kinds of food, or that it can be put in a container and kept on the kitchen table. Yet it is perfectly plain that your knowledge of these practically significant truths does not make you a chemist or scientist: “No man would be considered much of a chemist, who was merely acquainted with these and other such circumstances, concerning salt” (SP 10). In the same way, knowledge of the platitudes listed above does not make you a philosopher; for philosophy’s task is to go deeper, and to use reason to uncover necessary and c­ ertain principles which are more fundamental than these familiar truisms. But if knowledge

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

196  ferrier and the foundations of idealism of philosophy’s true foundations can only be had by those who take what Pope called ‘the high priori road’, such knowledge will inevitably be the property of the few and not the many. It follows that epistemological egalitarianism—the Reidian view that philosophy’s most basic truths, known inductively, are within the reach of the peasant as well as the metaphysician—is a grotesque error which betrays a misunderstanding of what philosophy is all about. Ferrier’s critique of Reid’s meta-philosophy, we now perceive, has something in common with Kant’s complaints about the superficiality of the Scottish answer to Hume.47 Both Kant and Ferrier are happy enough to acknowledge that most of us find  ourselves believing in certain things—in the existence of physical objects, for example—without knowing why; they are also willing to concede that these lowly convictions may be practically indispensable in quotidian pursuits. But Kant and Ferrier are adamant that such stubborn and unreasoned beliefs can never constitute the first principles of philosophy. Why do they take this stern and uncompromising line? The explanation must be sought in their shared understanding of philosophy as an a priori discipline—one which is exclusively concerned with necessary and universal truths known independently of experience. To be more precise, both Kant and Ferrier think that philosophy requires us to step back from our ordinary perspective on the world, to detach ourselves à la Plato from the contingencies of our condition and our culture, to regard reason as the arbiter of philosophic truth, and to realize that only this faculty is powerful enough to unearth the hidden foundations of knowledge and thought.48 And if this is how you understand philosophy, how could the idea of ‘common sense philosophy’ fail to strike you as a contradiction in terms? If the reader balks at our suggestion that Ferrier is an honorary member of the Platonist tradition, let her recall the broad sense of Platonism invoked by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who famously claimed that there are only two kinds of philosophers: Platonists and Aristotelians. Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. I do not think it possible that anyone born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and I am sure that no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are two classes of man, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third.  (Jackson 1985: 594–5)

Some philosophers have Platonism in their blood, it seems, just as others have Aristotelianism in their bones; some are temperamentally otherworldly, others incorrigibly down-to-earth; some are born with idealist and rationalist sympathies, while some are naturally inclined to be realists and empiricists. Minds of the first class instinctively tend to despise common sense, finding it inherently unphilosophical and all-too-human; minds of the second class, in contrast, typically treat entrenched categories and widespread convictions as indispensable points of reference. Does any of this sound familiar? It should; after all, the dramatic contrast between these two fundamentally opposed outlooks is what gives Ferrier’s critique of Reid its radical character and its uncompromisingly belligerent tone. This means that Ferrier’s repudiation

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  197 of the Scottish common sense tradition in the Institutes of Metaphysic can and should be seen not merely as an important episode in the history of modern Scottish philosophy, but as a memorable expression of the perennial conflict between Coleridge’s two ideal types or temperaments—the Platonist and the Aristotelian.49

6.9  A Tradition Transcended from Within To appreciate what Ferrier has achieved in the Institutes of Metaphysic, we need to remember something which we learned in Chapter  4: that Sir William Hamilton’s Janus-faced philosophy has both a Kantian side and a Reidian side. According to the Kantian side of Hamilton’s philosophy, knowledge of things in themselves is an impossibility because all knowledge is necessarily relative or subjectively conditioned; according to its Reidian side, we know that mind-independent material things exist because we have some immediate perceptual knowledge of them. If our treatment of the Institutes of Metaphysic is sound, Ferrier thinks (a) that the Kantian side of Hamilton’s philosophy is basically right; (b) that the Reidian side of Hamilton’s philosophy is hopelessly wrong; and (c) that the Reidian side of Hamilton’s philosophy is hopelessly wrong largely because its Kantian side is basically right. Inasmuch as Ferrier agrees with Hamilton that a subject can only know an object as it is related to a subject (the Law of All Knowledge), he agrees with Hamilton’s conclusion that there can be no knowledge of things in themselves. Nevertheless, Ferrier deduces two anti-Hamiltonian conclusions from this Hamiltonian thesis about the necessary limitations of our knowledge. In the first place, Ferrier thinks this thesis effectively destroys Hamilton’s argument for natural realism, because that argument is predicated on the very un-Kantian assumption that we can have immediate knowledge of mind-independent things. In the second place, Ferrier thinks that the discovery that things in themselves are unknowable leads to the refutation of natural realism, since we cannot be ignorant of objects per se if they are unknowable (the Law of All Ignorance), and Absolute Existence must either be something which we know or something of which we are ignorant. Hence if we accept Ferrier’s Master Argument, we must conclude that our quartet of Scottish common sense philosophers—Kames and Reid, Stewart and Hamilton—were colossally mistaken: material objects have no absolute or independent existence. Trees and rocks, mountains and bridges, cairns and  stone walls: these things do not exist in their own right, but only as one part of an integrated and indissoluble whole whose other part is always a subject or self. One way of summing up Ferrier’s achievement would be to say that the Institutes of Metaphysic finishes what Hamilton started, and that its author did unto Hamilton what Hamilton did unto Reid. For Hamilton, as we have seen, sought to refine Reid’s common sense realism by adding certain elements of Kant’s idealist epistemology; and what Ferrier has done is refine Hamilton’s qualified realism until the realist elements have been eliminated from it like so much dross, and all that remains is an unalloyed

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

198  ferrier and the foundations of idealism idealism which is simultaneously post-Kantian and neo-Berkeleyan. Locke’s material substances, Reid’s mind-independent objects, Kant’s things-in-themselves, Hamilton’s unconditioned: these dreadful spectres and frightful phantoms have been exorcized by Ferrier, and philosophy need no longer be haunted by them. Extinction also awaits the hoary bifurcations and clumsy dichotomies which have wrought such havoc in metaphysics: the dualisms of appearance and reality-in-itself, of subject and object, of perception and matter per se. Realism is now an exotic relic, a faded dust-covered curio; idealism is the new Scottish philosophy, born from the womb of the old, and the future belongs to her children. ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’: these words of Tennyson’s, spoken not with resignation but with hope, express the spirit which animates Ferrier’s Institutes of Metaphysic.50

Notes 1. The following passage explains what Ferrier means by ‘Absolute Existence’: “The problem of ontology, as announced in the Introduction, §54, is, What is? in the proper and emphatic sense of the word IS. What absolutely and independently exists? What, and what alone, possesses a clear, detached, emancipated, substantial, genuine, or unparasitical Being? What can that which possesses this be declared to be? What is its character? What predicate can  be attached to it? This is the problem which ontology is called upon to resolve . . . ” (FW 1: 454; cf. 513). 2. Unlike ‘epistemology’, ‘agnoiology’ never really caught on, although Keith Lehrer (1971, 1975) made a valiant effort to keep the term in circulation; cf. Rescher (2009: 26–7). The closest term in contemporary academic discourse is ‘agnotology’, which has been defined as “the cultural production of ignorance (and its study)” (Proctor and Schiebinger 2008: 1). 3. Alexander Campbell Fraser described the main argument of the Institutes as “a body of reasoning which might be condensed within a paragraph, although it is diluted into a volume” (Fraser 1856: 322; cf. 327). The reconstruction I have offered represents my attempt at condensation. 4. It should be noted that Ferrier, unlike Hamilton, shares the faith which Reid and Stewart had in philosophical theology. For a critique of Ferrier’s argument by a later Scottish idealist, see Seth Pringle-Pattison (1917: 193–5, 199–200). 5. We owe this label to Jonathan Bennett (1971: 169); for a recent discussion of the argument, see Dicker (2011), Chapter 12. Another idealist and theist who reworked Berkeley’s continuity argument was Hastings Rashdall, who recommends Ferrier’s Institutes to his readers (1910: 27; cf. 1–28). 6. This idea inspired a haunting metaphysical poem by Jorge Luis Borges, entitled “Cosas” (“Things”). See Borges (1999: 316–19). 7. According to Ferrier’s rationalism, philosophy is possible only if there is a primary, underived, or indigenous element in the human mind (commonly called ‘reason’ or ‘thought’) which, far from being peculiarly human, is common to the nature of all possible minds or intelligences (FW 2: 17–26). Now, what follows if the conjunction of Ferrier’s rationalism and his theism is true? In the first place, we should conclude that there is a God-like element in all intelligence, and that human reason is a reflection or expression of the Divine Reason. Not only that, but

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  199

we may now define a philosopher as a human being who, alive to the presence of this G ­ od-like element within herself, strives to be guided by it and to be true to its deliverances. Since such reverence for reason is alien to our natural way of thinking, philosophy as Ferrier understands it demands a kind of conversion or metanoia—a forsaking of ordinary modes of thought and a concomitant refusal to acquiesce in our ordinary self-understanding. Another noteworthy consequence of Ferrier’s position is that philosophy can be seen, inter alia, as one way in which rational creatures can deepen their participation in the life of God. For if Ferrier is to be believed, the faculty on which philosophers qua philosophers rely not only comes from God and leads back to God; it also makes it possible for human beings to apprehend certain aspects of reality in the way God himself apprehends them, instead of viewing such things from a perspective deeply dyed by our common humanity. Philosophy consequently has an inherently religious dimension, in as much as it promises to deliver us  from the tyranny of the contingent and the relative, the mutable and the apparent, the conditioned and the particular. 8. Ferrier’s fellow idealist John Grote (1813–66) was unimpressed with the deductive and quasi-Euclidean mode of exposition employed in the Institutes; see Grote (1865: 53–4, cf. 67, 70). Cf. Stout (1911: 158–9). 9. Whether Ferrier practised what he preached is another matter. Jennifer Keefe (2014) argues persuasively for the view he did not. 10. The argument for this claim presupposes what Ferrier calls the Law of All Ignorance—the proposition that we can be ignorant only of what is knowable. For more on this Law, see Section 6.6. 11. If the Law of All Knowledge is true, it must be an a priori truth, since it is supposed to express a proposition which is certain, necessary, and universal (i.e.—applicable not only to our knowledge, but also to the knowledge of non-human intelligences, if there are any). See FW 1: 87–8; cf. 74. 12. As we know, this is exactly the sort of narrow philosophical foundation to which Reid objected. For a discussion of Reid’s critique of the Cartesian starting-point in philosophy, see Sections 3.2 and 3.3. 13. Note Ferrier’s caveat: “When it is asserted that material things have no Absolute Existence, this must not be confounded with the affirmation that they have no existence at all. They have a spurious, or inchoate, or dependent existence” (FW 1: 473–4). 14. Recall the passage from On Certainty cited in Section 3.3: “It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back” (Wittgenstein 1969: §471). 15. G. F. Stout was unconvinced by this part of Ferrier’s explanation, and his a posteriori objection to it is an interesting one: “[I]f this were the real reason, self-consciousness ought to be more distinct and emphatic in earlier than in later stages of mental development, which is contrary to fact” (Stout 1911: 161). 16. A similar point is made in An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness (FW 3: 69–70). 17. See FW 1: 80; cf. 79–80. 18. This is very similar to the definition of philosophy given in Lectures on Greek Philosophy (FW 2: 7; cf. 7–10, 14, 474–6). 19. Again, a similar move is made in Lectures on Greek Philosophy (FW 2: 16; cf. 20, 26–31; FW 3: 551–5, 564–8).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

200  ferrier and the foundations of idealism 20. Although Ferrier does not supply a textual reference to the Theaetetus, the exchange he has in mind can be found at 146c–146e. 21. These ideas about philosophy’s nature are prominent in Lectures on Greek Philosophy (FW 2: 34–5, 42–7, 57–8, 76–8, 81–2, 156, 163, 192–6, 329–30, 346). 22. Since Proposition VI of the Epistemology contains a proof of the assumption which underlies epistemology’s fundamental question (FW 1: 157), it is clear that Ferrier does not think that the proposition assumed by epistemology’s basic question can be known only after we have discovered the answer to that question. 23. Note that the second half of this sentence qualifies the self-effacing concession made in its first half: “It puts in no claim to novelty, however novel may be the uses to which these Institutes apply it” (FW 1: 94; emphasis mine). 24. For more of Ferrier’s thoughts about the German idealists, see his biographical essays on Schelling (FW 3: 545–57) and Hegel (FW 3: 558–68). His remarks on Hegel in Scottish Philosophy: The Old and the New (SP 13–14, 22–4) are also of interest in this connection, because they give us some idea of the ways in which Ferrier felt his philosophy differed from that of Hegel (whom he claimed not to understand). 25. “Every metaphysical truth is faced by an opposite error which has its origin in ordinary thinking, and which it is the business of philosophy to supplant” (FW 1: 89; cf. 39). These opposite errors are called ‘counter-propositions’ (FW 1: 39), and Ferrier includes them in the Institutes on the grounds that “truths are unintelligible, or nearly so, unless when contrasted with their opposing errors” (FW 1: 44; cf. FW 1: 38–45, FW 2: 304–5). 26. This distinction is implicit in Hamilton’s discussion of the relativity of our knowledge. See Section 4.2, where a sharp distinction was drawn between the Argument from Analogous Faculties (which is based on a claim about the contingent conditions of our knowledge) and the Argument from Subjective Conditions (which is based on a claim about the necessary conditions of knowledge). 27. See FW 3: 552. 28. In Scottish Philosophy: The Old and the New, Ferrier defends his argument for theism against several objections (SP 35–7; cf. 20–1). 29. Ferrier’s critique of empiricism is most fully developed in his Lectures on Greek Philosophy, where he contrasts thought with sensation. Sensation, we are informed, is essentially passive and necessitated: passive, because a subject who feels a sensation is receptive and acted upon; necessitated, because sensation is always only of the particular (FW 2: 219). To feel a given sensation is to feel that sensation and nothing else; it is to be bound to one thing and to one thing only (FW 2: 221–2, 239). In contrast, to think a given thing is always to think that thing as a possible member of some class, to treat it as a potential token of a type, to regard it as an instance or an exemplification of a kind. In other words, it is constitutive of thought that it never confines itself to its immediate or ostensible object (this pain, this tree), but always relates the particular to the universal (FW 2: 223–6). Because thought must thus disengage or detach itself from the particular which it thinks, thought is essentially active and free (FW 2: 219, 237–8, 241). But if thought is essentially active and free, and sensation is essentially passive and necessitated, traditional empiricism has got it wrong: thought cannot be bound or limited by sensation, let alone reducible to it. Since thinking the particular item which we sense always means thinking more than the particular item which we sense, we can—indeed, we must—think of what we have not

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

ferrier and the foundations of idealism  201 experienced. It follows that anyone who truly understands the nature of thought must denounce the old dogmas of empiricism: that sensory experience is the source of our ideas, that the mind is a blank slate or a receptacle, that there is nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses (FW 2: 333–5). 30. To separate two things in cognition means apprehending one thing without apprehending the other (FW 1: 107; cf. 108–10). 31. See FW 1: 111. 32. Later in the Epistemology, Ferrier concludes from this that the material universe per se cannot even be thought (Proposition XII; FW 1: 300) on the grounds that what is absolutely unknowable must be absolutely unthinkable (Proposition XI; FW 1: 290). This is logically equivalent to the inconceivability principle which we discussed in Section 5.6. 33. Moreover, “[a]ll the qualities of matter by themselves are, of necessity, absolutely unknowable” (Proposition V; FW 1: 144) since they can only be apprehended in synthesis with a self. 34. Ferrier attributes the argument from knowledge to existence to Reid (FW 1: 493–4) and to Hamilton (SP: 29–30). 35. We may well wonder whether verificationism hasn’t occasionally functioned as an inexpensive agnoiology-substitute. For more on verificationism, see Misak (1995). 36. Hamilton is one of the whiners: “The grand result of human wisdom, is thus only a consciousness that what we know is as nothing to what we know not, (‘Quantum est quod nescimus!’)—an articulate confession, in fact, by our natural reason, of the truth declared by revelation,—that ‘now we see through a glass, darkly’ ” (DPL 601–2; emphasis mine). 37. To say that all ignorance is remediable is not to say that all ignorance is actually remedied (FW 1: 410), or even that all human ignorance is possibly remediable (FW 1: 411). All we can conclude is that “whatever any intelligence is ignorant of, may nevertheless be known,—known actually if an intelligence exists competent to know it—and known potentially even although no such intelligence should exist” (FW 1: 411). 38. I cannot improve on Jennifer Keefe’s formulation: “Ignorance . . . is a failure to know what can be known” (Keefe 2007b: 303). 39. Ferrier’s main point in this passage seems to be that a philosopher who claims that we are ignorant of things in themselves can avoid incoherence only if she also thinks (pace Kant and Hamilton) that things in themselves are knowable by some intelligence. 40. Although Ferrier does not make any mention of Hamilton in this section, referring only to “Kant and other philosophers” (FW 1: 425), it is clear from the context that he thinks his argument refutes both Hamilton and Kant. 41. Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison sums up Ferrier’s critique of Hamilton elegantly and economically: “That which is absolutely and necessarily unknowable to all intelligence is not a name for a hidden reality; it is simply another name for a contradiction, for nonsense” (Seth Pringle-Pattison 1899: 166). 42. Ferrier reminds us that his system, unlike Reid’s, does not set out from any assumption about the absolute existence or non-absolute existence of the material world (FW 1: 504). 43. See FW 1: 538, cf. 124, 473. 44. See Sections 1.6–1.8. 45. See FW 1: 53–7, FW 3: 467–73. 46. This view is still alive and well; see Kit Fine’s elegant statement of it (Fine 2001: 3).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

202  ferrier and the foundations of idealism 4 7. See Section 1.0. 48. In his Lectures on Greek Philosophy Ferrier also argues that philosophy requires us to step back from our ordinary image of ourselves, and to realize that we are essentially thinkers and rational beings. Yet why should we suppose that thought is more essential to us than sensation or feeling? Ferrier’s response to this challenge comes in the form of two arguments. Argument 1: Brutes or beasts of the field have sensation in common with us, but they cannot think (in Ferrier’s sense of the term). Hence thought is human in a way that sensation isn’t (FW 2: 243–4, 286–7). Argument 2: As a free activity, thinking must originate within the self, whereas sensation’s source is external to the subject who patiently receives it. Hence thought is rooted in the nature of the self in a way sensation isn’t (FW 2: 242, 247, 260, 275). 49. For some interesting reflections on this age-old contrast, see Williams (1981: 8–12). 50. From Tennyson, Idylls of the King (‘The Death of Arthur’) reprinted in Ricks (1969: 1752).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

7 ‘Scottish to the very core’ In studying the history of philosophy, we shall find that we are in fact studying only the development of our own reason in its most essential forms, with this difference, that the great problem which, in our minds, is worked out in a hurried manner, and within contracted limits, is evolved at leisure in the history of philosophy, and presented in juster and more enlarged proportions. The history of philosophy is in fact philosophy itself taking its time, and seen through a magnifying glass. —James Frederick Ferrier

In 1852, one hundred and one years after the publication of Lord Kames’s Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, James Frederick Ferrier applied for Edinburgh’s Chair of Moral Philosophy, a position which his father-in-law, John Wilson (1785–1854), had held ever since the death of Thomas Brown in 1820.1 Ferrier’s candidacy was unsuccessful, however, so he remained at St Andrews and put the finishing touches on the manuscript of the Institutes of Metaphysic. In 1856, the year of Sir William Hamilton’s death, Ferrier leapt into the fray again, putting himself forward as a candidate for Edinburgh’s storied Chair of Logic and Metaphysics. Would the second time be the charm? The fateful decision rested with Edinburgh’s Town Council, the non-academic body empowered to choose Sir William’s successor. Notwithstanding Ferrier’s impressive publications and his years of distinguished service at St Andrews, some members of the Edinburgh Town Council had grave doubts about whether he was the right person for the post.2 The candidate whom the  majority of the Council members favoured was Alexander Campbell Fraser (1819–1914), a scholarly Free Church minister who taught at Edinburgh’s New College, an institution created by the Free Church of Scotland after it separated from the Church of Scotland in 1843.3 A decade younger than Ferrier, the pious Fraser had not published much,4 but he was earnest, conscientious, and well-connected. He was also widely and rightly perceived to be sympathetic to the school of thought inaugurated by Reid and continued by Hamilton, whom Fraser knew well and revered. Lest any of these remarks about Fraser’s qualifications and background be misconstrued, let it be said at once that Fraser was a very able man, and he turned out to be both a prolific historian of philosophy and a careful thinker who pondered deep questions. His academic lectures powerfully conveyed a sense of the mysteriousness of existence to

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

204  ‘scottish to the very core’ generations of Scottish undergraduates; his scholarly commentaries were lucid and gracefully written; his editorial labours were undertaken with great energy and enthusiasm; and his devotion to Berkeley’s idealism (or ‘spiritual realism’, as Fraser preferred to call it) was a major influence on his own thought, which received its final expression in his two volumes of Gifford Lectures, entitled The Philosophy of Theism (1894–6). Nevertheless, all these laudable achievements lay in the future; in 1856, the year in which Hamilton’s Chair was as vacant as the Siege Perilous, Fraser’s philosophical potential was a relatively well-kept secret. At that time, very few impartial spectators capable of judging such matters could have been expected to regard him as Ferrier’s equal, either as a thinker of original thoughts or as a writer of finely-wrought prose. The contest between Fraser the apparent underdog and Ferrier the heir apparent was a perfect storm of political and religious intrigue, a cause célèbre in which rival factions did whatever they could to promote their respective candidates. Things got out of hand rather quickly, and the search for Hamilton’s replacement soon became the academic equivalent of a three-ring circus, complete with clowns and sideshows, fireworks and the odd wild beast. A helpful summary of how this untidy public drama played out was provided by a later occupant of Edinburgh’s Chair of Logic and Metaphysics (and an erstwhile pupil of Fraser’s), the personal idealist Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (1856–1931): Hamilton died in May, 1856, and the struggle for the Chair which he had made famous formed something of an episode in the domestic history of Scottish philosophy. Ferrier, then Professor at St. Andrews, was almost certainly at that time the most distinguished representative of metaphysics in Scotland. Eleven years older than Fraser, and the author of an important metaphysical work, he seemed marked out for the succession alike by the boldness of his speculations and the brilliance of his literary gifts. But Ferrier had sought out other masters than Reid and Stewart. He was understood to have drunk deep at German sources and, in his forcible style, he had spoken very contemptuously of the Scottish philosophers whom Hamilton had edited and expounded. Orthodox suspicions were aroused, and Dr John Cairns (who had the offer of the Chair himself, as he had had that of Moral Philosophy on Wilson’s death four years previously) came forward with an Examination of Ferrier’s Theory of Knowing and Being, which was largely instrumental in deciding the issue. Cairns was himself a metaphysician of considerable power, and his pamphlet undoubtedly touched real weaknesses in Ferrier’s system; but it also exaggerated its supposed theological tendencies, and thus fanned the prejudices of the electors. Denominational influences were also brought to bear upon the Town Councillors, with whom the patronage of the Chair then rested. A lively war of pamphlets ensued, waged both in prose and verse. Prof. Aytoun ­mingled (or was believed to have mingled) in the fray with a skit in verse, A Diverting History of John Cairns. More serious combatants entered the lists on Ferrier’s behalf; but Cairns returned to the charge with a second pamphlet, The Scottish Philosophy, a Vindication and a Reply, and on July 15 Fraser was elected by a majority of three to the Chair which he was to dignify for thirty-five years.  (Seth Pringle-Pattison 1915: 290–1)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

‘scottish to the very core’  205 In his autobiography, Biographia Philosophica: A Retrospect (1904), an engaging and substantial work of over three hundred pages, Fraser devotes but a single paragraph to this bitter and highly publicized contest. Speaking of “the change which has since determined my career” (Fraser 1904: 164), he explains why, despite his personal reservations and his great respect for Ferrier, he felt that it was his duty to apply for the Edinburgh Chair of Logic and Metaphysics. We also learn that the influential French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792–1867), Hamilton’s friend and a great admirer of the Scottish common sense tradition, supported Fraser’s candidacy with a weighty and enthusiastic testimonial.5 In May 1856 Sir William Hamilton died. The abolition, a few years before, of the ecclesiastical test which retained the Chairs of Philosophy exclusively for the Established Church of Scotland had deprived my office of its justification. The project of “a Free University” had precipitated this change. It was my duty to appear as a candidate for the vacant chair of Logic and Metaphysics; not without misgiving when I thought of its recent illustrious history, and when I compared myself with competitors, among whom Ferrier and Scott of Manchester were chief. But I was encouraged by the support of Cousin and Rémusat in France, Brandis at Bonn, and high philosophical authorities in England and America. A contest of unexampled severity ensued, in the end without alienation of friendship. I enjoyed cordial intercourse with Ferrier and Scott while they lived, and afterwards with Ferrier’s family, in some of the happiest experience of later life.  (Fraser 1904: 164)

Ferrier, stung and aggrieved by Fraser’s triumph, took the strongest possible exception to the standards by which he thought the Town Council of Edinburgh had judged the candidates. As far as the author of the Institutes was concerned, what the majority of Council members had wanted from the beginning was not a deft and disinterested dialectician, but a defender of the nation’s common sense faith; not a dauntless Socratic inquirer willing to follow arguments wherever they led, but a complaisant and doctrinaire apologist who would teach Scottish students to revere the lacklustre and local, to prize the tried and untrue. And this sad state of affairs, an indignant Ferrier concluded, set a most dangerous precedent, inasmuch as it constituted a scandalous affront to academic freedom in Scotland. Professors of philosophy in Scottish universities are no longer required to profess a belief in the sacred articles of Christianity,6 Ferrier observed; why, then, should they be required to profess a belief in the parochial and obsolete dogmas of Thomas Reid? The Government of the country has relieved the University of Edinburgh of one test, and they, of their own authority, have imposed upon it another; and, as most people will think, a much more obnoxious one. Chiefly through their liberalism the religious test was abolished, and entirely through their illiberalism, a philosophical test of the most exclusive character, has been substituted in its room. It is well to know that a candidate for a philosophical chair in the University of Edinburgh need not now be a believer in Christ or a member of the Established Church; but he must be a believer in Dr Reid, and a pledged disciple of the Hamiltonian system

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

206  ‘scottish to the very core’ in philosophy. The promulgation of that restriction was a pretty considerable stretch of arbitrary power on the part of our municipal corporation—was’nt [sic] it?  (SP 7)

According to Ferrier, the nation’s philosophers cannot be expected to recite the rudiments of their dreary Reidian creed forever. Since “[p]hilosophy is not traditional” (SP 9), reason is the sole authority which a philosopher is bound to obey, and Ferrier is certain that no one who truly obeys reason will endorse Reid’s philosophical starting-points or conclusions. Besides, patriotic attempts to define Scottish philosophy or to fix its essence by reference to its recent past are self-defeating; because they leave no room for the possibility of genuine innovation or intellectual growth, they effectively deprive Scottish philosophy of a future. Suppose that you have concluded that Reid and Hamilton have between them solved the basic problems of metaphysics and epistemology; what should your next move be? Since you can hardly hope to improve upon their work in any meaningful way, it seems you have no choice but to become a faithful disciple or echoing acolyte, a selfless hierophant or mere keeper of the sacred flame. Is the Scottish philosophy to be shut up for ever to the tenets of its bye-gone expositors, or rather of a mere section of these? Such certainly is the wish and the desire of the patrons of the University of Edinburgh. They are of opinion that no man except the thorough-going disciples of Reid, and Stewart, and Hamilton, ought to get a hearing from our Chairs, and that philosophy has reached its final close, its ultimate development in them. Alas for philosophy if this were so! But philosophy has not come, and never will come, to any such pass. Human reason is stronger than municipal restrictions, and truth will force her way, and hold her ground, in the face of municipal patronage.  (SP 8) Are we to judge of the productions of Scotland by looking merely to what Scotland has hitherto produced? May a philosopher not be, heart and soul, a Scotsman—may he not be a Scotsman in all his intellectual movements, even although he should have the misfortune to differ, in certain respects, from Dr Reid and Sir William Hamilton? To expatriate a man and his works on such grounds, would be rather a severe sentence, and one which the country, I take it, would be very slow to confirm.  (SP 12)

These strongly worded passages come from Scottish Philosophy: The Old and the New (1856), a pamphlet written by Ferrier in the immediate aftermath of the Edinburgh debacle. In one of this tract’s most provocative and memorable passages, Ferrier declares that his philosophical system is exactly what his most vocal detractors had insisted it wasn’t—‘Scottish to the very core’. What did he mean by this? One thing, at least, seems clear: Ferrier was absolutely convinced that his system was called into being by the need to reflect critically upon the influential works of his countrymen, particularly Reid and Hamilton, and that his philosophy could not be understood fully unless it was seen as an extended answer to them.7 Neither an exotic import nor an alloy made with foreign materials, the ‘Theory of Knowing and Being’ set forth in the Institutes of Metaphysic is Ferrier’s own creation, we are told, and woe betide any critic who is foolhardy enough to doubt it:

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

‘scottish to the very core’  207 My philosophy is Scottish to the very core; it is national in every fibre and articulation of its frame. It is a natural growth of old Scotland’s soil, and has drunk in no nourishment from any other land . . . The new Scottish philosophy would have been exactly what it is, although Germany and the whole continent of Europe had been buried, centuries ago, in the sea. Whatever my dominion over truth may be, small or great, I have conquered every inch of it for myself. The “Institutes of Metaphysics” [sic] seem very plain-sailing, and so does railway travelling; but if some of my critics “had seen these roads before they were made,” they would have had a better idea of the difficulties of intellectual tunnelling, and of bridging chasms in the land of thought, over which they may now be wafted in their sleep. But what I assert is, that my system of philosophy—whatever its merit or demerit may be—was born and bred in this country, and is essentially native to the soil. Scotland, and Scotland alone, shall get the credit, if it is good for anything, just as she must submit to the dishonour, if it is found fraught with principles of folly, danger, or disgrace.  (SP 12–13; cf. 15)

Despite such passionate protests, Ferrier’s reputation in Scotland suffered as a result of the events of 1856. When he died less than a decade later (in 1864) at St Andrews, he had founded no school, inspired no movement, attracted no followers. There was no cortège of fervent converts or true believers, no dyed-in-the-wool disciples who had sworn to keep his ideas alive; there weren’t even any formidable adversaries whose attacks on Ferrier’s work could be interpreted as indirect tributes to its importance or influence.8 Had Ferrier been appointed to the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh, however, he would almost certainly have exerted significantly greater influence upon the intellectual and literary life of his country, and his magnum opus would very likely have attracted considerable interest abroad, partly (ironically) because of its apparently Continental and ‘un-Scottish’ character—the very thing which had made it so unpopular in certain Edinburgh circles. And if that had happened, more universities outside Scotland would have made the Institutes required reading; more lectures would have been devoted to its exposition, more books and articles (in English, yes, but also in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch) to its emendation or confutation; and more historians of philosophy would have felt obliged to relate his mature system to the productions of greater and lesser minds. In short, Ferrier could have been a contender and not a footnote, had he only received a few more votes in the summer of 1856. Having devoted so much space to Ferrier’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Town Council, it is a pleasure to report that history discreetly vindicated this ‘man of independent mind’, and that time kindly gave his gallant ghost the last and loudest laugh. For by the end of the nineteenth century, several of the once-unpopular causes championed by Ferrier in the 1840s and 1850s had triumphed: Thomas Reid was no longer the beau ideal of most Scottish philosophers, the old meta-philosophy of common sense was decidedly out of favour, and idealism had supplanted realism as the metaphysic of choice in many Scottish universities.9 To be sure, grizzled defenders of Reidian-inspired realism could still be found at home and abroad;10 but their numbers had dwindled, their arguments were shop-worn, and their way of thinking

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

208  ‘scottish to the very core’ seemed banal and un-nuanced to a generation which had cut its philosophical teeth on the subtleties of German speculation. Encouraged by the example of The Secret of Hegel (1865), written by the Scot John Hutchinson Stirling (1820–1909),11 many of the nation’s best and brightest students turned their backs on what Ferrier had called ‘the old Scottish philosophy’, and looked for inspiration in the works of foreign authors. Close thy Reid and Hamilton, open thy Kant and Hegel: thus spake the spirit of the age, whose leading mediums included Edward Caird (1835–1908) and Henry Jones (1852–1922) at Glasgow, and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (1856–1931) at St Andrews and, later, at Edinburgh, where he occupied the very Chair Ferrier had set his heart on back in 1856. Truly, the old order changeth, yielding place to new; for the long season of realism’s supremacy in the north was finally over, as fewer and fewer philosophers in Scotland were inclined to defend Reidian views about the problems of mind and world. Idealism had established itself as the new Scottish philosophy, and varieties of it were to dominate the nation’s philosophical landscape until the period immediately following the First World War.12 Indeed, it is often forgotten that idealist doctrines were defended with vigour and rigour at places like Glasgow and Edinburgh long after those doctrines had been deemed passé by the pioneers of analytic philosophy at Oxbridge. These historical developments are not self-explanatory. Exactly how did idealism become the dominant philosophy in Scottish universities, and why didn’t it establish itself as such much earlier? Why did it survive in Scotland for as long as it did, and what factors contributed to its eventual downfall? Did idealism’s death bring about the end of the Scottish philosophical tradition, or had that tradition given up the ghost with idealism’s birth? Or did that tradition somehow live on, albeit in an altered form or under an alias? Did it emigrate, like countless Scottish men and women, crossing oceans and continents in search of a new life?13 For the time being, we must leave these difficult questions unanswered. The rise and fall of Scottish idealism, like the mysterious tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, is a story for which the world is not yet prepared.14

Notes 1. John Wilson or ‘Christopher North’, one of the authors of the popular Noctes Ambrosianae, was not the only member of Ferrier’s extended family to enrich the literature of Scotland. Susan Edmonston Ferrier (1782–1854), aunt of the metaphysician, was a distinguished novelist whose artistic gifts were recognized by her friend Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). Described by some as ‘the Scottish Jane Austen’, Susan Ferrier is perhaps best-known for her novels Marriage (1818) and The Inheritance (1824). Like her nephew, she was buried in the Ferrier family plot in St Cuthbert’s Churchyard in Edinburgh. 2. A detailed discussion of the background and cultural significance of this contest can be found in Davie (1964), Part 4. See Keefe (2015) for a shorter but still very helpful account of events. 3. At the centre of this nation-shaking development, known as the Disruption, stood the Reverend Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), who has been described as “possibly the most influential Scot of the nineteenth century” (Devine 2006: 364; cf. 370–1). An individual of remarkable gifts, Chalmers had occupied the Chair of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews from 1823 until 1828—the same Chair Ferrier held from 1845 until 1864.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

‘scottish to the very core’  209 4. See Fraser (1856). For a sample of his later work, see Fraser (1890), (1898), (1899), (1904), (1908). Cf. Seth Pringle-Pattison (1891), (1898) and Keefe (2007c) for more on Fraser. 5. On Victor Cousin’s relation to Scottish philosophy, see Cousin (1857), Madden (1984), and Davie (2009). 6. According to T. M. Devine, “[r]eligious tests for all university professorial appointments other than divinity chairs were abolished in 1852” (Devine 2006: 377). 7. As Alexander Broadie has rightly observed, “the philosopher to whom Ferrier responds most often is Reid” (Broadie 2009: 312; cf. 313). 8. The next occupant of the Chair of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews was Robert Flint (1838–1910), a philosophical theologian and minister of the the Church of Scotland whose interests and methods were quite unlike Ferrier’s. 9. Aberdeen was a notable exception, because Aberdeen’s Alexander Bain (1818–1903), a friend and philosophical ally of J. S. Mill’s, continued the older tradition of psychology (‘the science of the human mind’) which Ferrier had inveighed against. On Bain and his place in Scottish p ­ hilosophy, see Graham (2011) and Craig (2015); see also the references to Bain in Craig (2007a). 10. A good example is James McCosh (1811–94), who, after teaching at Queen’s College in Belfast, served as President of the College of New Jersey (as Princeton University was then known) from 1868 until 1888. For an overview of McCosh’s philosophy, see Chapter 4 of Segrest (2010); see also McDermid (2011). Another late realist is John Veitch (1829–94), who taught briefly at St Andrews (where he and Ferrier were colleagues) before moving to Glasgow (1864–94). McCosh and Veitch were students of Hamilton’s, and both men identified with the older tradition in Scottish philosophy. Nor were they the last to do so; the spirit of Scottish realism survived into the twentieth century, notably in the writings of Norman Kemp Smith (1872–1958), John Laird (1887–1946), and—less directly—John Anderson (1893–1962). Outside of Scotland, Scottish common-sensism was especially prominent ­during the first half of the nineteenth century in the northeastern United States, where it was ably represented by Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751–1819) at the College of New Jersey, Archibald Alexander (1772–1851) at Princeton Theological Seminary, Brown’s Francis Wayland (1796–1865), Harvard’s Francis ‘Fanny’ Bowen (1811–90), and Yale’s Noah Porter (1811–92). It also made inroads into the antebellum South, where it was a significant ­influence on two high-profile Presbyterian theologians: James Henley Thornwell (1812–62) of South Carolina, and Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–98) of Virginia and (later) Texas. For more on the influence of Scottish common-sensism on American thought, see Martin (1961), Lehrer (1976), Kuklick (2001), Chapter 4, Foster (2012), McDermid (2015), and Graham (2015c). 11. In the same year, Stirling published a critique of Hamilton’s philosophy of perception; see Stirling (1865) and Graham (2015b: 57–8). 12. An excellent place to start exploring the writings of the later Scottish idealists is the anthology edited by Boucher (2004a); see also Boucher (2004b) and Burns (2009). Mander’s comprehensive study of British idealism (Mander 2011) offers extended treatments of the work of a number of important Scottish philosophers, including Edward Caird and Alexander Seth Pringle-Pattison. This is as it should be; the Britishness of the British idealists, as Cairns Craig has observed, was “a Britishness consisting of a disproportionate number of Scottish contributors” (Craig 2007b: 174). 13. See Craig (2011), (2013) and Graham (2015c) for more on ‘Scotland’s migrant philosophers’. 14. See Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire”, in The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Bibliography Adams, Robert Merrihew. (1987) The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press. Alston, William. (1986) “Thomas Reid on Epistemic Principles”, History of Philosophy Quarterly 2: 435–52. Alston, William. (1993) The Reliability of Sense Perception. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Anderson, John. (1935) Lectures on Modern Philosophy 1932–35: Hume, Reid, James. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2008. Armstrong, D. M. (1961) Perception and the Physical World. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Audi, Robert. (2009) “The Epistemic Authority of Testimony and the Ethics of Belief ”. In Dole and Chignell (2009): 175–201. Austin, J. L. (1962) Sense and Sensibilia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bambrough, Renford. (ed.) (1963) The Philosophy of Aristotle. London: Penguin. Barker, Stephen F. and Beauchamp, Tom L. (eds.) (1976) Thomas Reid: Critical Interpretations. Philadelphia: Philosophical Monographs. Bennett, Jonathan. (1971) Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Berkeley, George. (1710) Principles of Human Knowledge. In Robinson (1996): 1–95. Berkeley, George. (1713) Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. In Robinson (1996): 97–208. Berlin, Isaiah. (1953) The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History. New York: Simon & Schuster. Bochenski, J. M. (1961) A History of Formal Logic. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Bonjour, Laurence. (1976) “The Coherence Theory of Empirical Knowledge”, Philosophical Studies 30: 281–312. Bonjour, Laurence. (1985) The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Borges, Jorge Luis. (1999) Selected Poems. Bilingual edition. London: Penguin. Boswell, James. (1791) Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. David Womersley. London: Penguin, 2008. Boucher, David. (2004a) (ed.) The Scottish Idealists: Selected Philosophical Writings. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Boucher, David. (2004b) “The Late 19th Century Scottish Idealists and the Problem of Philosophy”, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 2: 176–93. Brewer, Bill. (2011) Perception and Its Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Broadie, Alexander. (1990) The Tradition of Scottish Philosophy. Edinburgh: Polygon. Broadie, Alexander. (ed.) (2003) The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Broadie, Alexander. (2004) “Reid in Context”. In Cuneo and Van Woudenberg (2004): 31–52. Broadie, Alexander. (2009) A History of Scottish Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Broadie, Alexander. (2012) “The Rise (and Fall?) of the Scottish Enlightenment”. In Devine and Wormald (2012): 370–85.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

212  Bibliography Broadie, Alexander. (2013) “Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. N. Zalta. . Brown, Thomas. (1822) Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind. Andover: Flagg and Gould. Buras, Todd. (2002) “The Problem with Reid’s Direct Realism”, Philosophical Quarterly 52: 457–77. Buras, Todd. (2005) “The Nature of Sensations in Reid”, History of Philosophy Quarterly 22: 221–38. Buras, Todd. (2008) “Three Grades of Immediate Perception: Thomas Reid’s Distinctions”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76: 603–32. Burns, J. H. (2009) “Scottish Kantians: An Exploration”, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 7: 115–31. Burnyeat, M. F. (1982) “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed”, Philosophical Review 91: 3–40. Chalmers, Thomas. (1836) On the Miraculous and Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion. New York: Leavitt, Lord, and Company. Chesterton, G. K. (1908) Orthodoxy. London: The Bodley Head. Chesterton, G. K. (1933) St. Thomas Aquinas. New York: Dover Publications, 2009. Cloyd, E. L. (1972) James Burnett, Lord Monboddo. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Coady, C. A. J. (1992) Testimony: A Philosophical Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Copenhaver, Rebecca. (2000) “Reid’s Direct Realism”, Reid Studies 4: 17–34. Copenhaver, Rebecca. (2004) “A Realism for Reid: Mediated but Direct”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12: 61–74. Copenhaver, Rebecca. (2006) “Is Reid a Mysterian?” Journal of the History of Philosophy 44: 449–66. Copenhaver, Rebecca and Buras, Todd. (eds.) (2015) Thomas Reid on Mind, Knowledge, and Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cottingham, John. (ed.) (1988) Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cousin, Victor. (1857) Philosophie Écossaise. Paris: Librairie Nouvelle. Craig, Cairns. (2007a) Associationism and the Literary Imagination: From the Phantasmal Chaos. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Craig, Cairns. (2007b) “MacIver, Macmurray, and the Scottish Idealists”, Journal of Scottish Thought 1: 169–84. Craig, Cairns. (2011) “Empire of Intellect: The Scottish Enlightenment and Scotland’s Intellectual Migrants”. In MacKenzie and Devine (2011): 84–117. Craig, Cairns. (2013) “Scotland’s Migrant Philosophers and the History of Scottish Philosophy”, History of European Ideas 39: 670–92. Craig, Cairns. (2015) “Alexander Bain, Associationism, and Scottish Philosophy”. In Graham (2015a): 95–117. Craig, Edward. (ed.) (1998) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge. Cummins, Phillip. (1974) “Reid’s Realism”, Journal of the History of Philosophy 44: 449–66. Cuneo, Terence. (2010) “Duty, Goodness, and God in Thomas Reid’s Moral Philosophy”. In Roeser (2010): 238–57.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Bibliography  213 Cuneo, Terence. (2011) “Reid’s Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. N. Zalta. . Cuneo, Terence and Van Woudenberg, René. (eds.) (2004) The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid. New York: Cambridge University Press. Daniels, Norman. (1974) Thomas Reid’s Inquiry: The Geometry of Visibles and the Case for Realism. New York: Burt Franklin and Co. Davie, George Elder. (1964) The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and her Universities in the Nineteenth Century. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Davie, George Elder. (1967) “James Frederick Ferrier”. In Edwards (1967), Volume 3: 188–9. Davie, George Elder. (2001) The Scotch Metaphysics: A Century of Enlightenment in Scotland. London and New York: Routledge. Davie, George Elder. (2009) “Victor Cousin and the Scottish Philosophers”, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 7: 193–214. de Bary, Philip. (2002) Thomas Reid and Scepticism: His Reliabilist Response. London: Routledge. DeRose, Keith. (1989) “Reid’s Anti-Sensationalism and His Realism”, Philosophical Review 98: 313–48. DeRose, Keith. (2009) “Direct Warrant Realism”. In Dole and Chignell (2009): 150–72. Descartes, René. (1637) Discourse on Method. In Cottingham (1988): 20–56. Descartes, René. (1641) Meditations on First Philosophy. In Cottingham (1988): 73–159. Descartes, René. (1644) The Principles of Philosophy. In Cottingham (1988): 160–212. Devine, T. M. (2006) The Scottish Nation 1700–2007. London: Penguin. Devine, T. M. and Wormald, J. (eds.) (2012) The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dicker, Georges. (2011) Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination. New York: Oxford University Press. Dixon, Thomas. (2015) “Revolting Against Reid: The Philosophy of Thomas Brown”. In Graham (2015a): 23–46. Dole, Andrew and Chignell, Andrew. (eds.) (2009) God and the Ethics of Belief: New Essays on the Philosophy of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doris, Glen. (2009) “An Abolitionist Too Late? James Beattie and the Scottish Enlightenment’s Lost Chance to Influence the Slave Trade Debate”, Journal of Scottish Thought 2: 83–97. Doyle, Arthur Conan. (1927) The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1992. Duggan, Timothy. (1960) “Thomas Reid’s Theory of Sensation”, Philosophical Review 69: 90–100. Earman, John. (2000) Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edwards, Paul. (ed.) (1967) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London and New York: Collier Macmillan. Emerson, Roger. (2008) Academic Patronage in the Scottish Enlightenment: Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews Universities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Falkenstein, Lorne. (2004) “Nativism and the Nature of Thought in Reid’s Account of Our Knowledge of the External World”. In Cuneo and Van Woudenberg (2004): 156–79. Feldman, Richard. (2003) Epistemology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Fieser, James. (2000) “Introduction”, to An Appeal To Common Sense In Behalf of Religion (1766–1772), ed. James Fieser. Bristol: Thoemmes: xv–xxxviii.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

214  Bibliography Fine, Kit. (2001) “The Question of Realism”, Philosophers’ Imprint 1: 1–30. Foster, James. (ed.) (2012) Scottish Philosophy in America. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Franklin, James. (2003) Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia. Sydney: Macleay Press. Fraser, Alexander Campbell. (1856) Essays in Philosophy. Edinburgh: T. Constable. Fraser, Alexander Campbell. (1890) Locke. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. Fraser, Alexander Campbell. (1898) Thomas Reid. Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier. Fraser, Alexander Campbell. (1899) Philosophy of Theism. 2nd edition. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. Fraser, Alexander Campbell. (1904) Biographica Philosophica: A Retrospect. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. Fraser, Alexander Campbell. (1908) Berkeley and Spiritual Realism. New York: Dodge Publishing Company. Friday, Jonathan. (2005) “Dugald Stewart on Reid, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 13: 263–86. Gabbay, D. M. and Woods, J. (eds.) (2008) British Logic in the Nineteenth Century. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Garrett, Aaron. (2000) “Hume’s Revised Racism Revisited”, Hume Studies 26: 171–7. Garrett, Aaron and Harris, James. (eds.) (2015) Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century: Volume I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gellera, Giovanni. (forthcoming) “Common Sense and Ideal Theory in Seventeenth Century Scottish Philosophy”. In Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Bradford Bow. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Graham, Gordon. (2003) “The Nineteenth Century Aftermath”. In Broadie (2003): 338–50. Graham, Gordon. (2010) “The Significance of Reid’s Practical Ethics”. In Roeser (2010): 223–37. Graham, Gordon. (2011) “Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. N. Zalta. . Graham, Gordon. (ed.) (2015a) Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Graham, Gordon. (2015b) “A Re-examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy”. In Graham (2015a): 47–66. Graham, Gordon. (2015c) “Scottish Philosophy Abroad”. In Graham (2015a): 182–204. Grave, S. A. (1960) The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Grave, S. A. (1984) A History of Philosophy in Australia. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Greco, John. (1995) “Reid’s Critique of Berkeley and Hume: What’s the Big Idea?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55: 279–96. Greco, John. (2000) Putting Skeptics in Their Place: The Nature of Skeptical Arguments and Their Role in Philosophical Inquiry. London and New York: Cambridge University Press. Greco, John. (2004) “Reid’s Reply to the Sceptic”. In Cuneo and Van Woudenberg (2004): 134–55. Greig, J. Y. T. (ed.) (1932) The Letters of David Hume. Volume I: 1727–1765. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Grote, John. (1865) Exploratio Philosophica: Rough Notes on Modern Intellectual Science. Part I. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, and Company.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Bibliography  215 Guyer, Paul. (2011) “Gerard and Kant: Influence and Opposition”, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 9: 59–93. Haakonssen, Knud and Wood, Paul. (eds.) (2015) Thomas Reid on Society and Politics: Papers and Lectures. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Haldane, Elizabeth Sanderson. (1899) James Frederick Ferrier. Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier. Haldane, John. (1998) “James Frederick Ferrier”. In Craig (1998), Volume 3: 633–5. Haldane, John. (2001) “Introduction”, to Philosophical Works of James Frederick Ferrier. Bristol: Thoemmes: v–xx. Harman, Claire. (ed.) (1992) R. L. Stevenson: Essays and Poems. London: J. M. Dent. Harris, James. (2005) Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Harris, James. (2007) “Reid and Religion”, Eighteenth-Century Thought 3: 415–26. Heidegger, Martin. (1927) Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010. Herman, Arthur. (2001) How the Scots Invented the Modern World. New York: Three Rivers Press. Hogg, James. (1824) The Private Memoirs and Confessions of A Justified Sinner. London: Penguin, 1987. Holland, A. J. (ed.) (1985) Philosophy, Its History and Historiography. Dordrecht: Reidel. Hollingdale, R. J. (ed.) (1990) The Waste Books: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. New York: New York Review of Books, 2000. Houlgate, Stephen. (ed.) (1998) The Hegel Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Hume, David. (1739–40) A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Hume, David. (1748) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Hutcheson, Francis. (1742) An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, With Illustrations on the Moral Sense, ed. Aaron Garrett. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002. Hutchinson, Thomas. (ed.) (1923) The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: Oxford University Press. Immerwahr, John. (1978) “The Development of Reid’s Realism”, The Monist 61: 245–56. Immerwahr, John. (1992) “Hume’s Revised Racism”, Journal of the History of Ideas 53: 481–6. Jackson, H. J. (ed.) (1985) Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Major Works. London and New York: Oxford University Press. James, William. (1890) The Principles of Psychology. 2 volumes. New York: Dover Publications, 1950. Jessop, Ralph. (2008) “The Logic of Sir William Hamilton: Tunnelling through Sand to Place the Keystone in the Aristotelic Arch”. In Gabbay and Woods (2008): 96–163. Kant, Immanuel. (1781) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan, 1964. Kant, Immanuel. (1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, ed. Gary Hatfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Keefe, Jennifer. (2007a) “Ferrier, Common Sense and Consciousness”, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 5: 169–85. Keefe, Jennifer. (2007b) “James Ferrier and the Theory of Ignorance”, The Monist 90: 297–309.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

216  Bibliography Keefe, Jennifer. (2007c) “The Return to Berkeley”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15: 101–13. Keefe, Jennifer. (2014) “J. F. Ferrier’s Institutes of Metaphysic”. In Mander (2014): 154–72. Keefe, Jennifer. (2015) “James Frederick Ferrier: The Return of Idealism and the Rejection of Common Sense”. In Graham (2015a): 67–94. King, E. H. (1971) “A Scottish ‘Philosophical’ Club in the Eighteenth Century”, Dalhousie Review 50: 201–14. King, E. H. (1972) “James Beattie’s Essay on Truth (1770): An Enlightenment ‘Bestseller’ ”, Dalhousie Review 51: 390–403. Kroeker, Esther. (2010) “Reid on Natural Signs, Taste, and Moral Perception”. In Roeser (2010): 46–66. Kroeker, Esther. (2014) “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Plantinga’s Reidian Discourse”, Philosophia Reformata 79: 21–6. Kroeker, Esther. (2016) “Reid’s Response to Hume’s Moral Critique of Religion”, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 14: 85–100. Kuehn, Manfred. (1987) Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Kuklick, Bruce. (2001) A History of Philosophy in America, 1720–2000. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Laurie, Henry. (1902) Scottish Philosophy in Its National Development. Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons. Lehmann, William C. (1971) Henry Home, Lord Kames and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Study in National Character and the History of Ideas. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Lehrer, Keith. (1971) “Why Not Scepticism?” The Philosophical Forum 2: 289–98. Lehrer, Keith. (1975) “Social Consensus and Rational Agnoiology”, Synthese 31: 141–60. Lehrer, Keith. (1976) “Reid’s Influence on Contemporary American and British Philosophy”. In Barker and Beauchamp (1976): 1–7. Lehrer, Keith. (1978) “Reid on Primary and Secondary Qualities”, The Monist 61: 184–91. Lehrer, Keith. (1989) Thomas Reid. London and New York: Routledge. Lehrer, Keith. (1997) Self-Trust: A Study of Reason, Knowledge, and Autonomy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehrer, Keith. (2010) “Reid, the Moral Faculty, and First Principles”. In Roeser (2010): 25–45. Lemos, Noah. (2004) Common Sense: A Contemporary Defense. London and New York: Cambridge University Press. Levi Mortera, Emanuele. (2012) “Stewart, Reid, and the Reworking of Common Sense”, History of European Ideas 38: 122–42. Locke, John. (1690) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. McCosh, James. (1865) The Intuitions of the Mind Inductively Investigated. 2nd edition. London: Macmillan. McCosh, James. (1875) The Scottish Philosophy: Biographical, Expository, Critical. London: Macmillan. McDermid, Douglas. (1999) “Thomas Reid on Moral Liberty and Common Sense”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7: 275–303. McDermid, Douglas. (2001) “The Sensation/Perception Distinction in Reid and Schopenhauer”, Reid Studies 4: 3–17.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Bibliography  217 McDermid, Douglas. (2002) “Schopenhauer as Epistemologist? A Kantian Against Kant”, International Philosophical Quarterly 42: 209–29. McDermid, Douglas. (2003) “The World as Representation: Schopenhauer’s Arguments for Transcendental Idealism”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11: 57–87. McDermid, Douglas. (2006) The Varieties of Pragmatism: Truth, Realism, and Knowledge from James to Rorty. London: Continuum. McDermid, Douglas. (2010) “A Second Look at Reid’s First Argument for Moral Liberty”. In Roeser (2010): 143–63. McDermid, Douglas. (2011) Review of Scott Philip Segrest, America and the Political Philosophy of Common Sense (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2009), Journal of Scottish Philosophy 10: 239–44. McDermid, Douglas. (2012) “Schopenhauer and Transcendental Idealism”. In The Blackwell Companion to Schopenhauer, ed. Bart Vandenabeele. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 70–85. McDermid, Douglas. (2015) “Scottish Common Sense and American Pragmatism”. In Graham (2015a): 205–35. McDermid, Douglas. (2016) Review of Knud Haakonssen and Paul Wood (eds.), Thomas Reid on Society and Politics: Papers and Lectures (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Journal of Scottish Philosophy 14: 174–8. Mackay, J. A. (ed.) (1986) The Complete Works of Robert Burns. Ayr: Alloway Publishing. MacKenzie, J. M. and Devine, T. M. (eds.) (2011) Scotland and the British Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McKitrick, Jennifer. (2002) “Reid’s Foundation for the Primary/Secondary Quality Distinction”, Philosophical Quarterly 52: 476–94. Madden, Edward. (1984) “Victor Cousin and the Common Sense Tradition”, History of Philosophy Quarterly 1: 93–109. Madden, Edward. (1986) “Was Reid a Natural Realist?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47: 255–76. Magnus, P. D. (2008) “Reid’s Defence of Common Sense”, Philosophers’ Imprint 8: 1–14. Mander, William. (2011) British Idealism: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marcil-Lacoste, Louise. (1982) Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid: Two Common Sense Philosophers. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Martin, Terence. (1961) The Instructed Vision: Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and the Origins of American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mayo, Bernard. (1969/2007) “The Moral and the Physical Order: A Reappraisal of James Frederick Ferrier”, Scottish Journal of Philosophy 5: 159–67. Metz, Rudolf. (1938) A Hundred Years of British Philosophy. London: Allen & Unwin. Mill, John Stuart. (1865) An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, ed. J. M. Robson. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1979. Mill, John Stuart. (1873) Autobiography, ed. J. M. Robson. London: Penguin, 1989. Miller, Eugene F. (ed.) (1987) David Hume: Essays Moral, Political, and Literary. Revised edition. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Misak, Cheryl. (1995) Verificationism: Its History and Prospects. London and New York: Routledge. Mossner, E. C. (1980) The Life of David Hume. 2nd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Muirhead, J. H. (1931) The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy: Studies in the History of Idealism in England and America. New York: Humanities Press, 1961.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

218  Bibliography Nichols, Ryan. (2003) “Reid’s Inheritance from Locke, and How He Overcomes It”, Journal of the History of Philosophy 41: 471–92. Nichols, Ryan. (2007) Thomas Reid’s Theory of Perception. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1887) The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1888) The Will to Power, trans. W. Kauffmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage, 1967. Nolan, Lawrence. (ed.) (2011) Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Historical and Ongoing Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norton, David Fate. (1982) David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Palter, Robert. (1995) “Hume and Prejudice”, Hume Studies 21: 3–24. Pappas, George. (1989) “Sensation and Perception in Reid”, Noûs 23: 155–67. Phillipson, Nicholas. (2010) Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life. London: Allen Lane. Pitson, Tony. (2006) “George Campbell’s Critique of Hume on Testimony”, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 4: 1–15. Plantinga, Alvin. (1993) Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plantinga, Alvin. (2011) Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plantinga, Alvin and Wolterstorff, Nicholas. (eds.) (1983) Faith and Rationality. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Popkin, Richard. (1978) “Hume’s Racism”, Philosophical Forum 9: 211–226. Proctor, Robert N. and Schiebinger, Londa. (eds.) (2008) Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Putnam, Hilary. (1999) The Threefold Cold: Mind, Body, and World. New York: Columbia University Press. Rashdall, Hastings. (1910) Philosophy and Religion: Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Rescher, Nicholas. (2009) Ignorance: On the Wider Implications of Deficient Knowledge. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Rickless, Samuel. (2013) Berkeley’s Argument for Idealism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ricks, Christopher. (ed.) (1969) The Collected Poems of Tennyson. London: Longmans, Green and Company. Roberts, John Russell. (2007) A Metaphysics for the Mob: The Philosophy of George Berkeley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robinson, Daniel. (1989) “Thomas Reid’s Critique of Dugald Stewart”, Journal of the History of Philosophy 27: 405–22. Robinson, Howard. (ed.) (1996) George Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roeser, Sabine. (ed.) (2010) Reid on Ethics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ross, Ian Simpson. (1972) Lord Kames and the Scotland of His Day. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rowe, William. (1991) Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rysiew, Patrick. (2002) “Reid and Epistemic Naturalism”, Philosophical Quarterly 52: 437–56. Schopenhauer, Arthur. (1851) Parerga and Paralipomena. 2 volumes, trans. E. F. J. Payne. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Bibliography  219 Schopenhauer, Arthur. (1859) The World as Will and Representation. 2 volumes, trans. E. F. J. Payne. New York: Dover, 1969. Segrest, Scott Philip. (2010) America and the Political Philosophy of Common Sense. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press. Sellars, Wilfrid. (1963) Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Seth, James. (1912) English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy. London: J. M. Dent. Seth Pringle-Pattison, Andrew. (1891) “The Present Position of the Philosophical Sciences”. In Seth Pringle-Pattison (1902): 24–44. Seth Pringle-Pattison, Andrew. (1898) “The Venture of Theism”. In Seth Pringle-Pattison (1902): 218–53. Seth Pringle-Pattison, Andrew. (1899) Scottish Philosophy: A Comparison of the Scottish and German Answers to Hume. 3rd edition. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons. Seth Pringle-Pattison, Andrew. (1902) Man’s Place in the Cosmos. 2nd edition. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Seth Pringle-Pattison, Andrew. (1915) “Alexander Campbell Fraser, 1819–1914”, Mind 24: 289–325. Seth Pringle-Pattison, Andrew. (1917) The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sher, Richard. (1985) Church and University: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Sher, Richard. (2006) The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sher, Richard and Wood, Paul. (2012) “Much Ado About Dugald: The Chequered Career of Dugald Stewart’s Letter to Sir William Forbes on James Beattie’s Essay on Truth”, History of European Ideas 38: 74–102. Sidgwick, Henry. (1895) “The Philosophy of Common Sense”, Mind 4: 145–58. Sorley, W. R. (1920) A History of English Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sosa, Ernest. (1991) Knowledge in Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sosa, Ernest. (2009) Reflective Knowledge. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Sprigge, Timothy. (1983) The Vindication of Absolute Idealism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Sprigge, Timothy. (1993) James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court. Sprigge, Timothy. (1998) “Idealism”. In Craig (1998), Volume 4: 662–9. Sprigge, Timothy. (2006) The God of Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stirling, James Hutchison. (1865) Sir William Hamilton: The Philosophy of Perception. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Stout, G. F. (1911) Votiva Tabella: A Memorial Volume of St. Andrews University in connection with its quincentenary festival. Glasgow: Robert Maclehose and Company: 153–66. Strawson, P. F. (1959) Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen. Strawson, P. F. (1985) Scepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. New York: Columbia University Press. Swinburne, Richard. (2003) The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Swinburne, Richard. (2009) “The Probability of the Resurrection”. In Dole and Chignell (2009): 117–30.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

220  Bibliography Thébert, Angélique. (2015) “The Defense of the First Principles of Common Sense in Reid’s Epistemology: A New Use for Track-Record Arguments”. In Copenhaver and Buras (2015): 193–212. Thomson, Arthur. (1964) “The Philosophy of J. F. Ferrier”, Philosophy 39: 46–62. Tuggy, Dale. (2004) “Reid’s Philosophy of Religion”. In Cuneo and Van Woudenberg (2004): 289–312. Ulman, H. Lewis. (ed.) (1990) The Minutes of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Van Cleve, James. (2004) “Reid’s Theory of Perception”. In Cuneo and Van Woudenberg (2004): 101–33. Van Cleve, James. (2011) “Reid on the Real Foundation of the Primary/Secondary Quality Distinction”. In Nolan (2011): 275–304. Van Cleve, James. (2015) Problems from Reid. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van der Kooi, Cornelius and de Bruijn, Jan. (eds.) (1999) Kuyper Reconsidered: Aspects of his Life and Work. Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij. Van Woudenberg, René. (1999) “Abraham Kuyper on Faith and Science”. In Van der Kooi and de Bruijn (1999): 147–57. Veitch, John. (1877) “Philosophy in the Scottish Universities (II)”, Mind 2: 207–34. Vernier, Paul. (1976) “Thomas Reid on the Foundations of Knowledge and his Answer to Skepticism”. In Barker and Beauchamp (1976): 14–24. Wellek, René. (1931) Immanuel Kant in England: 1793–1838. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Whitehead, A. N. (1929) Process and Reality. New York: Humanities Press. Williams, Bernard. (1981) “The Legacy of Greek Philosophy”. In Williams (2006): 3–48. Williams, Bernard. (2006) The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Winch, Peter. (1953) “The Notion of ‘Suggestion’ in Thomas Reid’s Theory of Perception”, Philosophical Quarterly 3: 327–41. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1953) Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1969) On Certainty, trans. Dennis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Harper. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. (2001) Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. (2006) “What Sort of Epistemological Realist was Thomas Reid?” Journal of Scottish Philosophy 4: 111–24. Wood, Paul. (1985) “The Hagiography of Common Sense: Dugald Stewart’s Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Reid”. In Holland (1985): 305–22. Wood, Paul. (1997) “ ‘The fittest man in the kingdom’: Thomas Reid and the Glasgow Chair of Moral Philosophy”, Hume Studies 23: 277–313. Wood, Paul. (2004) “Thomas Reid and the Culture of Science”. In Cuneo and Van Woudenberg (2004): 53–76. Wood, Paul. (2012) “Dugald Stewart’s Original Letter on James Beattie’s Essay on Truth, 1805–1806”, History of European Ideas 38: 103–21. Wood, Paul. (2015a) “Thomas Reid and the Common Sense School”. In Garrett and Harris (2015): 404–52.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Bibliography  221 Wood, Paul. (2015b) “Postscript: On Writing the History of Scottish Philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment”. In Garrett and Harris (2015): 453–68. Yaffe, Gideon. (2004) Manifest Activity: Thomas Reid’s Theory of Action. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Yaffe, Gideon and Nichols, Ryan. (2014) “Thomas Reid”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. N. Zalta. .

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Name Index Anderson, John  111n54 Aristotle  75–8, 105, 106, 111n50 Politics 53n60 Armstrong, D. M.  109n29 Arthur, Archibald  11 Audi, Robert  50n26 Austin, J. L.  1 Bain, Alexander  209n9 Beattie, James  29–38 abolitionism 36 career 25 An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism  29–38, 53n59, 53n60, 70n10, 109n26, 110n45 on Hume  30, 36–8 Kant on  9 “Of National Characters”  36–7 on perception  33, 35 on reason  30, 32–5 on scepticism  29, 32, 34 Berkeley, George on belief in God  168 Ferrier on  153, 158, 164n31, 168, 179–83 idealism  66–8, 141, 168 on intuitionism  140–6 Likeness Principle  108n17 on metaphysics  35 on perception  116, 140–3, 147 Principles of Human Knowledge  141, 147 on problem of external world  104, 105 on reason  95 Reid on  73, 74, 85, 94–9 on scepticism  73, 142, 147 Stewart and  113–16 and theory of ideas  104, 116 Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous 141 Blair, Hugh  70n5 Broadie, Alexander  50n9, 51n32, 54n69, 54n71, 209n7 Brown, Thomas  160, 203 Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind 159 Buffier, Claude  43 Traité des Premieres Vérités 54n72 Burke, Edmund  29 Burns, Robert  8, 21 Burnyeat, Myles  107n2

Caird, Edward  208 Cairns, Dr John, Examination of Ferrier’s Theory of Knowing and Being 204 Calvin, John, Institutes of Christian Religion  51n29, 51n30 Campbell, George  38–43 on consciousness  41–2 A Dissertation on Miracles 38–40 and Hume  24, 25 The Philosophy of Rhetoric  38, 40–3, 54n71 on reason  38 and scepticism  41, 42 Chalmers, Thomas  208n3 On the Miraculous and Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion 53n67 Chesterton, G. K.  46, 50n27 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor  196 Copenhaver, Rebecca  110n44, 111n48 Cousin, Victor  205 Davie, George Elder  163n31 DeRose, Keith  109n29 Descartes, René on belief in God  84 on consciousness  79, 80, 81, 83–4 and deus ex machina 85 Meditations on First Philosophy 84 on perception  84, 87, 92 and problem of external world  74–93 Reid on  16, 72 on representative realism  73, 86, 87 on secondary qualities  70n12 Devine, T. M.  208n3, 209n6 Ferrier, James Frederick  137–208 on belief in God  157, 158 on Berkeley  179–83 “Berkeley and Idealism”  151 career and works  137, 203–9 common sense realism  149–51 on consciousness  144, 152 “The Crisis of Modern Speculation”  151, 162n15, 163n28 on Hamilton  133, 138, 158–61, 188–90, 206 hypothetical realism  146–9 and idealism  4, 133, 147, 148–9, 153–4, 156–7, 160, 166–98 on ignorance  165–70, 184, 193, 197, 201n37 inconceivability principle  151–4

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

224  Name index Ferrier, James Frederick (cont.) Institutes of Metaphysic: The Theory of Knowing and Being  4, 137, 139, 161, 165–98 on intuitionism  140–6, 155, 157–8, 160, 192–3 on Kant  188–90 Lectures on Greek Philosophy  200n29, 202n48 Mander on  6n5 on metaphysics  144, 145, 154, 155, 157, 190, 193, 195, 204 on perception  140–51, 152–3, 154, 155–8, 168, 171–2, 174–5, 182, 191–3 Philosophical Works 4 ‘Primary Law or Condition of All Knowledge’  169, 170–83 on reason  139, 147, 148–9, 167, 171, 172, 175, 176, 186, 189, 192, 195, 196, 203, 206 on Reid  138–40, 146, 149–50, 154, 155, 156–61, 190–8, 205–6 “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense”  138, 149, 150–1 and scepticism  142, 148–9, 157, 158 Scottish Philosophy: The Old and the New 206–7 on unknowability and ignorance  183–8 Ferrier, Susan Edmonston  208n1 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb  177, 178 Fieser, James  51n42 Franklin, Benjamin  30 Fraser, Alexander Campbell  49n3, 162n6, 164n35, 198n3, 203–4 Biographia Philosophica: A Retrospect 205 The Philosophy of Theism 204 George III  29 Gerard, Alexander  24, 25, 52n43 Graham, Gordon  136n38, 136n40, 162n14, 164n37 Greco, John  109n30 Grote, John  199n8 Guyer, Paul  52n43 Hamilton, Sir William  47–8, 113–14, 120–33 ‘common sense philosopher’  48–9 on consciousness  121, 125, 126–32 Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform 110n42, 121, 123, 124, 130, 132, 201n36 Dissertations Historical, Critical, and Supplementary. In Thomas Reid: Philosophical Works, With Notes and Supplementary Dissertations  122, 129, 135n32 Ferrier on  133, 138, 158–61, 188–90, 206 and hypothetical realism  126, 128, 129–32 on ignorance  121, 122, 124 on intuitionism  126 and Kant  4, 48, 112n57, 114

Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic  48, 120, 121–2, 123, 124, 125, 126–31 and natural realism  125–9 on perception  48, 114, 125–32, 158, 159–60 “Philosophy of Perception”  159 on Reid  48, 114, 158–61 and relativity of knowledge  114, 120–4 and scepticism  48, 113, 130, 131 and Stewart  48 The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D. 138 Harris, James  52n53, 70n6 Hegel, G. W. F.  177, 178, 200n24 Heidegger, Martin  112n58 Hogg, James, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner 70n15 Hume, David on belief in miracles  16 on Berkeley  70n8 and Campbell  38–40 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 60 on An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism  29, 30 Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion  56, 57 Kant on  9 “Of National Characters”  36 on reason  61 Reid and  3, 21, 98 on scepticism  12, 24, 36, 39, 52n54, 53n56, 58, 73 on theory of ideas  97, 104 A Treatise of Human Nature 61 Wise Club and  24–5 Hutcheson, Francis, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, With Illustrations on the Moral Sense 53n58 Jackson, H. J.  196 Johnson, Samuel  29 Jones, Henry  208 Jouffroy, Theodore  159 Kames, Lord (Henry Home)  49, 56–69 “On the Authority of the Senses”  59 on belief in God  70n14 on common sense realism  57, 73 on consciousness  64, 66, 67 Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion  56, 57–68, 70n13, 71n17, 71n21, 106–7 on idealism  67–8 on ignorance  66 on metaphysics  69 on perception  57, 59–67, 69, 90 on perceptual realism  57, 59–67, 68, 69

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

Name index  225 on reason  58, 62, 63 Reid and  3, 50n10, 90, 106–7 on scepticism  58, 63–4, 67, 68 and theory of ideas  106 works 56 Kant, Immanuel on belief in God  135n27 on consciousness  177 Critique of Pure Reason  107, 135n27 Ferrier on  177, 178, 188–90, 196 Hamilton and  48, 114, 124, 125 on Priestley  9 Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics 8–9 on reason  9, 107, 196 on Reid  21 Keefe, Jennifer  162n2, 199n9, 201n38, 208n2, 209n4 Knox, John  51n36 Kuyper, Abraham  110n42 Laurie, Henry  52n53, 52n54, 71n18 Lehrer, Keith  108n13, 109n20, 198n2 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph  164n36 Locke, John  72, 73, 85, 87, 95, 111n53 Malebranche, Nicolas  72 Mander, W.J., British Idealism: A History 6n5 Mansel, Henry Longueville  134n21 Mayo, Bernard  7n6 McCosh, James  52n49, 134n15, 135n36, 209n10 The Scottish Philosophy  22, 23 McKitrick, Jennifer  111n52 Melville, Andrew  51n36 Mill, John Stuart  4, 7n7, 47, 134n21, 135n33, 135n36 An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy 132 Monboddo, Lord (James Burnett)  69n2 Antient Metaphysics 163n23 Mossner, E. C.  29, 30 Newton, Isaac  99 Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica 21 Nietzsche, Friedrich The Gay Science 51n35 The Will to Power 54n78 Norton, David Fate  70n4, 70n14 Oswald, James An Appeal To Common Sense In Behalf of Religion  26–9, 52n50 career 25 on intuitionism  28 Kant on  9 on perception  28 on primary and secondary truths  27–8, 29, 43

and Reid  51n42 and scepticism  26, 28–9 Plantinga, Alvin  108n11 Plantinga, Alvin and Wolterstorff, Nicholas  6n4 Plato  22, 187, 188 Theaetetus 176 Priestley, Joseph An Examination of Dr. Reid’s Inquiry into the human mind on the principles of common sense, Dr. Beattie’s Essay on the nature and immutability of truth, and Dr. Oswald’s Appeal to common sense in behalf of religion 54n74 Kant on  9 Reid, Thomas on belief in God  15–16, 50n24 and Church of Scotland  25 common sense realism  11–17, 72–4, 103–6 on consciousness  79, 80–3, 93, 94, 100 critical editions  6 on Descartes  85–94 epistemological egalitarianism  23 Essays on the Active Powers of Man  13–15, 19, 20, 89, 90, 92, 109n23 Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man  11–14, 16, 18–20, 22, 23, 24, 54n77, 74–83, 85–9, 91–2, 94–5, 96–101, 108n3, 108n4, 109n19, 109n28, 111n49 Ferrier on  190–8 Golden Rule  14–15 Hamilton and  125 on ignorance  103 influence of  113, 114 An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense  10, 11, 12, 17, 19, 20, 24, 53n57, 73, 74, 76, 78, 81, 85, 86, 88, 94, 98–9, 100, 101–2, 110n35, 111n50 on intuitionism  140–3, 191 Kant on  9 life and career  10–11 loss of popularity  207 on metaphysics  90, 116, 190, 191, 195 on perception  10, 17–19, 72, 73, 83–4, 87, 88, 93, 94, 96–104, 140–3, 145 on primary and secondary qualities  85, 86–7 and problem of the external world  72–107 on reason  17, 18–20, 23, 72, 77, 78, 79, 81, 88, 103 relative notion  86 on representative realism  73 on scepticism  11–21, 22, 73, 80, 81, 88–9, 91, 93, 94–9, 103, 104, 116 Stewart and  47 on theory of ideas  73, 75, 83, 84, 85, 87, 95–9, 104, 105, 106, 107, 116

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/08/2018, SPi

226  Name index Reynolds, Sir Joshua, ‘The Triumph of Truth, with the Portrait of a Gentleman’  29 Rickless, Samuel  162n8 Ross, Ian Simpson  70n3 Schelling, F. W. J.  177, 178 Schopenhauer, Arthur  6n2, 110n38 Seth Pringle-Pattison, Andrew  7n7, 135n22, 135n23, 201n41, 204, 208 Sher, Richard  52n52 Sher, Richard and Wood, Paul  134n9 Sidgwick, Henry  52n45, 52n49 Smith, Adam, Theory of Moral Sentiments 10 Sorley, W. R.  161n1 Sosa, Ernest  54n75 Spencer, Herbert  134n21 Spinoza, Baruch  4 Sprigge, T. L. S.  162n3 Stevenson, Robert Louis  1 Stewart, Dugald  113–20 career 47 The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart 102–3, 108n6, 108n12, 109n18, 110n39, 134n11 ‘common sense philosopher’  48–9 on consciousness  108n6, 117, 118 on Greek philosophy  108n2 and Hamilton  48 “The Idealism of Berkeley”  114, 115 on ignorance  102, 117, 118

on Kames  69n1 on Kant  49n1 on metaphysics  118 on perception  48, 117 on reason  118–20 and Reid  47 on scepticism  48, 115, 120 Stirling, John Hutchinson, The Secret of Hegel 208 Stout, G. F.  162n1, 163n29, 199n15 Strawson, P. F.  50n21 Turnbull, George  10 Van Cleve, James  110n40 van Woudenberg, René  110n42 Veitch, John  51n40, 55n82, 70n5, 209n10 Wellek, René  133n4 Whitehead, A. N.  162n4 Wilberforce, William  36 Wilson, John  203 Wittgenstein, Ludwig  92 Philosophical Investigations 152 Wood, Paul  50n11, 51n37, 52n44, 53n56, 133n1, 134n19 Yaffe, Gideon  49n5 Yaffe, Gideon and Nichols, Ryan  50n24

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

General Index Aberdeen  24–5, 26 Aberdeen Philosophical Society see Wise Club Aberdeen, University of  6 abolitionism 36 Absolute Existence  165–70, 176, 184, 187–8, 190–1, 193, 197 absolute idealism  126, 129, 130 all or none thesis  79–84, 106, 108n10, 109n22 Aristotelianism  74, 75, 76, 196 Blackwood’s Magazine 138 Bonjour, Laurence  108n8 Book of Job  20 Book of Micah  21 Calvinism 19 Cartesians  78, 80 consciousness Campbell 41–2 Descartes  79, 80, 81, 83–4 Duality of Consciousness  126–7, 129 Ferrier  144, 152 Hamilton  121, 125, 126–32 Kames  64, 66, 67 Kant 177 Reid  79, 80–3, 93, 94, 100 self-consciousness  169, 171–4, 179–82 Stewart  108n6, 117, 118 Stout 199n15 cosmothetic idealism  126, 160 Disruption, The  208n3 descriptive metaphysics  50n21, 106 Duality of Consciousness  126–7, 129 Edinburgh 47 Edinburgh Review 159 Edinburgh, University of  137 Edinburgh University Press  6 epistemic asymmetry thesis  93, 108n13, 109n27, 112n56 epistemological egalitarianism  23–4, 110n43, 196 epistemological scepticism  11, 13, 158 Glasgow, University of  10, 11 God, belief in existence of Berkeley and  168 Descartes and  84 Ferrier on  157, 158 Kames and  70n14 Kant and  135n27

Reid and  15–16, 50n24 religious scepticism and  12, 42 hypothetical realism  126, 128, 129–32, 146–9, 159, 160 idealism Berkeley on  66, 67–8, 95, 114, 116, 141, 204 British 209n12 cosmothetic  126, 160 establishment of  207, 208 Ferrier on  4, 133, 147, 148–9, 153–4, 156–7, 160, 166–98 German  136n39, 178, 179 Hamilton on  114, 126, 127, 129, 130 Kames on  67–8 Mander on  6n5 ignorance Ferrier on  165–70, 184, 193, 197, 201n37 Hamilton on  121, 122, 124 Kames on  66 Reid on  103 Stewart on  102, 117, 118 immediate object thesis  64–7, 69 inconceivability principle  151–4 intuitionism Ferrier on  140–6, 155, 157–8, 160, 192–3 Hamilton on  126 Oswald on  28 Reid on  143, 191 King’s College, Aberdeen  10, 24, 25 knowledge, relativity of  114, 120–4 Likeness Principle  108n17 Marischal College, Aberdeen  10, 24, 25 memory  33, 39, 42–3, 81, 119 metaphysical realism  146, 190, 191 metaphysical scepticism  11, 14 metaphysics Beattie on  35 descriptive  50n21, 106 Ferrier on  144, 145, 154, 155, 157, 190, 193, 195, 204 Kames on  69 Reid on  90, 116, 190, 191, 195 revisionary  50n21, 98, 194 Stewart on  118 miracles  12, 16, 38–40, 130 moral scepticism  11, 12, 15

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/06/2018, SPi

228  General index natural inferiority thesis  36–7 New Machar  10 Oxford University  29 perception Aristotelians and  74 Beattie on  33, 35 Berkeley on  116, 140–3, 147 Descartes on  84, 87, 92 Ferrier on  140–6, 148–51, 152–3, 154, 155–8, 168, 171–2, 174–5, 182, 191–3 Hamilton on  48, 114, 125–32, 158, 159–60 Kames on  57, 59–67, 69, 90 Oswald on  28 Peripatetics and  74 Reid on  10, 17–19, 72, 73, 83–4, 87, 88, 93, 94, 96–7, 98, 99–103, 104, 140–3 Stewart on  48, 117 perceptual realism  57, 59–67, 68, 69 perceptual reliability thesis  59–67, 69 Peripatetic school of philosophy  74, 75, 76, 78 Platonism  196, 197 praeambula fidei 26 primary truths  27, 28, 29, 43 radical scepticism  20, 29, 116 rational perception  28 rationalism  4, 28, 168, 169 reason Beattie on  30, 32–5 Berkeley on  95 Campbell on  38 Ferrier on  139, 147, 148–9, 167, 171, 172, 175, 176, 186, 189, 192, 195, 196, 203, 206 Hume on  61 Kames on  58, 62, 63 Kant on  9, 107, 196 Reid on  17, 18–20, 23, 72, 77, 78, 79, 81, 88, 103 scepticism and  11, 17, 18, 81 Stewart on  118–20 religious scepticism  11, 12, 158 representationism  83, 140–9, 156, 157, 159–60, 192

representative realism  73, 86, 87, 94, 95, 146, 147 resemblance criterion  85 revisionary metaphysics  50n21, 98, 194 scepticism Beattie on  29, 32, 34 Berkeley on  142, 147 Campbell on  41, 42 common sense and  25 epistemological  11, 13, 158 Ferrier on  142, 148–9, 157, 158 Hamilton on  48, 113, 130, 131 Hume on  24, 36, 39, 52n54, 53n56, 58, 73 Kames on  58, 63–4, 67, 68 metaphysical  11, 14 moral  11, 12, 15 Oswald on  26, 28–9 radical  20, 29, 116 Reid on  11–16, 17, 18–20, 22, 73, 80, 81, 88–9, 91, 93, 94–9, 103, 104, 116 religious  12, 42 Stewart on  48, 115, 120 Scottish school of common sense philosophy  8–10, 16, 24–5, 43–6 secondary truths  27 self-consciousness  169, 171–4, 179–82 St Andrews, University of  137 theory of ideas Berkeley on  104, 116 Hume on  97, 104 Kames on  106 Reid on  73, 75, 83, 84, 85, 87, 95–9, 104, 105, 106, 107, 116 unknowability  95, 124, 180–1, 183, 185, 189–90, 197 ‘vulgar’, the  21, 22, 45, 72, 85, 86, 106, 139, 142 Westminster Confession of Faith 21 Wise Club (Aberdeen Philosophical Society)  10, 24–5, 40