Thomas Reid

Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids which rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are ‘stored’ only superpositionally, and are reconstructed rather than reproduced. Both models depart from static archival metaphors by employing distributed representation, which brings interference and confusion between memory traces. Both raise urgent issues about control of the personal past, and about relations between self and body.

The book’s historical argument is anchored by a reinterpretation of Descartes’ dynamic physiology of memory and strange philosophy of the body. English critics of Descartes’ view of memories as motions complained that mechanistic neurophilosophy could not guarantee order in memory, and instead sought techniques for controlling the brain. In a new account of 18th-century philosophers’ fears of confusion in remembering, the author demonstrates the role of bizarre body fluids in moral physiology, as philosophers from Locke to Reid and Coleridge struggled to control their own innards and impose cognitive discipline on ‘the phantasmal chaos of association’. Finally, in a defence of connectionism against Jerry Fodor and against phenomenological and Wittgensteinian critics of passive mental representations, the author shows how problems of the self are implicated in contemporary sciences of mind. The book is an experiment in historical cognitive science, based on a belief that the interdisciplinary study of memory can exemplify the simultaneous attention to brain, body, and culture towards which psychological sciences must aim.

CONTENTS (Download at http://www.johnsutton.net/PhilosophyandMemoryTraces.htm)
1 Introduction: traces, brains, and history
                  Appendix: memory and connectionism

Part I Animal spirits and memory traces
Introduction to Part I: Animal Spirits and Memory Traces
2 Wriggle-work: the quick and nimble animal spirits
3 Memory and 'the Cartesian philosophy of the brain'
                  Appendix 1: nerves, spirits, and traces in Descartes
                  Appendix 2: Malebranche on memory

Part II Inner discipline
Introduction to Part II: Inner Discipline
4 Spirit sciences, memory motions
5 Cognition, chaos, and control in English responses to Descartes' theory of memory
6 Local and distributed representations
7 John Locke and the neurophilosophy of self
                  Appendix: memory and self in Essay II.27
8 The puzzle of survival
9 Spirits, body, and self
10 The puzzle of elimination

Part III 'The phantasmal chaos of association'
Introduction to Part III: 'The phantasmal chaos of association'
11 Fodor, connectionism, and cognitive discipline
12 Associationism and neo-associationism
13 Hartley's distributed model of memory
14 Attacks on neurophilosophy: Reid and Coleridge

Part IV Connectionism and the philosophy of memory
Introduction to Part IV: connectionism and the philosophy of memory
15 Representations, realism, and history
16 Attacks on traces
17 Order, confusion, remembering

References
Index

This paper investigates the nature of reality by looking at the philosophical debate between realism and idealism and at scientific investigations in quantum physics and at recent studies of animal senses, neurology and cognitive psychology. The concept of perceptual relativity is examined and this involves looking at sense perception in other animals and various examples of perceptual relativity in science. It will be concluded that the universe is observer dependent and that there is no reality independent of the observer, which is knowable to the observer. The paper concludes by an investigation of what an observer dependent universe would be like and that recognition of an observer dependent world would lead to a more open minded and tolerant world.

Alvin Plantinga, Analitik Felsefe düşüncesi içinde yetişmiş ve bu gelenek içinde teistik din felsefesinin oluşumuna katkıda bulunmuş bir filozoftur. Ayrıca teizmin savunusu için yaptığı çalışmalarla çeşitli üniversitelerden aldığı onur ödülleri ve 2017 yılında kazandığı Templeton Prize ödülüyle haklı bir üne kavuşmuş bir şahsiyettir.  Bu çalışmayı yapmamızda ki en önemli amaç; Plantinga’nın dini epistemoloji üzerine yaptığı çalışmaları analiz edip, bu düşüncelerinin ardalanına dair bir tespitte bulunmaktır. Bu çalışmada yararlandığımız kaynaklar daha çok Thomas Reid’in ve John Calvin’in birinci el kaynakları oldu. Ayrıca onlar üzerine yazılmış bilimsel çalışmalara da atıfta bulunduk. Öte yandan A. Plantinga’nın Nicholas Wolterstorff ile birlikte kaleme aldığı “Faith and Rationality” adlı eser de reform epistemolojisini anlamamız açısından son derece önemliydi. Ayrıca, A. Plantinga üzerine ülkemiz de yapılmış çalışmalara baktığımız da, bu alanda yapılmış ilk çalışmalardan olan Doç. Dr. Ferhat Akdemir’in “Alvin Plantinga ve Analitik Din Felsefesi” isimli eserde araştırmamıza yön göstermesi ve kaynak taramamızı kolaylaştırması açısından son derece önemli bir diğer eserdir. Biz bu çalışmamızda Plantinga’nın epistemolojik ve teolojik fikirlerinin oluşumunda büyük etkisi olan Thomas Reid’in Sağduyu Epistemolojisi ve John Calvin’in Reform Teolojisi hakkında bilgiler vermeye çalıştık. Nitekim Plantinga’yı ve onun fikirlerini anlayabilmek için onun ardalanına bakmamız gerekmekteydi. Öte yandan ilk bölümde sunduğumuz Plantinga’nın biyografisi de onun aldığı eğitim ve yetiştiği ortamı görmemiz açısından önemliydi.

The role of epistemology in philosophy of religion has transformed the subdiscipline by diverting questions away from traditional metaphysical issues and toward concerns about justification and warrant. Leaders responsible for these changes, including Plantinga, Alston and Draper, use methods and arguments from Scottish Enlightenment figures. In general theists use and cite techniques pioneered by Reid and non-theists use and cite techniques pioneered by Hume, a split reduplicated among cognitive scientists of religion, with Justin Barrett and Scott Atran respectively framing their results in Reid’s and in Hume’s language and argument. This state of affairs sets our agenda. First we identify Reid’s use first in the epistemology of religion by Alston and Plantinga, and second in the cognitive science of religion by Barrett and Kelly Clark. We turn to Reid’s texts in an effort to assess the interpretations and extrapolations of Reid given by participants in these debates. The answers to our research questions shed light on what Reid would believe today, were he apprised of the latest research in epistemology of religion and in the cognitive science of religion, which should be of interest to modern schoolmen.

A paper given at the 2014 BSHP conference on The Common Sense Philosophy. Argues that relations between Hume and his common sense critics (Kames, Reid, Campbell, Beattie) were more complex and interesting than generally assumed. Focusses in particular on the first Enquiry as a response to the kind of criticism that the common sense philosophers tended to make of Hume's scepticism. And argues that the first Enquiry sees Hume make a decisive and self-conscious shift to a peculiarly modern form of philosophical scepticism.

Looking back at the early thought of parliamentary reform pioneer Major John Cartwright (1740-1824) in an essay of 1812, Samuel Taylor Coleridge contended that no-one could ‘have more nakedly or emphatically identified the foundations of Government in the concrete with those of religion and morality in the abstract.’

Indeed, Cartwright himself repeatedly stated that moral and religious considerations formed the fundamental basis of his political perspective. From his early statement, made in a letter of 1775, that ‘the principles on which politics are built, are the principles of reason, morality, and religion, applied to the concerns of large communities,’ he repeatedly asserted, throughout his career, that all temporal ‘rules of prudence and policy’ depended for their validity upon their being ‘strictly just and perfectly consonant with morality and religion.’

It is the fundamental contention of this article that Cartwright’s ideas are only comprehensible if we take these statements seriously and place his arguments within the context of eighteenth-century debates about the nature of moral knowledge, as well as considering his thought in the light of the broad Dissenting and Anglican latitudinarian tradition of rational religion.

Arendt’s concept of common sense has generally been misunderstood. It
is almost exclusively interpreted in light of Kant’s common sense, either as an
espousal of the latter or as a distortion of it. This narrow reading of Arendtian
common sense has led to a problem, as her uses of the concept do not always fit
its Kantian understanding. This has led to accusing her of being inconsistent, or as
holding on to several, incompatible concepts of common sense.
This article argues that Arendt has one complex concept of common sense, used
more or less consistently throughout her writings. Rather than understanding
Arendt’s common sense in light of Kant’s, as most readers do, I demonstrate its
links to Aristotle and to the eighteenth-century Scottish school of common sense.
By doing so I turn attention to a difficulty that has thus far not been adequately
treated, namely the fact that Arendt presents two, allegedly contradictory pictures
of the relation between common sense on the one hand and science and philosophy
on the other: a picture in which science and philosophy depend upon common
sense, versus one in which they find themselves in a conflict that eventually
leads to the loss or demise of common sense. The last part of the article suggests a
way to settle the tension between these two pictures, by understanding the political
significance Arendt ascribes to them as two distinct yet complementary ways of
approaching the modern phenomenon of totalitarianism.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to highlight the historical contribution of Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) to the debate over temporal consciousness and in particular to the evolution of the idea of the specious present. This objective is motivated by the fact that only parts of Reid’s analysis of temporal experience are discussed nowadays. In particular, while Reid’s argument concerning the instantaneous nature of perception is often cited, its metaphysical context is not fully appreciated. My point of departure is William James’ own reference to Reid, which occurs in the course of formulating the idea of the specious present in his Principles of Psychology (1890). James’ comment invites a broader perspective on Reid’s analysis since it brings to the fore the preeminence of the idea of duration. It is this preeminence and the experiential immediacy which it implies, that explain Reid’s historical role in the formation of the idea of the specious present.

The paper argues against Hume's account of testimony, and claims that trust in testimony is an autonomous source of knowledge, when the testimony believed is an honest report of something known by the person asserting it. Such trust is the exercise of an intellectual virtue.

In 1792 Dugald Stewart published Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. In its section on abstraction he declared himself to be a nominalist. Although a few scholars have made brief reference to this position, no sustained attention has been given to the central role that it played within Stewart's early philosophy of mind. It is therefore the purpose of this essay to unpack Stewart's nominalism and the intellectual context that fostered it. In the first three sections I aver that his nominalism emanated from his belief that objects of the mind--qualities, ideas and words--were signs that bore no necessary relation to the external objects that they were meant to represent. More specifically, it was these signs that were arranged into systems of thought by the 'operations of the mind'. The next three sections suggest that his treatment of words as signs most probably originated in his views on language and medicine and that his nominalistic philosophy of mind could also be extended to systems that sought to classify the natural world. I conclude by suggesting several avenues of enquiry that could be pursued by future scholars interested in excavating Stewart's thought.

Three widespread assumptions about the human senses are challenged. These are that we have five senses, that they function independently, and, for the purposes of theorising perception, that vision can serve as a typical sense. These assumptions underlie most philosophical treatments of the senses in epistemology and the philosophy of perception, but they are mistaken.
Contemporary attempts to count senses generally use some combination of four criteria based on sensations, organs, stimulus and behaviour. I examine these criteria and show them to be separately insufficient and jointly incoherent. In particular, the pluralism of physical theory and difficulties with dividing primary from secondary qualities complicate counting according to stimulus, while the other criteria advise large but indefinite counts.
I consider recent proposals defending the traditional count of five based on language use, proprioceptive awareness, and pragmatic utility, and reject them all. The traditional count is best explained on the basis of differences in sensory experience, coupled with easily identified organs, together with a mistaken tendency to separate the perceiver from the world.
Rather than attempting a more critically informed count, I argue that attempts to count the senses are currently based on false presuppositions regarding the individuation of the senses. I show that the traditional sense modalities are complex and do not function separately. This is achieved by considering the sense of balance, whereby the perceiver participates in dynamical relations. Balance is implicit in all perceiving.
Assumptions that cause difficulties in counting the senses are traced to a preoccupation with vision, which is usually treated as a single sense only instrumentally controlled by the perceiver. I point out that understanding seeing has historically been a misguided effort to explain what is seen on the basis of two-dimensional retinal images and a separation of perception from action.
By noting the dependence of seeing on looking, I argue that seeing has been misrepresented in philosophical accounts of perception. What follows is that some of the important problems of epistemology have arisen from attempts to base theories of perception on a false picture of seeing. The philosophical views of Thomas Reid are used throughout to evaluate the modern debates and place them in a wider historical context.

pénultième version -article à paraître dans Philosophia Scientiae) C'est un honneur et une joie pour moi d'être invité à discuter les écrits d'un philosophe qui a eu sur l'évolution de mes réflexions une telle influence, tant au niveau de ses thèses qu'au niveau de la conception de la tâche philosophique. Chacun sait l'importance de l'oeuvre de Pascal Engel au niveau académique international. Ce qui me frappe, personnellement, c'est une qualité philosophique qui n'est pas si fréquente parmi les auteurs de première importance -à savoir, un sens du rôle de l'activité philosophique dans nos sociétés. Engel permet d'aller au-delà de l'alternative désespérante entre une philosophie comme pur jeu intellectuel entre spécialistes et à l'extrême inverse une « philo » populaire qui croit avoir une signification sociale parce qu'elle s'adresse à monsieur tout le monde, mais pour ne lui livrer que du « prêt à philosopher », ou des maximes de vie façon « fortune cookies ». Engel rappelle, et démontre par ses écrits, que le philosophe a un rôle véritable, qui est de promouvoir et développer, notamment chez les intellectuels (ou les « clercs »), le sens de la rationalité et la valeur de la recherche de la vérité. D'un point de vue théorique, Engel a notoirement défendu une théorie de la vérité comme valeur, et une théorie des normes épistémiques en général. Mais il a également mis en pratique cet attachement aux valeurs épistémiques par une activité infatigable de discussion et de critique de ceux, parmi ses contemporains, qui s'éloignent de ces valeurs ou les négligent. Il est pourtant si facile -tant de philosophes le font, et de tous bords -de pratiquer le type de philosophie que l'on préfère sans se soucier de ce qu'écrivent les autres écoles ; mais Engel a toujours montré une disposition remarquable à entrer en dialogue constructif avec ses adversaires pour inviter, voire provoquer, à la rationalité ceux qui seraient trop heureux de pouvoir tranquillement « déraisonner en rond ». A ce titre, Engel offre un exemple dont j'espère que je saurai m'inspirer.

We commonly think of memories as about the past, and in particular, about past experiences. But John Locke and Thomas Reid present accounts of memory that are very different from this common picture. Locke presents remembering as an activity that may be, but need not be, about the past. His remembering includes recollection, but also contemplation, attention, reverie, daydreaming, and study. Remembering needs past experience because it needs ideas that have been already been formed. But remembering is not directed at the past or mainly about the past. Remembering renews an acquaintance with things already apprehended. But the acquaintance has uses not tied to the past: contemplating a problem, navigating an environment, attending to a story, or planning for the future. Like Locke, Reid holds that remembering renews acquaintance with things already apprehended. For both philosophers, then, remembering requires a past which, for Locke, it need not address. Both Reid and Locke see remembering as releasing us from a persistent specious present that would keep the world always new, yet leave it always alien. Without remembering, the present would stay incomprehensible and the future would remain unimaginable. Remembering makes the world less strange, reestablishing connections to things already experienced, helping make sense of the present, and enabling a vision of the future.

I challenge the primary interpretation of Reid’s epistemology of perception, the most familiar and most important aspect of Reid’s work. Using both his published and unpublished work, I argue Reid holds that the bulk of perceptual knowledge is, in a limited sense, inferential. This runs counter to the dominant interpretation of his epistemology of perception according to which perceptual knowledge is direct and non-inferential. After motivating the study of Reid’s theory of perceptual knowledge, I explain the dominant interpretation. I then argue that there is a paucity of textual and philosophical evidence in its favor, and that there is an abundance of textual evidence against it. In explaining my interpretation, I draw from Reid’s account of perceptual error, his treatment of skepticism and his use of a distinction between original and acquired perception. I explain this distinction in considerable detail, then develop its importance for an analysis of the role of reasoning within perceptual events. Reid’s view is nuanced and prescient in ways that assist him in fending off criticisms that render the dominant view implausible. Lastly, I bring forward and nullify two objections to my interpretation.

This is the English version of a paper published in French as 'Les Lumières Écossaises et le roman philosophique de Descartes', in Y. Senderowicz, Y. Wahl eds, Descartes: Reception and Disenchantment, Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 2000, pp. 65-88.
The paper reconstructs the reception of Descartes's work by Scottish eighteenth-century philosophers. The Scots' image of Descartes was a by-product of a scientific controversy; philosophical arguments were brought into the picture more as implications than the primary focus of interest. As soon as Cartesian physics withered away as a real alternative to Newtonian physics, only the philosophical arguments were left, with no memory of the context out of which they originated, and the focus of the discussion shifted from physics to the philosophy of mind and the theory of knowledge.

Thomas Reid's distinction between original and acquired perception is not merely metaphysical; it has psychological and phenomenological stories to tell. Psychologically, acquired perception provides increased sensitivity to features in the environment. Phenomenologically, Reid's theory resists the notion that original perception is exhaustive of perceptual experience. James Van Cleve has argued that most cases acquired perception do not count as perception and so do not pose a threat to Reid's direct realism. I argue that acquired perception is genuine perception and as direct as original perception. Perception is grounded in a productive and developing relationship between the mind and world.

Thomas Reid describes visible figure as both a ‘real and external object to the eye’ and as the ‘immediate object’ of sight. This generates an apparent challenge to Reid’s direct realism since if the ‘immediate’ object of sight is also its direct object, then visual perception must be perceptually indirect due to the role of visible figure as a perceptual intermediary. I argue that this apparent conflict within Reid’s account may be reconciled by understanding visible figure as a relational entity comprised of a set of objective relations that hold between an object’s visible surfaces and a point of view. On this view, once an ambiguity concerning his use of the term ‘object’ is resolved, Reid’s treatment of visual perception can be seen to be both epistemically and perceptually direct, as well as consistent both with his account of other sense modalities and the doctrine of signs.

Skeptisisme terhadap dunia eksternal dan skeptisisme epistemik merupakan dua buah posisi yang tidak dapat dipertahankan. Implikasi dari skeptisisme epistemik adalah R, sebagai proposisi bahwa kemampuan kognitif (​cognitive faculties​) manusia dapat diandalkan, tidak dapat dimengerti, atau inscrutable​, sehingga seorang skeptis akan meragukan segala sesuatu, dan ia, seharusnya, akan bingung terhadap seluruh keraguan dan, juga, keyakinan filosofisnya. Dalam mengatasi skeptisisme terhadap dunia eksternal, seorang filsuf analitik, G. E Moore menawarkan cara memandang yang berbeda terhadap realitas: bahwa manusia mengetahui keberadaan dari dunia eksternal bukan dengan membuktikannya melalui proposisi, melainkan dengan, secara langsung, mempersepsikannya. Sedangkan, implikasi dari skeptisisme epistemik, bahwa tingkat probabilitas yang rendah dari R, dapat diatasi dengan mengkombinasikan filsafat pikiran praktis (​common sense philosophy​) dari Thomas Reid dan G. E Moore: kepercayaan terhadap keandalan dari kemampuan kognitif adalah prinsip yang pertama (​the first principle​).

The experience of divine presence is compelling.  Yet it immediately confronts the Epistemology of Doubt that has dominated modern philosophy since Descartes.  Among its many limitations, this tradition is ill-equipped to understand divine self-presentation.  But an alternative tradition can be conceived.  Drawing on Thomas Reid and G.E. Moore, as well as other thinkers, we can envision an Epistemics of Trust.  This is not so much a theory (like those offered by Alston and Plantinga) as a research program, in the sense expounded by Imre Lakatos, that would address a wide range of knowings.  It is here applied to two experiences of divine presence, Moses' and the author's own.  The analysis illuminates not only the experiences, but the nature of the divine reality presenting itself.

Abstract :
Les relations intentionnelles posent une difficulté que l’on peut formuler sous la forme d’un trilemme. Les trois thèses qui suivent sont incompatibles quoique chacune semble plausible :

(1) Une relation intentionnelle (comme penser, chercher, aimer) est une relation entre un sujet et la chose visée par cette relation. (Par exemple, si je cherche la tour Eiffel, il y a une relation entre moi et la Tour Eiffel.)
(2) Il n’y a de relation que si les relatés existent.
(3) Il arrive que la chose visée par une relation intentionnelle n’existe pas. (Par exemple, je peux penser à une montagne d’or.)

On verra que la thèse qui, du point de vue du sens commun, semble la moins coûteuse à rejeter, est (2). Je montrerai que rejeter (2) tout en conservant (1) et (3) conduit à une forme de meinongianisme que j’appellerai meinongianisme de sens commun (car il se présente comme la solution du sens commun au trilemme de l’intentionnalité). Toutefois, je montrerai que, malgré son attrait apparent, cette approche est en fait intenable : rejeter (2) ne permet pas de maintenir (1). On pourrait alors être tenté par une autre solution du trilemme : rejeter (1) tout en conservant (2) et (3). Je montrerai là aussi les limites de cette approche et plaiderai finalement pour une solution mixte : rejeter à la fois (1) et (2), ce qui combine les avantages des deux solutions et mène à une forme de meinongianisme frégéen (notamment défendu par Edward Zalta) où l'on distingue deux types d'objets, les objets ordinaires et les objets conceptuels, ces derniers jouant le rôle de relata pour les relations intentionnelles et constituant un domaine d'objets meinongiens.

A thesis submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree at the School of Philosophy and Human Science of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and at the Doctoral School of Philosophy of the Université Paris 1  Panthéon-Sorbonne.

This thesis aims to discuss Thomas Reid’s (1710-1796) theory of the first principles of knowledge, more particularly, the first principles of philosophy of mind, morals, and politics. In the first chapter, I discuss Reid’s foundationalist commitments in philosophy of mind, morals, and politics. I argue that he is clearly a foundationalist about speculative and moral knowledge, but it is not clear if he keeps foundationalist commitments with regard to political knowledge – the first principles of politics are not self-evident beliefs: they are not justified from the start and, therefore, they do not have what is needed for being basic beliefs in a foundationalist view of the structure of knowledge. In the second chapter, I discuss Reid’s understanding of the sources of speculative, moral and political knowledge, namely, common sense and knowledge of mankind. I argue that while philosophy of mind and morals are based upon the first principles of common sense – immediate and irresistible beliefs due to the original constitution of mind, politics is based upon first principles of the knowledge of mankind – beliefs that are due to a mixture of the sagacity and the experience of the political scientist who lives among other human beings in a political society. In the third chapter, I try to explain Reid’s comprehension on the first principles of philosophy of mind, morals, and politics. I try to explain what a first principle of knowledge is, how to understand the distinction between the principles of contingent and necessary truths and what the means we have to identify the first principles of knowledge are. The fourth and last chapter is entirely dedicated to common sense. More particularly, I discuss how Reid defends the first principles of common sense from the skeptical attack.

In his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Thomas Reid draws an analogy between his notion of the self and Leibniz’s notion of a monad. Reid formulates this analogy in order to highlight what he considers to be the essential feature of the self: its unified and indivisible structure. This paper considers Reid’s analogy in the specific context of the diachronic aspect of substantial unity. Its focus is specifically on the role that the idea of continuity plays in establishing the unity and indivisibility of the entities in question (viz., the self and the monad). As part of the ongoing debate over Leibniz’s mature metaphysics of substance, this paper further highlights the positive implication of Reid’s analysis of the self —which is usually viewed as a critical reaction to Locke and Hume—and its place within the early modern debate over the nature of substantial unity.

Introduction to a section comprising seventeen articles on skepticism in the modern world. Attention is given to historical and cultural background that shaped, and was shaped by, skepticism, including globalization, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science.

Having previously posed the question of Reid's intellectual identity, in this paper I address this issue from the somewhat different perspective of early modern maps of learning in the hope that this approach will enable us to grasp more fully both Reid's conceptualization of the role of the philosopher and the implications of his conception for the historical interpretation of his career and writings.

This presentation takes the form of a historical collage in order to illustrate some important and, I think, far-reaching observations about the representation and theorisation of space. As a city, Aberdeen has made its own unique but largely unacknowledged contributions to this subject. For this reason, I will limit my principal reference points to several figures with close biographical connections to the city with the intention of exemplifying the scope and relevance of my research even within a very restricted geographical context. My account begins with the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Reid who was strongly opposed to the Idealism of his more famous contemporary, David Hume. This is followed by an outline of the physicist James Clerk Maxwell's contribution to the invention of colour photography which dovetails into a discussion of the work of Aberdeen born philosopher Dominic McIver Lopes, who in a paper from 2003, claims: " When we look at photographs we literally see the objects that they are of. " If this is true, then when someone looks at a photograph of their grandmother, they literally see their grandmother. With the help of the work of Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Aberdeen University, Jan Deregowski, I aim to show that Lopes' theory, and the philosophical Idealism that underlies it, is founded on various misconceptions about resemblances and the nature of illusion. The implications of this research both for theories of representation and for educational practice will also be sketched in outline.

Contrary to the widespread view that Reid and Hume agree that reason, alone, is inert, I argue that they disagree on this point. Both accept that reason plays a role in forming moral sentiments, and that affections are components of moral evaluations. However, I show that for Reid moral evaluations (comprised of moral judgments and moral affections) are different from moral motives (which are not comprised of affections). Moral motives for Reid are mind-independent states of affairs that are grasped by reason and do not require affections to influence human beings. Reid hence holds a non-humean theory in which reason, alone, is not inert.

Some interpret Reid’s notion of a moral sense as merely analogical. Others understand it as a species of acquired perception. To understand Reid’s account of the moral sense,wemust drawfromhis theory of perception and his theory of
aesthetic experience, each of which illuminate the nature and operation of the moral faculty. I argue that, on Reid’s view, the moral faculty is neither affective nor rational, but representational. It is a discrete, basic, capacity for representing the real moral properties of humans and human conduct.

The notion of common sense has been widely used in everyday speech and had its place within numerous philosophical doctrines in the past. One of the most comprehensive analysis of common sense was done by Thomas Reid. The problem is that Reid’s characteristics of common sense very often differ and that is why they are in most cases confusing. The aim of this paper is to organize Reid’s definitions of common sense and to show where we can find inconsistencies. Emphasis will be placed on distinction between common sense and principles of common sense and if Reid’s doctrine of common sense serves its purpose – to be an argument against the scepticism of David Hume.

Reid's notion of visible figure threatens to wreak havoc upon his direct theory of perception, according to which we immediately perceive objects or qualities external to our minds. This is because visible figure seems to stand as a perceived intermediary between our eyes and objects. I show that this tension can be resolved by developing Reid's concept of visible figure. I distinguish two stages of perceptual events, a physical and a mental stage, and argue that visible figure is a necessary aspect of the physical stage of perception. There are three types of visible figure: geometrical, seen and perceived. After explaining this, I develop several desiderata on seen visible figure. Seen visible figure, I argue, is a relational property between objects and eyes, which is interderivable with real (or tangible) figure. Such an account improves upon previous interpretations of visible figure and is consistent with common interpretations of Reid's direct theory of perception. In addition, this account allows Reid to circumvent Hume's perceptual relativity argument according to which we only perceive ideas or images visually.

The Yearbook mirrors the annual activities of staff and visiting fellows of the Maimonides Centre and reports on symposia, workshops, and lectures taking place at the Centre. Although aimed at a wider audience, the yearbook also contains academic articles and book reviews on scepticism in Judaism and scepticism in general. Staff, visiting fellows, and other international scholars are invited to contribute.  Only frontmatter and content are uploaded. The entire volume is available as open access, follow the link:
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Reid's unusual primary/secondary quality distinction is drawn along epistemic lines. Reid takes an epistemic turn because of Locke's failure to draw a metaphysical distinction. Secondary qualities differ from primary qualities in virtue of the fact that we acquire notions of secondary qualities via the mediation of sensations. Primary qualities require no such mediation. In one respect, the analysis I set out renders qualities relative to agents. I address whether Reid advocates a dispositional theory of secondary qualities, whether the phenomenology of color underlying Reid's theory is tenable, and whether Reid's distinction coheres well with his theory of perceptual knowledge.

This is a paper I presented at the conference 'Practicing Philosophy in Lebanon: Authors, Texts, Trends', UNESCO World Philosophy Day Colloquium, in 2013 at the American University of Beirut, now published in the conference proceedings. It represents a line of research that I planned to pursue further at the time but have since suspended in favour of others.