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Reid's Abstract of His 'Inquiry Into the Human Mind Based on The NOTES CHAPTER I {1} Reid's abstract of his 'Inquiry into the Human Mind based on the principles of Common Sense' is presented in a printed version by David Fate Norton on pp.12S-131 of 'Thomas Reid: Critical Interpretations' edited by Stephen Barker and Tom Beauchamp under the title 'Reid's Abstract of the Inquiry into the Human Mind'. The abstract is a quite invaluable presentation of one main theme of the Inquiry in which notions or conceptions are distinguished from sensations and copies of sensations, and the question about the origin of notions is clearly set out and a sober assessment given of the prospects of arriving ay a clear answer to it. In his important paper 'David Hume on Thomas Reid's An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles ofCommon Sense: A New Letter to Hugh Blair from July 1762' (Wood [1]) Paul Wood persuasively argues that the abstract was written in response to the newly discovered letter of Hume to Hugh Blair that is the central concern of Wood's paper. The importance of that letter to Reid scholars thus needs no further emphasis, even though there are plenty other ways in which it is important besides being the spur to Reid's writing of the abstract. {2} See his [1] p.186. A thought of a scarlet object of course might not be a thought of such an object as a scarlet one. But in any case the more an impression of a scarlet object resembles the idea of one the harder it is for Hume to insist that the distinction between feeling and thinking is readily to be perceived. {3} I make the perhaps rash presumption that for Hume an object of thought, whatever can be thought of, must, when it is thought of, appear to the mind. But then since Hume goes on to claim that everything which appears to the mind is a perception that narrows the possible status of objects of thought right down to perceptions, that is, impressions or ideas. {4} Hume's words are: IIIf I comprehend the author's doctrine, which, I own, I can hitherto but imperfectly, it leads us back to innate ideas II . {S} Note the way the question is put as if constituting a response to Hume's accusation that Reid is forced to accept an innateness doctrine for some ideas. As far as I am aware this is the only sort of response Reid makes to this kind of criticism; moreover it is surely far from being inapposite even though it does not entirely rule out innateness as a causal factor. NOTES 245 {6} Thus Quine argues in his [8] that once one has despaired of translating scientific statements into observational and set-theoretic terms and accepted the attendant bankruptcy of Cartesian epistemology there is still room for a naturalised epistemology. See especially p.82. {7} Hume complains in the letter to Hugh Blair that Reid ignores such evidence as this presented by himself on behalf of the view that " all ideas are cop'yd from impressions". {8} See Popper [1], especially pp,44-46. {9} Contrast lohn Wright's [2]. There he argues in effect that Hume is denying that we have notions in such cases even though to all appearances we do. Thus such terms as 'cause' serve in some sense as incomplete symbols in Hume's philosophy. {to} Here I am conscious of a debt to Popper's discussion of Hume in [I]. See especially p,42 and p. 56f. Not to mention Professor A.I. Ayer's discussion of the proposition that nature is uniform in [2]. {II} Contrast Hume's discussion of allied matters in Treatise 11,111,1 and 11,111,11. The possibility that only so-called 'for the most part generalisations' can apply in such fields as this seems to occur to Hume in some of these discussions. The view that such generalisations alone can be the fruits of investigation in the social sciences is argued for vigorously in McIntyre's [1] chapter 8. {12} See especially her [1], part III. The reader would do well to study that part before embarking on the final chapter of this book on first principles. CHAPI'ERll {I} See especially Intellectual Powers II,XIII (H p.295b,296a) where Reid notes that Arnauld, having maintained that ideas are modifications of our minds, and finding no other modification of the mind that can be called the idea of an external object, says that 'idea' is only another word for perception. And there is no question at this stage of Arnauld's discussion (chapter V) of these perceptions of external objects being perceptions of something other than external objects. {2} Thus in his seminal paper [2] Frege seems to hold that in such non-extensional contexts singular noun phrases stand for their senses (Sinne) rather than the usual objects for which they stand. The consequences of the apparent non-extensionality of some uses of 'see' is discussed by Hintikka in his [2] 'On the logic of Perception' 246 NOTES contained in his [1]. {3} There are a number of distinguished exponents of the view that Hume believed in external material bodies as well as impressions, most notably John Wright in [1]. There are also plenty distinguished exponents of the view that Hume identified external bodies with impressions, so that behind impressions there are no bodies differing in nature from impressions in that, for instance, they are not fleeting. Just in what sense impressions represent any bodies at all needs spelling out in order to facilitate discussions of the former view. In any case that view can surely derive no support from the philosophical system that Hume thinks we are driven to embrace and in which perceptions and objects are distinguished. For as Hume says at Treatise I,IV,II (SB p.211): There are no principles either of the understanding or the fancy, which can lead us directly to embrace this opinion of the double existence of perceptions and objects, nor can we arrive at it but by passing through the common hypothesis of the identity and continuance of our interrupted perceptions. {4} Interestingly enough there is no trace of such a retraction in the edition of the first letter to the Bishop of Worcester contained in the fourth volume of the 1823 reprinting of Locke's works entitled 'The Works of John Locke' printed for Thomas Tegg et alia. But equally there is no trace of an endorsment of such a position as Reid claims Locke has rejected. Material related to the topic that is our concern is to be foound in this •corrected , edition of the first letter on pages 74-78 of volume IV but Locke's topic in these paragraphs is the adequacy of simple ideas. {5} Thus Berkeley who makes a rigid distinction between inert ideas and active spirits allows that a spirit may act upon another spirit by producing an idea in the other spirit. Thus in the second of his Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Everyman edition p.248, we find: ..... these ideas ..... , either themselves or their archetypes, exist independently of my mind, since I know myself not to be their author, it being out of my power to determine at pleasure, what particular ideas I shall be affected with upon opening my eyes or ears. They must therefore exist in some other mind, whose will it is they should be exhibited to me. And on p.249 we find: From all of which I conclude, there is a mind which affects me every moment with all the sensible impressions I perceive. {6} Seeing is clearly something someone does but not what someone does in order to. affect something or someone else which is seen. Per contra pushing something is done to affect the thing pushed, to bring about a change in it or in its relations to other things or both. See NOTES 247 Geach [3] Essay 10.3 (God's relation to the World). {7} Not everyone takes the view that in non-extensional contexts singular terms refer to or si~nify such strange things as it appears Frege would have them signity, namely, senses (Sinne) or modes of presentation of objects. All that seems to withstand examination in this quaint view, a view which I hesitate to ascribe to Frege in so many words, is that in a wide variety of non-extensional contexts terms whose senses contain the same mode of presentation of that which is designated by them may be interchanged without change of truth-value in the sentences containing them. {8} Think of the eye as a hemisphere. Let the points A and B be the extremities of a body confronting the eye and let them be in one straight line AB. Let C be the centre of the sphere of which the eye is a hemi-sphere; then the angle ACB is the angle which the object whose extremities are A and B subtends at the eye. {9} The clearest explanation of constancy scaling known to me is that given in R.L. Gregory's [1], chapter 9. The point that Descartes was aware of such phenomena is contained on p . 152ff of chapter 9. As far as I am aware such phenomena are unjustly neglected by Reid in his published discussions of perception and visible appearances. Briefly, what it comes down to is that the smallness of Reid's angle (referred to in the previous footnote) for middle-distanced objects is some how compensated for so that such objects look larger than they would if Reid's angle was the sole determinant in how much of the visual field they took up.
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