Thomas Reid's Position on Common Sense - Essay Example

This was thought to condition human experience and make possible knowledge of moral, religious, and scientific kind. The first thinkers were Herbert of Cherbury, as well as Rene Descartes; other British representatives were Henry Lee, Claude Buffier, Henry Home, G. Leibniz, and many more (Redekop, 2009, p.407). Thomas Reid is considered a founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, whose ideas influenced several generations of philosophers well throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Rejecting the Theory of ideas, he claimed that it was “sensus communis” (the term Reid used to describe the “common sense”) that should be perceived as a solid basis of the philosophical quest.

Reid’s main arguments on common sense revolved around his reaction to the ideas by Hume and Berkeley. Hume believed that a person can never comprehend what the world which is external for him/her consists of, since human knowledge is restricted by the ideas that are present in human mind. Berkeley, in his turn, maintained that the external world is just ideas inherent in human mind. Both Berkeley and Hume asserted that a mental phenomenon exists as perceptions of certain mental objects (Yaffe & Nichols, 2009, [online]).

Contrary to these philosophers, Reid asserted that the foundations of common sense provide a justification to human belief in the existence of an external world. Reid provided response to the arguments by Hume, both naturalistic and skeptical by devising a set of common sense principles. He saw them as the basis of rational perception of the world and rational thought. To illustrate, any person who commits oneself to a philosophical argument must unconditionally presuppose particular beliefs.

The examples are I am speaking to a real person, or the external world does exist under the laws which remain unchanged. Along these claims, more presuppositions can be found, which are all positive, meaningful, and reality-based. In this context, it is worth mentioning that Reid does not see the belief in these principles’ rightness as something rational. Instead, he asserts that it is reason that demands that the aforementioned principles act as prerequisites and that it is human mind that inherently produces them.

Thus, the question of sanity arises here, which Reid believes leans back on his understanding of the common sense functioning. In relation to this, Reid writes, “For, before men can reason together, they must agree in first principles; and it is impossible to reason with a man who has no principles in common with you.” (Reid, 1846, p.230). Reid also believed that qualities are to be in “(.) Something that is figured, colored, hard or soft, that moves or resists. It is not to these qualities, but to that which is the subject of them, that we give the name body.

If any man should think fit to deny that these things are qualities, or that they require any subject, I leave him to enjoy his opinion as a man who denies first principles, and is not fit to be reasoned with.” (Reid, 1785, p.766) While Reid’s position on common sense can be well understood through analyzing his criticism of Hume, I would like to briefly outline his ideas regarding Hume’s understanding of knowledge. As it has already been mentioned, Hume along with Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley developed the ideal theory of human mind, which Reid refuted by offering the positive idea of mind instead.

The grounding argument against the theory by Hume is