A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, and Consciousness: Thomas Reid(1710-96) The Scottish Enlightenment Part two: Critical Empiricism

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Thomas Reid succeeded Adam Smith at Glasgow University and continued two traditions of reflection on common sense philosophy and Newtonian principles. Reid was however unique in two respects. Firstly in his unpremeditated mastering of Aristotelian assumptions in the arena of Philosophical Psychology and secondly in anticipating many of the themes of Kantian Transcendental Philosophy, in particular, the themes of transcendental logic and the logic of judgment(in both theoretical and practical contexts). Reid’s commitments to these four aspects of Philosophy, common sense Philosophy. Newtonian Principles, Philosophical Psychology, and Logic are all holistic commitments. It is therefore hardly surprising that the empiricism and atomism of Locke and Hume are targets for his criticism as are the rationalism of Descartes and the sentimentalism of Smith. Reid may, therefore, with justification be considered a synthesizer and a critical philosopher of the highest rank. He may, that is, be regarded as a critical empiricist because his work appears to be a critique of pure ideas and sensations.

Empiricism claimed in accordance with a technical theoretical atomistic model that our sensations/impressions and ideas are together “associated” in order to form our judgments about reality. Hume’s “ideas” were either copies of impressions or ideas about relations of impressions but they orbited in a galaxy without the objects that caused the impressions the ideas were copies of. Similarly, sensations/impressions also orbited in a galaxy without these objects. On such models, physical substance or matter have disappeared under the attacks of the skepticism of Philosophers like Hume and Descartes, both of whom were criticized by Reid.

Followers of the philosophers Reid criticized have disconnected the notion of an “idea” from the act of mind it emerges from, an act of mind that is moreover intentional and connected to an object. For Reid, these acts of mind or conceptions are not as had been claimed the basic building blocks of knowledge. This role is reserved for our power of judgment in general and the power of the kind of judgment we find in Newtons Principia, in particular. Reid here anticipates in an empirical frame of mind the relation that Kant will form with the work of Newton. Kant, as we know, regarded many of the judgments we find in Newton’s Principia as so-called synthetic a priori judgments, judgments formed independently of experience. Reid also produces reasoning reminiscent of Aristotle when he invokes a common-sense principle that is characterized by:

“the consent of ages and nations of the learned and unlearned, ought to have great authority with regard to first principles when every man is a competent judge.”(Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth(6,4,464)

This combination of an Aristotelian trust in the common man’s judgment that lands somewhere in the vicinity of the truth and the Aristotelian trust in the wise man’s judgment is reflected in Reid’s assertion that the source of perceptions/conceptions and the mental acts they are expressive of is a system of natural and original judgments:

“Instead of saying that the belief or knowledge is got by putting together and comparing the simple apprehensions, we ought rather to say that the simple apprehension is performed by resolving and analysing a natural and original judgment(Inquiry into the Human Mind and the Principles of Common Sense, 2,4)

This appears on the face of it to be a new systematic holistic form of empiricism that resembles Kantian transcendental philosophy in its positioning of judgment at the centre of the cognitive system but it should also be pointed out that many empiricists, including Reid, would classify abstract judgments as “empirical generalizations about species-typical features of human cognition”(Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy). The evidence for this interpretation comes from EIP 6,4,466:

“The universality of these opinions and of many such that might be named, is sufficiently evident, from the whole tenor of human conduct, as far as our acquaintance reaches, and from the history of all ages and nations of which we have any records.”

It is not entirely clear, however, from the above quote whether Reid is referencing the methodology of observation as the basis for universal judgments. When the Stanford Encyclopaedia cites the structure of language as further evidence that we are dealing with judgments that are empirical generalizations we do then encounter the term “observation”:

“Language, being something so widely shared offers an abundance of data for observation. Reid finds many commonalities across languages(the connection between ordinary language and common sense that Reid espouses was of great influence on such later philosophers as G E Moore and J L Austin)”

The evidence provided, however, is inconclusive because the term “common sense” is itself ambivalent. This term can, as Kant pointed out in his “Critique of Judgment” be either the common sense which is subjectively universal and the basis of aesthetic judgments(justifying only the kind of universality involved when we “speak with a universal voice” about matters of exemplary necessity): or the kind of common sense which is a more objective matter of the common understanding we possess of the external world and the language we use. In the case of language, it can be argued that we are not dealing with an observationally based knowledge but rather a more practically based non-observational knowledge of how to use language to generate what we want to say.

Kant goes on to claim, however, that experience per se is irrelevant to the presupposition of common sense involved when we are making a cognitive aesthetic judgment because in speaking in a universal voice about something beautiful we are necessarily expressing a normative attitude and claiming that our interlocutors “ought to regard the object spoken about as beautiful, i.e. in saying “This is beautiful” the judgment carries an expectation that whoever the remark is addressed to, ought also to find the object beautiful. In this context Kant writes:

“we do not have to take our stand on psychological observations but we assume a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of skepticism.”(Critique of Judgment p 84)

The Stanford Encyclopaedia notes that Reid’s principle of common sense was met with a considerable degree of skepticism. Reid retreated into a neo-Aristotelian defense when perhaps the above more logical form of defense may have been more effective. Without the assumption of common sense, Kant argues, we would not be able to so much as make any judgment of taste requiring the assent of others. In such cases, of course, my assent to the judgment that a particular object is beautiful is both categorical but also subjectively universal, meaning that, if the judgment is made in accordance with the appropriate psychological conditions which involve the harmonious working of the imagination and the understanding, then, and only then, are we dealing with a well-formed aesthetic judgment that carries with it a necessary delight, in spite of being founded upon a feeling and not a concept. Both universality and necessity play important a priori roles in this analysis. I cannot, i.e. “discover” my assent, observe my assenting or “experience” my assent in an observational mode. In this account we find Kant appealing to the power of the imagination: a power that does not passively receive sensations, impressions or intuitions but rather plays an active role in creating the experience:

“If, now, imagination must in the judgment of taste be regarded in its freedom, then, to begin with, it is not taken as reproductive as in its subjection to the laws of association but as productive and exerting an activity of its own(as originator of arbitrary forms of intuition)”(p86)

Obviously, I do not observe the operation of this power any more than I can “observe” the operation of my own will when I have decided to reach for some passion fruit in a fruit bowl. Observation is conducted in a hypothetical frame of mind, a questioning frame of mind, a wondering what- or- whether- something- is frame of mind, so poignantly expressed in Shakespeare’s portrayal of Macbeth wondering whether it is a dagger he sees before himself. The power expressed in the willed action of reaching for passion fruit is a categorical frame of mind that is connected fundamentally to an expressive power that permeates my whole being.

O´Shaughnessy in his work “The Will: a dual aspect theory” notes our relation to our own bodies is a very special epistemological relation which is nonobservational and nonconceptual proceeding via the feeling we have of our bodies. Of course, this notion of feeling he is using is a complex one and is not intended to deny that the relationship between physical action is an intimate one: he is merely denying the application in this context of the notion of observation:

“Taking observation to be, not just perception but perception that is a mode of access to information, it seems clear that our fundamental relation to our own actions is non-observational(even though perception can apprise us of the existence of unintended traits in these acts)”(Vol 2 p1)

O´Shaughnessy is arguing in his work for an ontological difference in the objects we encounter in reality: a difference between those objects created by changes human agents have brought about and those objects created by objects non-human forces have brought about:

“By action we irreducibly alter the state of the universe: a form or pattern appears that was not there before, the existence of which does not seem to follow in any way from the physical state of the universe beforehand. This is creation. We are ultimate sources of change in the environment in the way a river or hurricane is not. A chair or a table is a kind of gift to the universe as a whole, as if from another God, certainly from another creator. I actively brought that chair into existence…. I did it: I alone: and did all of it.”(Vol 2,p2)

My action O´Shaughnessy argues is a part of my world viewed as an agent and not the world viewed as a questioning observer and this is the major reason why observation of my own action is impossible. The agent experiences the world in terms of his action related powers: the world he experiences is a world endowed with a positive meaning. The passion fruit in the bowl appears in this dynamic context to be saying “Pick me!” and no hypothetical inquiring attitude or state of mind can intervene in such an attempt to change the world. If, in this context, I did try to observe what I am doing the structure of this action would dissolve into atomistic objects: the bowl, the passion fruit, the hand. In Heidegger’s language, the passion fruit is ready-to-hand and subject to a form of circumspection that is non-observational: a categorical feature of the world in which hypothetical questioning plays no part. This is not the world of the discoverer, it is rather the world of the agent exercising his active powers of imagination, perception, and action. Action of this kind occupies the whole mind. When Reid invoked the notions of common sense and agent causality in combination with each other in his theory of natural and original judgment he appears to be inclining his investigation away from an observation-based verification theory and towards an argument that rests on logical grounds and principles. He appears to be arguing that denial of his claims would not just be false but meaningless because self-contradictory. We do not attack and defend the validity of empirical generalizations on logical grounds. What would it be like, for example, to attempt to observationally confirm or falsify the Newtonian Principle “Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed”. The self- evidence of the principle seems at the very least to be non-observational and seems rather to rely on the logical principles of non-contradiction(Aristotle) and sufficient reason(Kant).

Reid also shares with both Newton and Kant the conviction that Science must use mathematics if it is to truly be considered a science. Mathematics was viewed by Plato and Aristotle as hypothetical in that it does not philosophically reflect upon its own principles. It proceeds by arguing that if you accept this axiom then this or that theorem or definition follows by implication. It uses the principles of noncontradiction within this hypothetical structure. It does not use the principles of non-contradiction or sufficient reason to prove that the structure is categorically, substantially or qualitatively true because mathematical structures conceive of reality in quantitative or relational terms. Mathematical calculation is also as Kant proved later, not purely logical because it requires a practical intuitive knowledge of numbers and the rules governing numbers for it to perform its epistemological function. The practice of counting in accordance with rules, for example, is a universally accepted practice in mathematics. But the ground of this universality is not experience, but rather, for Kant, the a priori intuition of time. Motion, then, can only be quantifiable if one assumes this intuitive frame. (Even the equation 7+5=12 Kant argues contains a synthetic reference to intuition). Our mind, that is, to use Aristotelian language “measures” motion in terms of number applied to “before” and “after”. This measurement has a subjectively necessary character as is illustrated by the Kantian example of the steamer steaming downstream on a river. It’s being upstream prior to being downstream is both a necessary priority as well as a necessary before to the necessary after. Here we see that the experience of the ship steaming downstream is a synthesis of its positions and not a juxtaposition of two analytically juxtaposed events, namely the ship upstream and the ship downstream connected by a Humean connection of constant conjunction, resemblance and/or spatial contiguity.

Kant would certainly not have denied that there is an observational and experimental component to Science which is used to establish the causal conditions of a phenomenon of motion, for example. These causal conditions will be essentially quantitative and relational and require mathematics for their determination. What will also be required is a measurement of this motion in time(an a priori form of intuition). Reid is not clear on the issue of causation, claiming that whilst causation may be necessary for the description of a phenomenon it will not be typical of scientific explanation as such, in particular of the kind of scientific explanation we find in Newton who, Reid claims appealed to laws in his explanations. It is not, however, clear what Reid is referring to here because if we examine Newton’s first law of motion we do find a reference to causality in the law. The first law of motion states that a body will remain in the same state until acted upon by an external cause or force(that it will only change its state if externally caused to do so). Now it is clear from later Philosophical analyses of the language of Science inspired by Wittgenstein that laws such as the one stated above are norms for the representation or characterization of motion. They are not empirical generalizations formed as a consequence of our experience with motion. Kant would characterize the philosophical status of such laws as metaphysical because they require a form of philosophical a priori justification if one is to fully understand their meaning. Now it may be the case that Newton himself would not believe that it was the task of science to fully justify his laws. It might be, that is, sufficient to the justification of them to point out that if they are true then certain other empirical statements are also true. This would not suffice for Kant who claims that the truth of the first law of motion depends upon another more transcendental law, e.g. “Every event must have a cause”. This is, of course, a more convoluted and nuanced position compared to the one we find in Reid’s account which appears to merely claim that laws are true general propositions(empirical generalizations?) used to explain appearances or phenomena. We are not, that is, claiming that his account commits him to the metaphysical and transcendental forms of explanation/justification of physical phenomena such as the motion of bodies. In fact, Reid paradoxically appears at some points in his work to insist that Newton’s Science does not rely on an appeal to physical causation of the kind discussed by Hume or what he called “efficient causation” which could even have theological dimensions. Physics, according to him should concern itself with the “discovery” of laws.

Causation is, however, of interest in investigations into the “structure of the mind and its operations”(EIP 1,3,51) and this he also argues is a matter of common sense as is Newton’s first rule of investigation which he also refers to: “No more causes, nor any other causes of natural effects ought to be admitted, but such as are both true and are sufficient for explaining their appearances.” Reid’s philosophical psychology and his appeal to agent causation whether intentionally or not evoke Aristotelian notions of sensory and intellectual powers in the context of this discussion. Insofar as the sensory power of apprehending a tree is concerned Reid believes that such a power is intimately connected to the conception of a tree which is an act based power in contrast to Hume’s atomic or corpuscular theory of impressions and ideas that occur largely passively and mechanically in men’s minds. Reid’s account claims that our perceptions/conceptions grasp their object immediately without the intervention of sense-data or image but the nature of the grasping is complex because of the inter-sensory unity involved in our apprehension of the tree, for example. The geometrical properties of the tree, its shape, height, and 3-dimensionality are, on Reid’s account largely motor-tactile properties generated by moving around the tree and perhaps measuring it with a measuring instrument. These are different properties but systematically related to the properties we experience via our visual impression of the tree which can also have an active component when the eye, for instance, changes the focus of its attention. So, even if the tree looks smaller when we are 200 yards away from it, the “knowledge” of its tangible(experience-based) tangible properties and the a priori knowledge that things stay the same unless acted upon by an external cause(struck by lightning) suffice for me to believe in the constancy of the tree. This relation between a visual and tangible representation was for Hume a subjective and varying judgment whereas for Reid we are dealing with natural objective judgment based on the intersensory unity of the object which is itself based on the systematic variation and relation of different sensory modalities to each other and to the object. This rather technical analysis, however, is quite consistent with the natural judgment of the man in the street using his common sense to insist that we do see trees and not just representations of them as so many empiricists throughout the millennia of Philosophy have insisted. This empirical realism, by the way, is also to be found in Kant’s theory.

Sensation remains a theoretical thorn in the side of all empiricists but Reid explains its role in a way that brings his theory closer to the accounts of Aristotle and Kant. Reid’s technical analysis insists that the tree causes sensations in us whether they be visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory or olfactory. When we pay attention to these sensations we become aware, for example of the tree’s colour, its shape and size, the sound its leaves and branches make in the wind, the taste of its fruit and the smell of its flowers. These qualities do not resemble the sensations. Here Reid agreed with Berkeley against Hume that the impression of a tree cannot resemble the actual tree that reaches its roots deep into the ground beyond my sensory fields. The perception/conception of the tree, for Reid, is a matter of the constitution of the sensory/intellectual powers of a body possessing a particular form and sensations are the natural signs of these powers. Reid describes the relation of the cause, to what it causes in this context as something magical. This natural sign of the colour of the tree, for example, indicates its quality without the necessity of prior experience. The sign and the signified are not merely contingently connected via an artificial relation of constant conjunction or habit but belong to one another in a relation of natural unity which both the philosopher and the man of common sense can appreciate. Involved in this account is an underlying Aristotelian claim that the colour of the tree in some sense belongs to the sensory form of the tree located in the normal sensory circumstances of daylight. Reid does, however, like Macbeth, attribute a primary significance to the motor tactile geometrical measurable properties of the tree(or the dagger) and claims that these kinds of properties present us with more reliable evidence of the existence of the tree. So, for Reid, the smell of a rose would give us no indication of the thorny natural existence of the rose in the way a tactile exploration would. It is not, however, as clear from Reid’s account as it is from a phenomenological account that the intersensory unity of the rose bush is the most reliable clue to the nature of the existence of the rose bush and this is supported by the experience of the smell of the rose giving rise to the visual image of the rose in the imagination as well as its scented petals and thorny bush. The natural and original judgment involved here would be that what smells like a rose, looks like a rose, feels like a rose, etc, is a rose.

One of the problems with this account is the absence of acknowledgment of the physical characteristics of the sensation, a characterization that requires a very different account from the realm of physiological Psychology but let us return to this point later. The argument that sensations are the natural signs of the sensory forms of the objects that cause them places sensations squarely in the domain of philosophical psychology. Why? Because for example the painful to touch sensation of the thorns of the rose is intentional and itself also a part of the natural system of judgments we all possess. Reid even suggests that the relation between the natural sign and what it is a sign of is in accordance with his conception of efficient causation that is significantly broader than Hume’s account of physical constant-conjunction causation. Reid’s account is, indeed significantly different and involves regarding efficient causation substantively in terms of agency:

“a being who had power to perform the effect, and exerted that power for that purpose”(Reid’s Correspondence 174)

This appears to postulate the presence of a telos or teleological aspect in relation to this power which takes us into the realm of Hylomorphic theory even if this is far from Reid’s intention. But Reid also connects the idea of power to the power of the will but unfortunately, he does not connect this power of the will to any physical body which would seem to be essential for any account which acknowledges that the body is an efficient cause of change in the world. He fails, that is, to acknowledge the integration of a material cause into the Aristotelian system of four causes. This ambivalence toward the role of the body is particularly worrying especially when one considers that Reid claims that God is an efficient cause: he claims, that is, in a discussion of the relation between sensation and its external cause that the relation must be “resolved into the will of God or into some cause altogether unknown.” It is presumably because of remarks such as these that Professor Brett claims that it sometimes seems as if Reid is still living in the shadow of medieval theology. Reid’s position is somewhat unclear here but in any event, it is to his credit that he conceives of the power of the agent to act as the paradigm form of efficient causation. This brings in its train the seeming implication that the agent is free to change the world in the way in which he chooses to. Reid, in the context of this discussion, argues that the relationship between the motive of an agent and his behaviour appear not to be law-governed or determined by causes outside of the control of the agent. In connection with this point, he produces a number of arguments for freedom of the will being a natural and original human power. Without this power of self-control, Reid argues, the idea of an agent being responsible for their actions makes no sense. This natural and original power also manifests itself in the forming of intentions for future action, in my intention to build a house, for example. I am free to choose not to build a house but I may also both form the intention and then proceed to carry out the intention. This power is connected to the end which I wish to bring about and which I can hold myself responsible for if, after all the planning, the house is not built.

The difference between instrumental action as referred to above and ethical action lies in the realm of the kind of imperative thought that occupies the mind. My telling myself that I am going to build a house for my family is a hypothetical imperative of the form “If I build a house, I and my family will lead a happy flourishing life”. The house here is clearly a means to an end, a very limited and selfish end, namely the flourishing life for myself and my family. If, on the other hand, I form an intention to keep a promise I made to return some money I borrowed to build a house, then the imperative is termed categorical by Kant. if in this case the action of returning the money is not carried out I will be, on Kant’s account, treating the person I borrowed the money from as a means to the end of my flourishing life. My failure to act in such circumstances has manifold consequences in the external world such as my being prepared to lie about paying the money back and in the light of the universalization test the very collapse of the trust-building institution of promising in the community we belong to. Promising to pay the money back and not doing so is a practical contradiction in Kantian Philosophy but there does not appear to be any mechanism of transcendental justification of ethical action in Reid’s account because people either keep their promises or they do not and whether they do or not are bare facts unrelated to the motivation of whether they ought to keep their promises or not. On Reid’s theory, the natural and original judgments appear all to be in fact stating is-language rather than value expressing ought language. This in itself is a decisive argument to regard the type of Principle we find in Newton’s Principia as irrelevant to investigating the realm of value in the human sciences and ethics. This awareness dawned neither on the Great Hume nor on the greatly underestimated Reid whose critical empiricism foreshadowed many of the twists and turns of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.