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REID'S CONCEPTION OF COMMON SENSE
Author(s): James Somerville

Source: The Monist, Vol. 70, No. 4, Thomas Reid and His Contemporaries (OCTOBER 1987),
pp. 418-429
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27903047
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REID'S CONCEPTION OF COMMON SENSE
When Reid wrote An Inquiry Into The Human Mind, On The Prin
ciples Of Common Sense the term 'common sense' had long been in use in
something like its ordinary sense today. Prompted no doubt by Priestley's
criticism that he had "made an innovtion in the received use" of the term1
he devoted a chapter of his Essays On The Intellectual Powers Of Man to
the use of the term: "All that is intended in this chapter is to explain the
meaning of common sense, that it may not be treated, as it has been by
some, as a new principle, or as a word without any meaning."2 He cites
what he calls "testimonies" from Berkeley, Hume and others. Pointedly, he
even quotes Priestley, concluding "whatever censure is thrown upon those
who have spoke of common sense as a principle of knowledge, or who have
appealed to it in matters that are self-evident, will fall light, when there are
so many to share in it" (425). Though he himself thought that his use of the
term was not new, he developed an account?a theory, if you like?of com
mon sense going clearly beyond ordinary conceptions. Unfortunately, many
of his arguments against philosophical scepticism are missed owing to the
distraction caused by this theory of common sense. I want to explore how
far it is dispensable.
One difficulty in saying what is meant by 'common sense' arises
because the term had its origins in the Aristotelian doctrine of the sensus
communis. It is not quite "true that common sense is a popular and not a
scholastic word" (423). It seems to have started as a semi-technical term of
the educated. Reid's insistence that "in common language, sense always im
plies judgment" (421) only goes to show that it is not clear what precisely
philosophers at least mean by 'common sense'. He himself, it will be seen
shortly, doesn't stick to the idea of judgment. Priestley indeed complains
that Reid and his friends have "degraded the judgment to the level of the
senses" (E 72). Of course, the term is now, and undoubtedly was in Reid's
day too, also used outside philosophy. Stock phrases like "Use your com
mon sense," "Common sense tells you ..." "It's only common sense that
..." show that as ordinarily conceived common sense often simply means
reasonable belief. Instead of saying "It's only common sense that. ..."
one could say "It stands to reason that. . . . "3 The problem is not that the
ordinary conception of common sense is unclear but that rival accounts of
what common sense dictates will be given according to differing views of
what it is that is reasonable to believe. A connected difficulty is that the
REID'S CONCEPTION OF COMMON SENSE 419
term is often used tendentiously. Just as politicians today resort to trite

phrases like "It's a matter of common sense," "Let common sense
prevail," "A victory for common sense," so Reid's testimonials to com
mon sense are from philosophers or divines with axes to grind. Both outside
and within philosophy and disputation generally the deference owed to
reasonableness is apt to get transposed to the specific beliefs or practices
claimed to be in accordance with common sense. When Hume wrote, "As
to the rest, we trust to common sense, and the general maxims of the world,
for our instruction"4 he did not indicate what common sense enjoins; but
when he wrote that those who "deny the right of resistance, have renounc'd all
pretensions to common sense, and do not merit a serious answer"5 he was
claiming the sanction of common sense for his own political opinions. This
stale rhetoric is nicely illustrated in Berkeley. In an attempt to make the doc
trine of his Principles acceptable he peppered his Three Dialogues with
references to common sense. But he also makes his creation Alciphron in his
other dialogues imagine "a monster ... the joint issue of statecraft and
priestcraft," which menaces "destruction to all who dare to follow the dic
tates of reason and common sense."6 Berkeley evidently realizes that his op
ponents can make claim to the authority of common sense just as much as
he. "Appealing to" common sense seems often to amount to no more than
a way of saying "what I say is so plainly right and reasonable that it needn't
be questioned." That is why a scrutiny of Reid's testimonies is only going to
yield the conclusion he desires, that everybody is in favor of common sense.
Yet it would be going too far to think that the term is purely honorific. It
also serves to pick out conventional opinion and received doctrine as op
posed to paradoxical or sceptical positions. Berkeley is an exceptional case:
his claims to be in agreement with common sense strain credulity just
because his doctrine is at odds with prevalent opinion, as he himself grants
in the Principles (?4). He may only have been paying lipservice; that would
explain how he could put the term into an opponent's mouth too. If, then,
'common sense' is taken as a name for orthodox opinion an appeal to it in
philosophical argument would seem to be worthless: for there is little reason
why received opinion should always be reasonable, or why what shocks its
upholders should be unreasonable.
But Reid systematized such stray remarks as his testimonies comprise
into the Philosophy of Common Sense, a body of doctrine taken to be prin
ciples of common sense held by all of us, learned and vulgar alike, which
metaphysical and sceptical doctrines contradict. This was to give a new
meaning to the term. Taken in its old sense as what it is reasonable to
believe Reid's championship of common sense might come over as, in Mill's
words, "a means of begging several of the questions in dispute between him
and his antagonists."7 But after Reid 'common sense'?sometimes
420 JAMES SOMERVILLE
dignified by initial capitals in nineteenth-century authors?became a

philosophical term of art. When people like Sidgwick, Peirce, and James
talk of common sense they mean the everyday assumptions people make,
which the Philosophy of Common Sense affirms; not what the stock
phrases outside philosophy mean?that is, a faculty of reasonable belief.8
By the time of Moore and Russell the term was so much a part of
philosophical vocabulary that it no longer seemed a technical term to them.
At any rate, neither Moore in introductory lectures in 1910, nor Russell in a
popular introduction of 1912, saw need to explain what philosophers mean
when they talk of common sense.9 Naturally, they both indicate what com
mon sense believes; but neither seems aware that this personification of
common sense is a peculiarly philosophical idiom. Familiarity with
philosophical usage?now passed down to educated people outside, like
scientists?may conceal the difference between philosophical and ordinary
uses of the term. Equally, an appreciation of the difference may cause one
to accuse philosophers of violating ordinary usage. Norman Malcolm, spot
ting the personification, criticizes Moore: "the famous 'Defence of Com
mon Sense' has no clear relationship to common sense" he objects. He
quotes Reid, "the eighteenth-century Scotsman," as connecting 'common
sense' "quite explicitly with good judgment" as evidence for "the actual
use" of the term.10 This is to come full circle. The twentieth-century
American forgets that it was Reid, not Moore, who was foremost in extend
ing the term beyond its usual connotations of good judgment to cover a set
of beliefs?or principles as he usually styled them in contrast with
Moore?held by all of us.11 Reid even adopts the idiom Malcolm objects to,
as when he writes "these questions are within the province of philosophy;
for common sense says nothing on one side or the other" (119; cf. 363).
How did Reid effect this transformation of the term?
He begins his chapter, "Of Common Sense" by stating that by 'sense'
is ordinarily meant judgment (422). So: "Common sense is that degree of
judgment which is common to men with whom we can converse and trans
act business" (421). There is ambiguity already in this answer. Common
sense is first identified with a positive characteristic, judgment. Not
necessarily good, but sufficient, judgment. Sufficient for what? For action,
to start with; and for judging what is true, secondly. Thus, common sense
has a practical and a theoretical side: "The same degree of understanding
which makes a man capable of acting with common prudence in the conduct
of life, makes him capable of discovering what is true and what is false in
matters that are self-evident, and which he distinctly apprehends" (423).
The practical side presents no problems. People with common sense are sen
sible. This means primarily that they are disposed to act prudently. They are
contrasted with fools, who behave rashly. Reid's account of the theoretical
side, however, seems remote from ordinary notions of common sense.

Sticking to the idea of judgment, common sense in its theoretical side would
seem to be the ability to arrive at reasonable beliefs?what is likely to be
true?rather than the self-evidently true. It doesn't require judgment, as or
dinarily understood, to judge "That White is not Black" which is Locke's
example of a self-evident proposition.12 Rather, people with no more than
common sense, as distinct from the wisdom of a sage, are able to judge at
least whether they are being blatantly lied to, to assess others' characters in
a rough and ready fashion, and form some opinion of the likely motives of
their actions. Reid is aware of the importance of such judgments (458, 543);
but in assigning "the first office of reason" to the judging of "things self
evident"?"the sole province of common sense" (425)?he departs from
the ordinary conception of common sense. Notice how the word
'understanding' has crept in to replace the word 'judgment'. A second idea
thus emerges, that of the negative characteristic of not being below a
minimum degree of understanding. The contrast here is with unintelligence
or halfwittedness, not foolhardiness or imprudence. Reid uses the term
'common understanding' besides 'common sense' in the Essays, apparently
as a variant. What, by contrast, in the Inquiry he calls common understand
ing?namely, the "more obvious conclusions drawn from our perceptions,
by reason" (185) seems, indeed, more akin to what would ordinarily be
thought of as common sense. He implies, then, that we cannot converse and
transact business with those lacking common sense, because they have no
common understanding. This, though a practical matter, arises from a
failure on the theoretical side. "There is a certain degree," he writes, of
sense "which is necessry to our being subjects of law and government,
capable of managing our own affairs, and answerable for our conduct
towards others" (422). Locke, too, seems to speak of common sense as if it
included common understanding: "He would be thought void of common
Sense, who asked on the one side, or on the other side went about to give a
Reason, Why it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be. . .. He
that understands the Terms, assents to it for its own sake, or else nothing
will ever be able to prevail with him to do it."13 Since the words 'fool" and
'stupid' may be applied equally to those who lack common understanding
as to those who lack judgment the distinction may not be sharply drawn in
ordinary language. But though understanding is a necessary condition of
judgment one may understand yet still lack judgment, as Kant
appreciated.14 Reid slides from the idea of being without common sense
understood as being imprudent or lacking judgment to one taken as being
out of one's senses, either like imbeciles, who were never in them, or
madmen, who may only temporarily be out of them, because the two ideas
are combined in the case of self-evident truths: these we "give a ready assent
to, as soon as they are proposed and understood" (230), which again is
Locke's account.15 But though understanding and judgment in some cases
may be so closely linked that a failure of judgment is thereby also a failure
of understanding, being out of one's senses is quite distinct from lacking
judgment, and being imprudent is not the same as being an imbecile or mad.
Reid's account of what is ordinarily meant by common sense is therefore
somewhat confused.16
A stock objection to Reid's account so far is that "the philosophical
opponents of the truths of common sense have been defined into madness
or imbecility."17 Priestley declaims: "it necessarily inspires conceit, and
leads to great arrogance and insolence with respect to our opponents in con
troversy, as persons defective in their constitution, destitute of common
sense, and therefore not to be argued with, but to be treated as idiots or
madmen" (E 71). This from a man who says that Reid is a disgrace to his
university (E 64). But Priestley has a point. The remark quoted from
Hume's Treatise, for instance, is arrogant. As for Reid, though, Priestley
has mistaken the purport of such phrases in the Inquiry as "what no man in
his senses can believe" (101); "while his mind is sound" (100); "the ridicule
and contempt of sensible men" (106); "the rest of mankind would consider
them diseased, and send them to an infirmary" (110); "this is not to act the
philosopher, but the fool or the madman" (111); "little better than a
changeling" (184). Remarks in the same vein occur in the Essays too.
Speaking of principles "common to all men" he writes: "All men that have
common understanding, agree in such principles; and consider a man as a
lunatic or destitute of common sense, who denies or calls them in question"
(230). Once, in the Inquiry, Reid tries to guard himself from misunder
standing: "No disparagement is meant to the understandings of the authors
or maintainers of such opinions" (108). It is a misunderstanding to think
that Reid is arguing that Hume, to take his principal opponent, is either a
halfwit, mad, or a fool. Certainly, he could have expressed himself better:
his phrase at the end of the Inquiry, "I appeal to any man of common
sense" (210) obscures the nature of his argument, one he was probably not
fully aware of himself. His argument isn't really an appeal to common
sense?asking his readers or his philosophical opponents to use their com
mon sense. Rather, it is that, first, some of the conclusions philosophers
have drawn would be taken as signs of insanity by anybody ignorant of (as
anybody not a philosopher would usually be) the philosophical arguments
offered in their support. As examples: "A man who disbelieves his own ex
istence" (100); the belief that the senses "ought never to be trusted" (259);
the calling "in question of the existence of external objects" (274); "a man
who doubts his own identity" (345); or confuses "his conceptions with what
he perceives or remembers" (362). Reid speaks of "metaphysical lunacy";
but immediately adds, "which differs from the other species of the
distemper in this, that it is not continued, but intermittent: it is apt to seize
the patient in solitary and speculative moments; but, when he enters into
society, Common Sense recovers her authority" (209). The second part of
Reid's argument concerns this inconsistency between, in Hume's words, the
philosopher and the man.18 The peculiarity of philosophical paradoxes is
that "though adopted in the closet, men find themselves under a necessity
of throwing off and disclaiming" them "when they enter into society"
(468). Reid says bluntly that if a man claims "to be a sceptic with regard to
the informations of sense, and yet prudently keeps out of harm's way as
other men do, he must excuse my suspicion, that he either acts the
hypocrite, or imposes upon himself (184). It would be wrong to think that
Reid is here accusing the sceptic of hypocrisy; rather, his point is that the
sceptic has fallen into confusion?"imposes upon himself." The points
about lack of common understanding and of common prudence are irrele
vant. Here Reid has been misled by all the talk by his predecessors of com
mon sense. As Sidgwick says, Reid's "essential demand ... on the
philosopher, is not primarily that he should make his beliefs consistent with
those of the vulgar, but that he should make them consisitent with his
own."19 To take Reid as arguing that his opponents are actually mad would
be as crass as to take a Wittgensteinian's talk of curing philosophical
puzzlement as a studied insult. Hume had some appreciation of the oddness
of philosophical scepticism.20 Reid, possessing what Russell calls a "robust
sense of reality,"21 is even more struck by the sheer preposterousness of
some philosophical doctrines. A knowledge of the work of Moore and
Wittgenstein might make this all seem commonplace. It was new in Reid's
day. Familiarity can dull the strangeness of the philosopher's mad-sounding
conclusions. That explains why Reid's characterizations of them may come
across as off-target, and even offensive.
In an important way, though, Reid does go astray. As was seen, he is
led to the idea of self-evidence mainly because those "propositions which
are no sooner understood than they are believed" (434) combine the twin
ideas of common understanding and judgment in his conception of com
mon sense. He agrees with Locke that some self-evident truths are trifling,
and not axioms?that is, first principles (230)?and that none are innate
(465-66). But he also says that all truths, whether or not self-evident, are
either necessary or contingent (441). Given this Lockean account of self
evidence, the notion of a self-evident, contingent truth is puzzling. At one
place, indeed, Reid seems almost to deny that self-evident truths can be con
tingent. Contrasting the evidence of sense with that of reasoning he
remarks, "the word axiom is taken by philosophers in such a sense as that
the existence of the objects of sense cannot, with propriety, be called an ax
iom. They give the name of axiom only to self-evident truths." But, he con
tinues, the truths "attested by our senses are not of this kind; they are con
tingent" (329). He goes on: "when I remember distinctly a past event, or see
an object before my eyes, this commands my belief no less than an axiom.
But when, as a philosopher, I reflect upon this belief, and want to trace it to
its origin, I am not able to resolve it into necessary and self-evident ax
ioms. ... I seem to want that evidence which I can best comprehend. ... ;
yet it is ridiculous to doubt; and I find it is not in my power. An attempt to
throw off this belief is like an attempt to fly, equally ridiculous and imprac
ticable" (330). Later, though, he is able to resolve these two beliefs into
contingent, self-evident principles:?namely, "That those things did really
happen which I distinctly remember9 9 (444); and ' ' That those things do real
ly exist which we distinctly perceive by our senses, and are what we perceive
them to be99 (445). But if a truth is ^//-evident, in the Lockean sense, and
not simply evident?"certain and notorious" (413)22?how could it be
otherwise? If it is evident that "there is a chair at present on my right hand"
(329) it is nonetheless contingent, for my evidence, the evidence of my own
eyes, could have been otherwise. But if the evidence for a proposition is the
proposition itself how could it have been otherwise? This would be to sup
pose that a proposition could have been other than itself.
In the Inquiry, interestingly, the principles of common sense are not
said to be self-evident.23 But since mathematical axioms are given as ex
amples of first principles (130, 185) possibly Reid thought that all first prin
ciples are self-evident without actually saying so. He says of mathematical
axioms that "we are under a necessity of assenting to them" (130); and that
"by the constitution of my nature, my belief is irresistibly carried along by
my apprehension of" them (185). This also fits what he says of the prin
ciples of common sense: "certain principles . . . 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 . . . and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call ab
surd" (108; cf. 209). Priestly takes absurdity to be impossibility (?20). He
would be correct if the absurditites Reid's opponents fell into were the con
traries of self-evident truths. But surely Priestley is right to deny that the
supposition that there are no material things is impossible. It is not hard,
though, to understand how Reid came to think that the principles of com
mon sense must be self-evidently?albeit sometimes contingently?true;
because he holds that they compel belief. But what is psychologically need
not be rationally compelling. Mathematical axioms are "irresistible" (259)
in the sense of being rationally compelling. What he calls "principles of
belief in human nature" (455) are, by contrast, psychological principles.
Reid might reply that since first principles "seldom admit of direct proof,
nor do they need it" (230) they could not be judged to be true unless they
were self-evident. He writes in the Essays: "All knowledge, and all science,
must be built upon principles that are self-evident; and of such principles
every man who has common sense is a competent judge, when he conceives
them distinctly. Hence it is, that disputes very often terminate in an appeal
to common sense" (422). But is it only self-evident truths which, though
known, cannot be proved? The suggestion is not that first principles may
not be self-evident, though this also merits discussion; but that there is no
need to have recourse to first principles to justify reasonable belief. Reid
presumes that the dispute with the sceptic must be about the truth of first
principles because "reasoning seems to be at an end" (437); "our belief of
first principles is an act of pure judgment without reasoning" (489).
Because he tended to think that reasonable belief can only be based on
reasoning he concluded that what we are justified in assenting to without
proof can only comprise first principles. Indeed, if one takes him strictly
there is no place for rational assent without proof, in that assent to self
evident truths on his view is psychologically, not rationally, compelling.
This leads him in the Inquiry on one occasion to oppose common sense to
reason (108); but the context makes clear that he means reasoning.
Elsewhere in the Inquiry his stated aim is to reconcile common sense and
reason (128; cf. 96 and 127).
Reid thus not only appears to have argued fallaciously that what
psychologically commands belief must also rationally do so?and, fur
ther, be true; more seriously, he also confuses these principles of human
nature with the beliefs they compel: "The power of judging in self-evident
propositions, which are clearly understood, may be compared to the power
of swallowing our food. It is purely natural, and therefore common to the
learned and unlearned, to the trained and untrained" (434). In the Essays
On The Active Powers Of Man this is said to be a matter of instinct: "A
man knows that he must swallow his food before it can nourish him.
But ... if it were to be directed solely by his understanding and will, he
would starve before he learned how to perform it. Here instinct comes in to
his aid. He needs do no more than will to swallow" (547; cf. 152). Now, it is
one thing to hold that "it is necessary for our preservation, that we should
believe many things before we can reason;" that our belief "is regulated by
certain principles, which are parts of our constitution" (333). This is only
what Hume holds.24 It is another that such instinctive principles are true.
Just as it is one thing to hold that some actions or abilities are innate;
another that some truths are innately known. The truth of principles of
belief is a psychological matter, quite independent of the truth of the beliefs
so regulated. This confusion, rather than Reid's platitudinous pieties, which
have no relevance to his philosophy, is what is objectionable in what has
been called "Providential Naturalism."25 Reid, though, is not the only

philosopher to have been ensnared by the word 'principle'.26
Intertwined with this official theory is a suggestion of a conception of
common sense which returns to something like the ordinary one. In the
Essays Reid finally identifies common sense with "a degree of reason"
(425). On this view common sense comprises all our faculties: understand
ing, reasoning, the senses, memory. In particular, it becomes a faculty of
judging, whether about external objects, the past, and so forth. In other
words, common sense becomes a faculty of reasonable belief. This much
more general, vaguer conception of common sense emerges from Reid's
criticism of scepticism. It starts with an account of scepticism found in
Hume. Speaking of the "antecedent" scepticism of Descartes, Hume writes
that it "recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our former opin
ions and principles, but also of our very faculties; of whose veracity ... we
must assure ourselves, by a chain of reasoning, deduced from some original
principle, which cannot possibly be fallacious or deceitful." Hume con
cludes that such a scepticism "were it ever possible to be attained by any
human creature (as it plainly is not) would be entirely incurable."27 Reid ac
cepts this interpretation and criticism of Descartes (447, 463-64), and ap
plies it to Hume's own scepticism with regard to reason (485, 488-89). But
he makes a point?only hinted at in Hume28?to the effect that the attempt
to prove the fidelity of our faculties only begs the sceptic's question. It is a
first principle that our faculties are trustworthy (447). At first this seems no
more than the official doctrine. But he adds that this truth?of the
trustworthiness of our faculties?can be said to have the best claim "to be
prior to all others in the order of nature" (447). He then mentions a "prop
erty" of this and other first principles: "No man ever thinks of this princi
ple, unless when he considers the grounds of scepticism; yet it invariably
governs his opinions" (448). Again, this seems to be repeating the point that
first principles are psychologically compelling. But it can also be taken as
saying that first principles are presupposed in our everyday judgments; that
it is only philosophers who articulate them. Immediately after he points to
"another property" of first principles: "that they force assent in particular
instances, more powerfully than when they are turned into a general prop
osition" (448). Sometimes a philosopher virtually abandons a favorite doc
trine even though because its language is retained it appears to be rein
forced. So Reid is unwittingly loosening himself from the strait jacket of the
Aristotelian-cum-Cartesian doctrine that all knowledge is founded on first
principles, even when he couches his points in terms of first principles.
Thus, in the Inquiry he states that "the first principles of all reasoning
about existences, are our perceptions" (185). Now, philosophers and the
vulgar are on the same level in respect to their faculties: "The judgments
grounded upon the evidence of sense, of memory, and of consciousness, put

all men upon a lever* (415). Reid, of course, relates the point to first prin
ciples: "with regard to first principles . . . every man is a competent judge"
(439). Finally, he remarks that "the province of common sense is more ex
tensive in refutation than in confirmation (425). This is illustrated by an
analogy in the Inquiry: "A traveller of good judgment may mistake his
way, and be unawares led into a wrong track; and, while the road is fair
before him, he may go on without suspicion and be followed by others; but,
when it ends in a coal-pit, it requires no great judgment to know that he
hath gone wrong" (103). That is, a doctrine may be rejected because it is
palpably absurd. The point is, again, made in terms of first principles: what
contradicts them is "Not only false but absurd" (438); and a "first principle
may admit of a proof ad absurdum" (439).
The official Reid is not so much appealing to common sense?at least
as ordinrily conceived?as defending certain principles or beliefs in the
manner of Moore. But since he, or rather his predecesors, try to relate com
mon sense understood as sound judgment to common sense understood as
an appeal, in philosophy and debate generally, to certain principles taken to
be true, the whole idea of appealing to common sense as a principle of argu
ment is in itself not only suspect but confused. In this respect Priestley's
complaints about "the new common sense" (?54) are justified. In so far as
Moore for the most part uses the term 'common sense', not in its non
philosophical sense but as a philosophical technicality, he is not guilty of
any such confusion. The official Reid can be re-interpreted as defending
beliefs "wherein we find an universal agreement, among the learned and
unlearned, in the different nations and ages of the world" (233)?that is,
what we all believe?as Moore does. Both point to the curious inconsistency
in belief of the sceptic; as indeed did Hume, though he tried in vain to
reconcile scepticism and human nature. The unofficial Reid takes common
sense simply as reasonable belief. It is reasonable to believe that there's a
chair over there, because I can see it; that I ate my breakfast this morning,
because I distinctly remember doing so. But I cannot prove either without
begging the question. Such judgments involve faculties common to all of us,
so each of us is equally competent to make them. Anybody who denies them
is saying something not only false but absurd. And any philosophical doc
trine which would imply that they were false is therefore shown to be absurd
and is thereby refuted. They presuppose general principles stating the
overall authority of sense-perception and memory, which the sceptic ques
tions or denies. But these principles cannot be proved either. Yet if they
were rejected all the particular judgments falling under them would have to
be rejected too, which, again, is absurd. On this conception of common
sense there is no appeal to any principles as such. Rather, principles are
presupposed in appeals to particular cases. Two differences from Moore

should be noted. First, though Moore holds that the belief that external ob
jects exist is a common-sense belief he never mentions common sense in
connection with particular perceptual judgments like "This is a finger," or
"Here is a hand." Common-sense beliefs for Moore always comprise
general classes of belief. Second, early in his career Moore rejected
transcendental arguments to the effect that certain principles are true
because they are presupposed in beliefs we hold, on the ground that they
could be presupposed by false beliefs too. That is why he holds, instead,
that it follows from "Here is a hand" that there exists an external object.29
James Somerville
University of Hull
NOTES
?. 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 in The Theological
and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley, edited by J. T. Rutt, III (1818), p. 70.
Hereinafter referred to by '?* followed by page number.
2. The Works of Thomas Reid, edited by William Hamilton (1895);
(Hildesheim: reprinted by Georg Olsm Verlag, 1983), pp. 422-23. All subsequent
references to Reid are to page numbers in this edition.
3. I argue this in section I of my paper, "Moore's Conception of Common
Sense," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 47, no. 2 (Dec. 1986).
4. "The Sceptic;" in Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963). p. 163.
5. Treatise, III, ii, 10; p. 564 of Selby-Bigge's edition. There are echoes of this
remark in Priestley. See Works, XXII (1823), pp. 20-21.
6. Alciphron, I, 3.
7. "Bailey on Berkeley's Theory of Vision"; in Collected Works of John Stuart
Mill, XI: Essays on Philosophy and the Classics (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1978), p. 251. Mill is here speaking of Reid's use of the term perception'.
8. James expressly distinguishes between the philosophical and ordinary senses.
See Pragmatism, ch. V (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 85.
9. I refer, respectively, to Some Main Problems of Philosophy (1953)?Moore's
lectures of 1910/11?and The Problems of Philosophy (1912), ch. II and III.
10. "George Edward Moore" in Knowledge and Certainty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1963), p. 173 and pp. 169-70.
11. Moore means by 'common-sense beliefs' the beliefs all of us hold, including
philosophers in their nonphilosophical moments. Other philosophers today usually
mean the beliefs of the vulgar as opposed to the beliefs of philosophers or the
learned. See sec. II of "Moore's Conception of Common Sense." Moore's usage is
closer to Reid's. Cf. Sidgwick: "but the Common Sense to which we are thus led is
not that of the vulgar as contrasted with the philosopher: Reid's point is that the
philosopher inevitably shares it with the vulgar"?"The Philosophy of Common

Sense" in Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant and other Philosophical Lectures &
Essays (London: 1905), p. 414.
12. Essay, I, ii, 18.
13. Essay, I, iii, 4; contrast IV, viii, I.
14. Critique of Pure Reason, A133/B172?A135/B174.
15. Essay, I, ii, 18; IV, vii, 4.
16. Reid not only agrees with Locke's use of 'sense' to the extent of including
common understanding within common sense; he also slides from 'sense' meaning
'good sense' to 'the senses', as when he argues that sense-perception always involves
judgment (421-22).
17. S. A. Grave, The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1960), p. 113; cf. p. III. Grave's remark is apropos Dugald Stewart.
18. "Be a philosopher; but, admidst all your philosophy, be still a man." An En
quiry Concerning Human Understanding, I, sixth para.
19. "The Philosophy of Common Sense," p. 415.
20. Besides the remarkable concluding section of Book I of the Treatise (I, iv, 7),
compare: "none but a fool or madman will ever pretend to dispute the authority of
experience." Enquiry, IV ii, para. 7.
21. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), p. 170.
22. Keith Lehrer's phrase "beliefs . . . evident in themselves" refers to beliefs
which are evident, not se//-evident in the Lockean sense. See "Reid's Influence of
Contemporary American and British Philosophy" in Thomas Reid: Critical Inter
pretations, ed. by Stephen F. Barker and Tom L. Beauchamp (Philadelphia:
Philosophical Monographs, 1976), p. 4.
23. Contrast Ronald E. Beanblossom's Introduction to his edition of Reid's In
quiry and Essays (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1975), p. xxvii.
24. See Enquiry, V, ii, para. 8; XII, i, paras. 7-10.
25. See David Fate Norton, David Hume, Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical
Metaphysician (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 202-03.
26. I am thinking of R. M. Hare in The Language of Morals (1952).
27. Enquiry, XII, i, para. 3. Though Descartes in the First meditation casts doubt
on the trustworthiness of the senses, he conspicuously declines to challenge the
authority of reason itself. There are perhaps hints of such a challenge in the
hypothesis of the evil genius, and the attempt to give a divine warranty for clear and
distinct perceptions; but it was left to Cudworth?in A Treatise Concerning Eternal
and Immutable Morality, IV, v,?to raise the question of the reliability of all our
faculties expressly (though he doesn't mention Descartes by name in this
connection). Hume himself, of course, argued for a scepticism about reason
(Treatise, I, iv, 1); cf. also Enquiry, XII, ii, first sentence.
28. Cf. Treatise, I, iv, 2, first para.: the existence of body "is a point, which we
must take for granted in all our reasonings."
29. My account of Moore is based on: "The Nature of Judgment," Mind, 8
(1899), 190-92; "Necessity," Mind, 9 (1900), 300-03; "The Value of Religion," In
ternational Journal of Ethics, 12 (1901/02), 88-89; Some Main Problems of
Philosophy, pp. 119-26; "Some Judgments of Perception," in Philosophical Studies
(1922), 220-28; and "A Defence of Common Sense" and "Proof of an External
World," both in Philosophical Papers (1959), pp. 42-44 and 145-50.

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REID'S CONCEPTION OF COMMON SENSE

Author(s): James Somerville

term is often used tendentiously. Just as politicians today resort to trite

dignified by initial capitals in nineteenth-century authors?became a

side, however, seems remote from ordinary notions of common sense.

been called "Providential Naturalism."25 Reid, though, is not the only

grounded upon the evidence of sense, of memory, and of consciousness, put

presupposed in appeals to particular cases. Two differences from Moore

philosopher inevitably shares it with the vulgar"?"The Philosophy of Common

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