An inquiry into the human mind on the principles of common sense Book

Read this! This work, by Thomas Reid, is perspicuous and a refulgent example to the best of human intelligence and insight. How did Locke and Hume end up being read more than Reid? His "Geometry of Visibles" is a devastating critique of Hume's theory of mediated knowledge: Hume's best response apparently was to find it "obscure." Reid was known at the time to be, and is, very good on optics. Without some knowledge of optics, you also may find him "obscure." Some of his work is based on, and confirmed by, his own experiments with optics.

The seventh book I have finished this year.
This article (below) is very good on why should all be reading philosophy to guide our lives.
When Philosophy Lost Its Way
By ROBERT FRODEMAN and ADAM BRIGGLE JANUARY 11, 2016 3:21 AM


p. xii. According to Thomas Reid, many of the perplexing philosophical problems which surround the concept of empirical knowledge have arisen because of the failure of philosophers to distinguish adequately between sensing and perceiving.

Mr. Duggan's suggestion that Reid's characteristics of sensation are "inconsistent" is a confusion that results from his own (Mr. Duggan's) failure to distinguish between "belief" and "notice." Reid does not suggest that I have sensations that I do not believe, but rather that I have (similar to William James' principal of "selection") sensations that I do not "notice." See p. 163.

p. xxii. That is, Reid might have denied that not noticing a sensation is a sufficient condition for not believing that one has that sensation.

Might have? I would think so. Mr. Duggan seems to be working to hard to find something to comment on.

p. xxxiii. In the objective sense of "see," in Ayer's words, "from the fact that something is seen it follows that it exists."

p. 4. A just interpretation of nature is the only sound and orthodox philosophy: whatever we add of our own, is apocryphal, and of no authority.

p. 10. A man that disbelieves his own existence, is surely as unfit to be reasoned with, as a man hat believes he is made of glass.

Reid seems to be taking Descartes' epistemological statement as an ontological statement.

p. 18. I blush inwardly to think how I have been deluded.

p. 25. This is the doctrine of the ideal philosophy;

p. 35. for this philosophy is like a hobby -horse, which a man in bad health may ride in his closet, without hurting his reputation; but if he should take him abroad with him to church, or to the exchange, or to the play house, his heir would immediately call jury, and seize his estate.

p. 38. I beg leave to make use of the word suggestion, . . . .

p. 42. So ardently do we desire to find every thing the happens within our observation, thus connected with something else, as it cause or occasion, that we are apt to fancy connections upon the slightest grounds; and this weakness is most remarkable in the ignorant, who know least of the real connections established in nature.

p. 54. Section II - Of Natural Language

p. 55 - 56 reflects the Stoic argument that it is the acquisition of language that gives us rights.

p. 65. Section III - Of Natural Signs is very good on the universality of the intonation and body language that are ninety-five percent of communication.

p. 80. If any one of them can be shown to be an idea of sensation, or to have the least resemblance to any sensation, I lay my hand upon my mouth, and give up all presence to reconcile reason to common sense in the matter, and must suffer the ideal skepticism to triumph.

To me this is very much with Kant's "pure intuitions of space and time." Some things are outside of what we can acquire through experience or develop through reason.

p. 94. . . . and, overlooking the appearance, we immediately conceive the real figure, distance, and position of the body, of which its visible or perspective appearance is a sign and indication.

p. 122. Nor is the demonstration at all difficult, if the reader will have the patience to enter but a little into the mathematical consideration of visible figure, which we shall call the geometry of visibles.
Section IX
Of the Geometry of Visibles

p. 137. Another phenomenon which hath perplexed philosophers, is, your seeing object erect, when it is well known that their images or pictures upon the tunica retina of the eye are inverted.

p. 146. In a word, the manner and mechanism of the mind's perception is quite beyond our comprehension:

p. 157. I am therefore apt to look upon this law as a primary law of our constitution.

p. 168. Thus it appears, that the laws of vision in the human constitution are wisely adapted to the natural use of human eyes, but not to that use of them which is unnatural.

p. 173. So prone are men to invent hypotheses, and so backward to examine them by facts.

p. 198. It is enough to observe that it is a system of conjectures concerning things of which we are entirely ignorant; and that all such theories in philosophy deserves rather to be laughed at, than to be seriously refuted.

p. 198. Since therefore, a blind man may guess as well in the dark as one that sees, . . . .

p. 203 - 204. The conclusion from all that hath been said, in no less than seven sections, upon our seeing objects single with two eyes, is that, by an original property of human eyes, objects painted upon the centers of the two retinae, or upon points similarly situate with regard to the centers, appears in the same visible place; that the most plausible attempt to account of this property of the eyes, have been unsuccessful' and therefore, the it must be either a primary law of our constitution, or the consequence of some more general law which is not yet discovered.

p. 208. . . . and after twenty such wise and rational actions, I am taken up and clapped into a mad-house.

p. 231. These appearances had been long observed by the writers on optics; they tortured their invention to find the cause of them from optical principles; but in vain; they must be resolved into habits of perception, which are acquired by custom, but are part to be mistaken for original perceptions.

p. 234. We have distinguished our perceptions into original and acquired; and language, into natural and artificial.

p. 238. I might add, that this reliance upon the declaration and testimony of men, is found in children long before they know what a promise is. . . .
. . . .
The first of these principles is , a propensity to speak truth, and to use the signs of language, so as to convey our real sentiments.

p. 240. Another original principle implanted in us by the Supreme Being, is a disposition to confide in the veracity of others, and believe what they tell us.

p. 247. But nature never misleads us in this way; her language is always true; and it is only by misinterpreting it that we fall into error.

p. 251. Most men continue all their days to be just what nature and human education made them. Their manners, their opinions, their virtues, and their vices, are all got by habit, imitation, and instruction; and reason has little or no she in forming them.

p. 258. The Epicurean doctrine, as explained by Lucretius, thought widely different from the Peripatetic in many things, is almost the same in this.

Descartes on p. 259 - 263.

p. 268. Such original and natural judgments are therefore a part of that furniture which nature hath given to the human understanding.