Reid and Common Sense Realism
52m
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Reid's Critique of Hume
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Part two of Professor Dan Robinson's examination of Reid's critique of David Hume. Is it the case that every simple idea is a “copy” of a simple impression? Hume is but the latest to deny that we have direct access to the external world. The “ideal” theory, relegating ideas to a mental realm whose occupants are but “copies” of some indefinite thing, is the sure path to skepticism and is at variance with the proper methods of science.
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The final part of Professor Dan Robinson's series on Reid's critique of David Hume. “Like all other sciences, morals must have first principles, and all moral reasoning is based on them... In all rational belief, the thing believed is either a first principle or something inferred by valid reasoning from first principles”. As for utility, “Suppose that mice rescue the distressed person by chewing through the cords that bound him. Is there moral goodness in this act of the mice?” Beyond the armchair and other precincts of untrammeled speculation, one finds that, there is little purchase on a morality of pleasure and utility. Indded, “If what we call ‘moral judgment’ isn’t really a judgment but merely a feeling, it follows that the moral principles that we have been taught to consider as an immutable law to all intelligent beings have no basis except an arbitrary structure and fabric in the constitution of the human mind…Thus, by a change in our structure immoral things could become moral…There are beings who can’t perceive mathematical truths; but no defect, no error of understanding, can make what is true to be false”.
Hume’s “Sentimentalist” Theory of Morals
The seventh part of Professor Dan Robinson's series on Reid's critique of David Hume. In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals [1751], Hume states: “The final sentence, it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, praise-worthy or blameable; that which stamps on them the mark of honour or infamy, approbation or censure; that which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery; it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species”. The ruling motives are shaped by considerations of utility. “The rage and violence of public war; what is it but a suspension of justice among the warring parties, who perceive, that this virtue is now no longer of any USE or advantage to them? The laws of war, which then succeed to those of equity and justice, are rules calculated for the ADVANTAGE and UTILITY…”
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