Abstract
According to dogmatism, a perceptual experience with p as its content is always a (defeasible) source of justification for the belief that p. Thomas Reid has been an extant source of inspiration for this view. I argue, however, that, though there is a superficial consonance between Reid’s position and that of the dogmatists, their views are, more fundamentally, at variance with one another. While dogmatists take their position to express a necessary epistemic truth, discernible a priori, Reid holds that if something like dogmatism is true, it is a mere contingent truth, discernible a posteriori. Owing to Reid’s epistemological naturalism, it might have been false that a perceptual experience is, by itself, a source of justification. On account of regarding something like dogmatism as only contingently true, then, Reid accepts the demand for a meta-justification of a sort that dogmatists squarely reject, and purports to meet it. Given that dogmatism essentially involves the rejection of the demand to meet this kind of meta-justification, it would seem that Reid should not be construed as endorsing dogmatism at all. I close by briefly considering how Reid’s view fits amongst dogmatism’s competitors.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
To clarify, this is to use the term “conservatism” as it appears in Pryor (2004), namely, to characterize a rejection of dogmatism. Huemer’s phenomenal conservatism, on the other hand, is a form of dogmatism, making the use of the term potentially confusing.
Wright (2004).
See, for instance, Huemer (2001).
Though dogmatists may be uncomfortable characterizing perceptual experiences as “evidence,” one may easily enough substitute other more palatable locutions such as “reasons to believe,” “theoretical reasons,” or something similar.
Pryor, “Who is a Dogmatist?” p. 1.
Dogmatists, themselves, point out the similarity of their views. Lycan, for instance, claims that Huemer’s principle of phenomenal conservatism reflects his own “principle of credulity” (2013). Likewise, Pryor explicitly associates his version of dogmatism with Huemer’s phenomenal conservatism as well as the views of a number of others (“Who is a Dogmatist?” pp. 1–2).
Pryor, “Who is a Dogmatist?” p. 1.
Van Cleve (2015, p. 342).
Huemer (2001, p. 35).
Lycan (1988, p. 165).
All in text citations come from Reid (1983) (eds. Beanblossom and Lehrer).
It’s worth noting that Reid’s conception of evidence is interesting in its own right. Evidence appears to be simply that which induces belief.
See, for instance, Huemer (2001, pp. 99–103).
Though as will be seen, there may be an important infelicity in claiming that Reid buys into “epistemic facts”.
“Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel; nor can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light, upon account of their customary connexion with a present impression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long as we are awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies, when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine. Whoever has taken the pains to refute the cavils of this total skepticism, has really disputed without an antagonist, and endeavoured by arguments to establish a faculty, which nature has antecedently implanted in the mind, and rendered unavoidable” (1987, I.iv.1).
Galen Strawson notes an apt remark on this point by the little known Thomas Brown (ca. 1812): “Reid bawled out, We must believe an outward world; but added in a whisper, We can give no reason for our belief. Hume cries out, We can give no reason for such a notion; and whispers, I own we cannot get rid of it” (1990). Though, as I will note presently, both are ambiguous on this point.
E.g., Essays ii.20: 202, 205.
See also Wolterstorff on this point (2001, p. 182).
For a rejection of the idea that doxastic compulsion implies doxastic involuntarism, see Steup (2012).
I acknowledge, however, that this is a vexed issue. Both Reid and Hume seem ambivalent about when and if one can refrain from believing that p on the basis of a seemingly veridical perceptual experience that p. There is clearly an alternate reading of Reid that takes him to hold that there is no way to resist believing that p when one has a perceptual experience with p as its content. This would rule out myprescriptive construal of Reid’s doxastic norms. This is because many would think that there is no sense in maintaining that one is obligated to believe something if one cannot do otherwise [perhaps with the exception of Steup (2012)]. We would, instead, need to regard those doxastic norms as merely evaluative; that is, they tell us which beliefs are good and which are bad.
Though I allow there are grounds for such a reading, I find something like it less apt than the one I take for the reasons just given as well as others I offer below (p. 9). I’ll note in addition, however, that the same considerations are more difficult to apply to Reid’s doxastic norms pertaining to testimony and memory, for instance. For he is far less emphatic that these two sources of belief generally compel assent (and this is the case even more so for Hume). That is, given that Reid doesn’t clearly regard these sources as able to compel assent, we don’t seem to have reason to regard the principles that pertain to them as merely evaluative.
That said, his ambiguity makes it difficult to take a strong stand on this issue. Returning to the case of perception, observe this tension in the following passage:
We cannot give a reason why we believe even our sensations to be real and not fallacious; why we believe what we are conscious of; why we trust any of our natural faculties. We say, it must be so, it cannot be otherwise. This expresses only a strong belief, which is indeed the voice of nature, and which therefore in vain we attempt to resist. But if, in spite of nature, we resolve to go deeper, and not to trust our faculties, without a reason to shew that they cannot be fallacious, I am afraid, that, seeking to become wise, and to be as gods, we shall become foolish, and, being unsatisfied with the lot of humanity, we shall throw off common sense (Essays IV.6).
While Reid seems to suggest that perception compels assent in that it is only “in vain” that “we attempt to resist” it. He, in almost the same breath, seems to make it clear that we can resist it. I regard the best way to read the “vain attempt to resist” as “vain” in the sense of being fruitless or imprudent, not as expressing causal impotence, though I acknowledge that it can be read otherwise.
One may, of course, find many things problematic about Reid’s rough treatment of what constitutes natural doxastic tendencies. Given, however, that I am merely attempting to present Reid’s view, I omit a critical discussion of this issue.
Wilson, in a similar fashion, notes “that ‘universal consent’ is the primary mark by which one can distinguish principles of common sense” (2016, p. 161).
Huemer (2001, p. 99); perhaps much the same contrast could be draw between Lycan’s conception of the principle of credulity and Reid’s.
I surmise that it is Reid’s ambiguous use of the term “principle” that leads Van Cleve, for instance, to suppose that Reid’s principles are known a priori (Van Cleve 2003, p. 51). This, as should be clear by now, seems to be a mistake.
This, of course, is not to say that Reid categorically eschews a priori reasoning. One finds a healthy regard for a priori reasoning especially in his discussion of the “First Principles of Necessary Truths.” He merely regards it as falling under the hegemony of common sense, “the final court of appeals in philosophical disputes” [Nichols (2007, p. 22); see also Lehrer (1989, p. 10) on this issue]. And it just so happens that Reid regards nature rather than reason to be our proper guide in discerning doxastic norms.
I realize that a belief’s being an epistemically good belief for an agent does not necessarily mean that she should believe it. What if she has no choice in the matter? For Reid, however, the evaluative claim (about the belief’s goodness) and the prescriptive claim (about what one should believe) appear to generally coextend.
In opting to treat contingent truths before necessary truths, Reid makes the independently interesting remark that: “As the minds of men are occupied much more about truths that are contingent than about those that are necessary, I shall first endeavour to point out the principles of the former kind” (Essays vi.5: 266).
One, however, might wonder what Reid means by testimony claiming “our assent upon its own authority” (emphasis added). Could “authority,” here, mean something like self-evidence? I am inclined to think not. First, notice his comparison of memory to “consciousness.” The context suggests that he is referring to consciousness as the awareness of things, or perception, given that he is likening it to a source of testimony. But it seems it would be a misuse of the term “self-evident” to suggest that the deliverances of perception are self-evidently true and, even more, that the deliverances of testimony are self-evidently true. The reason these sources are authoritative seems to be because of nature—how they tend to affect our psychology. Consider the following passage:
We cannot give a reason why we believe even our sensations to be real and not fallacious; why we believe what we are conscious of; why we trust any of our natural faculties. We say, it must be so, it cannot be otherwise. This expresses only a strong belief, which is indeed the voice of nature, and which therefore in vain we attempt to resist. (Essays IV.6)
Notice, secondly, that our proclivity to form beliefs on the basis of these sources is, as Reid claims, “immediate.” And this use of “immediate” seems to run parallel to his use of “its own authority” in the following clause. I take this to suggest that the deliverances of memory need no intermediary—perhaps reason, or independent evidence of reliability—to bring about our assent. That is, they are authoritative in the sense of needing no additional corroboration.
This label comes from Norton who calls Reid’s naturalism a “curious supernatural naturalism” (1982, p. 208).
See Rinard (2015) for a recent similar suggestion, namely, that epistemic rationality is reducible to pragmatic rationality.
Two important concerns may arise here: first, one might wonder whether Reid would even entertain the possibility of God not existing. After all, many theists are explicitly committed to the idea that God exists necessarily, such that it would be a mistake to even entertain the possibility of a world without God. Though I know of no place where Reid explicitly endorses such a view, it’s quite possible that he held that God does exist necessarily, and, thus, there is no sense in considering how epistemic or doxastic norms would be different if he didn’t exist.
Now, one might grant this point, but still maintain that Reid appropriately regards doxastic principles as contingent and known a posteriori. This is because, even if God exists, it is an open question (at least until one observes the world) whether our natural tendencies to believe are apt guides to truth, or pragmatically beneficial. The second concern, however, challenges this thought. If God exists necessarily and possesses all his characteristics necessarily (including his desire to make things such that rational beings aren’t systematically in error), then can’t we infer a priori that our implanted dispositions to believe reliably produce true beliefs?
One reason for thinking that Reid would not take this line is that experience seems to show that there are many dispositions to believe that are patently unreliable (e.g., gullibility, wishful thinking, et al.). Moreover, Reid regards the inferential dimension of our rational faculties to be unreliable (Wolterstorff 2001, p. 220). In his estimation, Hume showed where unbridled “rational” inference can lead—namely, to skepticism—and, as a consequence, it cannot be trusted. (Insofar as this runs against the grain of the theistic meta-justification that I discuss below, one might favor the pragmatic interpretation. For my part, the latter seems more promising.) Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Reid gives his reader no reason to think that such a piece of reasoning is how we discover doxastic principles. Of course, it’s possible that something similar might strike him as tenable; but he doesn’t give the reader any reason to think as much.
Steup (2004).
Wright (2004).
Wright characterizes cornerstone propositions as follows: “Call a proposition a cornerstone for a given region of thought just in case it would follow from a lack of warrant for it that one could not rationally claim warrant for any belief in the region” (2004, pp. 167–168). One may think of them in terms of denials of skeptical scenarios.
If, on the other hand, we take what I called the alethic interpretation of Reid, his view bears even less resemblance to that of Wright. I, thus, do not consider it here.
References
Chisholm, R. (1957). Perceiving. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Chisholm, R. (1982). The foundations of knowing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Cohen, S. (2002). Basic knowledge and the problem of easy knowledge. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 65, 309–329.
Huemer, M. (2001). Skepticism and the veil of perception. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Huemer, M. (2007). Compassionate phenomenal conservatism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74, 30–55.
Hume, D. (1987). In P. H. Nidditch (Ed.), A treatise of human nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lehrer, K. (1989). Thomas Reid. New York: Routledge.
Lycan, W. (1988). Judgment and justification. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lycan, W. (2013). The principle of phenomenal conservatism and the principle of credulity. In C. Tucker (Ed.), Seemings and justification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mounce, H. O. (1999). Hume’s naturalism. New York: Routledge.
Nichols, R. (2007). Reid’s theory of perception. Clarendon: Oxford University Press.
Norton, D. F. (1982). David Hume: Common sense moralist sceptical metaphysician. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Plantinga, A. (1993). Warrant and proper function. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pryor, J. (2000). The skeptic and the dogmatist. Nous, 34, 517–549.
Pryor, J. (2004). What’s wrong with Moore’s argument? Philosophical Issues, 14, 349–378.
Pryor, J. Who is a Dogmatist? Unpublished manuscript.
Reid, T. (1983). In R. Beanblossom, & K. Lehrer (Eds.), Inquiry and essays. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Rinard, S. (2015). No exception for belief. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 94, 121–143.
Rysiew, P. (2002). Reid and epistemic naturalism. The Philosophical Quarterly, 52, 437–456.
Steup, M. (2004). Internalist reliabilism. Philosophical Issues, 14, 403–425.
Steup, M. (2012). Belief control and intentionality. Synthese, 188, 145–163.
Strawson, G. (1990). What’s so great about Reid? London Review of Books, 22, 14–16.
Van Cleve, J. (2003). Is knowledge easy–Or impossible? Externalism as the only alternative to skepticism. In S. Luper (Ed.), The skeptics: Contemporary essays. Farnham: Ashgate.
Van Cleve, J. (2015). Problems from Reid. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wilson, A. B. (2016). Peirce’s empiricism: Its roots and its originality. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Wolterstorff, N. (2001). Thomas Reid and the story of epistemology. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wright, C. (2004). On epistemic entitlement. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 78, 167–212.
Wright, C. (2016). On epistemic entitlement (II). In D. Dodd & E. Zardini (Eds.), Scepticism and perceptual justification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
I am indebted especially to Matthias Steup for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article, as well as Robert Pasnau for giving feedback on the section on Reid’s epistemology. Additionally, two anonymous referees provided helpful remarks that were instrumental in leading to important improvements in the paper.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Boespflug, M. Why Reid was no dogmatist. Synthese 196, 4511–4525 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1663-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1663-x