The Constituents of Reality

Abstract

Our principal purpose in this chapter will be to see how and to what extent Reid employs first principles as a means to the formulation and sustenance of a variety of theses most of which are or involve ontological commitments {1}. Among such commitments are that there are material bodies and that these bodies possess two sorts of qualities, primary and secondary. There is also the existence of other minds and of God to consider. In so far as Reid is justified in his employment of first principles for such a role we shall have etablished the point that such principles serve a crucial function in Reid’s thought. Indeed without such a deployment of these principles, typical Reidian theses concerning the being of a God, of other minds, and of a world of material bodies are left exposed to the otherwise legitimate comment that they are in need of justification that Reid simply fails to provide, especially in the wake of the threat that all that there really are are ideas.