Common sense philosophy holds that widely and deeply held beliefs are justified in the absence of defeaters. While this tradition has always had its philosophical detractors who have defended various forms of skepticism or have sought to develop rival epistemological views, recent advances in several scientific disciplines claim to have debunked the reliability of the faculties that produce our common sense beliefs. At the same time, however, it seems reasonable that we cannot do without common sense (...) beliefs entirely. Arguably, science and the scientific method are built on, and continue to depend on, common sense. This collection of essays debates the tenability of common sense in the face of recent challenges from the empirical sciences. It explores to what extent scientific considerations--rather than philosophical considerations--put pressure on common sense philosophy. The book is structured in a way that promotes dialogue between philosophers and scientists. Noah Lemos, one of the most influential contemporary advocates of the common sense tradition, begins with an overview of the nature and scope of common sense beliefs, and examines philosophical objections to common sense and its relationship to scientific beliefs. Then, the volume features essays by scientists and philosophers of science who discuss various proposed conflicts between commonsensical and scientific beliefs: the reality of space and time, about the nature of human beings, about free will and identity, about rationality, about morality, and about religious belief. Notable philosophers who embrace the common sense tradition respond to these essays to explore the connection between common sense philosophy and contemporary debates in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, physics, and psychology. (shrink)

Wittgenstein likens philosophy both to an illness and to a therapy. The reflections he dedicates to mental disturbance in On Certainty shed some light on this ambivalence, by pointing at the intertwined themes of common sense, doubt, mistake, reasonableness, and normality. Wittgenstein’s remarks have sometimes been compared to the description of the symptoms of what psychopathologists have called the loss of natural self-evidence, or the loss of common sense. Besides briefly recalling some of the outcomes of this (...) debate in literature, I focus on Wittgenstein’s conception of “hinges”, the basic practical certainties which patients suffering from the loss of common sense seem to lack. By working on this comparison, I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s idea of philosophy that clarifies both its insane and its therapeutic side. (shrink)

This collection of essays brings together research on sense modalities in general and spatial perception in particular in a systematic and interdisciplinary way. It updates a long-standing philosophical fascination with this topic by incorporating theoretical and empirical research from cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology. The book is divided thematically to cover a wide range of established and emerging issues. Part I covers notions of objectivity and subjectivity in spatial perception and thinking. Part II focuses on the canonical distal senses, (...) such as vision and audition. Part III concerns the chemical senses, including olfaction and gustation. Part IV discusses bodily awareness, peripersonal space, and touch. Finally, the volume concludes with Part V, on multimodality. Spatial Senses is an important contribution to the scholarly literature on the philosophy of perception that takes into account important advances in the sciences. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Professor of Moral Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen, James Beattie (1735–1803) was one of the most prominent literary figures of late eighteenth-century Britain. His major works, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) and the two-canto poem The Minstrel (1771–1774), were two of the best-sellers of the Scottish Enlightenment and were key to Beattie’s role in the emergence of both the ‘Scottish School’ of Common Sense Philosophy and British Romanticism. Intellectual history scholarship on (...) the Scottish Enlightenment has tended to discuss Beattie in terms of his relationship to his fellow Aberdonian Thomas Read. While clearly important, his link with Reid does not exhaust our potential interest in Beattie. This article explores his extensive engagement with the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). In the process, it is argued that the Genevan’s works – especially the Confession of the Savoyard Vicar in Emile (1762) – played an important though little noticed role in both Beattie’s rhetoric and anti-scepticism in both the Essay and Minstrel. Moreover, Beattie’s initially praising stance on Rousseau as a potential friend to true religion indicates the complexity of the reception of the Genevan’s works in late eighteenth-century Britain. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of religion has been fascinated with questions of the rationality of religious belief. Alvin Plantinga—a prominent Christian philosopher—has contributed greatly to the exploration of these questions. Plantinga’s epistemology is rooted in the intuitions of Thomas Reid’s “common-sense” philosophy and has developed into a distinctive outlook that we may coin, Plantingian (Calvinist) Reidianism. This chapter aims to propose that, in fact, the central ideas of that outlook can be seen prior to Reid (and John Calvin), beyond (...) the confines of exclusively Christian and European circles, in the theological epistemology of the Damascene Islamic theologian, Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328 CE). In exploring the contours of a Taymiyyan worldview, primed upon the notion of fiṭra, Ibn Taymiyya can be seen to have developed a faculty-based account of knowledge, moderate foundationalism, and a distinct “Reformed” epistemology. Within the midst of these developments, Ibn Taymiyya offers a potential framework for a “common-sense” philosophical methodology. Taken together these ideas form the basis for the intuitions of Plantingian Reidianism. Therefore, Plantinga might have looked to an earlier figure working in another tradition for historical support and inspiration for his religious epistemology. (shrink)

Making Sense examines the philosophical issues and disputes that lie behind the news headlines of the day. We read about what is happening in the world, but how do we know what the truth is, or whether there is one 'truth' at all? A president has his private sexual affairs discussed and analyzed by everyone, but is the private life of anyone the proper moral concern of others? A war against terrorism is declared, but what justifies the use of (...) armed forces with its inevitable loss of life? Making Sense draws out these philosophical disputes and shows how we can use the techniques of philosophy and the insights of its greatest practitioners to understand the issues behind the headlines better. It explains the proper role of philosophy in this respect, showing both the limits and the reach of philosophical analysis of current affairs. It also argues that applying philosophy to news stories can and should inform our wider understanding; what we know, believe and value. A philosophically informed reading of the news creates a two-way process where philosophy sheds light on the news and the news, thus illuminated, sheds light on our philosophy. The book covers themes such as war, truth, morality, the environment, religious faith, the ending of life and the meaning of value. It examines such news stories as the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, the war against terrorism, the siege at Waco, the genetically modified foods debate and advances in human therapeutic cloning. The discussions interweave philosophy and current affairs to create a compelling narrative that challenges how we make sense both of the world around us and of our own beliefs. (shrink)

Margaret MacDonald (1907–56) was a central figure in the history of early analytic philosophy in Britain due to both her editorial work as well as her own writings. While her later work on aesthetics and political philosophy has recently received attention, her early writings in the 1930s present a coherent and, for its time, strikingly original blend of common-sense and scientific philosophy. In these papers, MacDonald tackles the central problems of philosophy of her day: verification, (...) the problem of induction, and the relationship between philosophical and scientific method. MacDonald’s philosophy of science starts from the principle that we should carefully analyse the elements of scientific practice (particularly its temporal features) and the ways that scientists describe that practice. That is, she applies the techniques of ordinary language philosophy to actual scientific language. MacDonald shows how ‘scientific common-sense’ is inconsistent with both of the dominant schools of philosophy of her day. Bringing MacDonald back into the story of analytic philosophy corrects the impression that in early analytic philosophy, there are fundamental dichotomies between the style of Moore and Wittgenstein, on the one hand, and the Vienna Circle on the other. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of religion has been fascinated with questions of the rationality of religious belief. Alvin Plantinga—a prominent Christian philosopher—has contributed greatly to the exploration of these questions. Plantinga’s epistemology is rooted in the intuitions of Thomas Reid’s “common-sense” philosophy and has developed into a distinctive outlook that we may coin, Plantingian (Calvinist) Reidianism. This chapter aims to propose that, in fact, the central ideas of that outlook can be seen prior to Reid (and John Calvin), beyond (...) the confines of exclusively Christian and European circles, in the theological epistemology of the Damascene Islamic theologian, Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328 CE). In exploring the contours of a Taymiyyan worldview, primed upon the notion of fiṭra, Ibn Taymiyya can be seen to have developed a faculty-based account of knowledge, moderate foundationalism, and a distinct “Reformed” epistemology. Within the midst of these developments, Ibn Taymiyya offers a potential framework for a “common-sense” philosophical methodology. Taken together these ideas form the basis for the intuitions of Plantingian Reidianism. Therefore, Plantinga might have looked to an earlier figure working in another tradition for historical support and inspiration for his religious epistemology. (shrink)

This book is a defence of the philosophy of common sense in the spirit of Thomas Reid and G.E. Moore, drawing on the work of Aristotle, evolutionary biology and psychology, and historical studies on the origins of early modern philosophy. It defines and explores common sense beliefs, and defends them from challenges from prominent philosophers.

The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Frege On Sense and Reference helps the student to get to grips with Frege's thought, and introduces and assesses:the ...

This book is a defence of the philosophy of common sense broadly in the spirit of Thomas Reid and G.E. Moore. It breaks new ground by drawing on the work of Aristotle, contemporary evolutionary biology and psychology, and historical studies on the origins of early modern philosophy. Part One offers new answers to the questions: What counts as a common sense belief? Why should common sense beliefs be considered default positions?, and Why is it that (...) philosophers so frequently end up denying what we all know to be true? Part Two defends common sense beliefs from specific challenges from prominent philosophers on topics from metaphysics to ethics. (shrink)

The Scottish Common Sense School of philosophy emerged during the Scottish Enlightenment of the second half of the eighteenth century. The School’s principal proponents were Thomas Reid, James Oswald, James Beattie and Dugald Stewart. They believed that we are all naturally implanted with an array of common sense intuitions and these intuitions are in fact the foundation of truth. Their approach dominated philosophical thought in Great Britain and the United States until the mid nineteenth century. In recent (...) years philosophers have renewed their appreciation of the notion of common sense. In particular, discussions of common sense intuitions are integral to contemporary epistemological foundationalism. Scottish Common Sense Philosophy: Sources and Origins is a 5-volume collection of writings by and about philosophers in the eighteenth-century Scottish Common Sense School. The writings by Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart are readily available in recent editions and facsimile reprints so this series focuses on less accessible and less well-known items. Oswald’s Appeal appears here in print for the first time in any form since 1772. Volume 2 is the first reset printing of Beattie’s Essay in over 100 years, and is the only edition to contain annotations that trace the major changes that he made to the text. Almost all of the responses in volumes 3 and 4 appear here in print for the first time since their original publication. These include reviews, pamphlets and excerpts from books. Also included is previously unpublished discussion of Beattie’s Essay by Dugald Stewart. The final volume is a bibliography of around 80 Scottish philosophers from the early eighteenth century to the close of the nineteenth century. Unlike the 1932 bibliography of Scottish philosophers offered by T. E. Jessop, which selectively presents only the philosophical writings by the various Scottish philosophers, this volume attempts to catalogue all of the writings by these philosophers in all of their editions. (shrink)

Common-sense philosophy is important because it maintains that we can know many things about the world, about ourselves, about morality, and even about things of a metaphysical nature. The tenets of common-sense philosophy, while in some sense obvious and unsurprising, give rise to powerful arguments that can shed light on fundamental philosophical issues, including the perennial problem of scepticism and the emerging challenge of scientism. This Companion offers an exploration of common-sense philosophy in (...) its many forms, tracing its development as a concept and considering the roles it has been assigned to play throughout the history of philosophy. Containing fifteen newly commissioned chapters from leading experts in the history of philosophy, epistemology, the philosophy of science, moral philosophy and metaphysics, the volume will be an essential guide for students and scholars hoping to gain a greater understanding of the value and enduring appeal of common-sense philosophy. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1-2, January–December 2024.

The 18th-century Scottish ‘common sense’ philosopher Thomas Reid argued that perception can be distinguished on several dimensions from other categories of experience, such as sensation, illusion, hallucination, mental images, and what he called ‘fancy.’ We extend his approach to eleven mental categories, and discuss how these distinctions, often ignored in the empirical literature, bear on current research. We also score each category on five properties (ones abstracted from Reid) to form a 5 × 11 matrix, and thus can generate (...) statistical measures of their mutual dependencies, a procedure that may have general interest as illustrating what we can call ‘computational philosophy.’. (shrink)

This volume reprints in a scholar's edition the first English-language texts on bioethics, John Gregory's (1724-1773) Observations on the Duties and Offices of a Physician and on the Method of Prosecuting Enquiries in Philosophy (London, 1770) and Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician (London, 1772). Five previously unpublished manuscripts of Gregory's lectures are also included. An introduction places Gregory's medical ethics and philosophy of medicine in their eighteenth-century contexts of Scottish Enlightenment history and culture, Baconian (...) science and philosophy of medicine, medical practice, the feminine and feminist philosophy of the Bluestocking Circle, and moral sense philosophy, particularly David Hume's concept of sympathy, and provides a bibliography of primary and secondary sources as an aid to teaching and future scholarship. The book's index provides access to Gregory's texts, by using both historical terms and current terminology of bioethics. A volume in the subseries Classics of Medical Ethics. (shrink)

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This paper identifies a volitional theory of meaning common to speech act theory and legal positivism, represented by Hart and Kelsen. This model is compared and contrasted with the model of social operations developed by Reid, a Common Sense Enlightenment philosopher. Whereas the former subscribes to the view that meaning is generated by acts of will, the latter finds meaning to consist of the dual elements of sign and 'directedness'.The ability of positivist theories to provide a structural account of (...) the difference between legal rules and other rules is inextricably linked to this commitment to the volitional theory of meaning. The commitment to the volitional view however leads to problems in requiring that some kind of authority be presupposed in for plain rules to attain legal force. Such authority can only be established with recourse to further rules or must be accepted as a matter of faith. Reid's criterion of direction however vitiates the need for an authority, instead accounting for social communication in general, and rules in particular, in terms of sociological factors. Although no comprehensive critique of the volitional theory is proposed, Reid's model is preferable on the grounds of explanatory richness.The core claims of the paper are that: legal positivism necessarily subscribes to the volitional theory of meaning; rejection of the volitional theory necessarily entails rejection of the positivist view that legal and non-legal rules can be differentiated on structural grounds another counter-model exists which avoids some of the pitfalls of the volitional theory; if the volitional theory is rejected then the existence of rules can only be accounted for in a 'strong' sociological sense and legal theory must accordingly accept the dominant role of sociology in conceptualising the nature of rules. (shrink)

In part one I present a positive argument for the claim that philosophical argument can rationally overturn common sense. It is widely agreed that science can overturn common sense. But every scientific argument, I argue, relies on philosophical assumptions. If the scientific argument succeeds, then its philosophical assumptions must be more worthy of belief than the common sense proposition under attack. But this means there could be a philosophical argument against common sense, each of whose premises (...) is just as worthy of belief as the scientist’s philosophical assumptions. If so, then the purely philosophical argument will also succeed. In part two I consider three motivations, each of which comprises a distinct philosophical methodology, for the opposing view: the Moorean idea that common sense enjoys greater plausibility than philosophy; case judgments should trump general principles; reflective equilibrium and conservatism. I argue that all three motivations fail. (shrink)

This article re-examines Humboldt’s comparative linguistics by analyzing two cases: the reception of Chinese philosophy in France and the translation of Greek philosophy in China. Humboldt’s legacy is treated in opposite ways which result in two translation methods. I argue that Humboldt’s statement about the inferiority of Chinese should not be taken in a literal sense. It highlights the grammatical differences between Greek and Chinese, and can lead to questioning some basic assumptions about the concept of being. (...) Humboldtian comparativism, understood as the recognition of differences and the respect for the foreign, can shed light on transcultural understanding in general. (shrink)

We are frequently confronted with moral situations that are unsettling, confusing, disorienting. We try to come to grips with them. When we do so, we engage in a distinctive type of moral inquiry: hermeneutical inquiry. Its aim is to make sense of our situation. What is it to make sense of one's situation? Hermeneutical inquiry is part of our everyday moral experience. Understanding its nature and its place in moral epistemology is important. Yet, I argue, that existing accounts (...) of moral inquiry do not give us the resources to do so. This paper develops a positive account of hermeneutical inquiry. I argue that when we engage in hermeneutical inquiry, we search for an apt perspective on our situation. (shrink)

An exploration of the influence of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy on early nineteenth century American attitudes toward fiction and the imagination. Martin first shows the great appeal of this movement, which became a semi-official philosophy in America. He suggests that it was attractive to Americans because "it stabilized, it was safe, it discouraged undue speculation." In reaction to this stolid philosophic outlook emerged a quest for a free, more dynamic concept of the imagination.--G. E. S.

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Contemporary philosophy’s three main naturalisms are methodological, ontological and epistemological. Methodological naturalism states that the only authoritative standards are those of science. Ontological and epistemological naturalism respectively state that all entities and all valid methods of inquiry are in some sense natural. In philosophy of mathematics of the past few decades methodological naturalism has received the lion’s share of the attention, so we concentrate on this. Ontological and epistemological naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics are discussed (...) more briefly in section 6. (shrink)

Here is an overview of what is to come. In Sections I and II, I will sketch two of the projects frequently pursued by moral philosophers, and the methods typically invoked in those projects. I will argue that these projects presuppose (or at least suggest) a particular sort of account of the mental representation of human value systems, since the methods make sense only if we assume a certain kind of story about how the human mind stores information about (...) values. The burden of my argument in Section III will be that while the jury is still out, there is some evidence suggesting that this account of mental representation is mistaken. If it is mistaken, it follows that two of the central methods of moral philosophy have to be substantially modified, or perhaps abandoned, and that the goals philosophers have sought to achieve with these methods may themselves be misguided. I fear that many of my philosophical colleagues will find this a quite radical suggestion. But if anything is clear in this area, it is that the methods we will be considering have not been conspicuously successful, though it certainly has not been for want of trying. So perhaps it is time for some radical, empirically informed rethinking of goals and methods in these parts of moral philosophy. (shrink)

In what, if any sense are our torts and our breaches of contract 'wrongs'? These two branches of private law have for centuries provided philosophers and jurists with grounds for puzzlement and this book provides both an outline of, and intervention in, contemporary jurisprudential debates about the nature and foundation of liability in private law.

In this article, I discuss how Samuel Stanhope Smith advanced Reidian themes in his moral philosophy and examine their reception by Presbyterian revivalists Ashbel Green, Samuel Miller, and Archibald Alexander. Smith, seventh president and moral philosophy professor of the College of New Jersey (1779–1812), has received marginal scholarly attention regarding his moral philosophy and rational theology, in comparison to his predecessor John Witherspoon. As an early American philosopher who drew on the ideals of the Scottish Enlightenment including (...) Common Sense philosophy, Smith faced heightened scrutiny from American revivalists regarding the danger his epistemology presented to the institution of religion. The Scottish School of Common Sense was widely praised and applied in nineteenth-century American moral philosophy, but before the more general American acceptance of Common Sense, Smith already appealed to Reidian themes in his methodology and treatment of external sensations, internal sensations, intellectual powers, and active powers of the human mind. In this paper, I argue that Smith's use of Reidian themes for grooming his student's morality conflicted with the educational expectations from revivalists on Princeton's board of trustees who demanded more attention on orthodox theology. I identify Smith's notions of causation, liberty, and the moral faculty as primary reasons for this tension over Princeton's educational purpose during the first decade of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Brian Lleiter : Leiter reports -- Jason Stanley : philosophy as the great naïveté -- Eric Schwitzgebel : the splintered skeptic -- Mark Rowlands : hour of the wolf -- Eric T. olson : the philosopher with no hands -- Craig Callender : time lord -- Kieran Setiya : what Anscombe intended and other puzzles -- Kit Fine : metaphysical kit -- Patricia Churchland : causal machines -- Valerie Tiberius : mostly elephant, ergo -- Peter Carruthers : mind reader (...) -- Joshua Knobe : indie rock virtues -- Alfred R. Mele : the four million dollar philosopher -- Graham Priest : logically speaking -- Ursula Renz: after Spinoza : wiser, freer, happier -- Cecile Fabre: on the intrinsic value of each of us -- Hilde Lindemann : no ethics without feminism -- Elizabeth S. Anderson : the new leveller -- Christine Korsgaard: treating people as end in themselves -- Michael Lynch : truth, reason and democracy -- Timothy Williamson : classical investigations -- Ernie Lepore : meaning, truth, language, reality -- Jerry Fodor : meaningful words without sense, and other revolutions -- Huw Price : without mirrors -- Gary Gutting : what philosophers know. (shrink)

The inquiry will attempt to answer several questions about: a) the cognitive status of philosophy according to Kant; b) the possibility of distinguishing philosophy from other forms of knowledge, with particular reference to specifically named scientific cognitions; c) the consequences connected with the necessity of thinking of philosophy in its relation to an ulterior dimension with respect to that of science, which is, according to Kant, the dimension of wisdom. Philosophy, according to Kant, is a rational (...) cognition, yet different from mathematics. Philosophy is a rational cognition from concepts, and therefore makes a discursive use of reason in accordance with concepts. Mathematics is instead a rational cognition from the construction of concepts, and therefore makes intuitive use of reason through the construction of concepts. The construction of a concept implies necessarily the capacity and the possibility of exposing in the intuition the corresponding object and to express it through a representation which is universally valid “for all possible intuitions that belong under the same concept”. It is precisely the fact that it is a cognition that proceeds along the construction of concepts which makes mathematics a stable and certain discipline, accompanied by evident proofs founded upon definitions, axioms and demonstrations that no rational cognition that proceeds with mere concepts can possess. It is for this reason that philosophy, in contrast with mathematics and whatever else is in some manner reducible to mathematics, may not be learned; for the fact that philosophy, understood as a scientific discipline in the same way in which all scientific disciplines are to be understood, really doesn’t exist. Philosophy is not a discipline in the sense in which all the other scientific disciplines are, because philosophy, for Kant, “is a mere idea of apossible science that precisely as an idea of a possible science is nowhere given in concreto”. If one may effectively speak about philosophy as a science, this does not constitute the moment in which philosophy finally reaches completion in itself. What Kant underscores is that at this level philosophy is only a science, that is, knowledge which, as much as it is fundamentally stable and certain, does not succeed in any case in obtaining that which constitutes instead, the most important and irreducible element of philosophy: “the relation of all cognition to the essential ends of human reason”. The philosopher is not for Kant simply a technician of reason, in that his aim is not solely that of ability, the completeness of knowledge and its systematic organisation. Rather, he aspires to something which goes beyond the merely cognitive dimension, and that Kant calls “wisdom”. Even knowing that science is the only available path, philosophy knows also that science cannot satisfy itself. In this sense philosophy presents itself as a science of limits and finds precisely in this determination the difference of all particular scientific disciplines, and, at one and the same time, of all pseudocognitive attitudes which are programmatically presented as independent from and alternative to science. (shrink)

There is no such thing as , conceived as a special discipline with its own distinctive subject matter or peculiar method. But there is an analytic task for philosophy that distinguishes it from other reflective pursuits, a global or synoptic commission: to establish whether the final outputs of other disciplines and common sense can be fused into a single periscopic vision of the Universe. And there is the hard-won insight that thought and language aren't transparent but stand in (...) need of analysis an insight that threatens to be lost once philosophers appeal to intuitions. (shrink)

Common sense philosophy was one of the Scottish Enlightenment's most original intellectual products. The nine specially written essays in this volume explore the philosophical and historical significance of this school of thought, recovering the ways in which it developed during the long eighteenth century.

This article argues that, strictly speaking, from its inception with the ancient Greeks and for all time, philosophy and science are identical and consist in an essential relationship between a specific type of understanding of the human person as possessed of an intellectual soul capable of being habituated and a psychologically-independent composite whole, or organization. It maintains, further, that absence of either one of the extremes of this essential relationship cannot be philosophy/science and, if mistaken for such and (...) applied to the workings of cultural institutions, will generate anarchy within human culture and make leadership excellence impossible to achieve. Finally, it argues that only a return to this “common sense” understanding of philosophy can generate the leadership excellence that can save the West from its current state of cultural and civilizational anarchy. (shrink)