Opposition to the ideal system as leitmotif in nineteenth century Anglo-Canadian psychology.

Abstract

AbstractDespite their varying backgrounds and philosophical commitments, the ideas of four major figures in the early history of psychology in English Canada converge in their opposition to what Thomas Reid had referred to as the system, his shorthand label for Cartesianism in general. The scepticism and individualism of Cartesianism were seen as particularly inimical to the development of psychology as a truly moral -- that is, truly social -- science. These early psychologies anticipated in several interesting respects more recent moves within psychology away from positivist science toward what is now again being described as moral science.Psychology, or the philosophy of the human mind ... is the province of Moral Philosophy ... [T]o employ our intellectual and moral powers according to the principles of reason and truth, is the great end of our existence. (Ryerson, 1842, p. 17)Egerton Ryerson, a major figure in the history of education in Upper Canada (and therefore also of Canada as such), held a view of psychology that did not differ significantly from that of Thomas Reid. Both saw it as the science of our capacity to grasp reason and truth as the foundations of the moral -- and thus truly human -- life. In the mid eighteenth century, Reid had, in connection, detected a serious problem in the philosophy of his time. The most immediate grounds of his concern were the implications for theology, which he took to provide the basis for morality, of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (1739/1984). In his criticism of Hume, Reid sought to identify the roots of the problem, which he ultimately found in the philosophy of Descartes.Des Cartes's system of the human understanding, which I shall beg to call the system, and which, with some improvements made by later writers, is now generally received, hath some defect; that his scepticism is inlaid in it, and reared along with it; and, therefore, that we must lay it open to the foundation, and examine the materials, before we can expect to raise any solid and useful fabric of knowledge on subject. (Reid, 1764/1818, p. 40)It was Descartes' doctrine that our ideas were the immediate objects of knowledge. This was the doctrine that Reid understood as the original defect of the ideal Descartes had intended to use scepticism in order to achieve certainty, i.e., to overcome scepticism itself, but, on Reid's account, the metaphysics of the Cogito was flawed in just such a way as to sow the seeds of precisely the noxious weed it had been intended to eradicate. Descartes, Reid maintained, was profoundly mistaken to believe that the problem of accounting for knowledge of ourselves and of the material world could be solved by the question - begging arguments presented in his Meditations. To begin by proclaiming ideas as the sole objects of knowledge left one with no effective instrument by which to break out of the realm of ideas. Locke, according to Reid, failed to see the nature of the problem and, though he dug deeper, found it even harder to keep out this enemy. Berkeley carried on the work but, finding himself unable to secure the material world against scepticism, took refuge in the spiritual. even proved insecure. Reid continued: But alas! the Treatise of Human Nature wantonly sapped the foundation of partition, and drowned all in one universal deluge (Reid, 1764/1818, p. 40).(f.1)Reid's Common Sense realism was based on the belief that to know God we must be assured a contact with the material world that is not threatened by sceptical arguments. Reid's philosophy was one of the two great eighteenth - century moves against the system. The other, motivated less by theological than by epistemological and logical considerations, was the German idealism that originated with Kant and continued with Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. These two traditions differed in important ways, but they had a common cause in their opposition to the scepticism that they saw descending from Descartes. …