Response to Keith Lehrer: Thomas Reid on Common Sense and Morals

Abstract

This paper is a response to Keith Lehrer's ‘Reid on Common Sense and Morals.’ I start by defending the general claim that it is appropriate to call Reid a moral realist. I continue by discussing three aspects of Reid's account of moral ideas. First, our first moral conceptions are non-propositional mental states that are essential ingredients of moral perception. Our first moral conceptions are not gross, indistinct and egocentric but are uninformed mental states that might be about others. Second, moral perception functions like perception of aesthetic properties and of the mental states of other humans, and this kind of perception is both immediate and informed. Third, I discuss the role of moral feelings in moral motivation.