Active Manpower Research Articles

Reid on Moral Sentimentalism

In the Essays on the Active Powers of Man V. 7, Thomas Reid seeks to show “[t]hat moral approbation implies a real judgment,” contrasting this thesis with the view that moral approbation is no more than a feeling. Unfortunately, his criticism of moral sentimentalism systematically conflates two different metaethical views: non-cognitivism about moral thought and subjectivism about moral properties. However, if we properly disentangle the various parts of Reid’s discussion, we can isolate pertinent arguments against each of these views. Some of these arguments, such as the argument from disagreement and the argument from implausible counterfactuals against subjectivism, or the transparency argument against non-cognitivism, still have important roles to play in contemporary metaethics.

Honestum is as Honestum Does: Reid, Hume – and Mandeville?!

How are we to understand Thomas Reid in relation to Bernard de Mandeville? I answer this question by considering two components of the assessment of Hume's theory of morals that Reid provides in his Essays on the Active Powers of Man: first, Reid's claim that Hume's system of morals cannot accommodate the Stoic conception of moral worth (honestum); second, Reid's charge that Hume's account of morally meritorious action leads to an inflated and incoherent version of Epicurean virtue theory. I thus determine the character of Reid's relation to Mandeville by examining the Stoic and anti-Epicurean assumptions involved in Reid's criticism of Hume's ethics.

Reid's Third Argument for Moral Liberty

Thomas Reid uses the term ‘moral liberty’ to refer to a kind of free will that is agent-causal and incompatible with determinism. I offer and textually support a new interpretation of Reid's third argument for moral liberty, which Reid presents in Section 4.8 of Essays on the Active Powers of Man. Generally regarded as obscure, most commentators either ignore Reid's third argument or lend it cursory attention. In my interpretation, Reid points to the truism that we have reason to think that human persons conceive of long-term plans. Then, Reid argues that determinism implies that God both conceives of and enacts these plans, leaving us without any reason to believe that people even conceive of these plans. Therefore, we should hold onto the truism and reject determinism. On my interpretation, Reid employs the premises of a theistic argument from design as premises of his argument.

Essays on the Active Powers of Man by Thomas Reid (review)

Reviewed by: Essays on the Active Powers of Man by Thomas Reid Esther Kroeker Thomas Reid . Essays on the Active Powers of Man. Edited by James A. Harris and Knud Haakonssen. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Pp. xxv + 388. ISBN 978-0-271-03789-9, Cloth, $139.95. For anyone interested in Reid's moral psychology and ethics, the new edition of his Essays on the Active Powers of Man is a welcome addition to the Edinburgh Collection. This book, first announced as the sixth, finally arrives as the seventh of a ten volume collection, The Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid, edited by Knud Haakonssen, which contains Reid's published and unpublished writings. During his lifetime, Reid published three volumes: An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). With the most recent addition of Harris and Haakonssen's edition of the Active Powers, all three of these books are now available in a clear and well-documented critical edition. This new volume in the Edinburgh Edition has already become the standard critical edition of Reid's Active Powers. The editors begin this volume with an instructive account of the historical background of Reid's ideas, the genesis of his work, a brief description of his method of argumentation, and comments about the reception of the Active Powers. The introduction is followed by the critical text of Reid's Active Powers, in which [End Page 275] Reid presents his account of human moral agency, and the volume ends with a bibliography and a useful index of names. In the introduction, the editors argue that this collection of essays has its roots in Reid's earlier intellectual life, with themes that Reid first started to develop in the 1730s, when he was regent at King's College in Aberdeen. However, Harris and Haakonssen point out, the greatest number of notes and manuscripts on the subjects found in these essays date from the time when Reid held a professorship for moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow (which started in 1764). Haakonssen and Harris report that among the courses Reid taught in Glasgow, one stands out as lasting the longest and including the greatest number of lectures: pneumatology (philosophy of mind). Reid found this topic to be so important because he believed it was basic to ethics and politics. The lectures for this course, in which he develops his moral psychology, constitute a significant part of the Active Powers. During his years at the University of Glasgow, Reid also presented a series of discourses at the Glasgow Literary Society. Some of the arguments discussed in these papers became central to the important Essay III of the Active Powers. According to Haakonssen and Harris, two factors seem to have had a major influence on the development of the arguments and views Reid presents in the Active Powers. The first is Reid's criticism of David Hume's moral theory, sentimentalism, together with a rebuttal of Joseph Priestly's necessitarianism, both viewed, according to the editors' understanding of Reid, as resurrections of the ancient Epicurean philosophy. Against this background, Reid develops his own views about the nature of non-rational and rational principles of action (or motives) and about the liberty of moral agents. The second factor is an essay competition for which Reid appears to have prepared several sets of manuscripts. Although these manuscripts bear the name of the competition, Haakonssen and Harris find no evidence that Reid actually submitted an essay to the contest. Even so, parts of Essay IV of the Active Powers—especially the three arguments in defence of moral liberty—reflect the content of these manuscripts. The introduction ends with instructive information about the first publication and reception of the Active Powers, which was among the dozen most frequently acquired works of Scottish Enlightenment Philosophy, and which appeared in twenty-one library subscriptions in the early nineteenth century. In the critical text, which follows the introduction, Reid presents his account of the human mind as it is involved in free moral action. Reid had presented his views about...

Lehrer Reading Reid

Lehrer's “reason for writing this book is that the philosophy of Thomas Reid is widely unread, while the combination of soundness and creativity of his work is unexcelled.” The book contributes to the ongoing Reid revival. Chapter 1 presents an overview of Reid's life and works and the last, Chapter 15, gives Lehrer's appraisal of Reid's philosophy. Chapter 2, “Beyond Impressions and Ideas,” outlines Reid's “refutation of what he called the Ideal System” of impressions and ideas that dominated philosophy from Descartes through Hume, and summarizes Reid's theory of the mind. The remaining chapters conduct the reader through the three books Reid published during his lifetime. There are three chapters covering the Inquiry of the Human Mind (1764), five on the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), a chapter comparing Reid on conception and evidence in the Inquiry and the Essays, and three chapters on Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). The index is helpful despite occasional references to a page number larger than the number of pages. The bibliography is generally good, although, oddly, Lehrer lists the inaccessible 1937 Latin edition of Reid's important Philosophical Orations and not the English translation published by the Philosophy Research Archives in 1977 and republished by the Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series early in 1989. The text is remarkably free of typographical errors, but on p. 130 Putnam's 1973 article, “Meaning and Reference,” is said to have been published in 1983.

On Alleged Inconsistency in Reid's Theory of Moral Liberty

NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 453 La Mothe le Vayer, Franqois de. Discours de la Diversit~ d'Humeurs de plusieurs Nations, et particuli&ement des Francois et des Espagnols touchant les affaires du temps present La Perri6re, Guillaume de. The Mirror of Policy Watson, William. A Decacordon of Ten Quodlibetical questions concerning Religion and State: wherein the author framing himself a quilibet to every quodlibet , decides an hundred cross interrogatory doubts, about the general contentions betwixt the seminary priests and Jesuits at this present Columbia University JAMES JAY HAMILTON ON AN ALLEGED INCONSISTENCY IN REID'S THEORY OF MORAL LIBERTY In a valuable essay in this journal, Jerome Weinstock argues that one of the most important insights in Thomas Reid's writing on active power and free will is his attempt to provide some coherent basis for the notion of having power over the determinations of one's will. ~An important part of this basis, according to Weinstock , is that Reid related this power to having a competent reasoning ability or faculty of judgment. But the exact nature of the relationship remains obscure in Reid's hands, Weinstock claims. He asks, "Is ... Reid's view that this power implies our having rational capacities, is simultaneous or coextensive with it, or synonymous with it? ''2 Weinstock argues that some of Reid's pronouncements on this issue only obscure the matter. What obscures the matter most, according to Weinstock, is that Reid is inconsistent about the relation of having power over the determinations of one's will and having rational capacities. I argue that a careful reading of Reid's argument shows that he is not guilty of the inconsistency Weinstock alleges, and I answer Weinstock's question about whether it is Reid's view that having power over the determinations of one's will implies, is coextensive with, or is synonymous with, having rational capacities. Weinstock expresses the inconsistency he finds in Reid as follows: "Although Reid first tells us that power over one's will implies judgment and reason, very shortly afterwards he tells us that it is at least conceivable that this power may be possessed by a being who has no reasoning abilities at all! ''3 The inconsistency Weinstock alleges is between the following principles: (a) Power over one's will implies judgment or reason. (b) "We may, perhaps, be able to conceive a being endowed with power over the determinations of his will, without any light in his mind to direct that power to some end.'" There is no doubt that if Reid accepts (a) and (b), he is guilty of an inconsistency. "Reid's Definition of Freedom," Journal of the History of Philosophy 13 (July 1975):335-45. 2Ibid., p. 338. Ibid., p. 339. ' Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man in The Works of Thomas Reid, ed. Sir William Hamilton, 6th ed., 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Maclachan and Stewart, 1863), 2:600. 454 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY In fact, however, Reid never asserts (a) and would not accept it. According to Reid, we do not know whether (a) is true: "What connection there may be, in the nature of things, between reason and active power, we know not. But we see evidently that, as reason without active power can do nothing, so active power without reason has no guide to direct it to any end. These two conjoined make moral liberty .... "~ Reid argues that an agent cannot be said to have active power to produce an effect unless all the means necessary to its production are in his power. 6 Since Reid takes power over the determinations of the will to be a necessary means, 7 it follows that an agent's having active power to bring about an effect implies that he has power over the determinations of the will necessary to produce that effect. Thus, if we do not know what connection there may be, in the nature of things, between reason and active power, neither do we know what connection there may be between reason and power over the determinations of the will. Because of this, Reid would not have accepted (a)-not because he believed it to be false, but because it is not known...