Causation and Perception in Reid

My discussion of Reid, in the paper which Cummins has criticized, was restricted to two questions: (i) did Reid hold both perceptual and epistemic direct realism? and, assuming that the answer to this question is affirmative, (z) what sort of perceptual direct realism did Reid hold? My answer to the first question was yes, and on both counts. On this point Cummins and I are in agreement. With regard to (2), one important question concerns the role of sensations in Reid's version of perceptual direct realism (PDR). Sensations might be mere accompaniments of perceptual events, and so not even partially constitutive of them, or sensations might somehow be ingredients in perceptual events. The first sort of role for sensations leads to what I called a double-tier account of perception, while the view that sensations are ingredients in perceptual events is an element of a single-tier account. Reid's texts are'not decisive in answering the question about the role of sensations in his version of PDR. Even so, I argued, there are reasons for interpreting Reid as a single-tierist. Such a view allows that perceptual experiences have sensuous content, as we normally assume, while this is ruled out on a double-tier theory. Moreover, I argued that a double-tier theory, when coupled with the assumption that sensations themselves are sometimes perceived, leads to problems for PDR. It is on this point that Cummins takes issue with my treatment of Reid. What it comes to is this: on a double-tier theory, perception proper is restricted to what Cummins calls an INB which has been caused in the right way by a sensation. In some texts, Reid allows that a person sometimes attends to his sensations, and if this attending is itself an INB caused by that sensation, then the sensation is perceived. Such an outcome leaves the way open for a case in which an external physical object is indirectly perceived, contrary to PDR. The case I used was one in which a sensation A in Cummins' paper is simultaneously a common cause of two INB's: one is the attentive belief which takes as its object that very sensation (PA), while the other is

Analytic philosophy · Causation · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Perception · Philosophy of mind · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology

• Thomas Reid's Philosophy of Mind

  Open Access•Rebecca Copenhaver•Philosophy Compass•2006

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