Common Sense in Reid’s Response to Scepticism

Abstract

Thomas Reid is one figure whose epistemological views are bound up with common sense. As with his positive theory, however, Reid’s response to scepticism – what it’s meant to establish, and how – is a matter of controversy. Of course, insofar as it respects and defends our ordinary view of ourselves as having knowledge, and from a variety of sources, any response to scepticism is ‘commonsensical’ in the broad sense. Notably, however, recent interpreters of Reid, and contemporary figures who take inspiration from his views, differ in what role if any they see common sense itself as playing in Reid’s response to the sceptic – hence, in whether they think that response is commonsensical in some more substantive sense. Here, I argue that even those who do give common sense a place in Reid’s defense of our pretheoretic epistemological views underrate the importance therein of common sense as Reid conceives of it. Specifically, they overlook the fact that common sense has an irreducible normative aspect for Reid, and that an adherence to the first principles of common sense is, for him, a minimal requirement on rational judgment and action, a requirement which even the sceptic cannot evade.