Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology (review)

Nicholas Wolterstorff. Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xiii + 265. Cloth, $54.95.

Interest in Thomas Reid has undergone a resurgence over the past several decades. Nicolas Wolterstorff's book is the latest addition to the growing Reid literature, and it is a most welcome contribution. As Wolterstorff would be the first to admit, his treatment of Reid is "partial" in at least two ways. First, unlike Keith Lehrer, whose Thomas Reid (London and New York: Blackwell, 1989) was an attempt to provide an overview of all of the main facets of Reid's philosophy, Wolterstorff focuses on Reid's epistemology. (Reid's views on perception and the mind are treated as well, but largely in service of the elucidation of Reid's critique of "the Way of Ideas" and his own positive epistemological views.) Second, as Wolterstorff tells the reader in the Preface, his book is not intended to be a close account of what exactly Reid said on epistemic matters. (Nor, as Wolterstorff notes, is there much engagement with the scholarly literature on Reid.) Rather Wolterstorff judges the need of the day to be for "a guide to reading Reid, so that his genius may come to light" (xi). Hence, his book is meant to be "an interpretation of Reid's epistemology"; his "goal is to discover the line of thought that [Reid] was trying to clarify and articulate" (ibid.).

In chapter 1, Wolterstorff sets out what he regards as the questions underlying the bulk of Reid's work--questions concerning the source of our ability both to "get entities in mind" and to form not just thoughts but beliefs about them (4). Chapter 2 sets out "the Ideal Theorists'" proposed way of answering these questions (viz. in terms of there being some mental entities that are the immediate objects of thought); and chapters 3 and 4 relate Reid's attack on the Ideal Theory. Chapters 5 and 6 are devoted to clarifying Reid's subtle and at times rather confusing views on perception. In chapters 7-10--what is really the heart of the book--Wolterstorff turns to a direct consideration of Reid's epistemological views, focusing on Reid's treatment of testimony-based belief, his conception of common sense, and his defence of the first principles thereof against sceptical attack.

Judged, as it ought to be, in terms of how well the author has achieved his goal, as described above, Wolterstorff's book is a great success. It is a fine and accessible overview of the central themes in Reid's epistemology.

That said, and at the risk of appearing ungrateful, I should note that it is not always clear that Wolterstorff has gotten Reid exactly right. As Wolterstorff sees, Reid regards the Ideal Theory as a "hypothesis"--as bare, unremunerative conjecture. But I do not think that even "[p]art of Reid's argumentation for his position on hypotheses is theological" (38). Rather, Reid is simply adopting, and remorselessly applying, the first of Newton's Regulae Philosophandi: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearance" (see Reid's Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Essay I, Chapter V).

Similarly, Wolterstorff's describing Reid as an "occasionalist" (41, 54ff.) is, I think, misleading at best. For Reid's view of perception is not that, when there occurs a material impression on one's organs of sense, God intervenes, (directly) causing one to have the relevant thought(s). Reid does, of course, deny that when I perceive an apple, it causes my perception. But he must deny this, given that he holds that onlyagents possess genuine causal efficacy. As Wolterstorff at one place says, it is Reid's view that "[w]e are so constituted that, upon having sensations of certain sorts, we form beliefs about the external objects causing these sensations" (243; "causing...