Talk:Thomas Reid

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Reid was a theist. He therefore had to make his philosophy conform to Judeo-Christian beliefs. Also, he misunderstood Berkeley. Reid could not mentally grasp that the way an object appears depends on the observer's brain.

Schopenhauer praised Reid because Reid realized that raw sensations do not, by themselves, represent objects. Sensations are mere feelings. Another mental process, which Schopenhauer called "understanding," represents objects to the mind by applying the forms of space, time, and causality to data provided by sensations.

I try to expand on Reid's notion of common sense and Ryan Delaney deletes my posting. Is it informative to merely say that Reid was a common sense philosopher? Isn't it more educational to explain how he thought that human knowledge can be anlyzed through common sense? Are we writing for third graders?

64.12.117.12 12:32, 11 September 2005 (UTC)Bruce Partington

Please familiarize yourself with the policy article Wikipedia:No original research. To say that Reid misunderstood Berkeley is original research, and not suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia article. It would be better to cite a source that said he misunderstood Berkeley. --Ryan Delaney talk 13:32, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

You are correct. I, personally, judged that Reid misunderstood Berkeley. That is my opinion. In the future I will be sensitive to such subjective points of view. 152.163.101.12 02:01, 12 September 2005 (UTC)Bruce Partington

[edit] Hume & Reid

The David Hume article states that

"Hume failed to gain chairs of philosophy in Edinburgh and in Glasgow, probably due to charges of atheism, and to the opposition of one of his chief critics, Thomas Reid."

whereas this states that

"He [Reid] had a great admiration for Hume, and asked him to correct the first manuscript of his (Reid's) Inquiry."

If Reid had so profound a change of heart regarding Hume that seems it should me mentioned in the articles, if not this contradiction should be resolved and the appropriate article corrected.

Welcome to the world of professional philosophy. Love/hate relationships between colleagues with antagonistic theories are the norm. Reid wanted Hume's brilliant mind editing his works before they hit the presses, protecting him (Reid) from quick refutation, but he didn't want Hume in a prestigious academic position. Politics. (Of course, that's my opinion and would count as original research, so we shouldn't go putting this in the article.) Postmodern Beatnik 16:20, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology

There may be several future terminological debates, all of which can go under this heading if desired. However, I wanted to make a general point explaining my word change in this article. The original sentence was:

"These axioms did not so much answer the testing problems set by David Hume and, earlier, René Descartes, as simply refute them."

I then changed it to:

"These axioms did not so much answer the testing problems set by David Hume and, earlier, René Descartes, as simply deny them."

It should be noted that one cannot refute anything that one leaves unanswered. What Reid did was make the opposite assertion as Hume and Descartes, thus he merely denied their claims. Refutation requires argumentation. Just something to keep in mind. Postmodern Beatnik 16:28, 21 May 2007 (UTC)