Thomas Reid’s iconoclastic approach of Philosophy

Thomas Reid was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher who faced great injustice in the philosophical world. His philosophy is called common sense; an aberrant effort against traditional mainstream philosophical theories. Reid is remembered in the history of philosophy for two things: first, his unique philosophy, and second his criticism of famous figures such as David Hume, John Locke, Berkeley, and Descartes. His philosophy known as common sense realism is a criticism of skeptical views espoused by his predecessors. Reid conceived that skepticism was incompatible with common sense. Skepticism holds that humans can only acquire knowledge through empirical observation and ideas are the object of the mind’s awareness. Reid emphasized that a view of perception perceived from sensory organs is the source of knowledge. Reid’s direct realism states that the primary objects of sense perceptions are physical objects, not preoccupied ideas in human minds—Ayn Rand's philosophy assent to the philosophy of Thomas Reid.

Reid's Essays on the Active Power of Man defended objective knowledge against subjectivism. Reid believes that beings have preoccupied notions of ideas or notions of power and he called it conception of power. Beings have cognitive capacities in mind that aren’t influenced by any source. We can’t define power but it is with all beings. Power is bought into action by our will. For Reid, the senses are the primary component of the human mind to gain knowledge. Actions, ideas, and thoughts originate through the senses. Sensation is an original and simple operation of the mind. Reid believes that all beings are born with the ability to sensation. The operation of the mind to perceive sense and act upon it isn’t logically proven. Sensations in beings have limited use. Perception is the domain where only human beings distinguish things and acquire knowledge.

Senses are inalienable features in living beings. Human beings have the power of the mind to distinguish information received from the external world. Animals cannot distinguish information because they don’t have the power of the mind to categorize things. Senses are irrefutable truths. They construct ideas and perceptions of the external world. Reid believes that to perceive something, an object must exist. It must be sensed through our sensory organs. Reid’s theory of common sense resembles Rand’s epistemology. She believes that consciousness is developed in three stages: the stage of sensations, the perceptual, and the conceptual. She believes that the base of all of man’s knowledge is the perceptual stage and Reid thinks the sensations are the irrefutable base for all human knowledge.

Reid emphasizes the mind initiates actions. He advocates for the active power of the mind over the human will to perform actions. The power of violation in humans implies the power to refrain from taking an action. Humans have control over their choices. They are free to will or to refrain from willing. This is what Reid means that we have power our actions and ideas are not things in the mind but actions of the mind. For instance, virtue isn’t a thing in the mind. It is a resolution to be a person of virtue. Virtue is an innate action humans learn from their sensations. Senses are the primary mode of human cognition. Reid believes that sensory organs give us initial knowledge about things from the external world. Through the mode of perception, we make ideas. Virtue is an action of the mind where senses such as seeing and hearing give information to the mind to act in a certain way. Reid says “Every virtuous action agrees with the uncorrupted principles of human nature.” The resolutions in mind express themselves in the person’s general and regular actions.

The knowledge of appetites is not a thing in the mind but an action of the mind. The appetites for knowledge, power, lust, and hunger are intrinsic principles of actions in human beings. These aren’t just things in the human mind; they are innate in human minds. Like Reid, Rand likewise held that the evidence of the senses: “is absolute, but [man] must learn to understand it, his mind must discover the nature, the causes, the full context of his sensory material, his mind must identify the things that he perceives.”

To cap it all, Thomas Reid's epistemology is unique from his predecessors. Plato thinks knowledge is not obtained through the senses but through reasoning and contemplation. Aristotle believes that knowledge is obtained from perception and any lack of perception results in lack of knowledge. Kant thinks that the combination of reason and experience is the source of knowledge. Thomas Reid criticizes skeptical views espoused by his predecessors. His theory is called the theory of ideas and Reid believes in direct objectivity, our senses guide us to what is right since we cannot trust our thoughts.