An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 612 passages
Cite this work
- APAThomas Reid. (n.d.). An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-reid/an-inquiry-into-the-human-mind-on-the-principles-of-common-sense
- MLAThomas Reid. "An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-reid/an-inquiry-into-the-human-mind-on-the-principles-of-common-sense.
- ChicagoThomas Reid. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-reid/an-inquiry-into-the-human-mind-on-the-principles-of-common-sense.
What it is about
Reid's first book, of 1764, and his most direct: an examination of the five senses to show that perception does not work as the received philosophy said.
Context and history
Reid explains at the outset that reading Hume he saw that his conclusions followed correctly from a premise everyone accepted, and that the premise must therefore be false. This book is the demonstration made case by concrete case: a chapter on smell, one on taste, one on hearing, one on touch and four on sight, and in each he shows that sensation and perception are not the same thing, and that what we perceive is not ideas but objects. The analysis of sight and of the perception of distance influenced later experimental psychology. Reid's two longer works — the 'Intellectual Powers' and the 'Active Powers' — are in the corpus and come after this.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
(i. AND J. ROBINSON; G. OFFOR ; AND J. EVANS AM) CO. I ALSO, R. GRIFFIN AND CO. GLASGOW; AND J. CUMMING, UL'BLIN. . CUStttingt)am, College I?ou0e, LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA gANTA BARBARA CONTENTS. CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION. Sect. P»g« 1. THE Importance of the Subject, and the Means of prosecuting it 1 2. The Impediments to our Knowledge of the Mind . 3 3. The present State of this Part of Philosophy. Of Des Cartes, Malebranche, and Locke ... 7 4. Apology for those Philosophers 10 5. Of Bishop Berkeley — the Treatise of Human Nature — and of Scepticism 12 6. Of the Treatise of Human Nature 14 7. The System of all these Authors is the same, and leads to Scepticism 16 8. We ought not to despair of a better 17 CHAP. II. OF SMELLING. 1. The Order of Proceeding. Of the Medium and Organ of Smell 19 2. The Sensation considered abstractly .... 20 3. Sensation and Remembrance natural Principles of iv CONTENTS. .Sect. Page 4. Judgment and Belief in some Cases precede simple Apprehension 24 5. Two Theories of the Nature of Belief refuted. Conclusions from what hath been said ... 25 6. Apology for metaphysical Absurdities. Sensations without a Sentient, a Consequence of the Theory of Ideas. Consequences of this strange Opinion 28 7. The Conception and Belief of a sentient Being, or Mind, is suggested by our Constitution. The Notion of Relations not always got by comparing the related Ideas 33 8. There is a