On Reid's 'Inconsistent Triad': A Reply to McDermid

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 121-127

  Harris, James A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 61249729402     PISSN: 09608788     EISSN: 14693526     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0960878032000058491     Document Type: Note

References (16)

1. Douglas McDermid, 'Thomas Reid on Moral Liberty and Common Sense', The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 7 (1999): 275-303, 295.
2. Reid gives his three arguments in the fourth of his Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, which is entitled 'Of the Liberty of Moral Agents'. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations will be from this essay, and the edition I shall use is Sir William Hamilton (ed.), The Works of Thomas Reid, sixth edn. (Edinburgh. 1868). Page numbers will be given in the main body of the text, with an 'a' or a 'b' to indicate, respectively, the left and right-hand columns of Hamilton's text.
3. For two illuminating accounts of Reid's response to scepticism, see Nicholas Wolterstorff. Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology (Cambridge, 2001). ch. VIII;
4. and Philip de Bary, Thomas Reid and Scepticism: His reliabilist response (London and New York, 2002), passim.
5. Thomas Reid on Moral Liberty', 295.
6. On agent causation and common sense, see Richard Stalley, 'Causality and Agency in the Philosophy of Thomas Reid', in M. Dalgarno and E. Matthews (eds), The Philosophy of Thomas Reid (Dordrecht, 1989);
7. and on agent causation and reasons explanations, see Timothy O'Connor, Persons and Causes (Oxford, 2000), ch. 5.
8. For one reply to the infinite regress objection, see Jerome Weinstock, 'Reid's Definition of Freedom', in Stephen F. Barker and Tom L. Beauchamp (eds), Thomas Reid: Critical Interpretations (Philadelphia, 1976).
9. Hamilton (ed.), Works of Reid, 446b.
10. For McDermid's construal of the first argument, see 'Thomas Reid on Moral Liberty', 289.
11. William Rowe also believes that Reid's argument is meant as a direct proof of the reality of moral liberty. Like McDermid, he suggests that the arguments be supplemented with an additional premise to the effect that fundamental principles of our constitution are true: see Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality (Ithaca, 1991), 103-111.
12. This is the interpretation I believe to be the correct one, so long as the inconsistency is understood to be between the necessitarian's theoretical beliefs and the beliefs implicit in his practice. Timothy Duggan seems to me exactly right when he says that 'Reid's first argument . is not, in fact, an argument in support of the thesis that man is endowed with moral liberty. It is. rather, an argument in support of the claim that this thesis is a first principle of contingent truth': see 'Active Power and the Liberty of Moral Agents', in Barker and Beauchamp (eds), Thomas Reid: Critical Interpretations, 107.
13. For Karnes's argument, see his Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (Edinburgh, 1751), 151-218. He retracts the hypothesis of a deceitful sense in the second edition of 1758, adopting there a straightforwardly compatibilist view of moral responsibility.
14. It could alternatively be construed as an ad hominem argument, as is noted by Duggan: that is, as 'directed against those who wish to maintain both that man lacks power over the determinations of his will and is, nonetheless, accountable for his actions' ('Active Power and Moral Agents', 108).
15. However, Reid shows himself aware that at least some necessitarians were willing to accept that their doctrine is at odds with accountability as normally construed: see 618a, where he quotes Priestley to the effect that, on the doctrine of necessity, men 'cannot accuse themselves as having done anything wrong, in the ultimate sense of the word'. (This passage is from Priestley's The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated, 2nd edn, Birmingham, 1782, 147.) Reid regards Priestley's views on this matter as plainly absurd.
16. I think Reid would allow that the evidence of liberty of will in purposive action is only prima facie evidence: it remains possible that, despite appearances, the agent is in the grip of some compulsion or neurosis, such that, in fact, his will is not in his power (see Duggan, 'Active Power and Moral Agents', 108)