Reid on Testimony and Perception

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 11:21-38 (1985)
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Abstract

Reid defended common sense against scepticism by appeal to the claim that our faculties should be considered trustworthy until some argument proves them to be untrustworthy. He believed, of course, that no such argument would be forthcoming. In this paper, we shall investigate Reid's defense of the faculty of perception and the evidence of the senses by analogy with the faculty of language and the evidence of testimony. Reid argued that the evidence of testimony should be trusted unless there is reason to think it untrustworthy and by analogy, that the evidence of the senses should be trusted unless there is reason to think it untrustworthy. He admitted the fallibility of such evidence but contended that such fallibility is characteristic of all our faculties. Moreover, and perhaps most important, Reid developed a psychological theory of the faculties of perception and language that showed the analogy between these two faculties to be very exact indeed.

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edition Lehrer, Keith; Smith, John-Christian (1985) "Reid on Testimony and Perception". Canadian Journal of Philosophy 15(sup1):21-38

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Keith Lehrer
University of Arizona

Citations of this work

Testimony: a primer.Martin Kusch & Peter Lipton - 2002 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 33 (2):209-217.
Perceiving Bodies Immediately: Thomas Reid's Insight.Marina Folescu - 2015 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 32 (1):19-36.
The Uses of the Common Sense in Thomas Reid’s Philosophy.Vinícius França Freitas - 2019 - Veritas – Revista de Filosofia da Pucrs 64 (3):e32795.

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