[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the concept of hardness; one cannot be acquainted with them as
hard. For they are not hard; sensory intuitions don t satisfy the
concept of hardness.
Those of us who have been inducted into contemporary ana-
lytic epistemology regularly attempt to give explicit formulation
to necessary and sufficient conditions for one thing and another.
Reid did not use this rhetorical mode, nor did anybody else in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nonetheless, there s prob-
ably no harm in trying to capture his standard schema for
perception in such a formula. The formula would go something
like this:
S perceives external object O if and only if O affects one s sensory organs
in such a way as to cause in S a sensory experience which is a sign (indi-
cator) of O, which sensation in turn causes in S an apprehension of O,
and an immediate belief about O whose predicative content is or implies
that O exists as an entity in S s environment.
There can be little doubt that Reid regarded what s expressed
by the right-hand side of this formula as a necessary condition of
perception on the standard schema (I say this, pending a revision
to be introduced when we discuss his way of handling hallucina-
tory phenomena). But whether what s expressed by the right-
hand side is also a sufficient condition is something that, so far
as I can see, Reid never gave any sustained thought to. Might there
be certain sorts of causal paths from an external object to a
sensory experience that is an indicator of that object, and then
104 Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology
to an apprehension of and belief about that object, such that cases
of this sort of causal path do not constitute perception of the
object? Reid never addresses the question.10
Though Reid would regard what s expressed by the right-hand
side of the formula as a necessary condition of perception on the
standard schema, what must at once be added is that he would
regard it as a blend of logically necessary and causally necessary
conditions. What s logically necessary to the occurrence of per-
ception is that objectivation take place this being analyzed by
Reid as consisting in the immediate formation of de re/predica-
tive beliefs about external objects to the effect that they exist as
external (or beliefs entailing that). Over and over one finds Reid
saying this: If . . . we attend to that act of our mind which we call
the perception of an external object of sense, we shall find in it
these three things. First, Some conception or notion of the thing
perceived. Secondly, A strong and irresistible conviction and belief
of its present existence. And, thirdly, That this conviction and
belief are immediate, and not the effect of reasoning (EIP II, v
[258a]).11 Reid acknowledged the implication that infants are
probably not capable of perception. The belief of the existence
of any thing seems to suppose a notion of existence; a notion too
10
In his Externalist Theories of Perception (Philosohy and Phenomenological Research, Vol.
L, Supplement, Fall 1990), William P. Alston argues forcefully that attempts to find the
right sort of causal path are hopeless.
11
Cf. EIP II, xx [326a]: there are two ingredients in this operation of perception: 1st,
the conception or notion of the object; and, 2ndly, the belief of its present existence.
Whereas objectivating belief thus constitutes the essence of perception (and a corre-
sponding sort of belief, the essence of recollection), the same is not true for con-
sciousness. Consciousness, if accompanied with attention, evokes beliefs about the
objects of consciousness; but those beliefs do not constitute consciousness. Hence Reid
observes that No philosopher has attempted by any hypothesis to account for his con-
sciousness of our own thought, and the certain knowledge of their real existence which
accompanies it (EIP VI, v [443a]). Belief accompanies consciousness (when attention is
adequate); it does not constitute it.
In the passage quoted just above, from EIP II, xx, and in a good many others, Reid
speaks of judgment or belief as not just logically necessary to perception, but as ingre-
dients of perception; indeed, belief, and the conception it presupposes, are said to be
the ingredients. But there are a few perplexingly atypical passages in which Reid declines
to say that judgment (and belief) are ingredients of perception: whether judgment
ought to be called a necessary concomitant of these operations [e.g., perception], or
rather a part or ingredient of them, I do not dispute (EIP VI, i [414b]). I have no idea
what Reid, in composing this passage, might have thought were the ingredients of
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]