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conjecture: and of this philosophers have always been very liberal.
The dark cave and shadows of Plato, the species of Aristotle, the films
of Epicurus, and the ideas and impressions of modern philosophers, are
the production of human fancy, successively invented to satisfy the eager
desire of knowing how we perceive external objects; but they are all defi-
cient in the two essential characters of a true and philosophical account
of the phenomenon: for we neither have any evidence of their existence;
nor, if they did exist, can it be shown how they would produce percep-
tion. (EIP II, xx [326b])12
Reid s argument will be that we neither have evidence for the exis-
tence of images of external objects, as an ingredient in percep-
tion, nor, if there were such entities, can it be shown how they
would produce perception.
The explanation offered by the Way of Ideas theorists of per-
ception, recollection, inner awareness, and the phenomenon ana-
lyzed by Reid as acquaintance with abstract entities (I have been
calling it intellection ), was framed in the context of certain
general principles that they assumed any tenable explanation of
these phenomena must satisfy. It was Reid s conviction that it was
those general principles that were the principal culprit in the
11
We laugh at the Indian philosopher, who to account for the support of the earth, con-
trived the hypothesis of a huge elephant, and to support the elephant, a huge tortoise.
. . . His elephant was a hypothesis, and our hypotheses are elephants. Every theory in
philosophy, which is built on pure conjecture, is an elephant . . . (IHM VI, xix [180a;
B 163]). Cf. the vivid passage making the same point at EIP II, xv [309a b].
12
Part of Reid s argumentation for his position on hypotheses is theological: Although
some conjectures may have a considerable degree of probability, yet it is evidently in
the nature of conjecture to be uncertain. In every case, the assent ought to be pro-
portioned to the evidence; for to believe firmly, what has but a small degree of proba-
bility, is a manifest abuse of our understanding. Now, though we may, in many cases,
form very probable conjectures concerning the works of men, every conjecture we can
form with regard to the works of God, has as little probability as the conjectures of a
child with regard to the works of a man. The wisdom of God exceeds that of the wisest
man, more than that of the wisest man exceeds the wisdom of a child (EIP I, iii [235a]).
Reid elaborates the point over several following pages.
The Way of Ideas 39
affair; the principles drove the invention of the hypotheses. One
sees him struggling, over and over, to identify the principles in
question; they were never, in their totality, explicitly affirmed by
his opponents. Here is perhaps his best formulation of the results
of his reflections:
There are two prejudices which seem to me to have given rise to the
theory of ideas in all the various forms in which it has appeared in
the course of above two thousand years. . . . The first is, that in all the
operations of the understanding there must be some immediate inter-
course between the mind and its object, so that the one may act upon
the other. The second, that in all the operations of understanding there
must be an object of thought, which really exists while we think of it;
or, as some philosophers have expressed it, that which is not, cannot
be intelligible. . . .
It is by these principles that philosophers have been led to think, that
in every act of memory and of conception [i.e., intellection], as well as
of perception, there are two objects. The one, the immediate object, the
idea, the species, the form; the other, the mediate or external object.
. . . These principles have not only led philosophers to split objects into
two, where others can find but one; but likewise have led them to reduce
the three operations now mentioned to one, making memory and
conception [intellection], as well as perception, to be the perception
of ideas. (EIP IV, ii [368b 369b])
The formulation is extremely compact and calls for some exe-
gesis. Take any mental phenomenon that has a self/act/object
structure. Reid s diagnosis was that in constructing their account,
adherents of the Way of Ideas were, in the first place, guided by
the general principle that any such phenomenon will fit into the
causal texture of nature in one or the other of two ways: Either
it will consist of the object acting immediately upon the self or
it will consist of the self acting immediately upon the object.
Our concern here is with cases of apprehension (Reid s con-
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