Philosophy of Being and Knowledge

Epistemology (Philosophy of Knowledge)

Scottish Common-Sense School

Another significant epistemological movement was the Scottish School of Common Sense, also known as Common-Sense Philosophy. This school emerged as a counterpoint to English empiricism. Its founder, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), posited that humans apprehend the world intuitively, through common sense. According to Reid, experience produces numerous ideas that conflict with common sense and, therefore, cannot form complete knowledge. Contrary to the empiricists, Reid argued that the perception of reality occurs solely through intuition, which distinguishes true perception from false. Intuition enables the human mind to perceive whole objects and to form accurate conceptions of things even without empirical evidence. Reid contended that the sensory images discussed by empiricists are illusions. Images, if perceived at all, are solely through sight; other senses do not create images. Vision can only perceptually grasp things as images, while many phenomena are perceived directly without imagery. Non-evidential but true perception is thus made possible by intuition.

The concept of intuition or common sense, as portrayed by Reid, raises several questions: Where does it come from? Is it an innate ability or acquired? Reid left many important questions unaddressed. Nevertheless, he is credited with elevating intuition to a central topic of epistemological debate. His ideas were further developed by his followers. For instance, the Scottish poet and philosopher James Beattie (1735-1803) reduced the principles of common sense to absolute subjectivity. According to Beattie, what is true should be considered what people, based on their nature, are compelled to believe—what seems self-evident and beyond doubt. Another of Reid's followers, Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), diverged from Beattie. Stewart proposed abandoning the term "principles of common sense" in favor of discussing "fundamental laws of belief." This new philosophical term, according to Stewart, referred to what is obvious and essential for further perception of the world. Unlike Beattie's principles of common sense, Stewart's fundamental laws of belief were to be very limited in number and comprised only the most general and necessary principles of knowledge. Stewart included only mathematical axioms and metaphysical transcendental concepts in this category.