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Thomas Reid on Consciousness and Attention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Gideon Yaffe
Gideon Yaffe*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA90089-0451, USA
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Extract

It was common enough in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to find philosophers holding the position that for something to be ‘in the mind’ and for that mind to be conscious of it are one and the same thing. The thought is that consciousness is a relation between a mind and a mental entity playing the same role as the relation of inherence found between a substance and qualities belonging to it. What it is, on this view, for something to ‘inhere’ in the mind is for that mind to be conscious of it. Locke was explicit in his acceptance of such a claim, writing, for instance,

[T]o be in the Mind, and, never to be perceived, is all one, as to say, any thing is, and is not, in the Mind.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 165 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2009

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References

1 Locke, John An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Nidditch, P. H. (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975,Google Scholar I.ii.5.

2 I use the term ‘object of consciousness’ to mean that thing, whatever it is, that is attended by consciousness and is, thereby, ‘in the mind.’ There is, of course, a difference between ascribing consciousness to a creature and ascribing it to a mental state. For our purposes here, the only kind of consciousness is creature consciousness — awareness on the part of some creature of some state of its mind. Talk of states of consciousness — of ‘conscious mental states,’ for instance — should be understood to be equivalent to talk of a mind being conscious of one of its mental states.

3 References to ‘EIP’ are by essay and chapter to Reid, Thomas Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, ed. Brookes, Derek Penn State Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar References to ‘EAP’ are by essay and chapter to Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, ed. B. Brody, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969. References to ‘INQ’ are by chapter and section to Reid, Thomas An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, ed. Brookes, Derek Penn State Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 There are many discussions in the secondary literature. For a start, see Duggan, Timothy J. ‘Thomas Reid's Theory Of Sensation’ in Philosophical Review, 69, 1960, pp. 90–100;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rose, Keith De ‘Reid's Anti-Sensationalism and His Realism’ in Philosophical Review, 98, 1989, pp. 313–348;Google Scholar Wolterstorff, Nicholas Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Google Scholar

5 See, for instance, EIP II.7-13.

6 Reid is persnickety about the term ‘cause.’ Strictly speaking the term ‘cause’ is to be reserved for minds that have the power to bring about an effect and exert that power. In this sense, no quality of an object is ever the cause of anything. However, Reid also allows the term ‘cause’ to be used to refer to that which stands in an appropriate law-like relation to some effect. It is in this sense — the sense more familiar to us — that I will be using the term.

7 For discussion of this worry, see Chappell, Vere ‘The Theory of Sensations’ in The Philosophy of Thomas Reid, Dalgarno, M. and Matthews, E. (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989, pp. 49–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Reid tries to meet this challenge at EIP II.21-22.

9 There's a question as to whether Reid would allow there to be things like ‘visual images.’ He is likely to oppose such talk, opting, instead, to talk of the appearance properties of the thing itself. So understood, there is no double image of the candle in one's mind when one is looking at the finger; rather, one encounters a particular property of the candle: the property of appearing double. I don't intend to be taking any stand on the question of whether or not Reid would allow there to be visual images here. Rather, all talk of visual images should be translatable into (the much more awkward) talk of appearance properties.

10 There is a small but useful secondary literature on Reid's discussion of the double vision experiment and the problem about attention raised here. See Richard Taylor and Duggan, Timothy ‘On Seeing Double’ in Philosophical Quarterly, 8, 1958, pp. 171–4;Google Scholar Blumenfeld, David Carl ‘On Not Seeing Double’ in Philosophical Quarterly, 9, 1959, pp. 264–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 For a proof, see the next footnote.

12 Here's a rough proof. Referring to Figure 2, let the center of the left eye be called point ‘C’ and the center of the right ‘D.’ Let the point of intersection of lines AD and BC be point ‘E.’ Points b1 and b2 are similarly situated if and only if Angle ACB = Angle ADB. But Angle ACB = Angle ADB if and only if Angle CAD = Angle CBD. Whyヨ ACB + CAD + AEC = 180 = ADB + CBD + BED. Since AEC = BED, it follows that ACB + CAD = ADB + CBD. So ACB = ADB if and only if CAD = CBD. So points b1 and b2 are similarly situated if and only if CAD = CBD. Notice that in none of the three panels in Figure 1 is it the case that CAD = CBD; it follows that in none of those cases are b1 and b2 similarly situated.

13 See Rebecca Copenhaver, ‘Thomas Reid's Philosophy of Mind: Consciousness and Intentionality,’ in Philosophy Compass, v. 1 (2006) for helpful discussion.

14 It's important to see that this cannot be definitional of consciousness, given the claim that inherence in the mind consists in being an object of consciousness. After all, if it were definitional, there would be a vicious circularity: What is it for X to be in the mind? It is for the mind to be conscious of it. What is it for a mind to be conscious of X? Among other things, it is for X to be in the mind. Trouble. Instead, consciousness must be a form of awareness distinct from perception and memory on grounds other than the nature of its objects but which, as a matter of contingent fact, always takes internal mental states as its objects.

15 The account of memory sketched briefly here is intended to be in line with that elaborated in the following very helpful paper: Copenhaver, Rebecca ‘Thomas Reid's Theory of Memory’ in History of Philosophy Quarterly, Volume 23, Number 2, April 2006, pp. 171–189.Google Scholar

16 For instance, see INQ V.3, EIP IV.2 310-311.

17 See EIP II.14 175-8. For discussion of Reid's understanding of conception of things that don't exist, see Nichols, Ryan ‘Reid on Fictional Objects and the Way of Ideas’ in Philosophical Quarterly, 52 (209), October 2002, pp. 582–601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 See EIP III.6 276.

19 Obviously, this is not the place for a full elaboration of this view. For discussion, see DeBary, Philip Thomas Reid and Scepticism : His Reliabilist Response, London: Routledge, 2002.Google Scholar

20 Thanks to Rebecca Copenhaver, Don Garrett, Beatrice Longuenesse, Jim Pryor, John Richardson, Sydney Shoemaker, James Van Cleve and anonymous referees for this journal for helpful comments on earlier drafts.