Terence Cuneo

I plan to work on two essays on Reid’s moral philosophy. The first, “Moral Perception in Reid,” assembles clues that Reid leaves regarding how he thinks of moral perception, presenting a model of a view that Reid says his readers will have expected him to provide. The essay also suggests ways in which this model might be supplemented in order to better capture what is deepest in Reid’s thought. The second essay, “The Place of Common sense in Reid’s Moral Philosophy,” addresses a puzzling methodological disunity in Reid’s work. When combatting Humean skepticism about our ordinary perceptual beliefs, Reid appeals liberally to what he calls the ‘principles of common sense.’ But when engaging in ethical theorizing in the Essays on the Active Powers, Reid does not identify ethical principles of common sense, let alone appeal to them to defuse skeptical challenges to our ordinary moral commitments. One wonders whether the principles of commonsense play any central role in Reid’s ethical theorizing. This essay argues that they do, but in ways that are not always easy to see and are unexpected.

Affiliation: University of Vermont