•  3
    This paper is concerned with Thomas Reid's account of the role of instinctive exertions in the development of one's conception of power. I consider whether such exertions can shed any light on the matter of how certain sensations can appear to us to possess spatial content. Reid denies that sensations have such content; I argue that the introduction of instinctive exertions into his account might allow Reid to avoid some of the less palatable consequences of denying spatial content to sensations…Read more
  •  1
    Alexander Broadie, ed., Thomas Reid on Logic, Rhetoric and the Fine Arts (review)
    Philosophy in Review 26 (6): 391-393. 2006.
  •  53
    Reid on instinctive exertions and the spatial content of sensations
    In Todd Buras & Rebecca Copenhaver (eds.), Thomas Reid on Mind, Knowledge and Value, Oxford University Press. pp. 35-51. 2015.
    In his last great philosophical essay, 'Of Power', Reid makes the plausible claim that 'our first exertions are instinctive' and made 'without any distinct conception of the event that is to follow'. According to Reid, these instinctive exertions allow us to form beliefs about correlations between exertions and consequential events. Such instinctive exertions also explain the origin of our conception of power. In this paper, I argue that we can use the notion of instinctive exertions to address …Read more
  •  53
    Hume and Reid on Newtonianism, Naturalism and Liberty
    In Ilya Kasavin (ed.), David Hume and Contemporary Philosophy, Cambridge Scholars Press. pp. 191-208. 2012.
    There has been a recent flurry of work comparing and contrasting the respective methodologies of David Hume and his contemporary Thomas Reid. Both writers are explicit in their commitments to a Newtonian methodology. Yet they diverge radically on the issue of human liberty. In this paper I want to unpack the methodological commitments underlying the two different accounts of liberty. How is it that two avowed Newtonians end up diametrically opposed to one another with respect to such a fundament…Read more
  •  98
    Reid on Scepticism About Agency and the Self
    Journal of Scottish Philosophy 3 (1): 19-33. 2005.
    Maria Alvarez has argued that Thomas Reid’s account of action gives rise to a sceptical worry concerning one’s awareness of one’s own actions. Against this, I argue that Alvarez overstates the sceptical consequences of Reid’s admission that there is room for doubt about the actual causes of bodily movements; rather than generating a serious epistemological problem for his theory, it can be given a more plausible reading that serves to defuse the sceptical worry.
  •  6
    Jane Heal, Mind, Reason and Imagination (review)
    Philosophy in Review 24 (2): 115-117. 2004.
  • AVRAMIDES, A.-Other Minds (review)
    Philosophical Books 44 (3): 277-277. 2003.
  •  20
    Problems from Reid by James Van Cleve (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 54 (4): 681-682. 2016.
    The arrival of James Van Cleve’s Problems from Reid is somewhat akin to the experience of waiting ages for a bus only for several to arrive at the same time. It is a gargantuan book, weighing in at over 550 pages covering sixteen chapters and a remarkable twenty-six appendices.There have been several important single-author books on Reid in the last decade or so, from the likes of Gideon Yaffe and Ryan Nichols, and some impressive anthologies, such as those edited by Patrick Rysiew, and by Todd …Read more