Matthew Stuart

Volition and exertion play key roles in Reid’s philosophy, but his handling of them has been disputed. Some claim that he identifies volition and exertion, others that he is inconsistent or unclear about this. Some claim that he quietly slides between using ‘exertion’ in two or three different senses. I aim to clarify Reid’s notions of volition and exertion, and to defend him against the charges of inconsistency and ambiguity. I argue that from 1780 to 1792 he consistently distinguishes volition and exertion. Throughout this period, he takes a volition to be a decision or intention to do something, and an exertion to be an attempt to do something. I maintain that ‘exertion’ is no more ambiguous for Reid than it is for any ordinary speaker of English.

In this book Nicholas Wolterstorff, a well-known proponent of “Reformed epistemology,” sets out to investigate the modern origins of the evidentialist and foundationalist tradition that he opposes. He locates these origins in book 4 of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Wolterstorff tells us that he had to overcome strong prejudices in writing the book, for “in the philosophical world I inhabit, Locke has the reputation of being boringly chatty and philosophically careless”. He suggests that the earlier parts of the Essay deserve that reputation, but says that while reading book 4 he felt himself to be “present at the making of the modern mind”. To Wolterstorff’s credit, he seems to have vanquished some of his prejudices, for this book offers careful and charitable readings of many important strands in Locke’s epistemology.

Locke’s remarks about attention have not received a great deal of attention from commentators. In Section 1, I make the case that attention plays an important role in his philosophy. In Section 2, I describe and discuss five Lockean claims about attention. In Section 3, I explore Locke’s views about attention in relation to his account of sense perception. He thinks that we attend to objects by attending to ideas, and I argue that he treats sensory ideas as transparent in a particular sense. In Section 4, I raise the worry that some of Locke’s remarks about attention seem at odds with his doctrine of the transparency of the mind. I offer two ways of resolving the problem, and suggest that they are parts of a single story.