Reid on powers of the mind and the person behind the curtain

Abstract

According to Thomas Reid, powers of will and powers of understanding are distinguishable in thought, but conjoined in practice. This paper examines the claim that there is no inert intelligence, the operations of the understanding involving some degree of activity. The question is: whose activity? For it is clear that a great deal of our mental activity is not in our power. We need to distinguish between a weak and a strong sense of ‘power’, and consider our dependence ‘upon God and the laws of nature’ in our mental exertions.

Keywords::

• will
• understanding
• power
• activity
• action

Notes

^1. For instance in this passage: ‘Desire and will agree in this, that both must have an object, of which we must have some conception; and therefore both must be accompanied with some degree of understanding’ (EAP 48; see also 29, quoted below: ‘that degree of understanding which will necessarily implies’).

^2. For a full discussion of this, see Yaffe (2004, 31–36).

^3. I think this is clear from the following passage: ‘Whereas he [Locke] distinguishes power into active and passive, I conceive passive power is no power at all. He means by it, the possibility of being changed. To call this power, seems to be a misapplication of the word. […] Perhaps he was unwarily led into it, as an opposite to active power. But I conceive we call certain powers active, to distinguish them from other powers that are called speculative. As all mankind distinguish action from speculation, it is very proper to distinguish the powers by which those different operations are performed, into active and speculative. Mr Locke indeed acknowledges that active power is more properly called power; but I see no propriety at all in passive power; it is a powerless power, and a contradiction in terms.’ (EAP 21)

^4. For a discussion of the distinction between exertion as activation of the power and exertion as the resulting action, see Hoffman (2006).

^5. This is not an isolated claim: ‘In most, perhaps in all the operations of mind for which we have names in language, both faculties are employed, and we are both intellective and active.’ (EAP 60)

^6. ‘The attention we give to objects is for the most part voluntary.’ (EAP 63)

^7. On the disanalogies between consciousness and reflective attention, see Copenhaver (2007).

^8. ‘Were we to examine minutely into the connection between our volitions, and the direction of our thoughts which obeys these volitions; were we to consider how we are able to give attention to an object for a certain time, and turn our attention to another when we chuse, we might perhaps find it difficult to determine, whether the mind itself be the sole efficient cause of the voluntary changes in the direction of our thoughts, or whether it requires the aid of other efficient causes.’ (EAP 41)

^9. ‘Numberless instances might be given of things done by animals without any previous conception of what they are to do; without the intention of doing it. They act by some inward blind impulse, of which the efficient cause is hid from us; and though there is an end evidently intended by the action, this intention is not in the animal, but in its Maker. Other things are done by habit, which cannot properly be called voluntary. We shut our eyes several times every minute while we are awake; no man is conscious of willing this every time he does it.’ (EAP 48)

^10. Here I take occasionalism to be a positive view about the omnipresent action of God, not a negative view about the absence of physical causes or powers in bodies, as some do (see Wolterstorff 2001, 54–63). Of course, Reid is a professed occasionalist in the latter sense, which is fully compatible with his ‘Newtonian’ rejection of hypotheses. Negative occasionalism is uncontroversial among empiricists and accepted by both an atheist, Hume, and a Christian, Berkeley.

^11. Wolterstorff describes as a frustration a state of knowledge Reid explicitly considers as sufficient: ‘With regard to the operations of nature, it is sufficient for us to know, that, whatever the agents may be, whatever the manner of their operation, or the extent of their power, they depend upon the first cause, and are under his control; and this indeed is all that we know; beyond this we are left in darkness.’ (EAP 30) In the next sentence, which I quote below, Reid contrasts this ‘sufficient’, although very limited, knowledge of nature, with the indispensable knowledge of what is in our power, which we have in abundance.

^12. See Rebecca Copenhaver's criticism of ‘mysterian’ interpretations of Reid (Copenhaver 2006).

^13. I thank Rebecca Copenhaver and Patrick Rysiew, and all the participants in the New Essays on Reid Conference, for their very helpful comments, suggestions and criticisms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laurent Jaffro

Laurent Jaffro is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris. Formerly he was Professor of Philosophy at Blaise Pascal University, Clermont Ferrand. He has published on the third Earl of Shaftesbury, George Berkeley, John Toland, and Thomas Reid.