Scottish Common Sense, association of ideas and free will

ABSTRACT

The philosophical debates that unfolded in Enlightenment Britain left a deep mark on the mindset of future generations of thinkers. A clear echo of eighteenth-century disputes over the meaning of human liberty is heard in the subsequent confrontation between materialists and idealists. In more recent times, a number of arguments developed by compatibilist and incompatibilist philosophers still resemble more old-fashioned positions. However, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the differences between Joseph Priestley’s defence of “necessitarianism” and Thomas Reid’s elaboration of counterarguments to support “metaphysical liberty” – as the two doctrines were known in the late eighteenth century – on the background of their methodological assumptions and the different styles of their reasoning. I contend that a different adoption of the Newtonian scientific method, which they brought to bear on the study of the human mind, is key to understanding the way they endeavoured to defend necessity and liberty, respectively. I also argue that their interpretation of the nature of causality importantly shaped the arguments they put forth in attacking each other’s position.

KEYWORDS:

• Priestley
• Reid
• necessity
• free will
• associationism

Notes on contributor

Sebastiano Gino received his Ph.D. in 2017 from the University of Turin. His researches focus on Scottish philosophy of the eighteenth century and early modern medicine. He is currently a fellow of the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences of the University of Turin.

Notes

1 Priestley, Disquisitions, vol. 2, 37. Where not otherwise specified, emphasis is in the original.

2 Following Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity, I apply the categories of “libertarianism” and “necessitarianism” to the opposite views, as they were held during the eighteenth century, that the will is either capable of self-determination or is always casually determined by a motive. Priestley describes those who subscribe to the latter position using the term “necessarians.”

3 Priestley, Disquisitions, vol. 2, xvii–xviii.

4 Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity, 10–11.

5 Reid, Active Powers, 267.

6 My point is consonant with Aaron Garrett’s interpretation of the philosophical feud in which Reid strongly opposed Priestley’s materialism. Garrett notes that the conflict between the two philosophers on the nature of the mind is best understood considering the methodological and epistemic assumptions underlying their arguments. See Garrett, “Mind and Matter,” 191; Garrett, “In Defense of Elephants.” However, my line of argument in this paper is not tantamount to treating Priestley’s thought as unsystematic or “eclectic.” For this interpretation, see Mudroch, “Joseph Priestley’s Eclectic Epistemology.” Undeniably, nobody fails to detect a religious undertone in a number of Priestley’s reflections, as noted by McEvoy and McGuire, “God and Nature.” But I assume that Priestley’s claim that each of the doctrines of materialism, necessity and Socinianism are suitable for independent demonstration should be taken seriously. See Priestley, Disquisitions, vol. 1, v–vi.

7 Paul Wood highlighted relevant social and political underpinnings of Priestley’s attack on Reid, Beattie and Oswald. See Reid, Animate Creation, 53–6.

8 For a quick survey of the confrontation between Priestley and Reid on this issue, see Fruchtman, “Common Sense and the Association of Ideas.”

9 See Allen, David Hartley on Human Nature; Glassman and Buckingham, “David Hartley’s Neural Vibrations and Psychological Associations.”

10 Reading the preface to Examination, it appears that Priestley was driven into the project of re-editing Hartley’s Observations with the intention of counterbalancing the success of Scottish Common Sense, defending an alternative explanation of mental phenomena. See Priestley, An Examination, xi.

11 On the specific features of the Newtonian hypothesis, as it was formulated in the queries of Opticks, and its historical origin, see Wallace, “The Vibrating Nerve Impulse in Newton, Willis, and Gassendi.”

12 Priestley, Hartley’s Theory, xi–xii.

13 Ibid., xii.

14 Ibid., x–xi.

15 Ibid., xiii.

16 Ibid., xxiv.

17 Ibid., xvi.

18 Ibid., xviii.

19 Ibid.

20 Priestley, A Free Discussion, 256.

21 See Tapper, “Reid and Priestley on Method and the Mind.”

22 The history of British associationism and its multifarious use of chemical metaphors have been explored by a number of Italian scholars. See especially Giuntini, La chimica della mente, 71–103.

23 Significantly, although Reid adopted a very different strategy from Kant’s to address the issue of scepticism, he also held that natural faculties yielded judgments, which are somehow independent from experience. “Such original and natural judgments are therefore a part of that furniture which nature hath given to the human understanding.” Reid, Inquiry, 215.

24 Ibid., 29.

25 Ibid., 31.

26 In recent years, many scholars have investigated Reid’s reply to Hume and its place within the history of epistemological debates on the reliability of sensory perception. See especially Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology; De Bary, Thomas Reid and Scepticism. For critical and interpretative perspectives on Reid’s epistemology, see Lehrer, Thomas Reid; Van Cleve, Problems from Reid, ch. 11, 12 and 13.

27 Reid, Intellectual Powers, 20.

28 Ibid.

29 For Reid’s interpretation of the Baconian experimental method and its application to an inquiry on the mind, see Wood, “Hume Reid and the Science of the Mind.”

30 Reid, Intellectual Powers, 21.

31 Ibid., 79.

32 Ibid., 81.

33 For Reid’s stance against uncritical reliance on hypotheses, see Wood, “Reid on Hypotheses and the Ether”; Callergård, “The Hypothesis of Ether.” It should be noted that, despite Reid’s hostility towards associationism (i.e. the doctrine that makes all mental operations dependant on associations), he also appreciates the importance of “mechanical” associations, which are based on custom and habit, for the development of the understanding. As Emanuele Levi Mortera has suggested, Reid, unlike Hartley, subordinates association to more fundamental principles (i.e. our “natural” faculties), which cannot be grounded in anything else. See Levi Mortera, “Reid, Stewart and the Association of Ideas,” 161.

34 Priestley, An Examination, vii.

35 Ibid., xx.

36 Ibid., 9.

37 Reid, Inquiry, 203.

38 Ibid., 205.

39 Ibid., 203.

40 Our inner states are indeed more fleeting and evanescent than material objects, and this raises some theoretical problems relating to their observation. For a commentary on Reid’s conception of introspection, see Mishori, “The Dilemmas of the Dual Channel.”

41 For Priestley’s use of analogical reasoning in his philosophy of mind, see Giuntini, La chimica della mente, 93–103; while some comments on the importance of analogy for his scientific practice in general can be found in McEvoy, “Joseph Priestley, ‘Aerial Philosopher.’”

42 Priestley, Hartley’s Theory, x. Emphasis added.

43 See McEvoy and McGuire, “God and Nature,” 337–48; Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, 77–91; Harris, “Joseph Priestley and ‘the Proper Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity’”; Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity, 167–78; Dybikowski, “Joseph Priestley, Metaphysician and Philosopher of Religion,” 91–9.

44 Priestley, Disquisitions, vol. 2, 50–1.

45 Ibid., 38.

46 Arguing in the same vein as Reid, but aiming at an opposite conclusion, Priestley claims that saying that the will is determined by motives “is common popular language, and therefore must have a foundation in the common apprehension of mankind.” Priestley, Disquisitions, vol. 2, 62. This shows how loosely common language was often appealed to in the eighteenth century.

47 Ibid., Sections VI and VII.

48 Ibid., vol. 2, 2.

49 Ibid., 11.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid., 10.

52 Discussing the nature of the will in the Treatise, Hume offers the following remark concerning the notion of “necessity”: “The necessity of any action, whether of matter or of the mind, is not properly a quality in the agent, but in any thinking or intelligent being, who may consider the action, and consists in the determination of his thought to infer its existence from some preceding objects.” Hume, Treatise, vol. 1, 262. For different interpretations of Priestley’s strictures on the Humean ideas of “cause” and “necessity,” see Popkin, “Joseph Priestley’s Criticisms of David Hume’s Philosophy”; Mudroch, “Joseph Priestley’s Eclectic Epistemology,” 59–65. It is also remarkable that Hume’s solution of the so-called free will problem can be seen as an alternative to both necessitarianism and libertarianism. See Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity, ch. 3.

53 Priestley, Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, 194.

54 Ibid., 74.

55 Priestley, Disquisitions, vol. 2, 16.

56 Reid’s theory of human agency and moral freedom has been widely discussed in the secondary literature. Historical accounts are oftentimes blended with a critical analysis of the issues relating to agent causation, and contemporary philosophers tend to look at Reid as a forerunner of incompatibilism. Some scholars also devoted entire books to the subject, such as Rowe, Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality; Yaffe, Manifest Activity. See also Weinstock, “Reid’s Definition of Freedom”; Madden, “Commonsense and Agency Theory”; Stalley, “Causality and Agency in the Philosophy of Thomas Reid”; Stecker, “Thomas Reid’s Philosophy of Action”; O’Connor, “Thomas Reid on Free Agency”; McDermid, “Thomas Reid on Moral Liberty and Common Sense”; Alvarez, “Reid, Agent Causation and Volitionism”; Harris, “Reid’s Challenge to Reductionism about Human Agency”; Huoranszki, “Common Sense and the Theory of Human Behaviour”; Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity, ch. 8; Lindsay, “Reid on Scepticism about Agency and the Self”; Van Woudenberg, “Thomas Reid on Determinism”; Greenberg, “Liberty and Necessity,” 263–7; Van Cleve, Problems from Reid, ch. 14 and 15.

57 Reid, Active Powers, 7.

58 Ibid., 29.

59 Ibid. See Schneewind, “The Active Powers,” 586.

60 Reid, Active Powers, 46.

61 Ibid., 47–51.

62 Ibid., 51.

63 Reid, Intellectual Powers, 478.

64 Reid, Active Powers, 211.

65 Reid’s claim has led some commentators to describe his position as a kind of occasionalism. See Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology, 54–63; Hellewell, “Thomas Reid on Physical Causation.” For an alternative interpretation, see Benbaji, “Reid on Causation and Action.” Reid, in fact, is agnostic about whether the succession of events in nature is caused directly by God or by other beings of which we have no knowledge. See Reid, Active Powers, 28.

66 Reid, Active Powers, 204. As the interpreters remarked, such an explanation apparently conflicts with Reid’s claim that the belief that everything must have a cause is a first principle. For instance, see Sir William Hamilton’s comment on this passage in Reid, Works, vol. 2, 604a, footnote. However, Reid did not detect any contradiction within the empirical origin of an idea, for example “power”, which is also a conceptual constituent of a first principle. In general, humans are able to grasp the meaning of axioms and first principles only after having acquired some basic concepts from experience. See Reid, Intellectual Powers, ch. 6, sec. 7. On the epistemic value of Reid’s first principles, see Rysiew, “Reid and Epistemic Naturalism.”

67 Reid, Correspondence, 174–5.

68 See note 56.

69 Reid, Active Powers, 231.

70 For a discussion on Reid’s three arguments for moral liberty as they feature in Essays on the Active Powers, see Rowe, Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality, 94–121; McDermid, “Thomas Reid on Moral Liberty and Common Sense,” 285–94; Harris, “On Reid’s ‘Inconsistent Triad’: A Reply to McDermid”; Yaffe, Manifest Activity, 76–97.

71 Priestley, Disquisitions, vol. 2, 58.

72 See Cuneo, “Reid’s Moral Philosophy.”

73 Reid, Active Powers, 219.

74 Priestley, Hartley’s Theory, xxviii.

75 Priestley’s philosophy of mind has been described as an important step toward the “naturalisation” of the traditional concept of “soul.” See Barresi and Martin, Naturalization of the Soul, 132–8.

76 Charles Wolfe has highlighted that conceptual analogies modelled on Newtonian science played a crucial role in the development of eighteenth-century studies on living beings. See Wolfe, “On the Role of Newtonian Analogies.” Considering Priestley’s thought, I suggest that analogical arguments also had a powerful, heuristic potential in the study of human minds during the Enlightenment period.

77 See Priestley, Hartley’s Theory, xiii.

78 In a manuscript paper discussed by Alexander Broadie, Reid contended that “inductive reasoning” must be applied in pneumatology; that is, in studying the mind. See Broadie, “The Human Mind and its Powers,” 71–2. Broadie also described Reid’s scientific methodology as a form of “providential naturalism” in that he maintained that natural laws, which we are able to grasp through induction, are directly produced by the divine mind. See Broadie, “Reid in Context,” 38–44. Moreover, historians of psychology have pointed out that it was not uncommon for Scottish philosophers in the Enlightenment period to deem a spiritual subject, like the soul or mind, to be part of nature. Accordingly, even the spiritual mind ought to be studied through induction and experiment. Gary Hatfield, for instance, claimed that “it was characteristic of Scottish philosophers to adopt a naturalistic attitude toward the mind and its powers.” Hatfield, “Remaking the Science of Mind,” 207. See also Vidal, The Sciences of the Soul, 118.

79 See Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity, 172–3.

80 Priestley, Disquisitions, vol. 1, 8.

81 “Dr. Priestley extends [Newton’s first rule] to things in general, without any restriction,” and this “alters the meaning of the rule by extending it to things that were never meant by it.” Reid, Animate Creation, 186. For a commentary of Reid’s strictures on Priestley’s reading of the Newtonian rules, see Garrett, “In Defense of Elephants”; Tapper, “Reid and Priestley on Method and the Mind.”

82 See Mudroch, “Joseph Priestley’s Eclectic Epistemology,” 53.