Appendix 31. - (323)
[Reid criticised in Germany and Italy]
My criticism of Reid is generally accepted as solidly based. My observations had their counterpart in Germany. Buhle writes:
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The main drawback of Reid's philosophy is the vague, indeterminate concept of fundamental truth. As Reid sees it, a fundamental truth is one enabling a person to reason and act prior to any observations from which to deduce this truth through abstraction. Accordingly, without being fully aware of it, we act most of the time almost by instinct in accordance with that truth. The rigorous idea or the only certain idea, as Feder has stated in his excellent critique of Reid's philosophical theory, is that it is a JUDGMENT which necessarily arises from the simple ideas of subject and attribute. |
Feder's observation is the very one which I have repeatedly put forward (cf.119). There were quite a number of German thinkers who realised that Reid 'made no contribution to the advancement of the cause of philosophical dogmatism, and in particular to that of empirical realism' (Buhle, Histoire de la philosophie moderne, vol. 5, c. 12).
In Italy, Galluppi, an outstanding thinker, showed clearly that Reid's system offered no protection against scepticism, but rather opened the way to it. The reason was Reid's having distinguished between sensation and the perception of bodies while denying that there was any likeness whatsoever between them. The two facts would have arisen in us contemporaneously without any reason. To remedy this defect, Galluppi eliminated the distinction and carried over to sensation everything that Reid had said about perception. Reid had assumed that perception enabled us immediately to perceive bodies as existing beings. Galluppi said that this immediate communication of our spirit with exterior things is achieved purely by sensation alone. Sensation, far from being merely subjective, as Reid had considered it, was essentially objective, something that Reid had said about perception. Galluppi endowed the senses with an aptitude for perceiving the existence of bodies, an obvious example of sensism.
However, it is impossible to attribute the perception of the existence of bodies to the senses alone. Note that it is impossible to say that we have perceived bodies as existing until we have said to ourselves: 'These particular beings exist.' To say this, it is absolutely essential that we have the prior universal idea of existence which, according to Galluppi, comes about after perception of bodies by an operation of our mind on these perceptions. But these perceptions of existent beings assume this idea which, as universal, can never be derived from particulars. I willingly grant to Galluppi the immediate communication of our spirit with the body, that is, our body; I grant that through our acquired sensations we experience within us some action of the external bodies but not that these are sufficient to enable us to perceive beings existing in themselves; the sensations of bodies must not be confused with judgment. We perceive bodies by means of an operation of the understanding which adds existence to the action of bodies upon us through sensations, and considers bodies as entia which act upon us in a manner determined by the sensations themselves.