Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-nx7b4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-21T06:32:56.279Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reid on the moral sense

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Rebecca Copenhaver
Rebecca Copenhaver*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Lewis & Clark College, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR, 97219-7899, USA
*
*Email: rebeccac@lclark.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Some interpret Reid's notion of a moral sense as merely analogical. Others understand it as a species of acquired perception. To understand Reid's account of the moral sense, we must draw from his theory of perception and his theory of aesthetic experience, each of which illuminate the nature and operation of the moral faculty. I argue that, on Reid's view, the moral faculty is neither affective nor rational, but representational. It is a discrete, basic, capacity for representing the real moral properties of humans and human conduct.

Keywords

Thomas Reidperceptionmoral perceptionmoral senseaesthetic perception

Information

Type
Moral Theory
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 41 , Issue S1: New Essays on Reid , July 2011 , pp. 80 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Broadie, Alexander 2010. “Reid Making Sense of Moral Sense.” In Reid on Ethics, edited by Sabine Roeser, 91–102. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Cuneo, Terence 2003. “Reidian Moral Perception.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (2): 229–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cuneo, Terence 2006. “Signs of Value: Reid on the Evidential Role of Feelings in Moral Judgment.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 14 (1): 69–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cuneo, Terence 2013. “Reason and the Passions.” In The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Harris, James A. 226–247. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Copenhaver, Rebecca 2004. “A Realism for Reid: Mediated but Direct.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12 (1): 61–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copenhaver, Rebecca 2010. “Thomas Reid on Acquired Perception.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (3): 285–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copenhaver, Rebecca 2013. “Perception and the Language of Nature.” In The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Harris, James A. 107–127. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Copenhaver, Rebecca Forthcoming. “Thomas Reid on Aesthetic Perception.” In Mind, Knowledge and Action: Essays in Honor of Thomas Reid's Tercentenary, edited by Buras, Todd and Copenhaver, RebeccaGoogle Scholar
Kroeker, Esther R. 2010. “Reid on Natural Signs, Taste and Moral Perception.” In Reid on Ethics, edited by Roeser, Sabine 46–66. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manns, James 1988. “Beauty and Objectivity in Thomas Reid.” British Journal of Aesthetics 28 (2): 119–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Ryan 2007. Thomas Reid's Theory of Perception. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, Thomas 1997. Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, edited by Brookes, Derek R. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Reid, Thomas 2002. Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, edited by Brookes, Derek R. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Reid, Thomas 2010. Essays on the Active Powers of Man, edited by Haakonssen, Knud and Harris, James A. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Roeser, Sabine 2010. Reid on Ethics Reid, edited by Roeser, Sabine Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Cleve, James 2004. “Reid's Theory of Perception.” In The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid, edited by Cuneo, Terence and Woudenberg, René van 101–133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolterstorff, Nicholas 2004. Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar