Revisiting Reid on Religion

Thomas Reid on Singular Thought

In my dissertation, I offer a new reading of Thomas Reid's philosophy of mind, in which I bring attention to his so far overlooked view that we can entertain a singular thought about an individual substance – we can think directly about a particular object. What emerges is a picture of Reid's theory as psychologically sophisticated, anticipating some very recent and influential views in empiric...

Thomas Reid on Consciousness and Attention

It was common enough in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to fi nd philosophers holding the position that for something to be ‘in the mind’ and for that mind to be conscious of it are one and the same thing. The thought is that consciousness is a relation between a mind and a mental entity playing the same role as the relation of inherence found between a substance and qualities belongin...

Reid on the Perception of Visible Figure

Understanding Thomas Reid

Thomas Reid offers a powerful challenge to Hume and his skeptical system. In “Thomas Reid on Epistemic Principles,” William Alston gives an explanation of that challenge and concludes in favor of a Reidian-inspired thesis. I argue, however, that Alston’s thesis is a diluted version of Reid’s radical position, one that Reid’s principles cannot accommodate. Thus, I conclude that, because Alston’s...

Art - Reid (E)

501 It has been widely accepted that spiking neurons code information in their firing rates1. A related assumption is that each neuron serves as an independent channel transmitting information from one stage to another. In principle, however, much more information can be coded in the activity of a neuronal ensemble if temporal correlations between neurons are also used to code additional inform...