John Haldane: In sceptical world, we should all thank this giant of 300 years ago

THREE-HUNDRED years ago today, on 26 April, 1720, in the manse at Strachan in Deeside, a child was born who, like his father, would become a minister of the Kirk. Unlike his father, he would also become a philosopher and one of the finest thinkers Scotland has produced, a name to be set alongside those of Duns Scotus, David Hume and Adam Smith.

Last month, the universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow jointly hosted a week-long Thomas Reid celebratory conference; later in June there will be another international symposium in Princeton, New Jersey; and this evening I will be delivering a lecture at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, honouring Reid's life and work.

In 1763 Reid was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow in succession to Adam Smith. Twenty years later, Reid and Smith, along with other distinguished scholars and scientists, also founded the RSE.

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Reid never crossed the Atlantic. Yet his influence upon the early philosophers in America began within his own lifetime through the teaching of expat Scots. Principal among these was John Witherspoon, another kirk minister, who became president of Princeton in 1768, and eight years later signed the Declaration of Independence.

Reid died in 1796 in his 87th year, having fathered nine children, taught generations of students and published three books in which he conceived and brought to birth a new kind of philosophy, that of "common sense".

Its immediate purpose was to counter the scepticism of his contemporary David Hume. Though amiable, generous and conservative by inclination, Hume had argued that the nature of perception is such that all we are truly aware of are impressions of colours, sounds and so on, and we can never know whether there is any real world beyond these. The theologians quickly realised that it threatened the possibility of arguing from the appearance of nature to its divine authorship. In the verdict of the time, Hume was not only a sceptic, he was a dangerous atheist.

To his great credit, Reid realised that it was no answer to Hume simply to observe the implications of his philosophy, for if his starting points and reasoning were sound then those conclusions did indeed follow. Where others issued condemnations, Reid carefully studied Hume's work, respecting its brilliance but showing what was wrong with its starting points.

Reid's analysis was insightful and remains applicable today against various kinds of scepticism. First, he observed that Hume confused sensation and perception. The former is indeed "subjective" and "internal" but the latter reaches out to the world in the seeing, touching and tasting of real things. Second, he observed that the philosophers' fabricated doubts themselves depend upon assumptions about which we all can be certain. These, he wrote, are "principles of common sense, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we necessarily take for granted in the common concerns of life".

The idea that I might not have a body, or that no-one else exists, or that there is no past, are, as common sense recognises, absurd and impossible. It is only our sure convictions about the world that allow us to reflect to the point where we might raise the sceptical doubts that those necessary convictions then show to be senseless.

In countering the sceptical philosophy of Hume, Reid did a great service to his contemporaries and those they taught.

• John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy at St Andrews University.