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Reid's First Principle #7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Patrick Rysiew*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, The University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3045, Victoria, BC, V8W 3P4, Canada

Abstract

By Reid's own account, ‘That the natural faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious’ (FP#7), has a special place among the First Principles of Contingent Truths. Some have found that claim puzzling, but it is not. Contrary to what's usually assumed, certain FPs preceding FP#7 do not already assert the better part of what FP#7 explicitly states. FP#7 is needed because there is nothing epistemological in the FPs that precede it; and its special place among the FPs is a straightforward consequence of its being both perfectly general and distinctively epistemological.

Type
Epistemology
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2011

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