Thomas Reid, Hume and Theology

Abstract

Joe Houston unfolds the subtlety of some of the fundamental aspects of Thomas Reid’s response to Hume’s scepticism and religious agnosticism. He discusses Hume’s awareness of the tension between scepticism and daily life; his foundationalist notions of rational belief; and the relation of modes of belief to the physical world, past events and causation. He then considers Reid’s counter-argument, that as humans we are constituted with belief-forming dispositions, and that there are no non-circular justifications available for each of the modes of belief-formation, only the principles of common sense.