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Thomas Reid on Language and Mind
In: Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository (2021)
Abstract: The dissertation concerns Thomas Reid’s philosophy of language. In the first three chapters, I discuss his philosophy of language in relation to his developmental psychology. More specifically, I discuss his answers to two questions: (i) what does the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs make possible? and (ii) what makes the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs possible? The focus is on Reid’s claim that the mind’s ability to understand artificial linguistic signs makes it possible for it to acquire a number of distinct mental abilities, such as to conceive universals, to judge, and to reason. I argue this claim commits him to the further claim that artificial language makes it possible for the mind to acquire moral liberty. The focus is also on Reid’s claim that it was possible for humans to first invent artificial linguistic signs, and, subsequently, for children to be taught artificial linguistic signs, only if they possess an innate faculty by the exercise of which they can understand natural linguistic signs that express social operations of the mind. I explain that claim, reconstruct Reid’s arguments for it, and argue that the account of artificial linguistic signs presupposed by said arguments is prima facie incompatible with his claim that artificial language makes moral liberty possible. In the fourth chapter, I discuss Reid’s accounts of perception, memory, and imagination. I argue he holds that we perceive, remember, and imagine before learning artificial language, and, consequently, is committed to the view that such acts do not essentially involve the exercise of those abilities that artificial language makes possible. I argue that it follows from this that Reid’s commentators have not fully understood his accounts of the conceptual content in perception, memory, and imagination; the processes through which said acts come to involve distinct conceptual content; and the distinction between acquired perceptions and habitual judgments.
Keyword: History of Philosophy; imagination; language; memory; perception; Reid; social operations
URL: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/8314
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10916&context=etd
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