In this post I will be further developing the reply to Reid adumbrated in my previous post; what I will refer to as the sui generis thesis. This thesis is not in tension with Reid’s observation that all the cognitive faculties are equally susceptible to “disorders of the body”. To wit, I am not claiming that reason is somehow less fallible than the faculty of sense. For example, we can imagine someone in the exact opposite position to Nash; someone whose schizophrenia utterly undermined the reliability of their rational faculty while leaving their sensory faculty perfectly intact. I do not wish to deny such a possibility.
My point is that if someone’s reason were so corrupted, there would be no way for them to use their sensory faculty to discover this fact. By contrast, in the case of someone whose sensory faculty is compromised by schizophrenia, it is nevertheless conceivable that they could discover this fact using their rational faculty (in fact, this is precisely what John Nash does).
Reid may object to my Nash counterexample by pointing out that John Nash could only use his reason to evaluate his sensory deliverances because he had prior veridical sensory experiences to use as a paradigm. But if we were to posit, let us say, a global scepticism in which the senses were always mistaken, reason would be powerless to discover this fact. The upshot of this objection is that reason could not effectively evaluate the senses independent of prior aid from the senses themselves.
However, the preceding objection merely points out that there are certain circumstances (i.e., in the case of pervasive sensory scepticism) in which reason would be unable to effectively evaluate the reliability of the senses. However, the sui generis thesis does not rely on the bold (and implausible) claim that reason is always able to effectively evaluate the reliability of the senses. Rather, it rests on the much more modest (and highly plausible) claim that it is possible, given the right circumstances, for reason to evaluate the senses. To wit, if we grant that it is never possible to use the senses to evaluate the reliability of reason, then it merely has to be the case that under some circumstances we may effectively use reason to evaluate the reliability of the senses in order to establish a unilateral relationship between the two faculties.
In sum, I am not claiming that reason is somehow free of the foibles that threaten the senses. Neither am I suggesting that reason can always be effectively used to evaluate the reliability of the senses (i.e., independent of prior aid from the senses themselves). Rather, I avow that there is a unilateral relationship between reason and the senses in that (under favourable circumstances) the former can be used to discover defects in the latter but not vice versa. I believe this unilateral relationship between reason and the senses is sufficient to establish, contra Reid, that there is something sui generis about reason vis-à-vis the senses.
In my next post on this topic, I will provide an account of what makes reason sui generis vis-à-vis the senses and outline how the sui generis thesis bears on Reid’s Shop Argument.
My point is that if someone’s reason were so corrupted, there would be no way for them to use their sensory faculty to discover this fact. By contrast, in the case of someone whose sensory faculty is compromised by schizophrenia, it is nevertheless conceivable that they could discover this fact using their rational faculty (in fact, this is precisely what John Nash does).
Reid may object to my Nash counterexample by pointing out that John Nash could only use his reason to evaluate his sensory deliverances because he had prior veridical sensory experiences to use as a paradigm. But if we were to posit, let us say, a global scepticism in which the senses were always mistaken, reason would be powerless to discover this fact. The upshot of this objection is that reason could not effectively evaluate the senses independent of prior aid from the senses themselves.
However, the preceding objection merely points out that there are certain circumstances (i.e., in the case of pervasive sensory scepticism) in which reason would be unable to effectively evaluate the reliability of the senses. However, the sui generis thesis does not rely on the bold (and implausible) claim that reason is always able to effectively evaluate the reliability of the senses. Rather, it rests on the much more modest (and highly plausible) claim that it is possible, given the right circumstances, for reason to evaluate the senses. To wit, if we grant that it is never possible to use the senses to evaluate the reliability of reason, then it merely has to be the case that under some circumstances we may effectively use reason to evaluate the reliability of the senses in order to establish a unilateral relationship between the two faculties.
In sum, I am not claiming that reason is somehow free of the foibles that threaten the senses. Neither am I suggesting that reason can always be effectively used to evaluate the reliability of the senses (i.e., independent of prior aid from the senses themselves). Rather, I avow that there is a unilateral relationship between reason and the senses in that (under favourable circumstances) the former can be used to discover defects in the latter but not vice versa. I believe this unilateral relationship between reason and the senses is sufficient to establish, contra Reid, that there is something sui generis about reason vis-à-vis the senses.
In my next post on this topic, I will provide an account of what makes reason sui generis vis-à-vis the senses and outline how the sui generis thesis bears on Reid’s Shop Argument.
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