Reid on Causation and Explanation in the Philosophy of Mind

Rebecca Copenhaver
Lewis & Clark College 

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  Reid’s repeated pessimism about discovering any causal explanations of mental phenomena indicates that he thinks that there is something special about the mind itself such that it is, as Reid says, “hid in impenetrable darkness”  (EIP 326a).  I shall argue, however, that Reid does not hold that the mind, unlike body, is fundamentally resistant to explanation by science.  I will not dispute that Reid repeatedly states that the causes of the operations of the mind, such as perception and conception, are inexplicable.  I will argue that, according to Reid, the same is true of the deepest stratum of the material world.  For Reid, the mind is no more mysterious than the body.  The physical sciences have progressed while the science of the mind has foundered because physical scientists, unlike philosophers, have given up the vain search for causes.  Such an understanding of Reid allows us to square his pessimism with the fact that he spent much of his life in the pursuit of a science of mind and with his repeated, but often overlooked, optimism about such a science.