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Kames and the Argument from Perceptual Reliability
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Critic and cousin to David Hume, Henry Home (1696–1782)—or Lord Kames, as he was known after his appointment to the Court of Session in 1752—had remarkably varied intellectual interests. His principal philosophical work is Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (1751, revised in 1758 and again in 1779), which contains constructive rejoinders to many of the sceptical arguments presented by Hume and Berkeley. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse Kames’s little-known defence of perceptual realism as it was set forth in the 1751 version of his Essays. As will become apparent in Chapter 3, Kames’s views about the nature of perception anticipated and inspired Thomas Reid’s plea for the view that we have immediate knowledge of a mind-independent world. This makes Kames the de facto founder of the Scottish common sense realist tradition.
Title: Kames and the Argument from Perceptual Reliability
Description:
Critic and cousin to David Hume, Henry Home (1696–1782)—or Lord Kames, as he was known after his appointment to the Court of Session in 1752—had remarkably varied intellectual interests.
His principal philosophical work is Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (1751, revised in 1758 and again in 1779), which contains constructive rejoinders to many of the sceptical arguments presented by Hume and Berkeley.
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse Kames’s little-known defence of perceptual realism as it was set forth in the 1751 version of his Essays.
As will become apparent in Chapter 3, Kames’s views about the nature of perception anticipated and inspired Thomas Reid’s plea for the view that we have immediate knowledge of a mind-independent world.
This makes Kames the de facto founder of the Scottish common sense realist tradition.
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