Reid on Our Mental Constitution

Reid is suspected to beg the question of belief-justification by referring to our mental constitution as the already truthful constitution of the knowing subject. But Reid does not simply say that knowledge is a natural or a divine gift. He claims that his inquiry into our constitution shows how natural powers operate and how they give us access to reality. He claims to explain our true beliefs. This chapter first distinguishes Reid’s approach from any subjectivism and shows how, for Reid, knowledge depends on “our constitution”: only the discernment of truth (and not the truth itself) depends on our mental constitution. The chapter considers why Reid claims to explain the discernment of truth by referring to our constitution, and concludes on the originality of Reid’s anti-scepticism by assessing the proper sense in which the mind is a subject of knowledge.