ABSTRACT
Reid attempted to reconcile his position on visible appearances with a realist account of visible appearance in a set of remarks on visible and tangible space made over the closing pages of Intellectual Powers 2.19, ‘Of matter and space,’ (222-225), a text that merits close consideration in connection with his remarks on Hume’s perceptual relativity argument. He there noted that a direct perceptual realist is not committed to holding that our perceptions tell us everything there is to know about the objects around us. Our perceptions of space and the spatial properties of things can be partial and incomplete, as long as they are correct and consistent. One sense might tell us more than another or different senses might tell us different things. We might learn to read what one sense tells us as a sign for what another sense will tell us. As long as what the different senses tell us is compatible and what each of them tells us is independently true of external objects, we have no reason to suppose that any one of them acquaints us only with images. And no sense or combination of senses may tell us everything there is to know about the spatial properties of objects. ‘Perhaps there may be intelligent beings of a higher order, whose conceptions of space are much more complete than those we have from both senses’ (Intellectual Powers II.19: 223/17-19).
