Notes

For, although we cannot, here below, have more than an epistemological glimpse of who is behind the curtain, we are able to engage in a conversation with the one whose existence, as Berkeley saw (Principles of Human Knowledge, I, §148; cf. EIP 512), is not less evident than the existence of other human beings. The belief in the intelligent author of the works of nature draws on the same cognitive equipment, antecedent to all reasoning or experience, as that of the baby in its ‘social intercourse’ with its nurse (EIP 482-483). This tends to qualify what Wolterstorff calls the ‘theme of darkness’. Our knowledge of intellectual and active powers, which appears to be quite limited when we focus on the ‘philosophy of the human mind’, is as complete as it needs to be, when we turn to social interactions and the commerce of spirits, which Reidian epistemology should not neglect:

It is of the highest importance to us, as moral and accountable creatures, to know what actions are in our power, because it is for these only that we can be accountable to our Maker, or to our fellow-men in society; by these only we can merit praise or blame; in these only all our prudence, wisdom and virtue must be employed; and, therefore, with regard to them, the wise Author of nature has not left us in the dark. (EAP 30-31)13

1. For instance in this passage: ‘Desire and will agree in this, that both must have an

object, of which we must have some conception; and therefore both must be accompanied with some degree of understanding’ (EAP 48; see also 29, quoted below: ‘that degree of understanding which will necessarily implies’).