ABSTRACT
What, then, of passages where Reid makes it sound like FP#7 is special – most notably, that beginning ‘If any truth can be said to be prior to all others in the order of nature, this seems to have the best claim . . . ’? On any reading, de Bary says, this passage is ‘embarrassing’ and ‘simply “bad Reid”.’9 For, if FP#7 is a not a Metaprinciple, then what Reid says here ‘is flatly inconsistent with Reid’s implicit commitment to the parity of first principles. All first principles are equal in being, by definition, innate and unprovable; and they can all be identified only by certain “marks” – self-evidence, irresistibility, etc.’ (2000, 382). Whereas, if FP#7 is a metaprinciple, that’s problematic as well:
Dr. Reid should surely not, by his own lights, be claiming that the truth of the set of human faculties is ‘prior to all others in the order of nature.’ We should expect whatever truth occupies that cosmic ‘pole position’ to include a reference to God, nature’s Wise and Bountiful Author. And in any case, we can find a candidate with at least as good a claim to priority from among Reid’s purely secular list of twelve first principles, namely principle 12: ‘That in the phaenomena of nature. What is to be, will probably be like to what has been in similar circumstances.’ (2000, 382).
