ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Thomas Reid’s reasons for eschewing causalism and espousing primitivism. Peter Kail has pointed out one more possible reason why someone with Reid’s views might not accept a causal theory of perception. Disjunctivism is the view that what is common to veridical perceptions and hallucinatory perceptions of the same scene can only be expressed in a disjunction. Some contemporary direct realists adopt disjunctivism in order to fend off arguments against their view based on the existence or possibility of hallucinations. Paul Snowdon has argued that disjunctivism is incompatible with causal theories of perception. The combination of a causal theory of intentionality with an intentional theory of causation gives rise to a metaphysical impossibility. The chapter shows Reid’s reasons for rejecting causal analyses of conception, which he regards as the most general of all intentional states.
