ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with Plantinga’s interpretation of Reid as an externalist foundationalist, and Wolterstorff’s view that Reid was not only not a foundationalist of any kind but was in fact ‘the first great anti-foundationalist of the modern tradition’, and an externalist with respect to epistemic justification. It is pointed out, against these interpretations, that Wolterstorff himself admits that Reid thinks that those adults that are justified in their theistic beliefs hold those beliefs mediately, on the basis of reason. This, it is suggested, torpedoes the argument that Reid is a ‘Reformed’ epistemologist. It is concluded that there is no doubt that Reid is an internalist foundationalist with respect to the justification of theistic belief, since he denies that we have (when we are functioning properly in an appropriate environment) a natural tendency to form the belief that God exists, and that we are entitled in the absence of argument to believe that God exists.
The second part of the chapter discusses the question whether Reid was a foundationalist. Two forms of foundationalism are distinguished, a propositionalist or internalist sense of foundationalism, according to which a proposition is rationally believable only if it is derived from propositions which every rational adult holds to be self-evidently true, and a non-propositionalist or externalist sense, according to which a proposition is rationally believable only if it is the product of belief-producing mechanisms common to every rational adult, or appropriately derived from propositions that are the immediate products of such mechanisms. It is argued that, even though there may be elements of externalist foundationalism about Reid, he holds to internalist foundationalism.
The chapter concludes by arguing, contra Wolterstorff, that Hume’s sceptical philosophy cannot be conscripted to assist Reid’s alleged anti-foundationalism. The argument here is based on the distinction between thin belief, belief that is insulated from practical concerns, and thick belief, which is not. It is then argued that, while Hume held a thick belief in the material world, and adhered to scepticism in the thin sense about the external world, Reid held both thick and thin beliefs in the material world. Reid’s argument against Hume here is that any thin belief, including thin scepticism, requires a set of thick beliefs, where the gap between thin and thick belief is bridged by the principles of common sense.
The chapter concludes by answering the question of the title by suggesting that Reid did not include theistic belief in the set of foundational propositions for the simple reason that the beliefs in this set were, in his view, common to every rational adult, and theistic belief was not common to every rational adult.
