An Inquiry into the Human Mind
Thomas Reid, on the Principles of Common Sense (1764)
Thomas Reid — Church of Scotland minister and professor, founder of the Scottish school of common-sense philosophy
Plain, careful, and entirely willing to let an argument run to wherever it actually goes.
- Catch rate
- 28 / 255
- Base research
- 242
- Stat total
- 342
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Patient and methodical — Reid built an entire school out of taking one observation seriously.
Turns Hume’s own method against his conclusion: skepticism, followed all the way down, has to doubt the faculties it is using to doubt with.
The first principles Reid names — memory, the senses, testimony, the uniformity of nature — are the ground UNDER every objection anyone could raise, including Hume’s own.
"Common sense" is Reid’s own name for it, and he meant the phrase as a technical term, not a dismissal.
Cited for this book
Certain first principles — that our memory is generally reliable, that the senses report a real world, that testimony is generally to be trusted, that nature is uniform — are not conclusions OF reasoning. They are the ground reasoning stands on, given by our constitution, and Hume’s skepticism, pushed through consistently, would have to doubt the very faculties it is using to reach its doubts. Reid was a working minister as well as a philosopher, and saw no conflict there: reason examined honestly, he held, leads a mind back to trust rather than away from it.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 30 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 40 | Reason Itself Must Stoop | Presupposition | Argument | 72 | 100% | 10 |
| 44 | Little Better Than A Changeling | Presupposition | Argument | 86 | 100% | 10 |