Where Mechanism Ends: Thomas Reid on the Moral and the Animal Oeconomy
Theories of life have consequences for how the social order is conceptualized. I pursue this theme in the work of the Aberdeen philosopher of mind Thomas Reid (1710–96), or more accurately, in his reactions to others’ views. Reid typically developed his own ideas into a coherent view in juxtaposition to ideas to which he took exception. This means entering into a number of apparently discrete contexts before the unifying threads can be made plain. Let me introduce my theme with a not untypical example of Reid’s way of clarifying by accentuating difference. In 1794, just two years before he died, Reid gave two lectures to the Glasgow Literary Society. The subjects were apparently unconnected. In the first lecture Reid extensively criticized and commented on Joseph Priestley’s materialist philosophy. The central point of dispute was the inertness of matter and its consequences for physiology and religion: “By what force [the muscular fibers] are contracted and relaxed, either in voluntary or involuntary Motion, Philosophy has never discovered. . . . It is here that Mechanism ends, at least human wisdom has never been able to carry it farther; and some cause must operate that has the power of beginning motion” (Wood 1995, 202).
Boerhaave's men at Leyden and after
Hermann Boerhaave, probably the greatest teacher of medicine in modern times, exerted a vast influence that we can measure by studying the careers of his students. Boerhaave's specific influence on British medicine and, through the Scottish connection, on early American medicine, has received the attention of several scholars. Dr Underwood, with unsurpassed background and critical acumen, has gone back to original sources and published what will certainly be the definitive work on this subject. Through painstaking search he has traced the men from Great Britain who had studied in Leyden during Boerhaave's lifetime. They had studied there for various lengths of time. Some took degrees; others did not. Some became famous indeed; others remained obscure. Underwood has traced what happened to them and described the way they affected British medical life in England, Scotland, and Ireland. The analysis really covered the entire 18th century—for of all the British students who
Do Potential People Have Moral Rights?
By a potential person I shall mean an entity which is not now a person but which is capable of developing into a person, given certain biologically and/or technologically possible conditions. This is admittedly a narrower sense than some would attach to the term ‘potential'. After all, people of the twenty-fifth century, if such there will be, are in some sense potential people now, even though the specific biological entities from which they will develop, i.e. the particular gametes or concepti, do not yet exist. For there do exist, in the reproductive capacities of people now living and in the earth's resources, conditions adequate to produce these future people eventually, provided of course that various possible catastrophes are avoided. Indeed, in some sense of ‘potential’ there have been countless billions of potential people from the beginning of time. But I am concerned not with such remote potentialities but with currently existing entities that are capable of developing into people.