Thomas Reid is one figure whose epistemological views are bound up with common sense. As with his positive theory, however, Reid’s response to scepticism – what exactly it’s meant to establish, and how – is a matter of controversy. Of course, insofar as it respects and defends our ordinary view of ourselves as having knowledge, and from a variety of sources, any response to scepticism is “commonsensical” in the broad sense. Notably, however, recent interpreters of Reid differ in what role if any they see common sense itself as playing in Reid’s response to the sceptic – hence, in whether they think that response is commonsensical in some more substantive sense. Here, I shall argue that even those who do give common sense a place in Reid’s defense of our pretheoretic epistemological views underrate the importance therein of common sense as Reid conceives of it. Specifically, they overlook the fact that common sense has an irreducible normative aspect for Reid, and that an adherence to the first principles of common sense is, for him, a minimum requirement on rational judgment and action, a requirement which even the sceptic cannot evade.
That common sense is central to Reid’s epistemological views hardly seems worth saying. And yet, witness for example James Van Cleve’s recent discussion of Reid’s epistemology, in which common sense figures hardly at all. As Van Cleve sees it, the key feature of Reid’s epistemology is its externalism. Reid is usually seen as proposing a number of general “first principles” asserting …