Causality and Agency in the Philosophy of Thomas Reid

Abstract

I shall be concerned here with two doctrines which are essential to Reid’s account of agency and of causation. The first, expounded at some length in AP I, v, is that, so far as we can tell, only beings with will and understanding can exercise active power. The second, avowed at many points in Reid’s writings, is that there must be an efficient cause for everything that comes into existence. Since Reid believes that only a being that exercises active power can truly be called a cause, these doctrines taken together have far reaching consequences in metaphysics, in the philosophy of science and in the philosophy of religion, as well as in the theory of action. They imply that material things cannot be genuinely active and thus cannot be regarded as causes in the truest sense of the word. Conversely only spiritual beings can be efficient causes and everything which happens must result ultimately from the agency of God, of man or of some other such being.