The "Way Of Ideas"

If the WOI is the theory that mind creates what we think of as reality - that ideas are all we have and that these are primary to the illusion that is direct perception, then something needs to be said on Reid's behalf. The conclusion from the 18th C was that what we know directly are ideas and not real things (the WOI). Because of this, rampant skepticism could ensue (see Hume).

It seems to be that Reid presented the major defect in the WOI. An assumption from the WOI worked its way into the collective academic mindset: that truth can be revealed (and should be) by a solitary thinker alone in an armchair. A single, autonomous thinker could "spin ideas out of his own head" (reference to Locke). This "atomistic" approach has little value other than subjectively (i.e. not communicative). To know a truth, Reid suggests, one must look at how all people, in particular, the common people think naturally (and not perhaps confused by academic atomism or the WOI), starting with perception. To "see" something is not merely to obtain an impression of a potential object - I'm not just "seeing." I am also judging things about the object. I am judging certain things - I automatically know that the object is real. This is judgment and belief in coordination with the almost circumstantial event that was obtaining data. This belief is contained in the act of perceiving. The WOI devolved into the notion that we passively receive data via perception and then, after perception, we think about this "impression" and decided things like belief. One of these after-the-fact thoughts might be whether we belief the object is real (I don't mean that we perceived in error, that can happen anytime, I mean whether any object has its own material being at all or ever). We see an object, its "impression" gets in our mind and then we sit in our armchair and think about the consequences of that "impression." That was the outline for perception in the WOI.

But for Reid the judgment had already occurred and it was only by learned sophistry that the academic/idealist covered over the belief with an unwarranted skepticism. There was no reason to question things like reality if the very act of perception included for all people an automatic belief.

This is also not different in substance from Kant's notion of categories and his push for objectivity. This is why Victor Cousins (in Billig, HR) "bracketed Kant and Reid."

Reference: Billig, Michael, HR ("The Hidden Roots of Critical Psychology" Sage, 2008)