Abstract: In a 1766 letter, Beattie states his intention to write a book on the nature of truth with this central thesis: "tha

THE RISE AND FALL OF BEATTIE’S COMMON SENSE THEORY OF TRUTH

James Fieser

4/4/2003

Abstract: In a 1766 letter, Beattie states his intention to write a book on the nature of truth with this central thesis: "that as we know nothing of the eternal relations of things, that to us is and must be truth, which we feel that we must believe; and that to us is falsehood, which we feel that we must disbelieve." In more contemporary wording, his bold point is that we must reject the correspondence theory of truth (i.e., that true statements are those that correspond with reality) since we do not have access to the world of facts. Instead, we must adopt a common sense standard of truth, which bases truth upon an instinctive conviction of foundational concepts. He states this thesis very prominently in the first edition of his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) -- in wording very similar to that in the letter. However, in his final revision of the Essay in 1776, he deleted the relevant sentences, thereby diluting -- if not destroying -- the book’s most innovative point. Why did he do this? He was apparently swayed by harsh criticisms of his thesis, particularly by Joseph Priestley. I discuss Beattie's claim, the attacks, and suggest ways in which a common sense standard of truth might be viable.

Introduction

Imagine a world in which the most extreme views of philosophical skeptics were put into practice. A hallmark of skepticism, for example, is to doubt everything; acting out on this, someone might bandage over his eyes, ears and other sensory inlets, striving to become catatonic. Another theme of skepticism is to dispute endlessly; thus, two people might sit hundreds of feet a part and quarrel in such a soft whisper that they could not possibly hear each other. Skepticism also attempts to undermine all reasoning; to this end, someone might attempt an experiment in which a human-looking puppet inserts its feet into its mouth, swallows itself entirely and disappears. Skeptics believe that our most fundamental beliefs and behaviors result from social convention; to demonstrate this, a scientist might try to raise a human child to behave like a sheep, or deprogram a chicken from its usual custom of laying eggs. This is the nightmarish world that James Beattie describes in his fictional essay “The Castle of Scepticism.”[1] As bizarre and counter-intuitive as skepticism is, he believes that ordinary people are nevertheless psychologically drawn to it, usually out of pretentiousness, ignorance, conceit, fashion, moral depravity, ambition, or just plain speculative curiosity. Because so many common people latch onto the views of skeptics, he argues, it is not merely a game for philosophers. Instead, it can affect the behavior of the masses with dangerous consequences – stripping people of their confidence in science, morality and religion. As Beattie depicts it in “The Castle of Scepticism,” the friendly skeptic David Hume welcomes people to his side and, when within arms reach, grabs them and throws them into a bottomless pit.

Beattie’s 1770 Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth was a valiant attempt to expose scepticism’s absurdities and dangers. Inspired by Thomas Reid, he felt that God implanted several common sense intuitions within human nature, particularly beliefs about the integrity of reason, sense perceptions, and moral virtue. As Beattie reflected on skeptics’ efforts to undermine truth, it occurred to him that common sense not only guides us towards truth, but it defines and is the criterion of truth. In his words, “that to us is truth which we feel that we must believe; and that to us is falsehood which we feel that we must disbelieve.” This goes beyond what any other philosopher in his day or since has said about the function of common sense. In more contemporary terminology, he is offering a theory of truth that radically differs from the more familiar correspondence theory. As bold and innovative as his common sense theory was, within a few years he revised his Essay, removing the central components of his common sense definition of truth. Why did he do this? He was apparently swayed by harsh criticisms of his theory, particularly by Joseph Priestley. I will discuss Beattie's claim and the attacks on it, and will suggest ways in which a common sense standard of truth might be viable.

Definitions of Truth in the Essay

Beattie began working on his Essay in the mid 1760s, and by 1766 had finished much of his first draft. In a letter at this time to his friend William Forbes, he describes the essence of his theory, clearly articulating his common sense criterion of truth:

My doctrine is this: that as we know nothing of the eternal relations of things, that to us is and must be truth, which we feel that we must believe; and that to us is falsehood, which we feel that we must disbelieve. I have shown that all genuine reasoning does ultimately terminate in certain principles, which it is impossible to disbelieve, and as impossible to prove: that therefore the ultimate standard of truth to us is common sense, or that instinctive conviction into which all true reasoning does resolve itself: that therefore what contradicts common sense is in itself absurd, however subtle the arguments which support it: for such is the ambiguity and insufficiency of language, that it is easy to argue on either side of any question with acuteness sufficient to confound one who is not expert in the art of reasoning. [Beattie to William Forbes, January 30, 1766][2]

There are two central points to this passage. First, he denies that we know the “eternal relations of things” in themselves. The notion of “eternal relations” appears prominently in the writings of rationalist British philosophers such as Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston, who believed that eternal relations were Platonic form-like features of the universe. Beattie, though, appears to use the expression more broadly in reference to the nature of things – elements of reality and the laws that govern things. His point is that we cannot judge truth and falsehood by inspecting reality itself since that is beyond what we can know. Second, he makes clear that common sense is the “standard” of truth, and not simply a guide or indicator of truth. Few people would object to the modest claim that common sense is a basic guide for recognizing the truth of at least some contentions. For example, my common sense inclines me to believe that the tree in front of me physically exists and, so, it is plausible for me to judge that this belief is true. However, Beattie goes a step further and suggests that “X is true” means that X is grounded in an instinctive common sense conviction. It is in this sense that he is offering a definition of truth to be placed for consideration along side other theories, most notably the correspondence theory.

In 1770, Beattie’s Essay finally appeared, and it retained the two key themes in his letter to Forbes. We find both elements in the opening chapter of the work:

Of those laws [of the nature of things] I do not pretend to know any thing, except so far as they seem to be intimated to me by my own feelings, and by the suggestions of my own understanding.... I account That to be truth which the constitution of my nature determines me to believe, and That to be falsehood which the constitution of my nature determines me to disbelieve. [Essay, 1.1][3]

The first part of the above passage states that we do not have access to the nature of things – or “the eternal relations of things” as he words it in his letter to Forbes. The second part links truth to common sense. The wording here, though, is less precise than in the Forbes letter. That is, he states here “I account That to be truth,” where the word “account” could imply either that natural beliefs are guides for truth, or the standard of truth. It is only the second of these that is particularly innovative. Later in the Essay, though, he makes his point less ambiguously, in a passage that more closely reflects the wording in the Forbes letter:

For of the eternal relations and fitnesses of things, we know nothing; all that we know of truth and falsehood is, that our constitution determines us in some cases to believe, in others to disbelieve; and that to us is truth which we feel that we must believe; and that to us is falsehood which we feel that we must disbelieve. There are innumerable truths with which we are wholly unacquainted; there are perhaps some truths which we reject as falsehood; but, surely, we must both know and believe a truth before we can acknowledge it as such; and belief is nothing but a perception, or, if you please, an action, of the mind, the peculiar nature of which we all know by internal feeling or consciousness, and cannot possibly know in any other way. [Essay, 2.1.2]

The important point in this passage is the claim that our knowledge of truth and falsehood is confined to our instinctive beliefs. Common sense belief is not just a guide, but the defining characteristic of truth.

A few years after its appearance, the Essay was hit with three detailed criticisms, all of which targeted Beattie’s common sense conception of truth. The first was the anonymously published pamphlet The Essay ... Shewn to be Sophistical (1773), possibly authored by Unitarian minister Thomas Cogan. The upshot of the critique is that common sense is notoriously variable from person to person, and Beattie’s attempt to ground truth in common sense in fact destroys the very nature of truth. The author makes this point here:

[W]ere a great majority, if not all, of mankind determined to believe, feel, approve, and disapprove, by one common intuitive principle, would there be so great a variety and contrariety of opinions and feelings, amongst the great majority of mankind, after an investigation of the same natural and moral objects, presented in the view of their understandings? [The Essay... Shewn to be Sophistical][4]

The irony here is that Beattie forged his common sense criterion of truth in an effort to block the kind of relativism that skeptics endorsed; yet, according to the pamphlet, Beattie’s solution promotes more relativism than the theories of the skeptics. Beattie dismissed this pamphlet as insignificant (London Diary, Tuesday, August 3),[5] but nevertheless understood its intent.

The next year Joseph Priestley published his Examination, which attacked the common sense theories of Reid, Beattie and Oswald. In his treatment of Beattie, Priestley quoted the above definition of truth from the Essay 2.1.2, which he followed with this critique:

To me this doctrine appears to be intirely subversive of all truth; since, speaking agreeably to it, all that we can ever say is, that certain maxims and propositions appear to be true with respect to ourselves, but how they may appear to others we cannot tell; and as to what they are in themselves, which alone is, strictly speaking, the truth, we have no means of judging at all; for we can only see with our own eyes, and judge by our own faculties, or rather feelings. [Joseph Priestley, Examination, “Beattie,” Section 1][6]

Priestley argues here that Beattie commits himself to a kind of individual relativism. We cannot know the instinctive beliefs of others, Priestley charges, and, by Beattie’s own confession, we cannot know the truth of things in themselves. It is thus our private instinctive beliefs that form the basis of truth. The point of Priestley’s critique is the same as that of the anonymous pamphlet: common sense is too variable to function as an adequate criterion of truth. Priestley forewarned Beattie of his impending attack, and, unlike his response to the anonymous pamphlet, Beattie did take Priestley’s criticisms seriously (Beattie to Montagu, August 5, 1774).[7]

In 1776 Beattie received an unpublished manuscript by James Steuart, which attacked the Essay. Citing the passage from the Essay 2.1.2, Steuart argues that Beattie grounds “the criterion of all truth to our opinion of it”:

In this passage, he gives up any pretensions which mankind can have to the knowledge of any eternal and immutable truth; and this, while he has demonstration in his eye. What motive can have induced him to contradict the very title of his Essay, which is on the immutability of truth? He can have no other than this. He wishes to fix the criterion of all truth to our opinion of it. How can he say that we know nothing of the eternal relation and fitness of things? Is not the relation the only characteristic of immutable truth? What can make truth immutable, but this eternal relation and fitness between the subject and the predicate in any proposition, which, at the bottom of page 220, he says Omnipotence itself cannot change? [James Steuart, “Observations”][8]

Steuart’s point is that the essence of truth is its immutability, which can only be guaranteed if truth is grounded in eternal relations. Beattie, though, denies this and instead makes truth dependent on our opinion, which is mutable. Beattie expressed some appreciation for Steuart’s comments, but had received them too late to make use of them for further revisions of the Essay (Beattie to Creech, 23 February 1776).[9]

Of the three critiques, Priestley’s is the one that impacted Beattie the most. Beattie was particularly bothered by the criticism that his criterion of truth was too relativistic, and, in the final revision of the Essay, published in 1776, he deleted the entire passage from 2.1.2 quoted above. He also made adjustments to his more ambiguously worded definition of truth in the opening paragraphs of the Essay. He stated there that “I account That to be truth which the constitution of my nature determines me to believe.” To make clear that truth was not simply based on his personal beliefs, as Priestley charged, he added a footnote stating that he accounts truth to be that which “the constitution of human nature determines man to believe.” Beattie did not completely retract his common sense theory of truth. However, in his effort to dodge the criticism of individual relativism, he left us with an ambiguous analysis of truth, which appears to be more of a guideline than a criterion.

Two decades later Beattie revisited the subject of truth in his Elements of Moral Science (1790-1793), which was based on his moral philosophy lectures at Marischal College. In that work he defines truth as follows:

Truth is that which the constitution of rational nature determines rational beings to believe: or it may be defined, the conformity of propositions with the nature of things. A definition of it is, indeed, unnecessary; for every man knows what he means when he says of one affirmation, that it is true; and of another, that it is not true. [Elements of Moral Science, 2.4.2, par. 1007][10]

Again, the definition is ambiguous. Truth is linked here with “rational nature” and the belief of “rational beings.” Although this is compatible with his earlier common sense criterion of truth, it is also compatible with rationalist conceptions of truth based on eternal relations. He also offers here an alternative definition, namely, the classic correspondence theory of truth. And, to top it off, he states that defining truth is not really necessary since we all know what it means. At this stage in his life, he all but abandons the common sense criterion of truth.

Correspondence, Coherence, and Common Sense

To understand the potential value of a common sense theory of truth, it will help to consider the limitations of rival truth theories. First, there is the correspondence theory, which Beattie himself considers. Most simply, this theory states that a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to a fact. For example, the proposition “my car is white” is true if and only if it corresponds to the fact that my car is white. The correspondence theory faces numerous problems, such as explaining the notion of “correspond” and the notion of “fact”. The key problem with the theory that concerns us – and Beattie – though, is that we do not have access to facts the way that we would like. When inspecting the truth of the statement “my car is white,” for example, a skeptic would immediately question so-called “facts” about my car. According to the skeptic, I can’t trust what my senses tell me about my car, and, what’s worse, I can’t know whether my car even really exists. The skeptic’s challenge affects the correspondence theory at two levels. First, it obstructs the theory’s capacity to be an effective guide or algorithm for discovering the truth of a proposition. My effort at determining the truth of the proposition “my car is white” immediately grinds to a halt when I see that I have no access to the world of facts. Second, and more importantly, the skeptic’s challenge foils the correspondence theory as a criterion of truth. All talk about the world of facts is metaphysical nonsense since it refers to something beyond our possible experiences. We may as well say that a proposition is true if it is confirmed by Elvis as he benevolently monitors the universe from aboard an alien spacecraft.

A modern day successor to the correspondence theory is the semantic theory of truth. According to the semantic theory, the proposition “my car is white” is true if and only if my car is white. The theory technically makes no mention of “facts”, and thus attempts to avoid problems defining the notion of a “fact”. Nevertheless, the semantic theory also falls prey to the skeptic’s challenge: we can question our knowledge of the presumed fact that my car is white.

Beattie devised his common sense theory of truth in response to the skeptic’s challenge – particularly the arguments by Berkeley and Hume against our knowledge of an external physical world. Beattie in fact concedes that we don’t have complete access to the world of facts, and whatever confidence we do have in such “facts” is grounded in our common sense beliefs in them. His answer to the skeptic’s challenge, then, is to eliminate any implicit or explicit reference to facts and go right to truth’s foundation: a proposition is true if and only if it is based on an instinctive foundational belief.

Consider next the coherence theory of truth, the principal rival to the correspondence theory. According to this view, a proposition is true if and only if it coheres with some larger set of beliefs. For example, the proposition “my car is white” is true if and only if it coheres with beliefs such as “many cars are painted white,” “I perceive that my car is white,” and “other people invariably report that my car is white.” The coherence theory avoids reference to the unobtainable world of facts, and focuses instead on something that we do have access to, namely, our beliefs. However, the coherence theory is saddled with conceptual problems, most notably, the problem of identifying whose set of beliefs we are appealing to, whether our own, our society’s, or some ideally rational person’s. The major problem with the coherence theory that concerns us here is that it is relativistic. It grounds truth in the potentially variable beliefs of human beings, rather than in a fixed external reality, and reflects the basic skeptical view that “man is the measure of all things,” as Protagoras classically expressed it. During the 18th century, the coherence theory was not articulated as explicitly as the correspondence theory. Nevertheless, it was very much embedded in skeptical theories of moral relativism, which Beattie staunchly opposed.[11] According to relativists, a moral proposition is true if and only if it is grounded in the beliefs of an individual or of society.

Beattie’s answer to relativism – and thus its imbedded coherence theory – was to distinguish between two kinds of beliefs: instinctive foundational beliefs, and beliefs founded blindly on the “sentiments of other men” (Essay, 3.1). Truth, he maintained, is grounded in the former, which is fixed and immutable, and not in the latter, which is variable. In some sense we might see Beattie as offering a version of the coherence theory: a proposition is true if it coheres with a set of instinctive foundational beliefs. Whether Beattie himself would classify his position as a “coherence theory” is something we will never know. However, because of the relativism endemic to coherence theory, he might have resisted being grouped among such skeptical theories. Far from being human creations, he argues, our instinctive foundational beliefs are implanted in us by God and as such reflect God’s knowledge of the nature of things. From our human perspective, we can never move beyond our instinctive beliefs into the mind of God or to the nature of things themselves. These instinctive beliefs, then, are the final court of appeal for any truth inquiry, and as such they constitute the criterion of truth.

Beattie’s common sense criterion of truth is interesting today, regardless of whether it is a distinct theory by itself, or only a kind of coherence theory. It is appealing because it avoids referring to objective facts, the nature of things, the mind of God, and similar external metaphysical crutches. It is also appealing because it limits the standard of truth to the internal structure of human nature – as philosophers after Beattie have tried to do. The key question, though, is whether the common sense intuitions he describes can meet the expectations that we have for a standard of truth.[12] Priestley and other early critics argued that common sense fails in this regard. First, they argued, these so-called instinctive beliefs are not as clearly defined within human nature as Beattie assumes. Second, human nature is unreliable and, because of this, instinctive beliefs will not generate fixed truths. But 18th century philosophers, including Beattie himself, had exceptionally high expectations for the notion of truth. Today we have lower expectations – as we see with coherence theories – which may enable Beattie’s criterion to survive the two objections by early critics.

The key is to recognize that not all “truths” are on the same footing. Some are more or less fixed, such as truths of mathematics, and others are more variable, such as moral and religious truths. Coherence theorists would explain this by maintaining that mathematical truths cohere with beliefs that most societies endorse, whereas moral and religious truths cohere with beliefs of smaller social groups that often conflict with each other. Paralleling this, according to a common sense theory of truth, we might say that mathematical truths are based on widely held intuitive beliefs, while moral and religious truths are based on intuitive beliefs that emerge differently in different cultures. There is a subtle yet crucial difference here between the common sense and coherence theories. Coherence theories presume that we can list the relevant body of beliefs with which a specific truth may or may not cohere; the common sense theory doesn’t require such a list. In Beattie’s words, “that to us is and must be truth, which we feel that we must believe.” Thus, the belief experience itself is the foundation of truth, and not a larger web of beliefs. Someone might demand that we explain why we have an intuitive belief, and how it connects with other beliefs. The beauty of common sense, though, is that we are not required to answer these questions. Again, the belief experience itself is the foundation of truth.

Right about now Beattie must be rolling in his grave. He proposed his theory of truth in an effort to establish the immutability of truth in opposition to skepticism. The relativist version of his theory presented here embraces skepticism, and in essence places Beattie along side Hume tossing people into a bottomless pit. If this is the only way of retaining his common sense theory of truth, he’d certainly much rather abandon it in favor of the standard correspondence theory. His citing of the correspondence theory in his Elements of Moral Science suggests that he may have done just that.