Study of Common Sense principles from Thomas Reid's Perspective

Every epistemic structure inevitably starts from postulates whose truth is taken a priori. Thomas Reid held the view that there are many postulates that sensible people assume to be true. They then build their knowledge on their basis. With a scientific method, he tried to infer these postulates which he called first principles of common sense, principles that underlie our nature, and form the basis upon which we conduct our daily interactions with others and the world. The present paper is aimed to explain these first principles with reference to Reid`s works, and to examine the role they play in human knowledge and the inevitability of their postulation. The paper concludes with the explanation of the importance of these principles from Reid`s point of view. The major conclusion is that without postulating these principles, we will lose a massive bulk of the knowledge we consider critical to acknowledge.