Mary Shepherd

Reason plays a central role in Shepherd’s account of our cognitive architecture. Most prominently, it provides for our representation and knowledge of causal relations, including but not limited to the relations between “external objects”; the continued, independent, and distinct existence of the external world, space, and time; the relation of “internal objects” to external ones; our idea of the mind; and our idea of God. Unfortunately, Shepherd says little about what she takes reason to be, or how she understands it (...) to operate. Nonetheless, recent scholarship has begun to make inroads in extracting an account of reason from Shepherd’s texts, and it is to that effort that this paper is meant to contribute. In particular, after briefly reviewing what function Shepherd takes reason to perform, I will turn my attention to how she understands reason to perform this function. My proposal for answering that question will, of necessity, be highly speculative, but I believe it fits with the extant texts, and provides a plausible path forward for future research. Roughly, my proposal is as follows. Shepherd holds that reason represents objects as causally related. She also holds that the causal relations in which objects stand in to each other are necessary relations. Finally, she holds that reason is not a mere associative faculty (à la Hume), but rather a structural feature of representations themselves. Putting all of these features together, I propose that we understand Shepherd as holding that reason employs material inferential rules to form representations of objects as necessarily connected. That is, she holds that we represent two objects as necessarily connected by licensing inferences between judgments about those objects. These inferences are not valid in virtue of their logical form, but rather because of the particular concepts they employ. So, for example, in licensing the inference from ‘This fire is close to that wax’ to ‘This fire will melt that wax’ we represent the fire as necessarily connected to the wax. In taking that inference to be valid, we represent that necessarily if its premise is true, then its conclusion is also true. Thus, Shepherd’s account serves as a corrective to Hume’s naïve naturalism. Both our mental representations and their objects are essentially part of the causal structure of the natural world, but the former represent the latter not solely in virtue of their natural relations to each other, but also in virtue of the irreducibly normative relations that these representations stand in to each other. (shrink)

Mary Shepherd and the Causal Relation - Part One -/- Part One gives context to the life and work of Lady Mary Shepherd. It weaves together the stories of her ancestors, her own stories and the wider social, historical and philosophical context. The aim is to evoke a world from which to mark the emergence of Mary Shepherd, Scotland’s first female philosopher.

Shepherd argues that we know general physical propositions and mathematical propositions on the basis of the same kind of reasoning – the same inference. She describes this inference as an inference from “like causes” to “like effects”. While her account of this inference is at the centre of her epistemology, much of it is still obscure to scholars. This paper presents an interpretation. I argue that, contrary to what scholars have suggested, Shepherd sees mathematical rather than physical reasoning as the (...) exemplar of the inference. My reading resolves some initial worries about Shepherd’s conception of mathematics. It also explains the justification for two key assumptions: that we know objects to have essences and that we know them to belong to natural kinds. (shrink)

Lady Mary Shepherd’s account of the mind-body relation is interactionist: she holds that bodies cause sensations in our immaterial minds, which in turn cause motions in our material bodies through actions of the will. Yet Shepherd does not explain how immaterial and material things interact with each other. She instead simply asserts that mind-body interaction does not raise any conceptual difficulties. In this chapter I argue that Shepherd’s dismissal of the interaction problem is underpinned by her rejection of the early (...) modern conception of substance, which sees substances as the metaphysical bases for their qualities or states. Shepherd’s approach to naturalism instead involves a chemical conception of substance, defining substances as masses of ‘qualities,’ which, for Shepherd, are capacities to interact in different circumstances. On this ontology, the nature of a substance is derived from its capacities to interact, and not the other way around. This ontological reversal dissolves the objections that had been raised against mind-body interaction. Shepherd’s metaphysical interpretation of the ‘chemical philosophy’ thus allows her to overcome one of the central aspects of the mind-body problem in its early modern formulation. (shrink)

This paper compares Hume and Shepherd’s account of the imagination. While both Hume and Shepherd agree that ‘conceivability implies possibility’, they differ in their views about what is ‘conceivable’, and therefore, what is possible. I then explore the implications that these two views have for the Abhorrent Acts Objection to the Divine Command Ethics. I argue that the objection is successful only if we adopt Hume’s account of the imagination but fails if we adopt Shepherd’s account.

One of Mary Shepherd’s primary philosophical aims is responding to the inductive skepticism of David Hume. However, her inductive theory has so far received only limited scholarly attention. Even less attention has thus far been paid to how her solution applies to the ordinary cases of induction that are central to both Hume’s presentation of his riddle and to Shepherd’s purported solution to it. We argue that Shepherd draws upon a distinction between real and nominal essences to justify the inductions (...) of the folk in everyday contexts, at least by her own lights. Along the way, we sketch how attending to Shepherd’s work enriches traditional narratives surrounding the reception of Hume and the traditional problem of induction. (shrink)

This discussion analyzes Lady Mary Shepherd’s response to the skeptical question raised by Hume about necessary causation: how can we know that like causes will necessarily give rise to like effects? Regardless of whether her account is metaphysically tenable in principle, this discussion seeks to assess if it is feasible in practice. Specifically, Shepherd’s response is considered in the context of scientific inquiry. If the inductive claims germane to scientific inquiry can be grounded in reason, as Shepherd believes, then her (...) anti-skeptical account prevails. However, a treatment of Shepherd’s oft-neglected epistemology reveals that she has not entirely silenced the Humeans here. Shepherd’s epistemic humility about external objects, when considered alongside her strict conception of natural kinds, forces us to employ an extra-rational inference when positing scientific claims. We must make an assumption about nature’s regularity which, crucially, is not guaranteed by reason. Shepherd’s response to Hume’s challenge cannot thus be considered an unmitigated success, at least by her own lights. To get induction off the ground, she has to make a concession to Hume about reason’s limits, albeit a subtle one. (shrink)

Shepherd argues that we know general physical propositions and mathematical propositions on the basis of the same kind of reasoning – the same inference. She describes this inference as an inference from “like causes” to “like effects”. While her account of this inference is at the centre of her epistemology, much of it is still obscure to scholars. This paper presents an interpretation. I argue that, contrary to what scholars have suggested, Shepherd sees mathematical rather than physical reasoning as the (...) exemplar of the inference. My reading resolves some initial worries about Shepherd’s conception of mathematics. It also explains the justification for two key assumptions: that we know objects to have essences and that we know them to belong to natural kinds. (shrink)

Shepherd’s epistemology of perception starts off with a rigorous refutation of Hume’s scepticism concerning the senses in the essay “On the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy” (chaps. 1–3), the first of the Essays on the Perception of an External Universe published in 1827. For this reason, at first sight she may be placed in the camp of the Scottish common-sense philosopher Thomas Reid. However, it remains to be seen whether they agree on the basic tenets of the epistemology of perception. Reid (...) assumes that our perceptual belief in mind-independent objects is “instinctive,” i.e. “immediate and not the effect of reasoning” (epistemic immediacy thesis). According to Shepherd, on the other hand, our belief in the external world is based on latent reasoning. The aim of this paper is to present an account of latent reasoning and to assess the importance of this notion for Shepherd’s epistemology of perception. I start with an outline of the current debate on alleged Reidian aspects of Shepherd’s epistemology (Bolton vs. Folescu). Then I show that Shepherd’s main epistemological critique of Reid echoes a point that was made earlier by Priestley. Thirdly, I lay out the main weaknesses of Priestley’s epistemology of perception in light of Reid’s insights. In the fourth part, I show why Shepherd’s latent reasoning is an inference to the best explanation and overcomes those weaknesses; and why Gilbert Harman’s analysis throws light on her concept. I conclude by stating Shepherd’s conditions of justified perceptual belief. (shrink)

This book is terrific. It offers the first panoramic exposition of Mary Shepherd’s complete philosophical works. Boyle also includes discussion of secondary literature on Shepherd (often in footnot...

In his Memoirs of 1879, the well-read philosopher and radical Robert Blakey, who had published a four-volume History of the Philosophy of Mind in 1848, described Mary Shepherd (1777-1847) thus: “She was, without exception, the most eloquent female talker I ever met with. Her lengthened….

In this article, I extract Mary Shepherd's social epistemology primarily from her attack on Hume's dismissive account of miracle reports. On my reading, she adopts a nonreductionist position on testimony, arguing that the hearer is both caused and justified to regard testimonies as true by default, that is, in the absence of any undefeated defeater. In contrast to Humean reductionism, we do not need to provide positive evidence for the truth of the testified proposition, for instance, by appealing to the (...) observed reliability of the speaker or speakers generally. In fleshing out her account, I clarify why her nonreductionism does not lead Shepherd to question our epistemic autonomy—the idea that we are supposed to draw our own conclusions. Indeed, I argue that it is precisely her commitment to epistemic autonomy that explains why, despite following Reid's similar account of testimony, she emphatically denies that we could justify metaphysical principles by appealing to common sense or universal agreement among people. Relatedly, I suggest that Shepherd thinks that while we have an a priori right to trust testimonies about events (whether ordinary or extraordinary) that we have not witnessed ourselves, we should never base our philosophical judgments simply on others' authority. (shrink)

Although writing almost a century after George Berkeley, Lady Mary Shepherd engaged with his works on various issues. I focus on Berkeley and Shepherd's conception of, and reaction to, indirect perceptual realism (IR) and note Berkeley and Shepherd's rejection of a familiar form of IR. After a short introduction, I outline Shepherd's version of IR, which, though denying direct sensory access to external objects, gives evidence of what that world is like in significant respects. I include Shepherd as an exponent (...) of IR since she accepts a mind-independent world, in principle non-observable, but models mind-dependent content in meaningful ways. I then critically consider Shepherd's claim that Berkeley thinks sense organs are external to the mind. I note Shepherd, like Berkeley, believes an early modern form of IR I call ‘Humean IR’ is incoherent. Finally, I discuss why Shepardian IR, though consistent, might rule out certain explanations of natural phenomena. (shrink)

Abstract: Writing almost a century after Berkeley, Mary Shepherd engages his writing on numerous issues. With respect to one central concern, what we directly experience through our senses, Shepherd is an indirect realist; i.e. that we are not directly aware of objects in the external world but only on their mind-dependent effects. However, while agreeing with Berkeley that sensible objects are mind-dependent, she claims we have reason-based insights into certain non-sensible properties of a mind-independent world. In the main I consider (...) their positions on indirect realism (IR). Both Berkeley and Shepherd, I argue, recognize the incoherence of one form of IR. Shepherd adopts a version of IR that avoids that problem, but faces the traditional epistemic veil of perception question of what can be known of the external world, given direct acquaintance only with its sensible effects. (shrink)

It is notable that Deborah Boyle’s guide to Mary Shepherd’s work appears as part of the Oxford Guides to Philosophy—a series that aims to present concise and accessible introductions to “the most important primary texts in the history of philosophy” (ii). Even a decade ago, close to no philosophers or historians of philosophy would have recognized Shepherd’s name.[1] Over the past several years, however, the situation has changed drastically. Prominent experts studying early modern and modern thinkers now see Shepherd as (...) vital to our histories of ideas. Many others now regularly teach her works in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. And the secondary literature is expanding rapidly. (shrink)

Mary Shepherd’s An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, first published in 1824, was a pioneering work in metaphysics and epistemology. Together with her 1827 Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, they make her one of the most important philosophers of her era. Although widely neglected by the history of philosophy in the decades after her death, her works have recently begun to attract the attention and sustained study they deserve. In the course of her writings, (...) Shepherd offers trenchant and detailed rebuttals of the arguments and conclusions of many prominent predecessors—including George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Lawrence, and especially David Hume—but she is no merely negative thinker. On the contrary, her critiques are always in the service of her own distinctive and highly original doctrines, which are of striking contemporary interest. Appearing two hundred years after its original publication, this is the first full modern edition of her first book, which presents and defends the theory of causation and scientific knowledge that constitutes the cornerstone of her entire philosophy. The edition includes an extensive introduction and scholarly notes throughout that provide historical and philosophical context while explaining the central ideas of the work. It also includes Shepherd’s two essays published in 1828 and all of her known letters—all but one of them published here for the first time—which shed significant additional light on her philosophical ideas. (shrink)

The editor’s introduction outlines and explains Mary Shepherd’s life and writings, focusing especially on those collected in this volume: _An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect_, the two essays published in 1828, and her letters. It details the events that led her to write (including the so-called Leslie Affair of 1805 in Edinburgh and her correspondence with John Fearn). It also provides essential background information about the three figures whose philosophical views the _Essay_ chiefly criticizes: David Hume, Thomas (...) Brown, and William Lawrence. It features substantive chapter-by-chapter analyses of the aims, arguments, and conclusions of that work. Finally, it provides information about Shepherd’s correspondents: Charles Babbage, William Whewell, and Robert Blakey. (shrink)

The sixth chapter of _ERCE_ begins by distinguishing and criticizing six different and mutually incompatible definitions of ‘life’ that Shepherd identifies in William Lawrence’s _Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man_. It then provides Shepherd’s own positive view of life, as a quality originating ultimately from God and mixing with matter to produce a living thing. In this respect, it is analogous to a spark that must be added to combustible materials in order to produce an ongoing (...) fire. Next, it offers eight propositions in summary of the account of causation provided in previous chapters of _An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect_, and it further diagnoses Lawrence’s alleged errors about that relation. It concludes by describing the most fundamental principles of _ERCE_ as the “true foundations of scientific research, practical knowledge, and belief in a creating and presiding Deity.”. (shrink)

The second chapter of _ERCE_ aims to show, against Hume, that “_Reason_, not _fancy_ [i.e., the imagination] and ‘custom’ leads us to the knowledge” of the central principle (now often called Shepherd’s “Causal Principle”) that “everything which begins to exist must have a Cause.” The chapter provides an argument in defense of that principle and then a further argument from it to the crucial principle (now often called Shepherd’s “Causal Likeness Principle”) that “_similar causes_ must necessarily produce _similar effects._” It (...) goes on to describes the source of the idea of necessary connection and outlines her own positive theory of relation of cause and effect. Next, it provides Shepherd’s own positive definitions of ‘cause’, ‘necessary connexion’, and ‘power’, and raises objections to Hume’s definitions of cause’. Finally, it seeks to establish her “Uniformity Principle”: “Nature cannot be supposed to alter her Course without a contradiction in terms.”. (shrink)

The fifth chapter of _ERCE_ criticizes William Lawrence’s materialism in his _Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man_, which he supports by appeal to the Humean account of causation found in the work of Thomas Brown. It focuses especially of Lawrence’s treatment of the “necessary connexion” between “irritability” and “living muscular fibres” and between “sensibility” and “living nervous fibres.” The chapter argues that Lawrence fails to recognize the need for separate qualities of _life_ and _mind_ because he (...) fails to distinguish between two possible relations that can be meant by the term ‘necessary connexion’, one of them merely verbal and the other metaphysical and causal. Shepherd traces Lawrence’s alleged errors to his acceptance of the central features of Thomas Brown’s treatment of causation. Foremost among these is Brown’s definition of ‘cause’ as a relation essentially involving temporal antecedence and consequence between distinct objects. (shrink)

Mary Shepherd concludes An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect – described in its subtitle as ‘Controverting the Doctrine of Mr. Hume’ – by listing several principles about causation as ‘the only true foundation of scientific research, of practical knowledge, and of belief in a creating and presiding Deity’. As it happens, Hume accepts each of these principles, at least as formulated. He also agrees that they are foundational – at least for scientific research and practical knowledge – (...) and he allows that they can be supported by reasoning. Shepherd and Hume disagree, however, about the particular reasoning by which they can be supported; the order in which they can be supported; the role played by custom or habit in that support; and the kind of necessity they express. The four parts of the present essay (1) outline and examine Shepherd's arguments for each of the three distinct foundational principles; (2) outline and examine Hume's contrasting arguments for those principles; (3) compare their differing approaches to providing epistemological foundations by means of these principles while highlighting some of the objections that might be made to each approach; and (4) offer brief concluding remarks about adjudicating the relative merits of the two approaches. (shrink)

The fourth chapter of _ERCE_ discusses Thomas Brown’s _Observations on the Nature and Tendency of the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, concerning the Relation of Cause and Effect_. First, it disputes Brown’s Humean definition of ‘cause’ as requiring temporal succession. Second, it discusses and assesses each of the five Humean propositions about the epistemology of the relation of cause and effect that provide a central focus of Brown’s book. Third, it argues, against Brown, that Hume’s account of the origin of the (...) idea of “power” in the operation of custom rather than reason cannot avoid atheistic implications. Furthermore, it concludes, Brown’s own conception of the idea of “power,” as the consequence of an unavoidable instinctive belief whose truth cannot be established by reason, is fundamentally no better than Hume’s in this respect. (shrink)

Following a preface explaining Shepherd’s reasons for writing, the introductory chapter of _ERCE_ aims to set out Hume’s position concerning “the necessary connexion of cause and effect” largely in his own words. It begins with his views as presented in his _A Treatise of Human Nature_ and then cites _An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding_ to show that he holds the same doctrines in that work. Hume’s “material proposition” is that “Nature may be conceived to alter her course, without a contradiction.” (...) The chapter seeks to show that both works depend on the thesis, stated only in the _Treatise_, that “it is neither intuitively nor demonstrably certain [that] whatever begins to exist must have a cause of existence.” It is important to refute this thesis, she concludes, because it leads to the dangerous atheistic consequence that there is no “necessity of a great first Cause, and ‘productive principle’ of all things.”. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an impressive and welcome groundswell of interest in the philosophy of Mary Shepherd. Although Antonia LoLordo's recent forty-eight-page Mary Shepherd in the Cambridge Elements series (Cambridge University Press, 2022) provides a useful overview, until now there has been no full-length book devoted entirely to Shepherd's philosophy. Deborah Boyle's Mary Shepherd: A Guide will assuredly not be the last such book, but it is an excellent and timely first. As its title indicates, Boyle's book is intended as (...) a guide, and it succeeds admirably in its task. It can be studied with great profit by scholars already familiar with Shepherd's writings, but its careful organization and clarity of... Read More. (shrink)

Shepherd argues that we can know that there exists a universe external to the mind because that universe is the only possible cause of our sensations. As a part of that argument, Shepherd eliminates the possibility that sensations might be caused by other sensations on the grounds that sensations are merely momentary existences and so not capable of standing in causal relations with each other. And yet she claims that sensations do stand in causal relations to other objects, both as (...) the effects of the combination of the external world, our organs of sense, and our minds, and as the partial causes of other sensations. These claims together generate a puzzle. If sensations are too fleeting to stand in causal relations with each other, how are they nonetheless capable of standing in causal relations to other objects? I suggest that because sensations exist only for a moment, to stand in synchronous causal relations with other sensations would require that the two sensations exist at precisely the same moment. But since cause and effect are identical during the moment in which they are combined, any two sensations that exist for only the moment of their combination are identical. Nothing can be its own cause, so sensations cannot be the sole cause of other sensations. Sensations can be the partial cause or effect of other objects, though, so long as those objects endure for more than a single moment. For example, external objects, organs of sense, and the mind all exist both before and after the moments in which they combine to form a sensation. So while their combination is identical to that sensation in that moment, all of these other objects exist outside of that moment and that combination as well. (shrink)

The full title of Mary Shepherd’s 1824 book, An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, Controverting the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, concerning the Nature of that Relation, with Observations upon t...

In this article, I argue in three steps that Mary Somerville changed her views on induction because of Mary Shepherd, with whom Somerville corresponded. First, I demonstrate how Somerville reworks the “induction passage” between the first and third editions of Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834–36). Second, I introduce the fundamentals of Shepherd’s understanding of causation and the “causal likeness principle” (CLP)—that is, like causes must have like effects. In the fourth section, I argue that two of Somerville’s changes are (...) the result of Shepherd’s criticism. First, Somerville ceases to characterize the CLP as an intuitive belief—consistent with Shepherd’s commitment to the demonstrability of the CLP. Second, Somerville stops to write in a way that suggests she is equating the CLP with induction, tout court. Finally, I emphasize the exchange’s significance, which contains a still rare example in the history of philosophy of science of two women thinkers engaged in a conversation about their own views. Furthermore, their exchange gives further credence to the notion that Somerville should be taken seriously as a (natural) philosopher. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I argue that Mary Shepherd has a dispositional understanding of God, matter, and finite minds. That is, she understands all of them as dispositions or powers (two terms I will use interchangeably). Second, I aim to shed light on the emanationist picture suggested by Shepherd’s remarks in her second book Essays on the Perception of an External Universe (EPEU). For instance, Shepherd calls ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate nature’ a divine ‘emanation’ (EPEU 190) and (...) describes finite beings as ‘outgoings’ that come ‘forth’ from God (EPEU 189, 190, 219). Because of this emanationist language, in conjunction with Shepherd’s dispositional understanding of God, matter, and mind, it is helpful to use Jennifer McKitrick’s (2003) distinction between bare and based disposition. For Shepherd’s remarks suggest that the powers that are matter and finite minds are akin to based dispositions because they are caused by and subsist in virtue of God. But since God – ‘THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE’ (ERCE 119) ‘who began not to be’ (EPEU 219) is also a power, the Deity functions similarly to a bare or ungrounded disposition, while matter and finite minds are similar to a ‘based dispositions’ (McKitrick 2003). (shrink)

The notion of causation that Mary Shepherd develops in her 1824 An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (ERCE) has a number of surprising features that have only recently begun to be studied by scholars. This relation is synchronic, rather than diachronic (ERCE pp. 49–50); it always involves a ‘mixture’ of pre-existing objects (ERCE pp. 46–7); and the effect must be ‘a new nature, capable of exhibiting qualities varying from those of either of the objects unconjoined’ (ERCE p. (...) 63). In this essay, I argue for an emergentist interpretation of Shepherd’s causal theory. On the reading I defend, all effects have qualities that metaphysically emerge from the complex interactions of their constituents. This reading explains the structure of Shepherd’s causal relation and clarifies the central aims of her philosophical project. In response to the problems raised by the science of her time, Shepherd developed a theory of emergence and published it during the period when the concept was first being shaped and adopted by prominent philosophers. Her work thus merits a place in the history of emergentist ideas. (shrink)

In her last known piece of work Lady Mary Shepherd’s Metaphysics (1832), Mary Shepherd writes that “mind, may inhere in definite portions of matter […] or of infinite space” (LMSM 699). Shepherd thus suggests that a mind – a “capacity for sensation in general” (e.g., EPEU 16) – may have a spatial location. This is prima facie surprising given that she is committed to the view that the mind is unextended. In this paper, we argue that Shepherd can consistently honor (...) both of these commitments. We argue, first, that even though finite minds, due to their unextendedness cannot, to use Shepherd’s term, ‘occupy’ space as material bodies do, such minds can nonetheless be said to have a spatial location in virtue of what we call their presence, or what Shepherd calls ‘inherence’, in a material body. Second, we argue that, in a similar way, the divine mind is present throughout the whole of space and is thus omnipresent. We then argue that, in contrast to finite minds, the divine mind does not require a body to be present in space. Rather, we contend, God’s omnipresence might be best understood in a ‘holenmerist’ sense, where the divine mind is wholly present in every part of creation. (shrink)

Volume 33, Issue 1, January 2025, Page 189-194.

Mary Shepherd’s Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824) and Essays on the Perception of an External World (1827) were, until quite recently, utterly neglected in the history of philosoph...

Shepherd’s philosophy centers on her rejection of Hume’s arguments against the demonstrability of causal principles. According to Shepherd, the causal maxim—everything that begins to exist must have a cause—is demonstratively true. She begins her first major philosophical work with a proof of this maxim. While scholars have complained that the proof seems blatantly circular, a closer look at Shepherd’s texts and their Lockean background dispels this worry. Shepherd’s premises are motivated not by the causal maxim or her theory of causation, (...) but by a metaphysics that distinguishes between substances and affections and by an empirical understanding of a ‘beginning of existence.’. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a novel interpretation of Shepherd's notion of selfhood. In distinction to Deborah Boyle's interpretation, I contend that Shepherd differentiates between the mind and the self. The latter, for Shepherd, is an effect arising from causal interactions between mind and body—specifically those interactions that give rise to our present stream of consciousness, our memories, and that can unite these two. Thus, the body plays a constitutive role in the formation of the self. The upshot of (...) this interpretation is that it can dissolve the problem of individuating mind that Boyle identifies. Briefly, the problem consists in Shepherd seemingly individuating minds in terms of their associated bodies and bodies in terms of the minds they are united with. My interpretation, however, allows to see that Shepherd neither wants nor needs to individuate the mind in isolation of the body and to read the passages, in which the problem seems to arise, as being about what makes living beings individual—with mind and body both playing a crucial role in this context. (shrink)

This paper considers the question whether the Scottish philosopher Mary Shepherd (1777–1847) endorses a form of nonconceptualism about mental states or their content. While the paper does not arrive at a definitive answer to the question, it paves the way to answering it in the future by demonstrating that there are prima facie promising ways to relate Shepherd to either of the previously mentioned forms of nonconceptualism – although I tentatively conclude that, ultimately, it will be more profitable to consider (...) her views in the context of content nonconceptualism. In arguing the way it does, this paper, then, also aims to bridge the often-lamented gap between the history of philosophy and our contemporary debates. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension in Shepherd’s accounts of space and time. Firstly, Shepherd explicitly claims that we know that the space and time of the unperceived world exist because they cause our phenomenal experience of them. Secondly, Shepherd emphasizes that empty space and time do not have the power to effect any change in the world. My proposal is that for Shepherd time has exactly one causal power: to provide for the continued existence of self-same or changing objects. Because (...) Shepherd takes causation to be a relation whereby two objects combine to form a third, their effect, whenever we perceive a continually existing object, since time is a proper part of such objects, our perception of time is caused by time itself. Likewise, space’s causal power is to provide for the possibility of the motion or rest of objects, and so when we perceive objects with space as a proper part, we come into causal contact with space. (shrink)

In the First Analogy, Kant argues that because we mark the passage of time on the objects of experience, in order to represent the unity of time, we must represent the world as consisting of a single substance that can never be created or destroyed. We must rule out gaps in time's passage, and incommensurable timelines. It is argued here that Mary Shepherd likewise holds that we mark the passage of time on the objects of experience, but that she meets (...) Kant's criteria for representing the unity of time with ontological holism rather than his required monism. (shrink)

For Shepherd, how many things exist? On the one hand, it looks like the answer is going to be many. It is a central tent of Shepherd's philosophical system that causation is a relation whereby two or more objects combine to create a third. Since there are many instances of this causal relation, there must be many objects in the world. On the other hand, there are several moments throughout her writing where Shepherd indicates that the distinction between causes and (...) effects is in some sense unreal, and that while the world appears to us to consist of many distinct objects interacting causally, really there is just one thing and its merely nominally distinct parts. I argue that Shepherd is an ontological pluralist, and the texts that appear to express a commitment to ontological monism are best understood as expressing ontological holism instead. (shrink)

Mary Shepherd's An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, first published in 1824, was a pioneering work in metaphysics and epistemology. Together with her 1827 Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, they make her one of the most important philosophers of her era. Although widely neglected by the history of philosophy in the decades after her death, her works have recently begun to attract the attention and sustained study they deserve. In the course of her writings, (...) Shepherd offers trenchant and detailed rebuttals of the arguments and conclusions of many prominent predecessors-including George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Lawrence, and especially David Hume-but she is no merely negative thinker. On the contrary, her critiques are always in the service of her own distinctive and highly original doctrines, which are of striking contemporary interest. Appearing two hundred years after its original publication, this is the first full modern edition of her first book, which presents and defends the theory of causation and scientific knowledge that constitutes the cornerstone of her entire philosophy. The edition includes an extensive introduction and scholarly notes throughout that provide historical and philosophical context while explaining the central ideas of the work. It also includes Shepherd's two essays published in 1828 and all of her known letters-all but one of them published here for the first time-which shed significant additional light on her philosophical ideas. (shrink)

This chapter provides a biographical sketch of Mary Shepherd, as well as an overview of the contents of her two books. In _An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect_ (1824), Shepherd argues that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary truths. In _Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation_ (1827), Shepherd extends the earlier project, arguing that through our knowledge of causation, we can also know (...) through reason that an external world of continually existing objects must exist independently of us. This chapter also provides a survey of the philosophical landscape in which Shepherd was working, including the Scottish common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Brown; Berkeleyan idealism; the French “ideologues”; and British moral theorists. The chapter ends with a brief account of the reception of Shepherd’s work. (shrink)