Editing Thomas Reid (section)

===Overview===
Reid believed that [[common sense]] (in a special philosophical sense of ''[[common sense#Roman|sensus communis]]'') is, or at least should be, at the foundation of all philosophical inquiry.<ref>{{cite book|title=Thomas Reid|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reid/|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|year=2016}}</ref> He disagreed with Hume, who asserted that we can never know what an external world consists of as our knowledge is limited to the ideas in the mind, and [[George Berkeley]], who asserted that the external world is merely ideas in the mind. By contrast, Reid claimed that the foundations upon which our ''sensus communis'' are built justify our belief that there is an external world.

In his day and for some years into the 19th century, he was regarded as more important than Hume.<ref>See Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen,
    ''Christian Philosophy'', p. 138 (Baker Academic, 2013).</ref> He advocated [[direct realism]], or [[Naïve realism|common sense realism]], and argued strongly against the [[Idealism|Theory of Ideas]] advocated by [[John Locke]], [[René Descartes]], and (in varying forms) nearly all [[17th-century philosophy|Early Modern philosophers]] who came after them.  He had a great admiration for Hume and had a mutual friend send Hume an early manuscript of Reid's ''Inquiry.''    Hume responded that the work "is wrote in a lively entertaining manner," although he found "there seems to be some Defect in Method", and he criticized Reid's doctrine for implying the presence of innate ideas. (pp.&nbsp;256–257)<ref name="edBrookes">Thomas Reid. ''An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense.'' Ed. Derek R Brookes. Edinburgh: [[Edinburgh University Press]], 1997. pp. 256–257</ref>