- Lived:
- 1710–1796 · Strachan, Aberdeen, and Glasgow, Scotland
- Tradition:
- Scottish Enlightenment; founder of the Common Sense school
- The Big Idea:
- If a philosophical theory ends by proving there are no tables, no minds, and no world, the sane response is not to believe the proof — it's to go back and find the false step. Our basic faculties deserve trust until proven guilty.
- In their words:
- "Philosophy has no other root but the principles of common sense; it grows out of them, and draws its nourishment from them: severed from this root, its honours wither, its sap is dried up, it dies and rots."
- If you remember one thing:
- He read the most devastating skeptical book ever written, agreed the logic was flawless — and concluded that a flawless argument for an absurd conclusion is just a long proof that one of your premises is wrong.