Shepherd vol 2: Part 2

Part 2

In Part 2, I continue many of my themes in Part 1 chapter 3, and expand on my interpretation of Shepherd as a scientific, soft materialist philosopher who, in the style of Bacon and Priestley, avoids the charge of atheism by making her views compatible with a Mild Theism. I also continue to argue that Shepherd's philosophy bears a similarity to the mild theist and soft materialist philosopher, Joseph Priestley and others. So Joseph Priestley functions as a bridge between Parts 1 and 2 of this volume and continues the thread of my overarching argument. 

In the opening of chapter 3 of my Volume 2: Research Thoughts on…. Lady Mary Shepherd, I argue that Boyle¹ has overlooked Shepherd's most important reference to the 18th century philosopher, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804). Why is this particularly relevant or of interest? Because it is the footnote in which Shepherd says her views, unknowingly, naturally run along the same lines as Priestley. The importance of this, is that:

1) This oversight that Shepherd can identify with a Theist materialist like Priestley’s thoughts, has allowed Boyle to claim² it is not plausible that Shepherd is the Materialist author of the 1819 Treatise. So Priestley and the plethora and variety of Early Modern stances on God and Materialism are highly relevant to Shepherd's authorship. 

2) Priestley was a theist materialist who was very sympathetic and supportive of the first British person to explicitly argue for atheism and declare himself to be an atheist in writing and for it to be published. So Priestley shows that a philosopher during Shepherd's lifetime could be a materialist, without being a hard materialist or an atheist. Therefore, Priestley functions as an important historical example when considering what stances were available to Shepherd during her era. 

Thus, in Part 2, I would like to explore the possibility of Shepherd being a type of materialist, without stereotypically also being a hard materialist or avowed hard atheist. I shall examine passages of her treatises for signs of textual evidence to support my hypothesis that Shepherd was a theist, soft materialist.

Nevertheless, although this is my stronger claim, I qualify this overarching argument by also making the subsidiary claim that there is an outside possibility that Shepherd may have been a harder materialist and or less theist (perhaps agnostic) than she presents herself in her writings. Why? Because there were blasphemy laws to contend with and early modern authors were acutely aware of the possible consequences of falling foul of them. We gain an insight into the fears of male atheists attempting to publish their non-religious views when we look at Priestley's correspondence with his atheist friend who asked him for protection if action were taken against him and his book, for being the first British publication of the atheistic perspective. Interestingly, this book was not as controversial as the atheist author expected, possibly partly due the fact that he used a loophole in the regulations of blasphemy: it was deemed more blasphemous to reject Jesus and the Trinity than to generally be a non-believer about God. So the first published atheist avoided this blaspheming of Jesus and the Trinity.

I think it is also important to note what Shepherd does not write in her treatises, as well as what she does write and publish. Hence, I argue, we may need to take account of the fact that Shepherd does not mention Jesus or the Trinity once in either of her published treatises that she puts her name to. 

I wish to pose the research question: Why would Shepherd feel the need to avoid blasphemy laws and regulations if she was devoutly Christian? The answer may well be that she was either a type of agnostic or atheist, or she was only very mildly Christian, in which case her views were less than pious concerning Jesus and the Trinity so it was best to omit them in her publications, on pain of blasphemy. 

Since Shepherd was an excellent logician, she ensures her arguments, materialistic and otherwise, are logically consistent and cohere with each other as well as her professed acceptance of the existence of God. 

Furthermore, Priestley's favourite book was written by David Hartley (1705-1757), a British Philosopher who also became a medical doctor. Indeed, not only did Hartley deeply influence Priestley, but his book 'Observations'³ became a fundamental text taught at dissenting Academies, and Hartley's theories went on to influence James Mill and his son JS Mill, inspiring James to write his philosophy of mind and psychology book: 'Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind'.⁴

Although no longer part of the philosophical canon, Hartley was a very pivotal and influential philosopher in the 18th century and his philosophical theories were heavily based on scientific and psychological thought. He is perhaps best known as the founder of the Associationist school of psychology, which expounds the doctrine of mental association. Although Hartley was not an atheist, he was a Christian non-conformist who is thought to have not believed in the trinity. 

So what is the relevance of Hartley to Mary Shepherd? 

In this volume 2, I maintain that Shepherd needs to be interpreted against the background of 18th and 19th century dissenters who balanced materialism with non-conformist Christian views. Otherwise one falls into the trap of assuming Shepherd cannot possibly be materialistic in any way, simply because we wish to stereotype all materialists as hard atheists and she does not seem to fit this description. Thus, we are inclined to forget that there were theist, soft materialists in her day, so Shepherd wouldn't stand alone in taking this stance. I argue that this is of scholarly relevance to both the 1819 treatise authorship debate as well as interpretations of her philosophy as a whole. 

I also argue that Hartley constitutes an important historical background for assessing to what extent Shepherd may have been a materialist in her era and what non-atheistic approaches to mind, body, soul and materialism were accessible to her as well as being persuasive for philosophers in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

Moreover, Hartley is not just relevant to my overarching argument because Priestley refers to him. Hartley is also directly relevant to my stated aim of providing historical background to Shepherd, as well as being directly relevant to her philosophy because he is mentioned by Shepherd herself, albeit merely in passing alongside other names, in her 1824 treatise: 'An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect'⁵. 

However, in the History of Philosophy, this does tell us a couple of vital things:

1) Shepherd was aware of him. This is important to know as a researcher when drawing parallels between thinkers, whether it is to draw similarities or dissimilarities as you compare and contrast their ideas. Unlike many other researchers in philosophy, I not only use methodological principles from Logic and Philosophy, I also sometimes draw on methodology from Research Methods borrowed from the fields of Sociology and Psychology. One principle I use as a Researcher is termed the Correlation Coefficient, which although it is primarily used in maths and statistics, plays an important scholarly and practical methodological role in Sociology and Psychology case studies and analyses. 

For present philosophical purposes, I shall draw on it as a way of assessing whether the link between two things is just an accidental similarity of no meaning or relevance, or whether it is showing a strong, meaningful link, or correlation between the two things we are assessing. In the Social Sciences, the Correlation Coefficient will be presented as a scatter graph that shows how weak or strong the correlation is between two variables or datasets. However I think we can still make use of the underlying logical reasoning behind this mathematical principle by cross-applying it to Philosophical Methodology, albeit in a more generalised way. 

For instance, when suggesting an interpretation of a past philosopher, we can ask: what variables are being matched up with the philosopher? Is there a strong or weak correlation between the philosopher and that variable or variables; or dataset? 

To provide an example, in her book: ‘Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion and Politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise’⁶, the philosopher Susan James puts forward her suggestion that we can understand Spinoza and his philosophy through seeing it within the context of the Dutch debates going on around him during his lifetime. As I argue elsewhere, this gives rise to her Contextual-Argument-Analysis interpretation. So I can assess the strength of this argument and interpretation through the key idea behind the Correlation Coefficient: is there a strong correlation between Spinoza's philosophy and the Dutch debates around him? I argue that there is obviously an extremely strong and indubitable correlation between the two, so she's providing a very strong interpretation of Spinoza. 

2) Shepherd was obviously familiar with Hartley's ideas and outlook, because in a passage from Shepherd's treatise 'An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect'⁷, we can see she was familiar enough with Hartley's work to argue against Lawrence's claim that all philosophers only talk of an immaterial being behind thought but not sensation. So in her contra, she cites Locke, Bishop Butler, David Hartley, and Bishop Berkeley as providing evidence to the contrary.

So, given my two claims, Hartley, as well as other thinkers Shepherd mentions in her treatises, are a fruitful point of discussion, especially those who were well known in the Early Modern era and Shepherd was familiar with and expects her readers to understand well, yet they are no longer part of the philosophical canon. This gap of familiarity between 19th century readers and contemporary readers of Shepherd's works, I suggest, leaves her treatises open to greater misinterpretations than some other works from her era. 

¹Boyle, Deborah. ‘A Mistaken Attribution to Lady Mary Shepherd’. Journal of Modern Philosophy 2, no. 0 (1 June 2020). doi:10.25894/jmp.2077.

²ibid

³Hartley, David. Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations, 2 vols., Bath and London: Samuel Richardson. 1749 

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/z5rgaevn/items?canvas=13

⁴Mill, James. Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, with Notes Illustrative and Critical by Alexander Bain, Andrew Findlater, and George Grote ; Edited with Additional Notes by John Stuart Mill. London, UK : Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1878. 

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hkhhxyzr.

⁵Shepherd, Mary. An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect : Controverting the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, Concerning the Nature of That Relation, with Observations upon the Opinions of Dr. Brown and Mr. Lawrence Connected with the Same Subject. London, United Kingdom: Printed for T. Hookham, 1824. http://archive.org/details/essayuponrelatio00shepiala.

⁶James, Susan. Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics The Theologico-Political Treatise. Paperback. 2012. Reprint, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014.

⁷Shepherd, Mary. An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect 1824

See also the transcript version of my arguments here in the appendix section of this book.