Common sense
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Common sense is sound, practical judgement concerning everyday matters, or a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge in a manner that is shared by (i.e., "common to") nearly all people.[1]
The everyday understanding of common sense is ultimately derived from historical philosophical discussions. Relevant terms from other languages used in such discussions include Latin sensus communis, Greek αἴσθησις κοινὴ (aísthēsis koinḕ), and French bon sens, but these are not straightforward translations in all contexts. Similarly in English, there are different shades of meaning, implying more or less education and wisdom. Notable, "good sense" is sometimes seen as equivalent to "common sense", and sometimes not.[2]
"Common sense" has at least two specific philosophical meanings. One is as a capability of the animal soul (ψῡχή, psūkhḗ), proposed by Aristotle to explain how the different senses join and enable discrimination of particular objects by people and other animals. This common sense is distinct from the several sensory perceptions and from human rational thought, but it cooperates with both. A second philosophical use of the term is Roman-influenced and is used for the natural human sensitivity for other humans and the community.[3]
Just like the everyday meaning, both of the philosophical meanings refer to a type of basic awareness and ability to judge that most people are expected to share naturally, even if they cannot explain why. All these meanings of "common sense", including the everyday ones, are interconnected in a complex history and have evolved during important political and philosophical debates in modern
In philosophical and scientific contexts, since the
Aristotelian
The origin of the term is in the works of Aristotle. The best-known case is
In this passage, Aristotle explained that concerning these koiná (such as movement) people have a sense — a "common sense" or sense of the common things (aísthēsis koinḕ) — and there is no specific (idéā) sense perception for movement and other koiná, because then we would not perceive the koiná at all, except by accident (κᾰτᾰ́ σῠμβεβηκός, katá sumbebēkós). As examples of perceiving by accident Aristotle mentions using the specific sense perception vision on its own to try to see that something is sweet, or to try to recognize a friend only by their distinctive color. Lee (2011, p. 31) explains that "when I see Socrates, it is not insofar as he is Socrates that he is visible to my eye, but rather because he is coloured". So the normal five individual senses do sense the common perceptibles according to Aristotle (and Plato), but it is not something they necessarily interpret correctly on their own. Aristotle proposes that the reason for having several senses is in fact that it increases the chances that we can distinguish and recognize things correctly, and not just occasionally or by accident.[12] Each sense is used to identify distinctions, such as sight identifying the difference between black and white, but, says Aristotle, all animals with perception must have "some one thing" that can distinguish black from sweet.[13] The common sense is where this comparison happens, and this must occur by comparing impressions (or symbols or markers; σημεῖον, sēmeîon, 'sign, mark') of what the specialist senses have perceived.[14] The common sense is therefore also where a type of consciousness originates, "for it makes us aware of having sensations at all". And it receives physical picture imprints from the imaginative faculty, which are then memories that can be recollected.[15]
The discussion was apparently intended to improve upon the account of Aristotle's friend and teacher Plato in his Socratic dialogue, the Theaetetus.[16] But Plato's dialogue presented an argument that recognising koiná is an active thinking process in the rational part of the human soul, making the senses instruments of the thinking part of man. Plato's Socrates says this kind of thinking is not a kind of sense at all. Aristotle, trying to give a more general account of the souls of all animals, not just humans, moved the act of perception out of the rational thinking soul into this sensus communis, which is something like a sense, and something like thinking, but not rational.[17]
The passage is difficult to interpret and there is little consensus about the details.[18] Gregorić (2007, pp. 204–205) has argued that this may be because Aristotle did not use the term as a standardized technical term at all. For example, in some passages in his works, Aristotle seems to use the term to refer to the individual sense perceptions simply being common to all people, or common to various types of animals. There is also difficulty with trying to determine whether the common sense is truly separable from the individual sense perceptions and from imagination, in anything other than a conceptual way as a capability. Aristotle never fully spells out the relationship between the common sense and the imaginative faculty (φᾰντᾰσῐ́ᾱ, phantasíā), although the two clearly work together in animals, and not only humans, for example in order to enable a perception of time. They may even be the same.[15][17] Despite hints by Aristotle himself that they were united, early commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Al-Farabi felt they were distinct, but later, Avicenna emphasized the link, influencing future authors including Christian philosophers.[19][20] Gregorić (2007, p. 205) argues that Aristotle used the term "common sense" both to discuss the individual senses when these act as a unity, which Gregorić calls "the perceptual capacity of the soul", or the higher level "sensory capacity of the soul" that represents the senses and the imagination working as a unity. According to Gregorić, there appears to have been a standardization of the term koinḕ aísthēsis as a term for the perceptual capacity (not the higher level sensory capacity), which occurred by the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias at the latest.[21]
Compared to Plato, Aristotle's understanding of the soul (psūkhḗ) has an extra level of complexity in the form of the noûs or "intellect"—which is something only humans have and enables humans to perceive things differently from other animals. It works with images coming from the common sense and imagination, using reasoning (
Aristotle also occasionally called the koinḕ aísthēsis (or one version of it) the prôton aisthētikón (πρῶτον αἰσθητῐκόν, lit. ''first of the senses''). (According to Gregorić, this is specifically in contexts where it refers to the higher order common sense that includes imagination.) Later philosophers developing this line of thought, such as
Roman
"Sensus communis" is the Latin translation of the Greek koinḕ aísthēsis, which came to be recovered by Medieval
- Koinḗ énnoia is a term from Stoic philosophy, a Greek philosophy, influenced by Aristotle, and influential in Rome. This refers to shared notions, or common conceptions, that are either in-born or imprinted by the senses on to the soul. Unfortunately few true Stoic texts survive, and our understanding of their technical terminology is limited.[30]
- Koinós noûs is a term found in Vulgate Bible), but he only found one clear case of a Latin text showing this apparent meaning, a text by Phaedrus the fable writer.
- Koinonoēmosúnē is found only in the work of the emperor Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury felt it represented the Stoic Greek original, which gave the special Roman meaning of sensus communis, especially when used to refer to someone's public spirit. He explained the change of meaning as being due to the specific way that Stoics understood perception and intellect, saying that one should "consider withal how small the distinction was in that Philosophy, between the ὑπόληψις [conjecture], and the vulgar αἴσθησις [perception]; how generally Passion was by those Philosophers brought under the Head of Opinion".[31]
Another link between Latin communis sensus and Aristotle's Greek was in
In his Rhetoric for example Aristotle mentions "koinōn [...] tàs písteis" or "common beliefs", saying that "our proofs and arguments must rest on generally accepted principles, [...] when speaking of converse with the multitude".[33] In a similar passage in his own work on rhetoric, De Oratore, Cicero wrote that "in oratory the very cardinal sin is to depart from the language of everyday life and the usage approved by the sense of the community." The sense of the community is in this case one translation of "communis sensus" in the Latin of Cicero.[34][35]
Whether the Latin writers such as
As with other meanings of common sense, for the Romans of the classical era "it designates a sensibility shared by all, from which one may deduce a number of fundamental judgments, that need not, or cannot, be questioned by rational reflection".[36] But even though Cicero did at least once use the term in a manuscript on Plato's Timaeus (concerning a primordial "sense, one and common for all [...] connected with nature"), he and other Roman authors did not normally use it as a technical term limited to discussion about sense perception, as Aristotle apparently had in De Anima, and as the Scholastics later would in the Middle Ages.[37] Instead of referring to all animal judgment, it was used to describe pre-rational, widely shared human beliefs, and therefore it was a near equivalent to the concept of humanitas. This was a term that could be used by Romans to imply not only human nature, but also humane conduct, good breeding, refined manners, and so on.[38] Apart from Cicero, Quintilian, Lucretius, Seneca, Horace and some of the most influential Roman authors influenced by Aristotle's rhetoric and philosophy used the Latin term "sensus communis" in a range of such ways.[39] As C. S. Lewis wrote:
Quintilian says it is better to send a boy to school than to have a private tutor for him at home; for if he is kept away from the herd (congressus) how will he ever learn that sensus which we call communis? (I, ii, 20). On the lowest level it means tact. In Horace the man who talks to you when you obviously don't want to talk lacks communis sensus.[40]
Compared to Aristotle and his strictest medieval followers, these Roman authors were not so strict about the boundary between animal-like common sense and specially human reasoning. As discussed above, Aristotle had attempted to make a clear distinction between, on the one hand, imagination and the sense perception which both use the sensible koiná, and which animals also have; and, on the other hand, noûs (intellect) and reason, which perceives another type of koiná, the intelligible forms, which (according to Aristotle) only humans have. In other words, these Romans allowed that people could have animal-like shared understandings of reality, not just in terms of memories of sense perceptions, but in terms of the way they would tend to explain things, and in the language they use.[41]
Cartesian
One of the last notable philosophers to accept something like the Aristotelian "common sense" was
René Descartes is generally credited with making obsolete the notion that there was an actual faculty within the human brain that functioned as a sensus communis. The French philosopher did not fully reject the idea of the inner senses, which he appropriated from the Scholastics. But he distanced himself from the Aristotelian conception of a common sense faculty, abandoning it entirely by the time of his Passions of the Soul (1649).[45]
Contemporaries such as
According to Hobbes [...] man is no different from the other animals. [...] Hobbes' philosophy constituted a more profound rupture with Peripatetic thought. He accepted mental representations but [...] "All sense is fancy", as Hobbes famously put it, with the only exception of extension and motion.[47]
But Descartes used two different terms in his work, not only the Latin term "sensus communis", but also the French term bon sens, with which he opens his Discourse on Method. And this second concept survived better. This work was written in French, and does not directly discuss the Aristotelian technical theory of perception. Bon sens is the equivalent of modern English "common sense" or "good sense". As the Aristotelian meaning of the Latin term began to be forgotten after Descartes, his discussion of bon sens gave a new way of defining sensus communis in various European languages (including Latin, even though Descartes himself did not translate bon sens as sensus communis, but treated them as two separate things).[48]
Schaeffer (1990, p. 2) writes that "Descartes is the source of the most common meaning of common sense today: practical judgment". Gilson noted that Descartes actually gave bon sens two related meanings, first the basic and widely shared ability to judge true and false, which he also calls raison (lit. ''reason''); and second, wisdom, the perfected version of the first. The Latin term Descartes uses, bona mens (lit. ''good mind''), derives from the Stoic author Seneca who only used it in the second sense. Descartes was being original.[49]
The idea that now became influential, developed in both the Latin and French works of Descartes, though coming from different directions, is that common good sense (and indeed sense perception) is not reliable enough for the new Cartesian method of
Cartesian theory offered a justification for innovative social change achieved through the courts and administration, an ability to adapt the law to changing social conditions by making the basis for legislation "rational" rather than "traditional".[52]
So after Descartes, critical attention turned from Aristotle and his theory of perception, and more towards Descartes' own treatment of common good sense, concerning which several 18th-century authors found help in Roman literature.
The Enlightenment after Descartes
Epistemology: versus claims of certainty
During the
In contrast to the rationalists, the "
As mentioned above, in terms of the more general epistemological implications of common sense, modern philosophy came to use the term common sense like Descartes, abandoning Aristotle's theory. While Descartes had distanced himself from it, John Locke abandoned it more openly, while still maintaining the idea of "common sensibles" that are perceived. But then
But would these prejudiced reasoners reflect a moment, there are many obvious instances and arguments, sufficient to undeceive them, and make them enlarge their maxims and principles. Do they not see the vast variety of inclinations and pursuits among our species; where each man seems fully satisfied with his own course of life, and would esteem it the greatest unhappiness to be confined to that of his neighbour? Do they not feel in themselves, that what pleases at one time, displeases at another, by the change of inclination; and that it is not in their power, by their utmost efforts, to recall that taste or appetite, which formerly bestowed charms on what now appears indifferent or disagreeable? [...] Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion?[56]
Ethics: "humanist"
Once Thomas Hobbes and
The Earl's seminal 1709 essay Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour was a highly erudite and influential defense of the use of irony and humour in serious discussions, at least among men of "Good Breeding". He drew upon authors such as Seneca, Juvenal, Horace and Marcus Aurelius, for whom, he saw, common sense was not just a reference to widely held vulgar opinions, but something cultivated among educated people living in better communities. One aspect of this, later taken up by authors such as Kant, was good taste. Another very important aspect of common sense particularly interesting to later British political philosophers such as Francis Hutcheson was what came to be called moral sentiment, which is different from a tribal or factional sentiment, but a more general fellow feeling that is very important for larger communities:
A publick Spirit can come only from a social Feeling or Sense of Partnership with Human Kind. Now there are none so far from being Partners in this Sense, or sharers in this common Affection, as they who scarcely know an Equall, nor consider themselves as subject to any law of Fellowship or Community. And thus Morality and good Government go together.[58]
Hutcheson described it as, "a Publick Sense, viz. "our Determination to be pleased with the Happiness of others, and to be uneasy at their Misery."" which, he explains, "was sometimes called κοινονοημοσύνη[59] or Sensus Communis by some of the Antients".[60]
A reaction to Shaftesbury in defense of the Hobbesian approach of treating communities as driven by individual self-interest, was not long coming in Bernard Mandeville's controversial works. Indeed, this approach was never fully rejected, at least in economics. And so despite the criticism heaped upon Mandeville and Hobbes by Adam Smith, Hutcheson's student and successor in Glasgow university, Smith made self-interest a core assumption within nascent modern economics, specifically as part of the practical justification for allowing free markets.
By the late enlightenment period in the 18th century, the communal sense had become the "moral sense" or "
Another man comes and alters the phrase: leaving out moral, and putting in common, in the room of it. He then tells you, that his common sense teaches him what is right and wrong, as surely as the other's moral sense did: meaning by common sense, a sense of some kind or other, which he says, is possessed by all mankind: the sense of those, whose sense is not the same as the author's, being struck out of the account as not worth taking.[61]
This was at least to some extent opposed to the Hobbesian approach, still today normal in economic theory, of trying to understand all human behaviour as fundamentally selfish, and would also be a foil to the new ethics of Kant. This understanding of a moral sense or public spirit remains a subject for discussion, although the term "common sense" is no longer commonly used for the sentiment itself.[62] In several European languages, a separate term for this type of common sense is used. For example, French sens commun and German Gemeinsinn are used for this feeling of human solidarity, while bon sens (good sense) and gesunder Verstand (healthy understanding) are the terms for everyday "common sense".
According to Gadamer, at least in French and British philosophy a moral element in appeals to common sense (or bon sens), such as found in Reid, remains normal to this day.[63] But according to Gadamer, the civic quality implied in discussion of sensus communis in other European countries did not take root in the German philosophy of the 18th and 19th centuries, despite the fact it consciously imitated much in English and French philosophy. "Sensus communis was understood as a purely theoretical judgment, parallel to moral consciousness (conscience) and taste."[64] The concept of sensus communis "was emptied and intellectualized by the German enlightenment".[65] But German philosophy was becoming internationally important at this same time.
Gadamer notes one less-known exception—the
Giambattista Vico
Vico, who taught classical rhetoric in
In its mature version, Vico's conception of sensus communis is defined by him as "judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire people, and entire nation, or the entire human race". Vico proposed his own anti-Cartesian methodology for a new Baconian science, inspired, he said, by
Thomas Reid and the Scottish school
Contemporary with Hume, but critical of Hume's scepticism, a so-called
If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them — these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd.[72]
Thomas Reid was a successor to Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith as
Reid was criticised, partly for his critique of Hume, by Kant and
Despite the criticism, the influence of the Scottish school was notable for example upon American pragmatism, and modern Thomism. The influence has been particularly important concerning the epistemological importance of a sensus communis for any possibility of rational discussion between people.
Kant: In aesthetic taste
Immanuel Kant developed a new variant of the idea of sensus communis, noting how having a sensitivity for what opinions are widely shared and comprehensible gives a sort of standard for judgment, and objective discussion, at least in the field of aesthetics and taste:
The common Understanding of men [gemeine Menschenverstand], which, as the mere sound (not yet cultivated) Understanding, we regard as the least to be expected from any one claiming the name of man, has therefore the doubtful honour of being given the name of common sense [Namen des Gemeinsinnes] (sensus communis); and in such a way that by the name common (not merely in our language, where the word actually has a double signification, but in many others) we understand vulgar, that which is everywhere met with, the possession of which indicates absolutely no merit or superiority. But under the sensus communis we must include the Idea of a communal sense [eines gemeinschaftlichen Sinnes], i.e. of a faculty of judgement, which in its reflection takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of all other men in thought; in order as it were to compare its judgement with the collective Reason of humanity, and thus to escape the illusion arising from the private conditions that could be so easily taken for objective, which would injuriously affect the judgement.[73]
Kant saw this concept as answering a particular need in his system: "the question of why aesthetic judgments are valid: since aesthetic judgments are a perfectly normal function of the same faculties of cognition involved in ordinary cognition, they will have the same universal validity as such ordinary acts of cognition".[74]
But Kant's overall approach was very different from those of Hume or Vico. Like Descartes, he rejected appeals to uncertain sense perception and common sense (except in the very specific way he describes concerning aesthetics), or the prejudices of one's "
Kant used different words to refer to his aesthetic sensus communis, for which he used Latin or else German Gemeinsinn, and the more general English meaning which he associated with Reid and his followers, for which he used various terms such as gemeinen Menscheverstand, gesunden Verstand, or gemeinen Verstand.[75]
According to Gadamer, in contrast to the "wealth of meaning" brought from the Roman tradition into humanism, Kant "developed his moral philosophy in explicit opposition to the doctrine of 'moral feeling' that had been worked out in English philosophy". The moral imperative "cannot be based on feeling, not even if one does not mean an individual's feeling but common moral sensibility".[76] For Kant, the sensus communis only applied to taste, and the meaning of taste was also narrowed as it was no longer understood as any kind of knowledge.[77] Taste, for Kant, is universal only in that it results from "the free play of all our cognitive powers", and is communal only in that it "abstracts from all subjective, private conditions such as attractiveness and emotion".[78]
Kant himself did not see himself as a relativist, and was aiming to give knowledge a more solid basis, but as Richard J. Bernstein remarks, reviewing this same critique of Gadamer:
Once we begin to question whether there is a common faculty of taste (a sensus communis), we are easily led down the path to relativism. And this is what did happen after Kant—so much so that today it is extraordinarily difficult to retrieve any idea of taste or aesthetic judgment that is more than the expression of personal preferences. Ironically (given Kant's intentions), the same tendency has worked itself out with a vengeance with regards to all judgments of value, including moral judgments.[79]
Contemporary philosophy
Epistemology
Continuing the tradition of Reid and the enlightenment generally, the common sense of individuals trying to understand reality continues to be a serious subject in philosophy. In America, Reid influenced
Another example still influential today is from G. E. Moore, several of whose essays, such as the 1925 "A Defence of Common Sense", argued that individuals can make many types of statements about what they judge to be true, and that the individual and everyone else knows to be true. Michael Huemer has advocated an epistemic theory he calls phenomenal conservatism, which he claims to accord with common sense by way of internalist intuition.[80]
Ethics: what the community would think
In twentieth century philosophy the concept of the sensus communis as discussed by Vico and especially Kant became a major topic of philosophical discussion. The theme of this discussion questions how far the understanding of eloquent rhetorical discussion (in the case of Vico), or communally sensitive aesthetic tastes (in the case of Kant) can give a standard or model for political, ethical and legal discussion in a world where forms of
In a parallel development, Antonio Gramsci, Benedetto Croce, and later Hans-Georg Gadamer took inspiration from Vico's understanding of common sense as a kind of wisdom of nations, going beyond Cartesian method. It has been suggested that Gadamer's most well-known work, Truth and Method, can be read as an "extended meditation on the implications of Vico's defense of the rhetorical tradition in response to the nascent methodologism that ultimately dominated academic enquiry".[83] In the case of Gadamer, this was in specific contrast to the sensus communis concept in Kant, which he felt (in agreement with Lyotard) could not be relevant to politics if used in its original sense.
Gadamer came into direct debate with his contemporary Habermas, the so-called Hermeneutikstreit. Habermas, with a self-declared Enlightenment "prejudice against prejudice" argued that if breaking free from the restraints of language is not the aim of dialectic, then social science will be dominated by whoever wins debates, and thus Gadamer's defense of sensus communis effectively defends traditional prejudices. Gadamer argued that being critical requires being critical of prejudices including the prejudice against prejudice. Some prejudices will be true. And Gadamer did not share Habermas' acceptance that aiming at going beyond language through method was not itself potentially dangerous. Furthermore, he insisted that because all understanding comes through language, hermeneutics has a claim to universality. As Gadamer wrote in the "Afterword" of Truth and Method, "I find it frighteningly unreal when people like Habermas ascribe to rhetoric a compulsory quality that one must reject in favor of unconstrained, rational dialogue".
A recent commentator on Vico, John D. Schaeffer has argued that Gadamer's approach to sensus communis exposed itself to the criticism of Habermas because it "privatized" it, removing it from a changing and oral community, following the Greek philosophers in rejecting true communal rhetoric, in favour of forcing the concept within a
"Moral sense" as opposed to "rationality"
The other Enlightenment debate about common sense, concerning common sense as a term for an emotion or drive that is unselfish, also continues to be important in discussion of social science, and especially economics. The axiom that communities can be usefully modeled as a collection of self-interested individuals is a central assumption in much of modern mathematical economics, and mathematical economics has now come to be an influential tool of political decision making.
While the term "common sense" had already become less commonly used as a term for the empathetic moral sentiments by the time of Adam Smith, debates continue about methodological individualism as something supposedly justified philosophically for methodological reasons (as argued for example by Milton Friedman and more recently by Gary S. Becker, both members of the so-called Chicago school of economics).[88] As in the Enlightenment, this debate therefore continues to combine debates about not only what the individual motivations of people are, but also what can be known about scientifically, and what should be usefully assumed for methodological reasons, even if the truth of the assumptions are strongly doubted. Economics and social science generally have been criticized as a refuge of Cartesian methodology. Hence, amongst critics of the methodological argument for assuming self-centeredness in economics are authors such as Deirdre McCloskey, who have taken their bearings from the above-mentioned philosophical debates involving Habermas, Gadamer, the anti-Cartesian Richard Rorty and others, arguing that trying to force economics to follow artificial methodological laws is bad, and it is better to recognize social science as driven by rhetoric.
Catholic theology
Among Catholic theologians, writers such as theologian
Endeavours of this sort always end in defeat. In order to confer a technical philosophical value upon the common sense of orators and moralists it is necessary either to accept Reid's common sense as a sort of unjustified and unjustifiable instinct, which will destroy Thomism, or to reduce it to the Thomist intellect and reason, which will result in its being suppressed as a specifically distinct faculty of knowledge. In short, there can be no middle ground between Reid and St. Thomas.[53]
Gilson argued that Thomism avoided the problem of having to decide between Cartesian innate certainties and Reid's uncertain common sense, and that "as soon as the problem of the existence of the external world was presented in terms of common sense, Cartesianism was accepted".[89]
Projects
- Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator and characteristica universalis.
- The Cyc project attempts to provide a basis of common-sense knowledge for artificial-intelligence systems.
- The Open Mind Common Sense project resembles the Cyc project, except that it, like other on-line collaborative projects depends on the contributions of thousands of individuals across the World Wide Web.
See also
- Appeal to tradition – Logical fallacy in which a thesis is deemed correct on the basis of tradition
- Basic belief – Axioms under the epistemological view called foundationalism
- Common knowledge – Statement widely known to be true
- Commonsense reasoning – Branch of artificial intelligence aiming to create AI systems with "common sense"
- Conventional wisdom – Ideas generally accepted by experts or the public
- Counterintuitive– Quality of being surprising and contrary to intuition
- Dunning–Kruger effect – Cognitive bias about one's own skill
- Pre-theoretic belief – Topic in linguistics and philosophy
- Public opinion – Aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population
- Social norm – Informal understanding of acceptable conduct
References
- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: "sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts." "common sense."Cambridge Dictionary: "the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way." van Holthoorn & Olson (1987, p. 9): "common sense consists of knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument." C.S. Lewis (1967, p. 146) wrote that what common sense "often means" is "the elementary mental outfit of the normal man."
- ^ For example, Thomas Reid contrasted common sense and good sense to some extent. See Wierzbicka (2010, p. 340).
- ^ The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary of 1973 gives four meanings of "common sense": An archaic meaning is "An internal sense which was regarded as the common bond or centre of the five senses"; "Ordinary, normal, or average understanding" without which a man would be "foolish or insane", "the general sense of mankind, or of a community" (two sub-meanings of this are good sound practical sense and general sagacity); A philosophical meaning, the "faculty of primary truths."
- Common Sense" was an influential publishing success during the period leading up to the American Revolution.
- ^ See for example Rosenfeld (2011, p. 282); Wierzbicka (2010); and van Kessel (1987, p. 117): "today the Anglo-Saxon concept prevails almost everywhere".
- ^ a b c Hundert (1987)
- ISBN 978-0674284166.
- ^ Descartes (1901) Part I of the Discourse on Method. Note: The term in French is "bon sens" sometimes translated as "good sense". The opening lines in English translation read:
"Good Sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess. And in this it is not likely that all are mistaken: the conviction is rather to be held as testifying that the power of judging aright and of distinguishing Truth from Error, which is properly what is called Good Sense or Reason, is by nature equal in all men; and that the diversity of our opinions, consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share of Reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects. For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it."
- Historia Animalium I.3 489a. See Gregorić (2007).
- primary qualities" (not to be confused with Aristotle's use of the term "primary qualities"). Plato is not so clear. In the equivalent passage in Plato's Theaetetus 185c–d, he talks about what is common in all things, and in specific things, and by which we say that things for example "are" versus "are not"; are "similar" versus "dissimilar"; are the "same" versus being "different"; being one or a higher number; odd or even.
- ISBN 978-1118610633.
- ^ De Anima line 425a47, just after the famous mention of "common sense".
- ^ De Anima column 427a. Plato, in his Theaetatus 185a–c uses the question of how to judge if sound or colour are salty.
- ^ Sachs (2001, p. 132)
- ^ a b Brann (1991, p. 43)
- ^ Approximately 185a–187a.
- ^ a b Gregorić (2007)
- ^ Gregorić (2007), Introduction.
- ^ a b c Heller-Roazen (2008, p. 42).
- ^ ISBN 978-1871031768.
- ^ Gregorić (2007, p. 125)
- ^ Posterior Analytics II.19.
- ^ Gregorić (2007, pp. 5–6).
- De Partibus AnimaliumIV, but also refers to other passages in the corpus. See footnote 28.
- ^ Gregorić (2007, p. 10). The "cogitative" or "estimative" capacity, vis aestimativa, "enables the animal to extract vital information about its environment from the form processed by the common sense and imagination."
- ^ Gregorić (2007, p. 11). See below concerning Descartes.
- ^ Heller-Roazen (2008, p. 36)
- ^ Gregorić (2007, p. 12)
- ^ a b Bugter (1987, p. 84).
- ISBN 978-3110212297
- ^ Cooper (2001), volume I, part III, section I, first footnote.
- ISBN 978-3643111722 and Schaeffer (1990, p. 113).
- ^ ἀνάγκη διὰ τῶν κοινῶν ποιεῖσθαι τὰς πίστεις καὶ τοὺς λόγους Rhetoric 1355a
- ^ Bugter (1987, p. 90).
- ^ De Oratore, I, 3, 12
- ^ Heller-Roazen (2008, p. 33).
- ^ Bugter (1987, pp. 91–92).
- ^ Bugter (1987, p. 93).
- ^ Heller-Roazen (2008, p. 32).
- ^ Lewis (1967, p. 146)
- ^ van Holthoon (1987), chapter 9.
- ^ Descartes (1901) Chapter: MEDITATION II.: Of the Nature of the Human Mind; and that It is More Easily Known than the Body.
- ^ Descartes (1901) Chapter: MEDITATION VI.: Of the Existence of Material Things, and of the Real Distinction Between the Mind and Body of Man.
- ^ Brann (1991, p. 75)
- ^ a b Rosenfeld (2011, p. 21).
- ISBN 978-9004117297. Hobbes (like Gassendi) wrote scornfully of the complex old distinctions, and in particular the medieval concept of sensible "species" (a concept derived from Aristotle's perceptibles):
Some say the Senses receive the Species of things, and deliver them to the Common-sense; and the Common Sense delivers them over to the Fancy, and the Fancy to the Memory, and the Memory to the Judgement, like handing of things from one to another, with many words making nothing understood. (Hobbes, Thomas, "II.: of imagination", The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; Now First Collected and Edited by Sir William Molesworth, Bart., 11 vols., vol. 3 (Leviathan), London: Bohn).
- ^ Spruit (1995, pp. 403–404).
- ^ Rosenfeld (2011), p. 282. English is unusual in keeping one term that unites the classical and modern meanings, and philosophical and everyday meanings, so clearly. Italian has senso comune and also buon senso; German has gemeiner Verstand, gesunder Menschenverstand, and Gemeinsinn, used by Kant and others. French also has sens commun, used by Étienne Gilson and others. See Wierzbicka (2010), who also notes that according to Gilson, Descartes himself always referred to bon sens as bona mens in Latin, never sensus communis (p. 340).
- ISBN 9782711601806
- ^ Heller-Roazen (2008, p. 30)
- ^ van Kessel (1987)
- ^ Schaeffer (1990, p. 52).
- ^ a b c Gilson (1939), chapter 1.
- ISBN 9783862349180
- ^ Bacon, Francis, On Truth, archived from the original on 2013-06-29, retrieved 2013-09-19
- ^ Hume (1987) Chapter: ESSAY XVIII: THE SCEPTIC
- ^ Gadamer (1989, pp. 19–26).
- ^ Cooper (2001), Volume I, Part III, section 1.
- ^ Although Greek, this term koinonoēmosúnē is from the Meditations of the Roman emperor-philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, and was possibly coined by him. Shaftesbury and others[who?] suspected it is a Stoic term.
- ^ Hutcheson, Francis (2002), "section i: A general Account of our several Senses and Desires, Selfish or Publick", An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense, ed. Aaron Garrett, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, retrieved 2013-07-25.
- ^ Chapter II, "OF PRINCIPLES ADVERSE TO THAT OF UTILITY", in "An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation".
- ^ Gadamer (1989, p. 25)
- ^ Gadamer (1989, pp. 25–27)
- ^ Gadamer (1989, p. 27)
- ^ Gadamer (1989, p. 30)
- ^ Gadamer (1989, pp. 27–30)
- ^ Schaeffer (1990, p. 3).
- ^ Schaeffer (1990), chapter 3.
- Machiavelli. Citing Plato on the other hand, shows the typical rejection in this period of Aristotle and scholasticism, but not classical learning in its entirety.
- ^ Vico (1968), I.ii "Elements" (§§141-146) and I.iv "Method" (§§347-350).
- ^ Bayer (1990), "Vico's principle of sensus communis and forensic eloquence" (PDF), Chicago-Kent Law Review, 83 (3), archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-09-21, retrieved 2013-07-25. Also see Schaeffer (1990), p. 3, and Gadamer.
- ISBN 9780521012089
- ^ Kant (1914). Key German terms are added in square brackets. See German text.
- ^ Burnham, Douglas, Kant's Aesthetics
- ^ Rosenfeld (2011), p. 312, note 2.
- ^ Gadamer (1989, pp. 32–34). Note: The source makes it clear that "English" includes Scottish authors.
- ^ Gadamer (1989, pp. 34–41)
- ^ Gadamer (1989, p. 43)
- ISBN 978-0812205503, p. 120.
- ^ "Phenomenal Conservatism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy".
- ISBN 9789039004036
- ISBN 9781134940622
- ISBN 9781441175991
- ISBN 9780664222437
- ISBN 9781441175991
- ISBN 9780585177724
- ^ Schaeffer (1990), chapters 5–7.
- ^ See for example Albert O. Hirschman, "Against Parsimony: Three Easy Ways of Complicating Some Categories of Economic Discourse." Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 37, no. 8 (May 1984): 11–28.
- ^ ISBN 9780826262387
Bibliography
- Aristotle, De Anima. The Loeb Classical Library edition of 1986 used the 1936 translation of W.S Hett, and the standardised Greek text of August Immanuel Bekker. The more recent translation by Joe Sachs (see below) attempts to be more literal.
- Brann, Eva (1991), The World of the Imagination: Sum and Substance, Rowman & Littlefield
- Bugter (1987), "Sensus Communis in the works of M. Tullius Cicero", in van Holthoon; Olson (eds.), Common Sense: The Foundations for Social Science, University Press of America, ISBN 9780819165046
- Descartes, Réné (1901), The Method, Meditations and Philosophy of Descartes, translated from the Original Texts, with a new introductory Essay, Historical and Critical by John Veitch and a Special Introduction by Frank Sewall, Washington: M. Walter Dunne, retrieved 2013-07-25
- Descartes, Rene (1970), "Letter to Mersenne, 21 April 1941", in Kenny, Anthony (ed.), Descartes: Philosophical Letters, Oxford University Press Translated by Anthony Kenny. Descartes discusses his use of the notion of the common sense in the sixth meditation.
- Descartes, Rene (1989), Passions of the Soul, Hackett. Translated by Stephen H. Voss.
- Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1989), Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, New York: Continuum.
- Gilson, Etienne (1939), Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, Ignatius Press, ISBN 9781586176853
- Gregorić, Pavel (2007), Aristotle on the Common Sense, Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780191608490
- Heller-Roazen, Daniel (2008), Nichols; Kablitz; Calhoun (eds.), Rethinking the Medieval Senses, Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 9780801887369
- van Holthoon (1987), "The common sense of Rousseau", in van Holthoon; Olson (eds.), Common Sense: The Foundations for Social Science, University Press of America, ISBN 9780819165046
- van Holthoorn; Olson (1987), "Introduction", in van Holthoon; Olson (eds.), Common Sense: The Foundations for Social Science, University Press of America, ISBN 9780819165046
- Hume, David (1987), Essays Moral, Political, Literary, edited and with a Foreword, Notes, and Glossary by Eugene F. Miller, with an appendix of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, retrieved 2013-07-25
- Hume, David (1902), Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals by David Hume, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, M.A. 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
- Hundert (1987), "Enlightenment and the decay of common sense", in van Holthoon; Olson (eds.), Common Sense: The Foundations for Social Science, University Press of America, ISBN 9780819165046
- Kant, Immanuel (1914), "§ 40.: Of Taste as a kind of sensus communis", Kant's Critique of Judgement, translated with Introduction and Notes by J.H. Bernard (2nd ed. revised), London: Macmillan, retrieved 2013-07-25
- van Kessel (1987), "Common Sense between Bacon and Vico: Scepticism in England and Italy", in van Holthoon; Olson (eds.), Common Sense: The Foundations for Social Science, University Press of America, ISBN 9780819165046
- Lee, Mi-Kyoung (2011), "The distinction between primary and secondary qualities in ancient Greek philosophy", in Nolan, Lawrence (ed.), Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Historical and Ongoing Debate, Oxford, ISBN 978-0-19-955615-1
- Lewis, C. S. (1967), Studies in words, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521398312
- Moore, George Edward (1925), A defense of common sense
- Oettinger, M. Friedrich Christoph. 1861. Cited in Gadamer (1989).
- Peters Agnew, Lois (2008), Outward, Visible Propriety: Stoic Philosophy and Eighteenth-century British Rhetorics, University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 9781570037672
- Reid, Thomas (1983), "An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense", in Beanblosom; Lehrer (eds.), Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays, New York: Hackett
- ISBN 9780674061286
- Sachs, Joe (2001), Aristotle's On the Soul and On Memory and Recollection, Green Lion Press, ISBN 978-1-888009-17-0
- Schaeffer (1990), Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism, Duke University Press, ISBN 978-0822310266
- Cooper, Anthony Ashley (2001), den Uyl, Douglas (ed.), Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund
- Spruit, Leen (1994), Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge. I. Classical roots and medieval discussions, Brill, ISBN 978-9004098831
- Spruit, Leen (1995), Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge. II. Renaissance controversies, later scholasticism, and the elimination of the intelligible species in modern philosophy, Brill, ISBN 978-9004103962
- Stebbins, Robert A. Leisure's Legacy: Challenging the Common Sense View of Free Time. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
- Vico, Giambattista. On the Study Methods of our Time, trans. Elio Gianturco. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.
- Vico, Giambattista (1968), The New Science of Giambattista Vico (3rd ed.), Cornell University Press. Translated by Bergin and Fisch.
- Voltaire (1901), "COMMON SENSE", The Works of Voltaire. A Contemporary Version. A Critique and Biography by John Morley, notes by Tobias Smollett, trans. William F. Fleming, vol. IV, New York: E.R. DuMont
- Wierzbicka, Anna (2010), Experience, Evidence, and Sense: The Hidden Cultural Legacy of English, Oxford University Press
Further reading
- Coates, John (1996), The Claims of Common Sense: Moore, Wittgenstein, Keynes and the Social Sciences, ISBN 9780521412568
- Ledwig, Marion (2007), Common Sense: Its History, Method, and Applicability, ISBN 9780820488844
- ISBN 9780893915353