Common sense – a senseless term!

Post by Tamil Selvi on Yahoo 360

Common sense by definition is what people in-common would agree or naturally understand; meaning, the "thing" that all (at least most) people perceive in common - to be precise, the knowledge and experience most people either have, or believed to have. Note an important distinction here: unlike an axiom which is a self-evident truth upon which other knowledge must rest or other knowledge is built up, these so called common-sense elements instead are endoxa (commonly held beliefs accepted by the wise and by the elderly) in a social group; actually the word endoxa is more than just a belief because it adds an attributed "tested" before belief (or went though argumentative struggles before it became a common sense element)!

The problem with this assertion is that most people don't think, hence how can an idea be considered as "sensible" just because most people "think" it is sensible!! lol!

To make things worse, there is a thesis Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke where he claims that the mind of a newborn is a blank slate and that all ideas are developed from experience... and he goes on to classify all ideas as either simple or complex; simple as red, sweet, round, etc., and complex as numbers, causes & effects, abstraction, identity, diversity and so on... but both of them are rather "learnt" and not "born with", leading to the fact that there is no such a thing called "Common sense"!

On the contrary, some classical thinkers (like René Descartes) claimed that we were born with some "innate" idea, hence an innate concept or item of knowledge could be universal to all humanity - that is, something people are born with rather than something people have learned through experience, and that should be the thing called "Common sense"! uh.. They rationalize their argument by quoting the extraordinary ability to learn complex concepts possessed even by very young children, like a language, for instance! Nevertheless, they don't disregard the influence of the environment and accept that the environment does aid in triggering and developing the dormant ideas that we were born with; if I understand this concept clearly, it looks like we are born with some set of switches in normally-off position and as we interact with the rest of the world one or more of these switches gets turned-on!! (no clue why none of my switches were turned-on as of today! lol).

But I also see an alarming misuse of this term; especially when people start drawing parallels to this function, such as other faculties of the mind, viz. morals, norms, sin... I covered this in some of my previous blogs, as we see in many occasions even in most developed countries, common sense is appealed to/in political or religious debates, particularly when they are loosing an intelligent argument with their opponent! lol... insane arguments against abortion by the conservative-clowns is a good example of this argumentum ad populum (Latin: "appeal to the people")! .

Since everyone is born with a clean slate, thereby there is no way we could have "One Truth" to which all humanity will agree upon, Locke argued in detail, against many universally accepted truths, for instance the principle of identity such as Cultural, Gender etc., goes on to add at the very least children and idiots are often unaware of these; brutal! lol... (mmm... does a newborn baby know that it is a "she"? :)).

In closing, I do believe that Common sense is a hindrance or an obstruction to reasoning and abstract thinking, take science or even mathematics for that matter; where human intuitions has always conflicted with documented, provable and verifiable results!

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen - Albert Einstein, LOL, I am not a teen, not even close BTW!
Common sense – a senseless term!
Common sense by definition is what people in-common would agree or naturally understand; meaning, the "thing" that all (at least most) people perceive in common - to be precise, the knowledge and experience most people either have, or believed to have. Note an important distinction here: unlike an axiom which is a self-evident truth upon which other knowledge must rest or other knowledge is built up, these so called common-sense elements instead are endoxa (commonly held beliefs accepted by the wise and by the elderly) in a social group; actually the word endoxa is more than just a belief because it adds an attributed "tested" before belief (or went though argumentative struggles before it became a common sense element)!

The problem with this assertion is that most people don't think, hence how can an idea be considered as "sensible" just because most people "think" it is sensible!! lol!

To make things worse, there is a thesis Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke where he claims that the mind of a newborn is a blank slate and that all ideas are developed from experience... and he goes on to classify all ideas as either simple or complex; simple as red, sweet, round, etc., and complex as numbers, causes & effects, abstraction, identity, diversity and so on... but both of them are rather "learnt" and not "born with", leading to the fact that there is no such a thing called "Common sense"!

On the contrary, some classical thinkers (like René Descartes) claimed that we were born with some "innate" idea, hence an innate concept or item of knowledge could be universal to all humanity - that is, something people are born with rather than something people have learned through experience, and that should be the thing called "Common sense"! uh.. They rationalize their argument by quoting the extraordinary ability to learn complex concepts possessed even by very young children, like a language, for instance! Nevertheless, they don't disregard the influence of the environment and accept that the environment does aid in triggering and developing the dormant ideas that we were born with; if I understand this concept clearly, it looks like we are born with some set of switches in normally-off position and as we interact with the rest of the world one or more of these switches gets turned-on!! (no clue why none of my switches were turned-on as of today! lol).

But I also see an alarming misuse of this term; especially when people start drawing parallels to this function, such as other faculties of the mind, viz. morals, norms, sin... I covered this in some of my previous blogs, as we see in many occasions even in most developed countries, common sense is appealed to/in political or religious debates, particularly when they are loosing an intelligent argument with their opponent! lol... insane arguments against abortion by the conservative-clowns is a good example of this argumentum ad populum (Latin: "appeal to the people")! .

Since everyone is born with a clean slate, thereby there is no way we could have "One Truth" to which all humanity will agree upon, Locke argued in detail, against many universally accepted truths, for instance the principle of identity such as Cultural, Gender etc., goes on to add at the very least children and idiots are often unaware of these; brutal! lol... (mmm... does a newborn baby know that it is a "she"? :)).

In closing, I do believe that Common sense is a hindrance or an obstruction to reasoning and abstract thinking, take science or even mathematics for that matter; where human intuitions has always conflicted with documented, provable and verifiable results!

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen - Albert Einstein, LOL, I am not a teen, not even close BTW!
Common sense – a senseless term!
Common sense by definition is what people in-common would agree or naturally understand; meaning, the "thing" that all (at least most) people perceive in common - to be precise, the knowledge and experience most people either have, or believed to have. Note an important distinction here: unlike an axiom which is a self-evident truth upon which other knowledge must rest or other knowledge is built up, these so called common-sense elements instead are endoxa (commonly held beliefs accepted by the wise and by the elderly) in a social group; actually the word endoxa is more than just a belief because it adds an attributed "tested" before belief (or went though argumentative struggles before it became a common sense element)!

The problem with this assertion is that most people don't think, hence how can an idea be considered as "sensible" just because most people "think" it is sensible!! lol!

To make things worse, there is a thesis Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke where he claims that the mind of a newborn is a blank slate and that all ideas are developed from experience... and he goes on to classify all ideas as either simple or complex; simple as red, sweet, round, etc., and complex as numbers, causes & effects, abstraction, identity, diversity and so on... but both of them are rather "learnt" and not "born with", leading to the fact that there is no such a thing called "Common sense"!

On the contrary, some classical thinkers (like René Descartes) claimed that we were born with some "innate" idea, hence an innate concept or item of knowledge could be universal to all humanity - that is, something people are born with rather than something people have learned through experience, and that should be the thing called "Common sense"! uh.. They rationalize their argument by quoting the extraordinary ability to learn complex concepts possessed even by very young children, like a language, for instance! Nevertheless, they don't disregard the influence of the environment and accept that the environment does aid in triggering and developing the dormant ideas that we were born with; if I understand this concept clearly, it looks like we are born with some set of switches in normally-off position and as we interact with the rest of the world one or more of these switches gets turned-on!! (no clue why none of my switches were turned-on as of today! lol).

But I also see an alarming misuse of this term; especially when people start drawing parallels to this function, such as other faculties of the mind, viz. morals, norms, sin... I covered this in some of my previous blogs, as we see in many occasions even in most developed countries, common sense is appealed to/in political or religious debates, particularly when they are loosing an intelligent argument with their opponent! lol... insane arguments against abortion by the conservative-clowns is a good example of this argumentum ad populum (Latin: "appeal to the people")! .

Since everyone is born with a clean slate, thereby there is no way we could have "One Truth" to which all humanity will agree upon, Locke argued in detail, against many universally accepted truths, for instance the principle of identity such as Cultural, Gender etc., goes on to add at the very least children and idiots are often unaware of these; brutal! lol... (mmm... does a newborn baby know that it is a "she"? :)).

In closing, I do believe that Common sense is a hindrance or an obstruction to reasoning and abstract thinking, take science or even mathematics for that matter; where human intuitions has always conflicted with documented, provable and verifiable results!

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen - Albert Einstein, LOL, I am not a teen, not even close BTW!