Talk:Common sense

Inaccessible article

I find this article almost completely unreadable. It makes too much use of philosophical jargon with little explanation. Especially the sections on "Locke and the Empiricists" and "Epistemology". I learn nothing from reading these sections.

In fact, the earlier version of June 2, 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Common_sense&oldid=4012173) that was proposed as a "featured article candidate" is much more readible. It was clear, more simply written, and all of the jargon can be resolved by context.

-Ben

There are certain respects in which I, too, am forced to agree. The beginning of the article sounds more like a particular interpretation of the term and certainly requires more editing, among other things.

TonalHarmony (talk) 02:09, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

older entries

• Apparently there is little common sense on common sense. If this is to be more than a constructed definition (e.g., original research), then it should talk about the varieties of common sense and use citation to back that up. This article is in serious need of help. --Jeffmcneill ^{talk contribs} 23:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Common Sense is not knowledge. It is a common method of acquiring knowledge, represented by a knowledge, recognizable as that knowledge.

When a person infers that 'common sense' would 'dictate' that person is not referring to a specific knowledge but to what the words actually mean.

'Common' is something most widely known, or habitual.

'Sense' is a natural understanding or intelligence.

So 'common sense' would be a widely known, natural understanding.

Not all persons have the same knowledge, yet all persons use the same method of intelligence.

Your 'common sense' may not be the 'common sense' of another person, which is why the term has never gained 'common sense' understanding.

Read chapter 12 of The Brain Is A Wonderful Thing at http://www.enticypress.com to see the definitive 'common sense' explanation.

---

There's a lot of comment on common sense by many writers that should be here.

Also, the sense of it in Common Sense Revolution, as that phrase was coined in New Jersey and Ontario, should be mentioned. Here is an example of such self-proclaimed common sense by User:JoeM, who has certainly livened things up with his relentless support of Zionist Occupation Government and pursuit of New World Empire (from User_talk:JoeM):

"You people are cowards. You know that one common sense conservative can topple down the delicate house of cards made up users who are at least 90% far left. That's why you want me banned. Well, you might be able to ban me when you control the machinery, but my views are those of the majority of Americans and we now have an all-GOP government now. :America voted for Bush. Bush's approval rating are high. We have a GOP House and Senate. Americans supported the war in Iraq. Americans prefer Republican governors. We prefer the free market, tough on crime stances, a strong foreign policy guided by moral clarity, freedom, and national security, smaller government, lower taxes, and more freedom. Americans love Reagan and We defeated Communism and socialism. However, a bunch of leftists are censoring me because they control this site and not America. User:JoeM"

This is a great quote, but should have been given a date. Now we have an "all-DEM government now", LOL. And "Bush's approval rating are low", LOL. Besides the twisted grammar and factually-incorrect phrasing, this is clearly WP:MPOV. Does that mean that one sense of Common Sense is a state of being in MPOV? --Jeffmcneill ^{talk contribs} 23:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately. If only the staid Wikipedians were in fact writing briefing papers for Bush. He might learn something.

It's common sense that most people don't care, and two parties still exist because neither can and does win. Bush only won because others let him. lysdexia 17:34, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Lack of common sense

Would it be fair to say that geeks lack common sense? At least I do. People tell that to me all the time. :) Can we expand the article to include a section "Lack of common sense and those who don't get it"?

you need a serious, referenced source to say so. Andries 16:31, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Should be of note that it is possible that those with Aspergers Syndrome may lack certain common sense (Like forgetting about personal hygeine or lack of social common sense). Just my two-cents, i will add it into the article unless someone objects me doing so. I am fairly knowledgeble of the mind of an Asperger since i am one myself.--Raddicks 16:48, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

What exactly is "lack of common sense"? (Or even just "what is ``common sense''?")

I ask because I've had people tell me "you have no common sense".

Usually whenever I use the phrase "common sense", I use it to imply things like intuitiveness and intuition, but then people tell me "you have no common sense" and their usage of it therefore completely disagrees with my usage of it. I am an aspie, by the way, if that somehow makes a difference in this discussion (it might be interesting if it did). Stuart Morrow 20:36, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

In the definition provided in the top paragraph, it is just saying that your point of views simply do not agree with the other person's point of views. Nothing to do with Asperger's Syndrome, simply a rhetoric fallacy. 129.21.35.237 (talk) 08:30, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

== Common sense ==Alexander was here. Common sense is often confused with logic, but common sense is logic plus extraneous information that is available to most people. Logic is applied according to a set of rules, and is internal to that system only. Thus you have 'garbage in, garbage out', as is evidenced so often in our legal system. Common sense helps filter out garbage, and is why juries are allowed to use common sense, whereas officers of the courts do not.

so, what you are saying is that common sense is meta-data of the logic process/experiences accumulated throught applying the logic process, right? is it an Meme? Because if it is, we can talk about how common logic is a learned trait and it must be taught/learned though experience in order to be understood. (Yeah, i don't get how people say "It's just common sence!") Project2501a 14:42, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

On the dynamics of an individual's common sense

There is a surprising contradiction in the article: Common sense is considered to be a static phenomenon: "There are two general meanings to the term "common sense" in philosophy. One is a sense that is common to the others, and the other meaning is a sense of things that is common to humanity." (from the article)

On the other hand, the strongest reference in the article reads: "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." (Einstein)

So, why do we not talk more about the ways an individual develops their own "common sense"? This is more important than one would think, since, if Einstein is right, for most of us, regearding most of the areas of knowledge, education ends at age eighteen. For instance, the mathematical "common sense" is fully formed by then.

Undoubtedly, the only possible goal of the middle level education is to form the "common sense". Why do we not talk about the dynamics of one's individual common sense as opposed to fighting for "real knowledge". Don't be mistaken, "real knowledge" cannot be conwayed during the course of middle level education. At least in mathematics the best that a high school can achieve is the provision of the right mathematical "common sense".

Is there such a thing as the "right common sense" if "common sense" is, according to common sense, just the opposit of deep knowledge? "Some use the phrase to refer to beliefs or propositions that in their opinion they consider would in most people's experience be prudent and of sound judgment, without dependence upon esoteric knowledge or study or research, but based upon what is believed to be knowledge held by people 'in common'." (from the article)

Common sense as the unconscious combining of information

I would define common sense as:

1. The tendency of a person’s brain to run a background process that automatically (i.e. without conscious direction) combines elementary pieces of information and supplies the results to the conscious mind.

2. Knowledge gained by the above process.

The terminology I’ve used here is a litte sloppy, e.g. I’ve used the words “brain”, “mind”, “conscious”, and “background” in ways that may not be precisely standard, but overall I think this definition is an important one and I don’t see anything similar in the article. I may do something about this at some point but in the meantime am providing this comment as a heads-up (and to invite responses).

Note that part 1 here is entirely consistent with the leading paragraph of this talk page, which describes common sense as “a common method of acquiring knowledge” rather than knowledge itself. Fillard 18:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I like your definition a lot more than the one given by the article. I think as it stands, the article’s definition confuses common sense with conventional wisdom. To me common sense is an individual’s judgment rather than a majority consensus. It draws on all of the individual’s experience and knowledge (including the esoteric one), without explicit use of logic, rather uses brain’s innate ability to integrate information to come up with prudent / common sense judgment. It is an acknowledgement of the fact that most complex (real life) problems that are outside of the confines of well-controlled physics experiments lack accurate data and rule set to apply logic with any degree of accuracy.

So much for a common sense definition of common sense... ReAlly 06:56, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

PS My biggest concern with the article is the first paragraph and heavy emphasis on philosophy. I would have liked to see some brain research discussion (if anyone knows of any). ReAlly 07:12, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Not so common

As has already been said everyones common sense is not the same. Education, upbringing, religion all play a part in the thought process.

Applying common sense to a set of laid down rules is dependant on the indviduals education. In his/her ability to understand the rules as laid down.

If an individual does not fully understand the rules he/she cannot really be expected to apply common sense to those rules.

Added to that if a person has not properly read those rules then he is in no position to comment in a 'common sense' fashion as to how those rules are to be interpreted.

But of course this is just me using my common sense.

"Other arguments have been exhaused"

"Common sense is sometimes appealed to in political debates, particularly when other arguments have been exhausted. Civil rights for African Americans, women's suffrage, and homosexuality—to name just a few—have all been attacked as being contrary to common sense": this should be slightly edited for NPOV, as it implies that there are no other possible arguments against these, that these other arguments were exhausted, &c. It is possible that this is true, but this is a POV against these which shouldn't be in Wikipedia. --Daniel C. Boyer 16:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

If I could add my persepective to the subject; common sense has more to do with accurately perceiving the world around us i.e simple physics, social norms, being able to distinguish especially in oneself rational vs. irrational behaviour, and the ability to predict fairly accurately consequences of actions and behaviours in physical as well as social interactions.

Mark Sutton

This article is priceless

... because it completely lacks common sense, in the real meaning of the word. The current definition embodies that lack of common sense, when it uses analytic techniques to deconstruct the phrase to find meaning. And yet it completely misses what the phrase means, most of the time that it is used. common sense is about judgement, wisdom and practicality. wikipædia marches on!! flux.books 13:13, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Another view

Although I do believe there's such a thing as common sense, and this discussion prompts me to think about how I'd define that, there was a former headmaster at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, who retired. One speaker at the retirement ceremony praised the headmaster for his common sense. In replying, he demurred, and said that common sense tells many people the earth is flat.

Common sense is more relative, I think, than it appears on the surface. If I think you're showing common sense in a given situation, it may mean:

• Your choices, even if not formally correct, have a logic and an aptness I can perceive.
• Your choices are the ones I think I myself would make (and therefore they must demonstrate common sense), even though I'm not the person having to make the choices.

— OtherDave 22:21, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Does common sense exist?

If applying common sense worked, the world would have many less conflicts and be a much simpler place. But it does not, for more than one reason.

The first of these is that the concept of common sense is mythical. It is supposed to be the set of basic sense most of us have, but there are some problems with this.

The first is that people are not that uniform, theyre not even close. The reality is that people vary widely in every respect. Why we are taught otherwise is the subject for another article some time.

The 2nd is that a belief being shared among a group of people, even a whole nation, does not make it correct. Appearing to be sense does not make something sense.

The 3rd problem is that most things described as common sense are in practice nothing but group assumptions. It is not a coincidence that most people think they have common sense, even though what people believe varies a good deal.

Too often group 1 believes A, group 2 believes not_A, group 3 believes maybe_A and group 4 believes A_is_insane, and yet all 4 groups call what they believe common sense, failing to notice the error of their perception. Tabby 23:59, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Current First Paragraph is Awfully Convoluted

As of the time of this post, it reads:

"Common sense (or, when used attributively as an adjective, commonsense, common-sense, or commonsensical), based on a strict construction of the term, is what people in common would agree: that which they "sense" in common as their common natural understanding. Some use the phrase to refer to beliefs or propositions that in their opinion they consider would in most people's experience be prudent and of sound judgment, without dependence upon esoteric knowledge or study or research, but based upon what is believed to be knowledge held by people "in common", so: the knowledge and experience most people have, or are believed to have by the person using the term."

Hmm... what? Sounds like me grasping for words in my old high school philosophy papers.

201.29.17.10 19:15, 21 July 2007 (UTC)Concerned Citizen

Common Sense & Speed of Light

I am no expert in this field however might I suggest that the statement "Humans lack any commonsense intuition of, for example, the behavior of the universe at subatomic distances; or speeds approaching that of light." in the 3rd paragraph is superflous.

It's not a particularly informative statement, especially considering that an 'ordinary' member of a society would hardly ever be required to apply their common sense to these areas & intuition is not really part of the scientific method.

The prior statement "... without reliance on esoteric knowledge or study or research, but based upon what they see as knowledge held by people" precludes these areas does it not (or is this counter-intuitiveness to be considered the ignorance of a populace)?

Perhaps including the statement " ... human 'common sense' ceases to be applicable in areas of theoretical science for example, the behavior of the universe at subatomic distances; or speeds approaching that of light. " would be more useful?

Comments &/or suggestions please :)

IE (talk) 18:48, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

An individual cannot HAVE a common sense

Under the title "Aristotle and Ibn Sina" there is a statement:

Individuals could have different common senses (...)

Isn't that statement a contradiction in itself? Because individuals can only have INDIVIDUAL senses (perhaps understood as perceptions), and a COMMON sense could be associated only to an entity of (at least) more than one single individual, e.g. a group. Hence, an individual could only SHARE a common sense (or JOIN, or ... please find some more appropriate english word instead of SHARE); as well as: different individuals could SHARE different common senses. --Azvonko (talk) 16:22, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I have corrected the (woefully deficient) article to reflect what Aristotle actually SAID, as opposed to a misguided gloss on a third-hand anachronistic account. I hope this will clear up what he actually meant by "common" and "sense", which are extraordinarily different than what was previously expressed in the section. I have also duly provided sources, although I do not know if the references are entirely well-formatted...(forgive me, I'm new at this, but it had to be done.)

TonalHarmony (talk) 00:22, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Article should emphasise that common sense is not to be relied upon or trusted

(Why has this text gone tiny?)

Common sense includes stereotypes and prejudices, for example. It is not tested empirically. The common sense of the white population in the southern USA in the early nineteenth century is considered untrue today. In my personal opinion, fools and/or bigots trust their common sense. Compare with critical thinking and self deception. If I could I would also add Truthiness to the See Also section.

It does seem unresonable that the article cannot be edited. 89.240.206.60 (talk) 22:48, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Improper Redirect

The common-sense metaphysics link under philosophy currently redirects to "Infant cognitive development," it should actually be redirected to "Scottish School of Common Sense"; the philosophical idea of common sense has nothing to do with infant cognition, it has everything to do with Thomas Reid (and others in that school). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.39.103.200 (talk) 00:34, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, one understanding of it may have a lot to do with infant cognition (I am not the one who made the edit, mind you.) At least in the Aristotelian conception, it is the way by which our external senses are integrated, so the degree to which this occurs on a sensible level in the growth of an infant would likely, among other things, have something to contribute to understanding the Molyneux problem posited in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

However, I am unsure if this is what is meant by common sense "metaphysics"; if that is what you are emphasizing there as referring to a specific non-Aristotelian or non-Scholastic school, then it's no concern of mine.  :-)

TonalHarmony (talk) 00:20, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

What allows the effective functioning of common sense?

If you do not mind, I can give you my own understanding. Often the wikipedia experts think that I am a vandal. Just think of this paragraph: Everyone who cannot identify the common properties of different things will lack common sense. The common properties allow the effective functioning of common sense. Going by the definition of common, being able to predict a future reaction based on well-known behavior of something (a property), is common sense. It's not an individual preference...because then it wouldn't be common. Every scientific method is a structured process whose logical structure is based on the knowledge of the common properties observed of different familiar things. As experience contradicts with the bookish knowledge, people have already came with 'analytical wiki' which makes a claim that You will die if you do not use your common sense! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.249.50 (talk) 08:19, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Where is the Criticism section?

Something out to be said about common sense often being erronious, as described above. 78.146.171.125 (talk) 00:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

The ACTUAL Aristotelian common sense, instead of a caricature, please?

As of the current page status, the section on Aristotle reads:

"According to Aristotle and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), common sense provides the place in which the senses come together, and which processes sense-data and makes the results available to consciousness. Thus the modern psychological term, "perception", fulfills the same function. Individuals could have different common senses depending on how their personal and social experience has taught them to categorize sensation."

After the word combination "sense-data", this ceases to be what either Aristotle, Avicenna or any of the innumerable scholastics who wrote on the subject said, to my knowledge. Can we please stick to the actual authors? Because this business about perception and a subjective common sense is, at the least, woefully disconnected to the original understanding. The common sense isn't some kind of intellectually conditioned function; it's a sense, which carries the same general meaning as the five "senses". If I see the color grey, hear a howl, and smell wet dog, there's something which unites these impressions, and unites, internally, on the level of sensation, the various different external sensible forms. That's why one may say that they see "a wolf", and not just a lot of appearances which we associate with the concept wolf (this would be a Hobbesian perspective or something, in any case not Aristotelian or Avicennan.)

Also, it's not rational, because all animals having sensation and a need to recognize something beyond pleasure and pain of sensation, according to Aristotle, have this sense, and he didn't say brute animals were rational; by definition, they aren't. I'm speaking of what Aristotle said here, so please don't protest about how animals can be almost human or suchlike. I'm provisionally editing that section.

Just to make things clear, in case it was not already: Aristotle's conception of common sense is, to paraphrase Douglas Adams (may he rest in peace), "almost, but not entirely unlike" the conception of common sense which people have usually used since the time of Locke. It's not the same; not a belief, a set of common opinions, a means of coming to knowledge through likelihood, a phenomenological schema, a set of basic principles, or anything on the level of rationality or consciousness.

TonalHarmony (talk) 23:32, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Weasel words

You don't have to be an experienced Wiki editor to know that "in their opinion" is a weasel phrase. Cite the definitions given by major dictionaries, and don't add unfounded OR about how definitions relate. If there's no scholarly work done comparing dictionary definitions, then say nothing. It isn't the job of Wiki editors to do synthesis. 98.210.208.107 (talk) 11:00, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

---

The article says this: "Often ideas that may be considered to be true by common sense are in fact false."

Even if there were something called 'common sense', as understood by various theorists -- which I doubt -- precisely which "ideas" considered true by 'common sense' are false? Can the author of that bold statement please tell us?

Rosa Lichtenstein (talk) 00:51, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

---

About the best you can do is claim common sense comes from a common experience. Otherwise it is a meaningless concept. If common sense were common, more than half the population would have it. Ignorance seems to be more common than hydrogen in the universe. What I have seen and heard to be "common sense" has often ended in disaster and is mostly nonsense. No one is born with knowledge or reasoning. Few know how to detect a fallacy, much less follow a line of logic. So, that which is considered "common knowledge" or "common sense" is like a Unicorn. It is a myth that sounds good and makes us feel less anxious, but it is an exercise in self serving self delusion. If it were innate, we would have found that it could be inherited from parents. If it could be taught, there would be an "ology" and a Ph.D. you could get for it. Some pinhead has angels dancing on his head who gave up on the trail trailing an Invisible Pink Unicorn to assert the existence of "common sense." 71.193.247.134 (talk) 19:39, 10 November 2011 (UTC)