What is common sense?

[Lorizael]

In debates, people will often appeal to common sense as a way of alleviating themselves of the burden of supporting a claim. A claim that is common sense couldn't be otherwise, or is obvious, or at least moves the burden of proof to the party opposing the claim. Now this doesn't sound very generous, but is common sense more than a rhetorical trick? Off the top of my head, I can think of three ways to conceptualize common sense:

(1) A kind of basic empiricism about the world. That is, we should take at face value the observations about the world that everyone shares. Fire is hot, lions are dangerous, etc. The problem with this common sense is that it falls down rather badly at explaining physics. It's common sense that the sun revolves around the earth, say. In light of the fact that we know our senses can be quite misled, how much weight should we put on this common sense? It obviously still works in many cases, but how can we characterize where it doesn't work?

(2) A body of knowledge shared almost universally by some cultural group. This conception saves our common sense from being defeated by physics, because it's now common sense that the earth goes around the sun. Furthermore, this idea of common sense is adaptable. Raised in a modern, electronic world, some ways of interacting with GUIs are "common sense." But a changing common sense has problems, too, because it seems to imply some sort of relativity about knowledge, and knowledge is usually supposed to be about truth.

(3) Whatever feels obvious or natural or intuitive to a person. Our brain runs on energy- and time-saving heuristics that are often black boxes in terms of the underlying reasons, but tends to produce useful results more often than not. We should rely on our gut most of the time, because why would we have evolved a ****ty gut? The difficulty here is this is a very individualistic common sense that might be oxymoronic. If two people's common senses disagree, which one do we rely on and does it even make sense that common sense can differ between people?

Monkeys.

[Proteus_MST]

Well, common sense always is relative not only to the culture group, but also to the time/knowledge (of a society) at the time.

Example:
Not long ago common sene would dictate to you that, if caught in the open during a thunderstorm, you should seek cover under Beeches (and definitely not under Oak-trees)
(German saying: Buchen sollst Du suchen, Eichen sollst Du weichen (Look out for Beeches, but stay away from oak-trees)

Reason was, that people always saw that Beeches would remain undamaged after a thunderstorm, whereas lots of Oak-trees would be damaged/destroyed.
Nowadays we know that this is because the bark of beeches is a very good conductor and therefore most of the energy of the lightning doesn't affect the tree, but instead gets conducted into the ground (with the contrary being tthe case with oak trees) and that it therefore mounts to suicide to use a beech as cover during a thunderstom)

Which is why nowadays it is common sense to stay away from trees and also try to not stick out from the ground (for example by cowering in depressions on the ground) so that lightning don't get "attracted" to you because you are the highest conductor nearby

So, what amounts to common sense in case of thunderstorms has changed over time/with better knowledge ... and what amounted to common sense in earlier times nowadays actually is seen as one of the worst things possible you can do in this situation

[BeBMan]

In many cities tourists or so throw some coins into fountains - theoretically anyone passing by can take them out, so they're basically common cents. /hoho

Srsly:

As for OP _2_ - I'd include obvious things that go beyond "culture group X", like "without food you starve to death". Question is, can there be common sense that deserves the name unrelated to the findings of research? That could just be belief then (as in _1_ ) , and then the term "common sense" makes to me less....hm....sense.

Otoh if it is based on research etc. common sense is temporary and, as in Proteus' post, would change with new findings.

PoMo version:

Referring to "Common Sense" as something which does not need proof is basically invoking absolutes, and so is either unreflected/unintentional or even intentional reproduction/perpetuation of existing power structures.


Maybe I should have posted this in "random thoughts"

[The Mad Monk]

It's a pamplet written roughly 250 years ago by a British firebrand in an effort to foment rebellion in the American colonies.

[Aeson]

It should be reserved for common problems of no real significance. You wouldn't use common sense to build a fusion plant or put together IKEA furniture for instance.

[Lorizael]

Referring to "Common Sense" as something which does not need proof is basically invoking absolutes, and so is either unreflected/unintentional or even intentional reproduction/perpetuation of existing power structures.

Well, I think it's definitely reasonable to believe that we don't require proof for every claim. Like, as you said, that without food you starve to death. Not every discussion about food scarcity or overpopulation needs to begin with evidence that lack of food is bad. We can accept that as given. But that suggests common sense is--building off of the common part--a set of shared givens about the world in a particular group. In that case, common sense is less about what's epistemologically justified and more about what facilitates fruitful exchange between members of a group.

For example, if a team of physicists sets out to explore some new phenomenon, they don't start by finding evidence for Newton's laws. They don't need to. They have a paradigm within which they work that establishes the ground rules for research. Reinventing the wheel wastes time.

But common sense is not what we'd typically refer to the shared base of knowledge that physicists have about quantum mechanics, even if they're all comfortable with it. We only talk about common sense when referring to more or less global shared knowledge. And if that's the case, I don't think common sense should be used as a rhetorical move. We shouldn't bludgeon our opponents with what is obviously true but instead, at the outset of discussions, try to figure out what our shared base of knowledge is about a particular subject. Then work from there.

[Elok]

I'd say the word has no precise meaning and is essentially an emotional appeal to a certain type of idealized mentality; "common sense" is the opposite of specialized expertise, at least in some contexts. In others it's an appeal to the concrete and pragmatic.

[ZEE]

Answer to the OP:

WHO CARES?!?

See Lori, you need to stop being so Aspie and overthinking and caring about everything, and be moar Schizo and not give a **** about anything except a small narrow-minded belief that nobody else cares about but you. (Like AAHZ does.) Of course your brain is wired the way it is so...

[Jon Miller]

Teaming up with Russia on cyber security.

Apparently.

JM

[The Mad Monk]

Well, if you can't beat 'em...toss 'em the keys and tell 'em to have fun?

[rah]

We shouldn't bludgeon our opponents with what is obviously true but instead, at the outset of discussions, try to figure out what our shared base of knowledge is about a particular subject.

If our opponent doesn't have the same understanding it must not be obviously true.

But there are exceptions. If I drive a nail through my hand we should all be able to agree that it will hurt. But if Kid was still here and claimed that it would only hurt liberals because they are stupid, I would still claim that it was common sense regardless if it was not obviously true to him.

[Lorizael]

I'd say the word has no precise meaning and is essentially an emotional appeal to a certain type of idealized mentality...

Sure, most words don't have precise meanings. I'm just trying to see if there is a useful/meaningful conception of common sense that captures how people use the word.

..."common sense" is the opposite of specialized expertise, at least in some contexts. In others it's an appeal to the concrete and pragmatic.

I think both of those senses are related. Concrete + not specialized to me means that common sense derives from a set of internal rules we have about how the world works, rules built up from long experience and maybe some genetics. The rules being internal means that, complex though they may be, they're not explicit and so don't seem unnatural. Additionally, unspoken rules act as a kind of foundation for how we experience the world, which is why explanations that align with those rules seem sound, concrete--like common sense.

But all of that means common sense could be completely different for aliens that evolved in an environment completely different from ours.

[BeBMan]

Well, I think it's definitely reasonable to believe that we don't require proof for every claim. Like, as you said, that without food you starve to death. Not every discussion about food scarcity or overpopulation needs to begin with evidence that lack of food is bad. We can accept that as given. But that suggests common sense is--building off of the common part--a set of shared givens about the world in a particular group. In that case, common sense is less about what's epistemologically justified and more about what facilitates fruitful exchange between members of a group.

Yups I do certainly agree. My "invoking absolutes" line was more about a certain (ab)use of "common sense" -- when someone just declares his opinion to be "common sense" to avoid actually debating it and says essentially "my stuff is true because I say so". Not unheard of, esp. in poltical debates on the intarweb

As for "common sense" as such - FWIW the Kraut equivalence means usually not expert knowledge, but a basic set of experiences/judgements that are obvious to everyone (like that no food >>> starve thingie).

[Ben Kenobi]

Common sense in a physics environment would have to do with allocation of scarce resources. What problems do Physicists believe would yield useful results for the dollars and time invested? That's not a question of a problem with an empirical answer as it requires knowledge of unknown information, both information that is known to be unknown and information that is unknown unknowns. Nor could it be assessed afterwards. Common sense would also probably influence when you might choose to give up on a problem and sunk costs, etc.

[Ben Kenobi]

TBH, much of what science is about is testing 'common sense' to see whether there's any empirical evidence.