No such thing as Common Sense!

Great Debates
21

There is always something that goes against common knowledge.

Your examples for instance- What about shower Radios? Watch that 'lectricity!

Heatless Iron!

Humor aside, my point is still has some validity in it, as far as the common part goes. If common sense is just drawing an inference from common knowledge, where do we draw the line on what is common knowledge. It would seem to me that only the person that does something apparently stupid actually knows if they possess common sense or not.

If a guy takes the oil plug out of his car while underneath it, that would seem pretty stupid. Yet it can be considered a common error in people that have never changed oil before and don’t know what to do.

The label of not having common sense is applied willie nilly and without consideration all the time. Which still makes it useless because common usage has warped it into exactly what my OP is talking about. Your definiton is a great model, and I agree with it. Now we either need to the whole world to realize it, or just drop the whole silly idea. Personally I wouldn’t say somebody that burns themselves because they were trying to Iron clothes they were wearing lacks common sense- I would just call the f’in stupid. YMMV

I have the feeling though that this whole common sense thing will just continue and go the way of the Schizophrenia defintion. (you know those Idiots that think it is multiple personality disorder)

22

And that’s exactly why I said “ordinary radio”:slight_smile:

I guess it does, because I have always heard “X doesn’t have any common sense” used as a more polite way of saying “X is stupid”

23

That may be how you see it. I don’t. Stupid is lacking any sense, common or not. :wink: Stupid is the inability to infer properly.

Lets look at your definition. Infer from common knowledge. I condeeded that there was such a thing as common knowledge. Very few things actually. This was touched upon by the culture and subculture.

Ok, lets take this instance of common knowledge and making an inferance out of it:

That the world is flat is common sense. You can look around and see yourself. The world does not curve. Ships that go too far out dont come back, and it says so in the bible. All common knowledge in my subculture. Those zany scientists just lack common sense.

Lets look at your ironing example: A person knows an Iron is hot. A person knows that hot things burn. This is common knowledge. But wait! Irons aren’t hot ALL the time. In face, an iron takes awhile to warm up and get dangerously hot. So an inference would be that if I warm up it slightly then I can iron my clothes while wearing them.

The problem is that Inferences drawn are not always specific. Two people can infer totally different conclusions than each other based on similar or perhaps even exact data. Common knowledge is a misnomer because common knowledge may not even be correct data. Common knowledge may be ignorant speculations or variable sets.

This causes the problem of labeling such a thing. If common knowledge is so common, and to infer things proper is just assumed that everybody will do, then common sense may “make sense.” The main problem with this is that there are too many variables involved. When a rule has too many exceptions, especially exceptions that cannot be deduced without knowing specific instances, then that rule is worthless. Such is common sense.

You familiar with the GHOTI cliche?

http://magazine.englishclub.com/199909.htm

This problem also arises in the I before E except after C rule- A rule that is worthless because the exceptions don’t make any kind of logical sense. Or specifically, not make sense to the average joe. (perhaps an Etymologist would know…) (I mentioned this in an earlier post)

Common sense cannot be objectively defined well enough to label without all kinds of wiggling around potential exceptions and problems, and thus is worthless to use as a defined occurance. Therefore there is no such a thing as common sense.

24

I lack the “common sense” of preview as well- I need a spell checker and to change a few words around. :frowning:

25

the quiz was interesting, but seemed to show that common ‘truths’ are maybe not that truthfull, but still commonly believed anyway. I didnt really see how it was testing common sense or any lack therof.

I think the OP question itself is very misleading as well. It is very hard to prove or disaprove absolutes. To take a stance like “No such thing as common sense” is very easy and hard to be proven wrong. For every example I were to give of something I felt was common sense, you could just say YOU didnt know about it, therefore it is not common.

Which brings to light another question, what is common? How many people does it take for something to be common? Can common sense be different in different parts of the world? Would a farmer in Africa think it common sense to shake your shoes out in the morning, but a tourist wouldnt so therefore its not common?? Fliping it around, if that same tourist brought a flare he would think it common sense to not light the flare while pointing toward your face…someone who had never seen a flare wouldnt. So does that make it not common??

I wouldnt say their is no such as common sense, what I would say is that their is no such thing as common sense that is common to everyone.

26

It certainly doesn’t have to pertain to everybody to be common. Wouldn’t you say that if 50% or more of somebody owned computers, then it would be a common household item? Or would it take more?

If 25% of Americans that made 50,000+ dollars a year owned more than one computer and owned their own house, would you say it is common that Middle class Americans with their own houses own more than one computer?

If 1 out of 4 people with sexual transmitted diseases had crabs would you say crabs is a common STD? Or would it be common to STD carriers to also have crabs? So is then having crabs commonplace for everybody?

This is the very problem I am talking about. If it isn’t common to everybody, then assigning values to the term Common sense to mean these things that only certain people know or can infer about is erroneous. If something like this isn’t universal then it breaks down.

If everybody has a different concept of common sense, and somebody accuses you of not having common sense, then all it means is “This is common place for me, but you don’t know it, so you either don’t know it, or you are stupid, have forgotten it, or perhaps something else.” Useless. What it really means is this “Everybody knows this to be true, even a 10 year old can figure it out and you didn’t, therefore you are stupid.”

Unfortunately, in defending your common sense defintion, you also defeat your own arguments by making it even more meaningless. Give it up. Common sense does not exist. Or more aptly, it is so watered down as to be non-existant except in the most rare of cases.

27

A few exceptions don’t disprove the rule.

Conversely, a mountain of exceptions only water down the rule enough to make it useless.

28

I’m inclined to agree with Doreen’s examples, although not necessarily her overall definition.

Common sense, to my mind, covers things such as getting out of the way of something barrelling toward you rapidly without showing any signs of stopping, coming in out of the rain if you don’t want to get wet, refraining from hitting yourself on the head with a blunt object if you don’t want a pounding headache, and so forth. And, btw, it doesn’t have to be universal to be common. I think it refers to the kinds of things that most people have derived from every day experience (which suggests that little kids don’t have it, or at least not at the level adults do), but that don’t require esoteric knowledge.

Yes, that means that there will be some cultural variation in some things covered by Common Sense. But other things, such as the ones I mentioned above, while lending themselves to differing proverbs demonstrating them, are pretty broadly known and accepted everywhere.

And I do believe that this is a different kind of sense from that, say, required for academic success. I have a good friend, for example, with considerably less than half my education and probably little more than two thirds my IQ. But when I lose something around the house, I call her, and she finds it, bless her! Each of us recognizes abilities in the other that she herself lacks, and we are both very glad to have access to each other.

YMMV.

29

Obviously everybody has different abilities and strong points. This has to do with our personality.

I think I see the problem here. Nobody here is interested in actual debate, they “believe” common sense to exist, but don’t really have anything but a few misapproprations such as “common sense is ducking when something is comming towards your head.” No, that is reflex and involves hand eye coordination. Getting out of the way of a car comming towards you is called survival instinct. Even cats and dogs do this, do they then posess common sense? :rolleyes:

I want a debate, not a IMO. Thanks

30

coming.

31

Well, the quiz sort of shows that there IS such a thing as “common sense”, and in the exact way Einstein envisioned it.

But not in the way you might think. I got 8 out of 10 correct, not because I knew what the answers really ARE, but what psychology courses expect. In other words, I recited the “common sense” psychology is supposed to teach me. I don’t agree with all of the answers, but answered them nonetheless.

32

This reminds me of something my teacher mentioned today in class. Discussing Freud and Psychotherapy he mentioned that many people “disagree” with Freud. These people are undergraduates, and Psych 140 is beginner Psychology. His hypotheses is that in Chemistry or Math, most people either have knowledge of the subject (little bit, or lots) or none. Psychology, on the other hand, is one of those subjects that EVERYBODY thinks they are an expert on.

Disagree all you want on these things. All that is just your faulty perceptions being expressed as a belief. You Believe they are wrong in face of all the evidence and reasoning behind such knowledge. That my friend is called delusional.

33

Common sense isnt common and it doesnt make sense.

First of all, the commonality of “common sense” varies from locality to locality and culture to culture and from one time period to the next.

Secondly, just because a majority of people agree on what makes sense, doesnt always mean it actually does make sense.

remember, ia lot of superstitions used to be common sense.

The idea of negroes being inferior used to be common sense.

The univers revolving around the earth used to be common sense.

The Earth being flat used to make excellent common sense.

Democracy being the best system of govt currently is common sense to a whole lot of peoples.

what makes sense isnt democratic.

34

Common sense is the mishmash of rules, associations and analogies that one aquires trying to make sense out of life. One cannot expect an infant to start with “i think therefore i am” and work out the universe from there. Instead the child picks up things as it goes along. “Dogs have four legs.” “Stoves are hot.” “Ice ceam is sweet.” It’s the most efficient way to get along in this crazy world of ours.

Someone from a different culture would probably have a different bundle of leaned rules, so there is no unified codification of rules one can point to and say “THAT is common sense!” That does not, however, mean that it does not exist.

And it’s just like a student in beginning psychology to think that “delusional” means “doesn’t agree with me.”

35

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/singingman7/CommonSense.htm

36

Common Sense is all the little unwritten rules of life that no reasonible person should have to be told. When someone says “I wouldn’t do that shit” well, Common Sense is the “shit” you shouldn’t do.

-Don’t run with scissors
-Don’t stick stuff in your ear/nose
-Look before crossing the street
-Show up to work on time
-Don’t play with fire
-Don’t run from the cops
-Don’t throw stuff off the overpass
-Don’t play with guns
-Don’t videotape yourself committing crimes

Why is this stuff “common sense”? Because it should be painfully obvious that failing to head these bits of advice can only bring unfavorable consequences. Because this is the kind of stuff a retarded monkey wouldn’t do. These are the kinds of activities that piss people off so much because the person who injures themselves or others by performing them can never give an explaination reasonable than “duhhh…I donno”.

It isn’t the same thing as Common Knowledge. Common sense is the human equivalent of that little voice in the back of the rabbits head that tells it that jumping onto that sleeping wolfs head…probably not a good idea.

Unfortunately, our society is gradually breeding that little voice out of domesticated humans. Every trauma team that saves a guy who strapped a rocket to his Buick. Heck, every bungie cord that doesn’t break allows just a little more Common Sense to slip out of the gene pool.

37

Won’t disagree with you, but around here,“He doesn’t have the common sense to come in out of the rain” and " He doesn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain" are used interchangably. Perhaps the “common” in the phrase is similar to the “common” in “common courtesy” and is used to point out the low expectations of the speaker.
And looking at your original list

None of these have to do with common sense as written. The closest is if the last one ended after the word “checked”. But I think the part that really annoys me about this list is that I have really never seen things which require very specific knowledge called “common sense” except perhaps among a particular group-changing oil isn’t a common sense issue for lots of people, but it might be for a mechanic.

Psychology, like the other social sciences is indeed one of those subjects that people perceive to be an easy class that just requires “common sense” to do well. (and I’d imagine that’s the use of common sense that your professor has a problem with-not the come in out of the rain sort) Those people are wrong. But although your professor may not have mentioned it, there are plenty of people in the field of psychology who either disagree with Freud or find him to be completely irrelevant who are not undergraduates. I heard the name Freud in two courses as an undergraduate psychology major- once in the intro course and once in an industrial/organizational course taught by a professor who was clearly Freudian.

38

Did you read my posts?

Tone down the arrogance a notch or two, and maybe more people will take the time to join the thread.

39

The difference between the professors or Ph.D holders in the field of psychology disagreeing with Freud is that they have the educational background and have reasons for disagreeing. The undergraduate, or never take a college course armchair psychologist don’t generally have good reasons for disagreeing other than “they don’t like how it sounds.”
Personally I don’t know enough to disagree or agree. Our teacher leaves his biases behind, or so it seems, because he gives each framework ample description without slipping in dergogetory statements. However much I think psychology is interesting, It isn’t the field I am going into, and this will no doubt be the only class I have taken in it.

As for the delusional… Well, I think if you check my posting history you will see I use that term more than once. This summer was my first semester in school. I have been on here for 3 years or so now- the word is not new. I also don’t use it to stick on people that disagree with me. I use it in the strictest definition:
“A false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence.” Do you disagree with my “diagnosis” of Ludovic’s statements?

If all that stuff above was common sense, then they would figure it out for themselves and not have to be taught it. Since that isn’t the case (kids figuring it out for themselves), then it cannot be common sense can it?

Tell you what. If I see people on this board using common sense in the context of how people are describing it in this thread, I will be content. However, it is my experience that this is not so. EVEN on this board. Just do a search for common sense.

40

Every single one of these things is taught. We may not remember being taught it, but your premise is wrong. People don’t figure these things out unless they do them. That is learning, not “so painfully obviously only stupid people would do em.” Most people are told not to do these things as well. That is learning.

An amazing amount of people still do some of these things. I guess they are all retarded monkeys and the smart person is you. Right?