No such thing as Common Sense!

Great Debates
41

Epi, the issue I have with these is that often, the situation is more complicated than a pat answer from a psych. textbook can give. For instance, what if one had heard about the famous “shock experiments” and had modified one’s behavior due to them?

More importantly, I answered because of what I had heard, but this did not indicate that I disagreed with any one answer. I just dislike overly-broad statements.

For instance, in my intro to psych. class, we had a lot of evidence given by the lecturer on most of the subjects (IIRC, it’s been awhile.) Then, we get to the part about “passive aggressive” behavior. The professor’s take? “We do this all the time”, followed by anecdotal evidence. Now, is Passive Aggresive all it’s cracked up to be? (The master speaks :))

42

Actually, Epimetheus, there seems to be no point in having this discussion. We’re working from two separate platforms here.

You’ve defined ‘common sense’ as being purely inborn knowledge. The rest of are working with the more colloquial definition that suggests common sense is good practical judgement based on prior knowledge of an issue and/or related issues. Unless we reach a common ground there, we’ll get nowhere. We’ll keep giving you examples like the “running with scissors” thing, and you’ll keep telling us we’re not debating.

Also, I’m not sure what tone of voice you intended your remarkls in, but online they really are coming off rather arrogantly.

43

Cecil is right only in part. Not all passive-aggressive behavior can be ascribed to a personality disorder. If you sit on your feelings so long that you erupt in anger suddenly, that is passive-aggressive behavior. It is common and considered emotionally unintelligent – both the passive and the aggressive parts. Assertive behavior is generally considered to be emotionally healthy.

You are misinformed. Babies are born with an instinctive fear of loud noises and falling. Newborns instictively curl their fingers around larger fingers placed in their palms. There may be others that are not learned behaviors.

Language itself is not a matter of logic. That doesn’t mean that it is worthless. The I before E rule is generally helpful if you know the complete rule/rhyme: “I before E except after C or when sounded as a as in neighbor and weigh.” That takes care of most ie and ei situations. There may be a few exceptions such as weird, but as a whole, the rule is valuable in spelling.

It seems to me that you have changed or ignored the connotation of the term “common sense.” You have decided to challenge the literal meaning of the individual words and forgotten their combined figurative usage.

When others come up with some perfectly good examples of the connotation of the term “common sense,” you have determined that the examples are “beggin the question” or merely a “survival instinct.” Survival instincts are certainly common senses.

aasna, in previewing this post, I see that you and I are in agreement.

44

No…They are freakin’ geniuses because they stick pencils in their nose or toss rocks off an overpass.

:rolleyes:
Have we become so tolerant as a society that we are willing to excuse every stupid act because “no one told me not to”?

Does someone have to tell you not to take a crap in the middle of a restaurant? Does someone have to specificly tell you not light your hair on fire? Why not? Children have to be taught things like “don’t run into traffic” because they are unable to comprehend consequences for their actions. Once a person is a little older, they are expected to use “common sense” to figure out what is and is not appropriate.

45

Actually yes, when I came into this world I would crap anywhere. I had to be potty trained. Once a person is older they are expected not to figure things out, but to remember what they were taught. Adults don’t do things that children do because they were TAUGHT not to when they were children. :rolleyes: indeed.

Zoe- That is babies have a reflexive fear of loud noises. Different creature. Instinct is “An inherited, species-specific stereotyped pattern of pre-programmed behavior that involves a relatively complex pattern of response; generally characterized by less flexibility in adaptability to changes in an environment but greater assurance that a complex pattern of behavior will occur as it is pre-programmed to occur, without variation.”

I wouldn’t say cringing and crying from a lound noise because it scares them in any way compares to an instinct. I would imagine that babies could be classically conditioned into not being scared of a loud noise. (such as a hammer stricking steel)

Actually it is almost everybody that likes to lump just about everything under common sense. If everything falls under common sense, then it really makes it a pointless subject.

I have already explained this, yet none of you have broke down my arguments.

46

Your argument is largely one of semantics:

Doesn’t matter what you call it if you are referring to the same thing.

That is completely untrue. You are absolutely expected to be able to figure certain things out as an adult. You are expected to have a certain ability to use reason, logic and experience to extrapolate a solution from a similar situation. Yes we are taught many things as a child.

Let me give you an example: Lets say you never grew up around firearms. You were never taught safe handling of a gun since they were never around. As a 20-30 something year old adult, so you know, without being told, that you shouldn’t point it at people or yourself?

47

If I was never brought up around firearms, and nobody told me what they were, how they worked or what was considered safe or not, then no, I wouldn’t know not to point it at anybody. Neither would you. You are TAUGHT not to point it at people.

All the arguments here rely upon this:

Common sense is what everybody knows, and since everybody knows it, it is common sense. Circular reasoning people, and it is making me dizzy.

There is no common sense because everything is taught to us, and the very process of HOW we think is taught. Very little in this world is figured out fresh each time.

48

Epimethus, your arrogance and insistence that anyone who disagrees with you is delusional are traits commonly associated with trolls. There are rules about that here.

More on topic, did you read my post? Your definition of common sense and your reasons for it not existing are not mutually incompatible.

Every adult knows things that are common sense, and common sense is composed of things every adult knows.

Children, however, are not adults. They are not expected to understand all common sense, and adults have an instictual urge to respect that. For example, a child who believes in the tooth fairy is cute and naive. An adult who does so is pitiable and ignorant.

Children learn common sense by observing adult behavior and mimicing accordingly. This learning of common sense rules is a process often known as “growing up.” Usually accompanied by a degree of formal training (such as beginning psychology classes), “growing up” is the process by which children become adults.

Hope this helps you understand that people can have views that aren’t yours without being “delusional,” and occasionally those views may even be correct. Cheers.

49

I’m still waiting for a definition of the term on which we can all agree so we can debate that. Otherwise we’re talking at cross purposes.

That said, I will make reference to Thomas Gilovich’s book How We Know What Isn’t So, and assert that there are aspects of human cognition that give rise to what might be called “reasoning artifacts.” In other words, the way we interpret and selectively process the available information about the world can cause us to arrive at perfectly reasonable conclusions that are just plain wrong.

The most common example, I think, is the old coin-flipping exercise. Flip a quarter ten times. The first nine times, it happens to come up heads. How does this affect the odds of the tenth flip?

If you know anything about probability, you know the preceding flips don’t affect subsequent flips in any way. The odds on any given flip will always be fifty-fifty (discounting hugely unlikely events like landing on edge, being snatched out of the air by a bluejay, quantum tunneling to the other side of Rigel, etc.).

And yet common sense will nag at you, trying to convince you that the last flip will somehow be more likely to come up tails. This is because the human brain, by default, groups events and seeks patterns. Most of the time, this is a very useful skill. (“Hmmm, everybody who walked into that cave was thrown back out after a minute or two covered in bloody claw marks. Guess I’m not going in there.”) Sometimes, though, this habitual approach is inappropriate, and causes us to draw improper conclusions, as in the coin-flipping exercise.

In learning critical analysis skills, one must learn the limitations of those cognitive defaults, and the ability to recognize where they aren’t sufficient to untangle the nature of reality. I refer again to Gilovich’s book as a good starting point.

That said, I think the OP overstates the issue considerably. The human mind is a powerful device, and one of the most amazing things about it is that it can be trained to recognize its own weaknesses. “Common sense,” if you want to call it that, can be very useful, up to a point. The trick is to neither put too much faith in it nor dismiss it entirely.

50

Whoa, hang on. Bad example.

If the coin is fair, then the odds on any given flip will always be fifty-fifty. However, if it’s not - if it’s a double-headed quarter, or if the coin is weighted somehow or otherwise rigged, or there’s something funny about the way you’re flipping it, or something - then it may not be fifty-fifty. In a thought experiment, of course, you can just specify at the outset that it’s a fair coin. But in real life, if you randomly find a quarter and you flip it several times and it consistently keeps coming up heads, it’s entirely logical to become increasingly suspcious that it may not be a fair coin - and therefore to suspect more and more that the coin’s going to come up heads the next time. It’s not a matter of the preceding flips changing the odds for the current ones, but the preceding flips can provide evidence that the odds weren’t what you thought they were in the first place. So I don’t think common sense is entirely out to lunch on this one.

I don’t disagree with you about “reasoning artifacts,” but I always think the coin-flipping exercise is a bad example.

51

[quote]
Epimetheus: I wouldn’t say cringing and crying from a lound noise because it scares them in any way compares to an instinct. I would imagine that babies could be classically conditioned into not being scared of a loud noise.

I’m not at all surprised that you wouldn’t say that. As I remember, that’s not discussed until you take classes in child psychology and graduate courses in developmental psychology. It is not a learned behavior. They are born with it..

52

You are FAMILIAR with the concept of a firearm, right? You maybe saw one on TV being used to inflcit harm on people or read stories in the paper about people who have been killed or injured by firearms? You recognize the basic shape of a gun, right? “Common Sense” dictates that having lived in a society where images of firearms and weaponry are commonplace, one should recognize a firearm when one sees it and should treat it as a dangerous object. Common Sense does not mean you should be able to field strip an M16 or fire a .44 with a policemans markmanship. Common sense is just the stuff you should know by simply living in society. It is defined as “sound and prudent” judgment (by Webster). A person who picks up a gun and brandishes it about like a toy is not demonstrating common sense. They are demonstrating thickness or a level of ignorance that is truly staggering.

Lets choose another example. Would you say skiiing down an expert ski trail with little or no experience displays common sense? Or does someone have to be told “don’t attempt dangerous activies outside your ability”?

Maybe I’m all wrong though. Maybe our society has grown so PC - valuing feelings over facts, favoring consensus over truth - that we are unwilling to tell anyone “hey stupid!! Don’t you have enough common sense to come in out of the rain?!”

53

Yeah, your right, I am a troll with 1151 posts. :rolleyes:

There are also rules about accusing people of being trolls. Think about that.

No, this has nothing to do with PC. This has to do with attributing values on the term common sense. Why would coming in out of the rain be commn sensical? Perhaps that person likes rain and likes getting wet. Perhaps they are taking the oportunity to clean themselves.

If I have heard that a person died by accidentally shooting themselves, and did so by looking in the barrel and pulling the trigger then I have learned from that experience by observation. This tells me nothing about common sense.
If you learn something, then how can it be an inference?

Which brings us to the definiton of common sense Cervaise- I think one has already been suggested. An inference made upon common knowledge. The best definition I have seen yet. Anybody propose a better one?

54

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Zoe *
**

That is true, they are born with it and don’t have to be taught it. It is a reflex.

Read my above defintion of an instinct. “complex behavior” How is the reflexive action of a baby getting scared at a loud noise anywhere near the same thing as the instinctual ability of a robin to make its nest, whether it has ever seen one or not?

55

(being a reflex, I would agree they couldn’t be conditioned out of it)

56

Yeah, I have obviously bandied about delusional so much in this thread. :rolleyes: Do you actually even read this stuff? Here is the context of which I mentioned delusional ONCE.

This was in a specific example of people rejecting certain things in face of all evidence. I know, things in an abstract context may confuse you, I appologize. The post was directed at Ludovic, nobody else. If somebody discards all the evidence of evolution no matter what evidence they are shown, they are delusional, by the very definition. (and I have said as such in my past) This was what I was refering to. Nice try demonizing me though.

Oh, if you don’t like arrogance, WTF are you doing here?

57

Sorry, missed this. I wouldn’t want you to think I was ignoring your point.

If common sense is just “sound and prudent” judgment, then it would be used in such a context. It isn’t always so. In fact, it would just be easier to say “That guy has good judgement”, than “that guy has lots of common sense.” There is a lot less of a chance that it will be misinterpreted.

The whole point, and one that everybody seems to be avoiding, is that the common usage of common sense is too vauge to be considered useful in any term. Keep throwing defintions at me, each of em are different, and each one just gives me more evidence that each person has his/her own definition and qualifiers for possessing common sense, and thus just makes it even more useless.

I posess a good deal of sound judgement. I drive well, I plan my finances well, never been injured, other than minor cuts and bruises, have no problems finding my keys, stay out of the rain, don’t point guns at myself or others, don’t put things in my ears, etc. By most of your definitons, I posess common sense right? However, I am constantly told I don’t have common sense by a large number of people. At work, because I pushed a box too hard. I have no common sense. Not, I displayed an error of judgement that time. Nope, all around I lack common sense.
I lack a set of knowledge, and suddenly I lack common sense. At my new job- I don’t do things the way my boss likes it- I lack common sense. Not that I don’t do things the same way because I was brought up differently. Nope, I lack all around common sense.

Of course I probably lack all around common sense in some of your eyes too. I mean, it is just common sense that there is such a thing as common sense.

58

someone I know tells me that I shouldn’t have a shower just after I have eaten. Why? because they heard that its dangerous, and they believed it. The fact is that a person shouldn’t swim in water after a large meal since oxygen will be most needed in the abdomen and the muscles will thereby tire easier putting the swimmer at risk of drowning.

I don’t know if this qualifies as common sense, or lack of, but it has more to do with correlating the wrong elements and not thinking those through.

but, I agree- people think that common sense exists outside of the mind, and that everyone shares a similar grasp of reality, which is true to a certain extent, but as a rule, common sense has little bearing on my life, which is dictated by knowledge and experience.

59

http://66.165.133.65/spoons/oldwives/hourwait.htm

60

Here here for knowledge and experience. :smiley: