Commonsense Political Philosophy 3 (original) (raw)
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Thomas Reid and Notion of Common Sense
The notion of common sense has been widely used in everyday speech and had its place within numerous philosophical doctrines in the past. One of the most comprehensive analysis of common sense was done by Thomas Reid. The problem is that Reid’s characteristics of common sense very often differ and that is why they are in most cases confusing. The aim of this paper is to organize Reid’s definitions of common sense and to show where we can find inconsistencies. Emphasis will be placed on distinction between common sense and principles of common sense and if Reid’s doctrine of common sense serves its purpose – to be an argument against the scepticism of David Hume.
The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, 2014
COMPARATIVEL Y recent inquiry among present-day thinkers/ relative to Neo-Scholastic Philosophy, netted many replies whose comments and criticism are of interest to students of Scholastic Philosophy. In criticism of Scholastic Philosophy it is said that "the Scholastic method seems too rationalistic, aprioristic, deductive, to an age whose temper is empirical, experimental, hypothetical. Its great defect is thought to be its independence of experience. It appears as if Scholastics were trying 'to spin truth out of their own interior.' " 2 Were it not for a contrary opinion, this objection would be formidable, for no philosophy to be complete can afford the neglect of knowledge gained from singular facts. This contrary opinion states that "idealists dislike the strong realistic bias of Scholastic thought." 8 Here we have two opposing systems, two extremes, each one of which accuses Scholastic Philosophy of the tendencies characteristic of its rival. And yet Scholastic Philosophy is the Philosophy termed by one of its adherents the common sense philosophy!
The Priority of Common Sense in Philosophy
The aim of this paper is to explore the issue of priority of common sense in philosophy. It is divided into four parts. The first part discusses examples of common-sense beliefs and indicates their specific nature, especially compared to mere common beliefs. The second part explores in more detail the supposed positive epistemic status of common-sense beliefs and the role they play in delimiting plausible philosophical theories. The third part overviews a few attempts to formulate a legitimate argument, or justification, in favor of the positive epistemic status of common-sense beliefs, none of which, however, appears to be clearly successful. Finally, the fourth part addresses the central issue of priority of common sense. Two different types of priority are introduced, epistemic and methodological, and it is argued that only the latter applies to common-sense beliefs. If so, then common-sense beliefs are not to be conceived as cases of knowledge but as the clearest cases of what we believe is knowledge.
Who is Exaggerating? The Mystery of Common Sense
2002
The most difficult thing in the world to learn to see is the obvious, the familiar, the universally taken for granted." 1 (John Dewey) Throughout the history of Pragmatism, the notion of common sense has been recurrent, but rather than a central feature it seems to be an underlying, over the time changing, and indefinite motif, which nevertheless has unceasingly accompanied pragmatist thought. common sense has taken on a range of meanings, varying from vague beliefs, everyday-knowledge, common experience, sound understanding, good judgment, anachronistic truth, hidden intuition, custom and routine on the one hand to innate knowledge and universal truth on the other hand -just to name a few. To add some confusion, common sense has sometimes been located in the past, sometimes in the present or even in the future. It focuses either on epistemological, moral, or aesthetic questions. So, in a way, common sense touches almost all the philosophical fields and concerns pragmatism has ever embraced. What is the use of dealing with a notion at once so obvious and yet so vague? The insistence on a critical reconsideration of common sense, which I pursue in this essay, has to do with the general trajectory of pragmatism. While it contains many different and competing positions (some prefer to call pragmatism a method applicable to any kind of subject) all the varying pragmatist accounts have something in common: a strong resistance against philosophical exaggeration. Of course, the criterion applied to detect those philosophical exaggerations is a pragmatist one, namely, the validity of philosophy for practice, even if in a remote way.