An Inquiry on the Principles of Common Sense
Once upon a time there was a philosopher trying to solve a difficult epistemiology problem: how does a sheep know that there is a wolf standing in front of it? There is sensory input, but how does this input becomes a wolf? The Philosopher believed that animals, unlike us, do not have reason, so this integration cannot be the function of their rational mind. So he suggested that in addition to the external senses, animals have irrational sense that they use for inner "sensation" of objects synthesized from what is provided by these external senses. He called this inner sense "common sense" (koine aisthesis). As part of human nature is animal nature, Aristotle suggested that we also have common sense. What makes it "common" is not that it is shared, but the fact that this sense coordinates the external senses revealing what is common between them (this image + this smell + this sound = a wolf). Common sense is the sense of complex perceptual operations in animals.
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/philosophy/9780199277377/toc.html
How did this "common sense" become the "common sense" that we colloqually use?
The first step of this transformation occurred in Thomas Reid, an obscure rationalist philosopher from Aberdeen and the author of "An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense" (1764). His idea was extending the animalistic common sense to include fundamentals of rational thought. The first step of the transformation was from irrational to pre-rational:
...Anyone who undertakes a philosophical argument must implicitly presuppose certain beliefs like, "I am talking to a real person," and "There is an external world whose laws do not change," among many other positive, substantive claims. For Reid, the belief in the truth of these principles is not rational; rather, reason itself demands these principles as prerequisites, as does the innate "constitution" of the human mind. “For, before men can reason together, they must agree in first principles; and it is impossible to reason with a man who has no principles in common with you.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Reid#Thomas_Reid.27s_Theory_of_Common_Sense
(PS: the men who are not worth reasoning with include Kant, Hume, and Locke)
...Common sense, for Reid, are those tenets that we cannot help but believe, given that we are constructed the way we are constructed. This is not to say that nobody fails to believe the dictates of common sense. People often have beliefs that are in manifest conflict with common sense, but to have such beliefs is to be in deep conflict with one's nature as a human being. What this suggests is that Reid takes on a burden of showing, each time that he claims some particular view to be a dictate of common sense, that belief in it is dictated by human nature. In addition, much of Reid's philosophy proceeds from the assumption that the dictates of common sense could not possibly conflict with one another. Human nature could not be such as to lead us to contradictory beliefs. The tenets that make up common sense are consistent with one another, and non-optional to those who have beliefs as a human being does.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reid/
Reid's philosophy did not find following in Europe, but it deeply impressed American gentry that discovered that (i) their "vulgar notions" are but the expressions of the mysterious common sense and (ii) those disagreeing with these notions are suffering the case of detachment from their own nature. They did not discover these truths on their own: a Presbyterian minister and the devout follower of Reid, Rev. Witherspoon, the founder of Princeton University imported the doctrine from Scotland when he crossed the pond. The beauty of this "common sense" was that instead of explaining things by rational causes it was sufficient to "apply the test of common sense" supplemented with a bit of demagoguery. Soon it was discovered that any notion contradicting the opinions of Rev. Witherspoon were deficient in common sense. As Princeton was Presbyterian answer to Puritan Harvard, a fair amount of the Founding Fathers were educated at this citadel of common sense learning and learned the ingenious rhetorics of common sense. Sadly, Rev. Witherspoon failed to understand Reid's philosophy properly, so the colonial "common sense" changed its meaning once again. The first step was from irrational to pre-rational; the second step was from pre-rational to rational:
...“Common sense,” in Witherspoon’s case, is the ordinary good sense of ordinary people
and the funded good sense of educated and engaged men across the centuries - men well acquainted with the great meditations on human nature and the perennial human problems, not detached from the experiences of ordinary people or lost in abstract speculations, but participating on all levels in the world of which they are part and drawing their principles and constructing their theories from the concrete facts of human existence as they present themselves “on the ground.”
http://shawnslayton.com/open/books/Book%20common%20sense%20philosophy%20pragmatism.pdf
In other words, "common sense" was the sense of students of divinity educated at Princeton. However, even that was not good enough for mass consumption. Enters a political pamphleteer and the Father of American Revolution, Thomas Paine, with his bestseller "Common Sense" (1776), a tedious and stupid agitprop piece aptly characterized by his Fellow Founding Father (John Adams) as a "crapulous mass." It was this book that introduced "common sense" to the revolutionary masses, albeit without explaining what it means. The probable reason for this omission is that half-educated author was as uncertain of this meaning as his feverish readers.
Originally, the pamphlet was called "Plain Truth". Paine was a disgruntled English officer of excise who was repeatedly denied a pay raise on the account of ineptitude, fired for negligence, and barely avoided debtor's prison. Following the beaten path, Paine separated from his wife and sailed to the colonies, where he immediately emerged as the intellectual giant. The newly minted thinker was not aware of Witherspoon's common sense; the title was suggested to him by a physician friend, a devout Presbyterian and Princeton-educated literatus named Benjamin Rush. Dr. Reid (who also became one of the Founding Fathers) not only believed in Witherspoon's "common sense," he, actually, claimed that sense of morality (being part of this common sense) is influenced by diet, climate, and the use of tobacco and alcohol. Common sense was a medical condition, and this belief was nothing but the expression of the common sense itself. Dr. Reid was full of such commonsensical notions.
For example, the good natured doctor believed that the black skin and the ugly stature of "the Negroes" are due to a disease, an inheritable leprosy ("negroidism") that was contracted by the distant ancestors. He also believed that the disfigured "Negroes" can be cured with a proper medical treatment, and he spent many years looking for this treatment, but, alas, he failed to discover it. G-d knows how many people he killed in these experiments. He was a curious case of slave owning abolitionist, a great advocate of mercury as a laxative and bloodletting as an efficient cure of yellow fever. Actually, he was publicly accused of killing more patients in Philadelphia than the epidemic itself. Dr. Reid used his common sense far and wide.
It was this man of science who conflated revolutionary "plain truth", Witherspoon's common sense, "negroidism", and bloodletting into the common sense as we presently understand it:
...the ability to make intelligent decisions especially in everyday matters.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/common+sense?show=0&t=1306441441
The evolution of common sense from the subtle concept of Aristotlean psychology to the term of abuse occurred in less than a decade and it involved the illustrious collection of third-rate Presbyterian intellectuals, one dumber than another, playing the game of Chinese Whispers - all for our enjoyment of blaming each other for lacking the commodity that was originally thought to be present in earthworms and clams.
Long live common sense!
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/philosophy/9780199277377/toc.html
How did this "common sense" become the "common sense" that we colloqually use?
The first step of this transformation occurred in Thomas Reid, an obscure rationalist philosopher from Aberdeen and the author of "An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense" (1764). His idea was extending the animalistic common sense to include fundamentals of rational thought. The first step of the transformation was from irrational to pre-rational:
...Anyone who undertakes a philosophical argument must implicitly presuppose certain beliefs like, "I am talking to a real person," and "There is an external world whose laws do not change," among many other positive, substantive claims. For Reid, the belief in the truth of these principles is not rational; rather, reason itself demands these principles as prerequisites, as does the innate "constitution" of the human mind. “For, before men can reason together, they must agree in first principles; and it is impossible to reason with a man who has no principles in common with you.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Reid#Thomas_Reid.27s_Theory_of_Common_Sense
(PS: the men who are not worth reasoning with include Kant, Hume, and Locke)
...Common sense, for Reid, are those tenets that we cannot help but believe, given that we are constructed the way we are constructed. This is not to say that nobody fails to believe the dictates of common sense. People often have beliefs that are in manifest conflict with common sense, but to have such beliefs is to be in deep conflict with one's nature as a human being. What this suggests is that Reid takes on a burden of showing, each time that he claims some particular view to be a dictate of common sense, that belief in it is dictated by human nature. In addition, much of Reid's philosophy proceeds from the assumption that the dictates of common sense could not possibly conflict with one another. Human nature could not be such as to lead us to contradictory beliefs. The tenets that make up common sense are consistent with one another, and non-optional to those who have beliefs as a human being does.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reid/
Reid's philosophy did not find following in Europe, but it deeply impressed American gentry that discovered that (i) their "vulgar notions" are but the expressions of the mysterious common sense and (ii) those disagreeing with these notions are suffering the case of detachment from their own nature. They did not discover these truths on their own: a Presbyterian minister and the devout follower of Reid, Rev. Witherspoon, the founder of Princeton University imported the doctrine from Scotland when he crossed the pond. The beauty of this "common sense" was that instead of explaining things by rational causes it was sufficient to "apply the test of common sense" supplemented with a bit of demagoguery. Soon it was discovered that any notion contradicting the opinions of Rev. Witherspoon were deficient in common sense. As Princeton was Presbyterian answer to Puritan Harvard, a fair amount of the Founding Fathers were educated at this citadel of common sense learning and learned the ingenious rhetorics of common sense. Sadly, Rev. Witherspoon failed to understand Reid's philosophy properly, so the colonial "common sense" changed its meaning once again. The first step was from irrational to pre-rational; the second step was from pre-rational to rational:
...“Common sense,” in Witherspoon’s case, is the ordinary good sense of ordinary people
and the funded good sense of educated and engaged men across the centuries - men well acquainted with the great meditations on human nature and the perennial human problems, not detached from the experiences of ordinary people or lost in abstract speculations, but participating on all levels in the world of which they are part and drawing their principles and constructing their theories from the concrete facts of human existence as they present themselves “on the ground.”
http://shawnslayton.com/open/books/Book%20common%20sense%20philosophy%20pragmatism.pdf
In other words, "common sense" was the sense of students of divinity educated at Princeton. However, even that was not good enough for mass consumption. Enters a political pamphleteer and the Father of American Revolution, Thomas Paine, with his bestseller "Common Sense" (1776), a tedious and stupid agitprop piece aptly characterized by his Fellow Founding Father (John Adams) as a "crapulous mass." It was this book that introduced "common sense" to the revolutionary masses, albeit without explaining what it means. The probable reason for this omission is that half-educated author was as uncertain of this meaning as his feverish readers.
Originally, the pamphlet was called "Plain Truth". Paine was a disgruntled English officer of excise who was repeatedly denied a pay raise on the account of ineptitude, fired for negligence, and barely avoided debtor's prison. Following the beaten path, Paine separated from his wife and sailed to the colonies, where he immediately emerged as the intellectual giant. The newly minted thinker was not aware of Witherspoon's common sense; the title was suggested to him by a physician friend, a devout Presbyterian and Princeton-educated literatus named Benjamin Rush. Dr. Reid (who also became one of the Founding Fathers) not only believed in Witherspoon's "common sense," he, actually, claimed that sense of morality (being part of this common sense) is influenced by diet, climate, and the use of tobacco and alcohol. Common sense was a medical condition, and this belief was nothing but the expression of the common sense itself. Dr. Reid was full of such commonsensical notions.
For example, the good natured doctor believed that the black skin and the ugly stature of "the Negroes" are due to a disease, an inheritable leprosy ("negroidism") that was contracted by the distant ancestors. He also believed that the disfigured "Negroes" can be cured with a proper medical treatment, and he spent many years looking for this treatment, but, alas, he failed to discover it. G-d knows how many people he killed in these experiments. He was a curious case of slave owning abolitionist, a great advocate of mercury as a laxative and bloodletting as an efficient cure of yellow fever. Actually, he was publicly accused of killing more patients in Philadelphia than the epidemic itself. Dr. Reid used his common sense far and wide.
It was this man of science who conflated revolutionary "plain truth", Witherspoon's common sense, "negroidism", and bloodletting into the common sense as we presently understand it:
...the ability to make intelligent decisions especially in everyday matters.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/common+sense?show=0&t=1306441441
The evolution of common sense from the subtle concept of Aristotlean psychology to the term of abuse occurred in less than a decade and it involved the illustrious collection of third-rate Presbyterian intellectuals, one dumber than another, playing the game of Chinese Whispers - all for our enjoyment of blaming each other for lacking the commodity that was originally thought to be present in earthworms and clams.
Long live common sense!