Nancy insists that common sense isn't my greatest gift.   And of course she’s right.  A recent example is when I washed the kids’ clothes using bleach instead of detergent.    In the case of the bleach problem, my mind was elsewhere while I was going through the motions of laundry.  An example of the latter case is when I saw someone who was signaling a left turn bearing down on me at an intersection and I proceeded through the intersection—me intersecting with him.  In the first cast, I exaggerated my rationality.  In the second case, I exaggerated their rationality.  Both cases violated common sense.  

        The legal definition of common sense is:  “When a person possesses those perceptions, associations and judgments, in relation to persons and things, which agree with those of the generality of mankind, he is said to possess common sense. On the contrary, when a particular individual differs from the generality of persons in these respects, he is said not to have common sense, or not to be in his senses.”

         Common sense is sense, first of all.  It is the empirical and pragmatic proposition that what the eyes can see, the wits can solve.  And it is universal, not requiring special insight or effort.  Thus, solving calculus equations or trading commodities isn’t common sense whereas counting your change or clipping coupons is.  It can be intuitional, I believe, so long as that intuition is shared by the general population and is rooted in shared memories.    “Avoid foreign entanglements” is one such intuition.  I don’t think common sense is homespun and sometimes erroneous advice (“put butter on burns”) or superstition (“avoid black cats”).  Rather, it is peasant cunning derived from real-life experiences.   

           Common sense is a valid but limited test for a belief.  It must meet a reality check in that it is reasonably in agreement with most people and that it has user value.  Beliefs that cannot meet this test must meet higher non-utilitarian tests to demonstrate validity.  Common sense is often an impediment to thought and truth.  It is not entirely irrational to use our inborn facility of common sense.  But controlled observation and measurement must supplement primitive data and natural experience.   The reliance on common sense by itself can lead us to enormous errors.  Common sense unchecked by logical criticism is the mother of folklore—that the earth is fixed and the sun moves, that spirit is breath and wind is alive, that ships would fall off the edge of the earth, that kings and slaves were the natural order of things, and that women should remain in subjugation.  Such misuse of the notion of common sense is fallacious, being a form of the argumentum ad populum  (appeal to popularity) fallacy.   

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