Philosophical Definitions of Commonsense
Here, I’d like to discuss the three main currents in philosophical thought regarding the definition of commonsense. Nunberg described very neatly their origin in the 18th century while mentioning representatives for each.
Critical Faculties
The first definition of commonsense refers to the capability of judgement that the average person already possesses. In other words, commonsense is the critical faculty that is given by birth to every human being. Consequently, this position assumes that this critical faculty exists universally. That means it is part of human judgment regardless of region and time period.
This position was especially defended by scepticists like Hume as part of his moralist philosophy. Critical faculties even more so, allow every individual to reach objective moral laws. Not only knowledge can be achieved in such a way but also a similar refinement of moral judgment.
Common Beliefs
Opposing the idea of defining commonsense solely as critical judgment, the Scottish school of commonsense (also called Scottish commonsense realism) emphasized the ability to perceive common ideas. More concretely, this means that commonsense also consists of universal beliefs complementing natural cognitions we received at birth. This forms an interdependent process with the critical faculties. Reid described it as follows:
”If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them — these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd.”
Collective Representations
The “collective representations” was a term coined by Durkheim. It refers to concepts and ideas shared by the whole linguistic community. Therefore, it represents those parts of the everyday language that arises from cultural evolution. Durkheim puts it in the following way:
”Collective representations are the result of an immense co-operation, which stretches not only into space but into time as well.”
These collective representations only exist through social interactions. The meaning of a term is realised through reference to the collective system. Collective system then also includes linguistic authorities.
For example, when looking at a painting, I can refer to it as a “work of art” as opposed to a “work of science” even though I might be a complete amateur with respect to both. But, we are able to talk about concepts of traditional art without knowing what “art” actually means, consists of, or even what methods are necessary to create a painting.
So, the meanings of “painting” and “art” are realised in the context of our collective sense. With the mentioned linguistic authorities, this collective sense also needs trust in having indeed art experts in our community. Also, we need to trust that these art experts understand the relevant references and distinctions.
In Nunberg’s words, these collective representations can simply be explained as “custom”, “received wisdom”, or “body of beliefs and values” of our linguistic community
Final Words
It is worth having a look at the paper of Nunberg. He starts by also describing the origin of the term “commonsense” as it is even older. It already appeared in the 14th century!
Besides discussing the three philosophical approaches of the critical faculties of judgment, the common beliefs, and the collective sense of a linguistic community, he continues with a modern evolution of this topic: formalising the semantics to model commonsense.
According to him, when talking about social variation in language, formal semantics fall short. In other blog posts, I will discuss this idea in the context of logicism to see where it works out and next, where it doesn’t connect to modern approaches to artificial intelligence.
Sources:
Geoffrey Nunberg. 1987. Position paper on commonsense and formal semantics. In Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing 3.
David Fate Norton. 1975. Hume’s common sense morality. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 5(4):523–543.
Terence Cuneo and Ren ́e van Woudenberg. 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Emile Durkheim. 1971. The elementary forms of the religious life. New York : George Allen Unwin: Free Press, London, UK.
