Common Sense

When I typed common sense into a popular search engine the results were nearly overwhelming. Many referred to a pamphlet by Thomas Paine. One pointed to a blog post by Donna Fish in Huffington Post and a column on Uncommon Sense. I didn't read them all, of course, preferring to use my own judgment.

What does it mean to use good sense?

sense -noun, (plural senses)

1. One of the methods for a living being to gather data about the world; sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste.
2. A general conscious awareness. a sense of security
3. Sound practical judgment, as in common sense
4. The meaning, reason, or value of something. You don’t make any sense.
5. A natural appreciation or ability

The old idea that it is common no longer holds true. People tend not to trust themselves to make the best choices, instead relying on "expert" advise and input from total strangers via all sorts of media.

Common sense seems to be on the decline. We are bombarded by expert advice and self help books. Everyone has an opinion on how you can parent better, or do everything better. There are books, courses you can take. But I think there is a danger in overly relying or in taking in the information without integrating how it works for you. I call that putting the information on top of your head and wearing it like a hat, instead of letting it seep through, and take what you can use, and throw away the rest. Donna Fish

So what is common sense?
I like the idea of a general conscious awareness. How about a filtering of information and a logical process of knowing what to keep and what to disregard?

Wikipedia contributes this to the discussion:

Aristotle and Ibn Sina
According to Aristotle and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), common sense provides the place in which the senses come together, and which processes sense-data and makes the results available to consciousness. Thus the modern psychological term, "perception", fulfills the same function. Individuals could have different common senses depending on how their personal and social experience has taught them to categorize sensation.

Locke and the Empiricists
John Locke proposed one meaning of "common sense" in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This interpretation builds on phenomenological experience. Each of the senses gives input, and then something integrates the sense-data into a single impression. This something Locke sees as the common sense — the sense of things in common between disparate impressions. It therefore allies with "fancy", and opposes "judgment", or the capacity to divide like things into separates. Each of the empiricist philosophers approaches the problem of the unification of sense-data in their own way, giving various names to the operation. However, the approaches agree that a sense in the human understanding exists that sees commonality and does the combining: "common sense".

I don't know. I've just been reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang. There didn't seem to be much common sense prevailing over the many transitions three generations of her family experienced. From war lords to puppet regimes, to Japanese occupation and on through the Cultural Revolution, the idea of what was appropriate changed as with the political winds of the times. Some of the atrocities people participated in seemed right in the conditions of the time.

It is easy to judge many situations from the comfort of an easy chair. I have that privilege when it comes to raising children. I think the reality of it is quite different than simple doses of common sense now and then. What if the sense is not common to all concerned?
To be continued!