In Search of Common Sense

An exploration of its origins and meaning

April 2024

By January 1776, the fight between Britain and the 13 young American colonies had shifted from a modest request for specific colonial rights to a full-throttled demand for unconditional independence. This seismic shift from ‘loyalty with rights’ to declared rebellion was perfectly articulated in Thomas Paine's pamphlet titled "Common Sense".

Paine's 47-page pamphlet, published in January 1776, consolidated many strands of ideas that had been fermenting and forming in a social vat for 30 years. A native of Britain, Pain combined these ideas with his experiences and constructed a story whose core theme was that independence from the parent (England) was more desirable than continued dependence on it.?

Paine presented his case using ‘simple facts, plain arguments’ and language that appealed to people’s ‘common sense’ of the world. He suppressed any use of philosophical abstractions to reach the widest audience and ensure the message was readily grasped. It was a direct appeal to one’s sense of the world based on day-to-day experiences.

Five hundred thousand copies of the pamphlet were printed and distributed in a nation of 2.5 million people. When the pamphlet hit the streets, it was consumed, debated, and digested by people across all spheres of life.? His arguments resonated with a population, many of whom were first or second-generation migrants to America. All the reasons he offered were readily intuited, for most had first-hand experience of the underlying ‘truths’ he claimed.? Truths that he presented as being self-evident:?

• Monarchs become rulers through hereditary rather than meritocratic or democratic processes.?
• An entrenched ruling class with no controls could be tempted to exploit the many that live outside that class.?
• A world that has the potential to oppress needs at least one safe haven where the oppressed can seek refuge.?

The ideas and the deep feelings circulating throughout the 13 colonies were eventually condensed into a singular document, ‘The Declaration of Independence’. This short document captured one of the great insights about human life, and the form and expression of this singular idea represents one of the finest pieces of writing in history.

Put plainly. If you accept the principle that ‘all people are created equal’, then what follows is that from birth, ‘certain unalienable rights’ are endowed to all, and the way to ‘secure these rights’ is through the institute of Government that ‘derives its powers from the consent of the governed.’ These ideas laid bare were simple, direct, concise, and ‘self-evident’ to the senses.?

The pen and sword often play a defining role in shaping the course of history. The pen usually leads the charge, followed by the destructive path of the sword. In 1776, Paine wielded his pen like a man on fire, constructing his call to action by not only appealing to people’s “Common Sense” but naming his pamphlet accordingly.?

Why did Paine name his book “Common Sense”?. After all, the concept is ill-defined. Ask 50 people what it is, and you get 50 different answers.

The Question to Explore

So what is common sense? Are we born with it? Do we acquire it over time? Can we learn it??

Is it like our biological senses, or is it different? Is it alive or in decay? Is it like practical wisdom born out of our experiences??

Why do some people appear to have more "Common Sense" than others? Do people with? "common Sense" fare better in life than those without it??

Do you need “Common sense” to be able to fly a plane, sail around the world, or write a novel?

Is the world drifting further away from using "Common Sense" as its guide? And is "Common Sense" the right name for this thing we have talked about for 3000 years?.

What is a Sense

To understand Common Sense, we could start by understanding what ‘sense’ is.?

Living creatures experience their immediate external and internal environment through sense organs. The diversity of sense organs, the complexity of their construction, and the type and range of stimuli they can detect are breathtaking. Our ability to detect stimuli occurs way before percepts are formed, concepts are created, words are applied, meaning is assigned, and response behavior is shaped and determined.?

These sense organs operate within a sensory system whose sole purpose is to detect and discriminate stimuli within a stimulus band, convert these to electrical signals, process them locally, transmit them to the central nervous system, and trigger a perception that you may or may not care about or become aware of. Sensory systems operate within a band of thresholds. Outside these threshold limits, the world is silent to us, and our experience of it is denied.???

A bird flying through a dense forest at 25 mph receives and uses a rapid flow of sensory input to navigate through the obstacle course. 99.99% of the time, they navigate the course without missing a beat. A Formula 1 driver averages 200 mph around a circuitous track with 20 other drivers going at roughly the same speed, often within a foot of each other. Both feats are marvels of the sensory and cognitive machinery.

Detecting the world within our sensory range is the first step towards cognition. If common sense is dependent on but not created by our sensory apparatus, then it must be a product of perception and cognitive processes.?

Our perception of a thing is dependent on it being perceived by our sensory organs. If a thing is not detected, then we cannot develop a perception of it. If we don't detect it, then we can't name it, understand it, and develop concepts about it. If we don't detect it, then the apparatus and processes of cognition can't be applied.?

Abstract Concepts?

Concepts like gravity, velocity, and acceleration are concepts born from our experience with them through the senses. How about concepts like freedom, liberty, and rights? Are these just abstract concepts, or are they also concepts derived from experience??

And what is the source of that experience? Our sensory organs?

If you have never been in or on an object that accelerates, then you have never experienced acceleration through your senses. Therefore, you can only understand it in the ‘abstract.’

If you have always been subjected to the will of others, then you have never experienced life under your own free will. Therefore, you can only understand the concept of freedom in the ‘abstract.’

In this context, we use the term ‘abstract’ to mean concepts created in the absence of ‘experience through sensory input.’

What do we mean by ‘Common.’

So far, we have tried to develop an intuition about the term ‘sense. But what do we mean by ‘common’?

For something to be considered ‘common,’ it needs to be shared by two or more persons. The more it is shared, the more it is deemed to be common. Common also refers to something that is shared within a community. The more widespread the sharing, the more common it is. Common also means that a thing occurs frequently, and its frequency has been experienced. Common could also mean a perception that arises from the use of two or more senses.

So, is common sense a collection of beliefs based on everyday experiences and observations that are shared by members of a social group? Is a common sense belief useless if it can’t be put into practice? Is it enough to just share a common sense idea, or does it need to be accepted and practiced by the group?

Putting something into practice is invaluable. It is the only way to get feedback and evidence to support a belief or discard it.?

Let’s agree for the moment that our common-sense knowledge of the world is shaped by our personal and collective experiences, and our understanding of the world is developed and shaped by those same experiences.

Examples of Common Sense?

Let’s examine some examples of what is considered common sense and inspect them closely.

It is common sense to look both ways before crossing the street.

From observation and experience, we know that cars can travel the road from both directions, so if you don't want to be hit, it makes sense to look both ways before you cross.

It is common sense to be polite to others.

We observe that if we are polite to others, they are more likely to be polite to us, and this is likely to create a pleasant environment. So, it makes sense to be polite.

It is common sense to save money for the future.

We know or have observed from experience that we often need money to meet emergencies or future planned events. So it makes sense to save money for this.

It is common sense to eat healthy foods and exercise regularly.

We know from observation, experience, and anecdotal evidence that eating healthy foods and exercising regularly helps maintain a healthy weight, reduce the risk of chronic diseases, and improve overall health and well-being. So, it makes sense to adopt such a practice.

It is common sense to respect the property of others.

We know we don’t want others to disrespect, steal, vandalize, or trespass our property. So, it makes sense to respect other people’s property so that they will respect ours.

If you go out in the rain without an umbrella, then there will be consequences.

If you want the worm, you have to get it before the other birds do.

If you spend more than you can earn, then there will be consequences.

In all cases, observation, experience, and evidence play a role in establishing the understanding that our actions, guided by a common-sense belief, will bring about a desired outcome.

The practice of common sense is not uniformly distributed, and no one person knows about or practices all that is known.

In addition, the intent behind a common-sense belief may be expressed in various ways within and across a culture.?

Acquiring Common Sense?

So, do we learn and acquire common sense from our parents, grandparents, friends, play, and teachers? Or is experience our primary source of learning?

For common sense to emerge, it seems that the following conditions need to be met.

1. We have to experience it through our senses
2. Multiple people have to experience it
3. The experience, together with the validation and confirmation, is shared and accepted by many as being self-evident.

Common Sense, Culture, and Tradition

If common sense is a function of experience and what we experience is based on when we were born and where we live, then a lot of our common sense will be based on the culture we are born into.

For example.

By the 16th century, the available sensory evidence gave birth to the common belief that the earth was flat. This belief fed common sense ideas such as “if you sail too far, you will eventually fall off the edge of the earth.” So don’t sail too far!

Before the 16th century, the common belief was that the earth was stationary and everything revolved around it. This belief fed the common sense notion that “If you throw something up in the air, it will fall directly back to you because the earth is stationary.”

In both cases, the available evidence and sensory experience supported and reinforced those common-sense beliefs.

If you were born in Britain between the 11th and 18th centuries, you would have been born into one of the ‘socially defined classes.’ This accident of birth would have provided some common sense notions that made sense for the class a person was born into.

While common sense and cultural traditions differ, we often see them overlap. For example, in many countries, removing one’s shoes when entering someone’s home is a tradition and part of the culture. If you investigate the origins, you uncover a practical reason behind the tradition. Shoes bring in dirt, mud, and other unpleasant objects from the outdoors. So taking off your shoes helps to keep the home clean and tidy. If you have a culture where people sit and eat on the floor, then this practice would make ‘sense.’ Shoes are also noisy in the home, so removing them reduces the noise.

That said, some traditions make ‘sense’ to some but not to others and are accepted as part of a tradition that has no practical value or utility. For example, rolling a large wheel of cheese down a steep hill provides great spectacle and fun but has zero practical value or utility, yet it is part of the tradition of some communities.

When Common Sense is Defied?

In the 15th century, evidence that the earth was round was scant. The available evidence was scattered across centuries and cultures, and only a handful of people considered the idea plausible. At that time, the American land mass was unknown, and all European nations conducted extensive trading with a wide range of countries to their east. These countries were highly connected through the complex Indian Ocean trading network. Anyone who accepted the unpopular notion that the earth was round would arrive at the conclusion that you could get to India by going west from Europe rather than east.

By defying a prevailing belief, a new set of common sense ideas emerged based on the sensory evidence that the earth was not flat and that you could circumnavigate it because it was round.

Universal Common Sense

So far, the definition emerging from this exploration is that common sense is founded on socially accepted cognitions, intuitions, and understandings that arise from everyday experiences and interactions with the world.

While some common-sense notions are a product of the culture and times we are born into, many are universal and true across cultures and history.

These universal notions belong to the collective wisdom of communities based on what appears to be self-evident truths that require no proof, sophisticated reasoning, arguments, or a large collection of facts.

Before the inventions of the magnetic compass, chronometers, radio navigation, and GPS, sailors universally used the North Star for navigation. The observation that the North Star maintained a fixed position in the northern sky allowed mariners to determine their latitude and navigate the seas. To these mariners, using the North Star was using common sense, and it remains a practical backup when electronic navigation fails.

Yet, we have seen how common sense notions, reasoning, and practices can erroneously guide behavior in the absence of evidence.

What Happens When Common Sense Is Lost

We are a collective and conduct our lives as a collective. We share ideas and concepts about the world as we experience it. We have the machinery to “make sense” of the world, and for day-to-day living, we need to do this with a minimum of fuss and effort.

Conducting first-principles thinking is great, but not for everyday acts or decisions. Common-sense beliefs wrapped up as “self-evident truths” rescue us by providing guardrails for actions and decisions. If we lost this sense, then navigating daily life would handicap us and be a burden.??

Common Sense vs "Practical Wisdom"?

Is common sense nothing more than the fleeting wisdom of crowds that holds true up to a point but collapses under scrutiny? Does it differ from practical wisdom?

Both have their origins based on experience, observations, and repeated interactions with the environment.

Both can be considered pre-scientific knowledge of the causal properties, patterns, and regularities in the world.??

Both provide guidance that helps us navigate and understand the world.?

Both can be wrong under the burden of proof.??

Yet they are different.

One guides us through common everyday aspects of life. While the other helps when judgments and decisions are needed in more complex and uncertain situations.?

One is simple, straightforward, and easy to follow. The other is flexible and nuanced, whose meaning could change with the context.?

Common sense tells us not to drink and drive. Practical wisdom advises against the sustained use of alcohol in one's life and instructs us on its impact on others.?

Wisdom, practical or otherwise, goes further than common sense and gets to the heart of a deep understanding of the world, people, and the events of life.

Common Sense and its Limitations

Those who apply common sense in their daily lives will attest to its utility. But they will also attest to its limitations and shortcomings.

If some common-sense notions are rooted in false premises, unverified beliefs, and biases, then their application will lead to flawed judgments, conclusions, and outcomes.

Can Common Sense be Taught?

Common sense is not dependent on having a formal education. One can argue that education based solely on books rather than experience will blunt our capacity to develop and sharpen our common sense.

Yet the observation is that books plus experiential knowledge offer us a better and deeper understanding of the world. While common sense is based on a gross understanding of something, the deeper we understand its origins, the more we can rely on it as a guide.

That said, the goal is not to blindly accept common-sense beliefs that have been handed down but to challenge, refine, or refute them.

Living in a world of misconceptions and biases can be unhealthy.

Common Sense and Experimentation?

Many of our common-sense notions are based on repeated observations of patterns or causal relationships we sense in the world. Most predate the science and understanding of what we observe. Their continued practice is mainly dependent on their utility, value, and effectiveness. However, many things are practiced even when their utility, value, and effectiveness have gone past their ‘use by date’.

Crop rotation, a solution designed to improve soil fertility and reduce pests and diseases, is a good example of a practice born out of observation and experimentation that goes back many, many years. Medieval farmers would have put this practice down to common sense. Over the years, these notions evolved slowly through endless trial and error. Eventually, a more systematic and rigorous study of the concepts would begin the long march toward greater insights and understanding. The initial ideas for crop rotation would evolve and eventually be replaced by new ideas supported by evidence from fresh experiments and updated theories.?

Common Sense and Scientific Knowledge

Does common sense differ from scientific knowledge? Is one based on the practice of beliefs that have not been rigorously studied, while the other is based on empirical evidence and experimentation?

Common-sense notions that are accepted as true do not make them true. The truth has to be verified, and the process of verifying is the collective work of the community we call scientists.

We cannot see ‘natural selection’ in action, but we can see its results and infer that some mechanism is at play that produces the result. The job of the search is to discover the mechanism and describe how it works.

Many things in life can’t be experienced, like the subatomic world or traveling at the speed of light. These experiences are unavailable to our sensory apparatus. Therefore, they are unlikely to be the source of common sense notions. But we can and do try to develop some intuition about the phenomenon.

Common Sense in a Domain?

While some common sense beliefs are universal, many common sense beliefs are domain-specific.?

The Kitchen

A person who has spent zero days in a kitchen will exhibit a lack of ‘common sense’ when it comes to cooking. A basic understanding of how kitchens work and how to create food that's fit to eat is necessary to be functional within that environment.?

The Yacht Race

Imagine you are an observant fly in the bar of a yacht club. A yacht race has just concluded, and all the sailors have poured into the bar to quench their thirst and analyze the race. As you move from crew to crew, you observe that the young sailors talk about sailing techniques like tacking and gybing, sail trimming, and weight distribution. Meanwhile, the older, experienced sailors discuss the race's tactics, strategy, and what went wrong. They discuss topics like covering, casting a "wind shadow," ducking and crossing, leeching and footing, and tacking on the shifts. To experienced sailors, ‘technique’ is a skill you acquire and apply. These techniques are acquired over time. They become part of the common sense practices that let you enter the race. They are what the groups rely on just to stay afloat, sail, and stay out of trouble.?

Tactics and strategy, however, are race-specific. They depend on where you race, the type of boat, the tide and current, the weather, the crew, the course, and a host of other elements. So, for novel conditions, you do have to reason and construct a racing strategy while relying on past patterns that have been reduced to common-sense practices.?

Foundations of Common Sense?

Many aspects of the world exhibit patterns that recur in appearance and behavior. These regularities are experienced as consistent and predictable features of life. Some patterns, however, emerge only from the interactions or co-occurrence of two or more things. These interactions do not deliver the firm and fixed regularities we are usually accustomed to. Instead, they expose their recurring features in a statistically regular way. A way that is not easy to perceive through the senses but can be uncovered through analysis.

There may be an argument to pursue that we neurologically capture the statistical properties of nature even though we may not be aware of them or be able to express them.

While degrees of variation exist in the world, we prefer to experience life mainly through a lens of certainty—and for good reason.

Since many events are distributed across a probability spectrum, when it comes to daily life, our memory is biased towards recalling the average over the exceptional or rare. This bias shapes perception, behavior, and learning. For day-to-day living, this is an invaluable convenience. Simplifying complexities does make life easier to navigate.

Without our ability to ‘sense’ these patterns and regularities, we would not be able to develop common sense.

Without common sense, we would struggle to navigate the complexities of everyday life.

Without common sense, our ability to predict the consequences of our actions would diminish.

Without tapping into the community pool of common sense, everyone would be forced to learn everything from scratch.

Causal relations exist, and our actions are part of a casual chain, which is why common sense notions emphasize the consequence of an action.

Is Common Sense Dying?

Our use of Common Sense helps reduce a complex world to a set of simple, reliable practices. The fact that they are based on real-world observations and experience makes them credible and useful.

Our Common Sense muscle deteriorates when we are prevented by law, custom, or social pressure from using it in our daily lives. It also deteriorates when we cease to trust or ignore what we have learned from experience.?

Where Common Sense is absent?

We have seen that common sense is developed through experience and shared practices within a community. But in many aspects of life, we don’t get enough practice to build up the experience needed to acquire that common sense.

If you are a chef, a sailor, a software engineer, a concert pianist, a doctor, or a nurse, you get to practice your craft over and over again every day for years. This repeated practice with feedback helps you learn and develop a common sense of your craft.

But when it comes to aspects of life like love or choosing a partner, we don’t fall in love 1000 times a week or try out 100 partners a month, so we don’t get the practice we need to develop any ‘love’ or ‘marriage’ muscles.

To be proficient in something, you need to practice, and constant practice helps develop a common sense of the skill.

How useful is Common Sense

Common sense is used to make practical decisions. No one is born with it; we develop it over time.

You look before crossing the road; you bring in the washing from outside if you think it will rain; you don’t leave the stove on if you leave the house; and you tackle the urgent and important tasks first.

If common sense predicts the consequence of an action, then it’s a really useful tool to help prevent or avoid unwanted consequences.

While you could reason why it will rain, common-sense practice will help you stay dry by taking an umbrella or a raincoat.

Common Sense in the Digital World

In a pre-digital world, our knowledge was sourced directly from contact with the environment through the intermediary of our senses. In the digital world, we worship devices that bring us useful but often pointless, meaningless distractions.?

The more time we spend in these invented worlds, the more removed we are from experiencing the world directly. The more removed we are from reality, the less opportunity we have to learn from it.

So, where in our modern world is the common sense that Thomas Paine appealed to? Have we lost the ability to build and share a common sense that would guide us?

Common Sense, AI, AGI, and Large Language Models?

It was 28 years from the start of Darwin’s five-year voyage across South America, the Galapagos Islands, New Zealand and Australia to the publication of his landmark book titled The “Origin of Species”. During that period, he observed firsthand the variation of species and their divergence. He collected a wide variety of specimens, including plants, animals, and fossils, and he documented his observations of the geology and ecology of the places he visited. On returning from his voyage, Darwin reflected on his observations, read the scientific literature, and wrote to many scientists, all in the pursuit of developing his theories while gathering the evidence to support them.

The accumulation of evidence during and after the voyage, the many years of reflection, the endless conceptual refinements and elaborations, and the collaboration with other scientists are fundamentally a very human endeavor. No AI, AGI, or large language model built today, in 20, 50, or 150 years, would have the ability to ‘create’ the ‘Origin of Species,’ Paine’s ‘Common Sense,’ or the ‘Declaration of Independence.’

Could these models summarize the works? Yes

Could these models extract the key topics from the works? Yes

Could these models make suggestions as to where to improve the writing. Yes

But could these models originate and create the works. And the answer is emphatically no.

Why?

Because all these documents were generated from real world experiences derived from the direct and continuous interaction between our senses and our environment.

We know our senses take us only so far. We know that our real understanding comes from the cognitive processing that occurs as we transform the signals from all sensory channels into a common neural language. How we go from this language to creating concepts that represent our understanding is not something an AI model will discover. And it will take more than one human to make this discovery.

An Ode to Common Sense

In quiet whispers does wisdom speak,??

A guide for life’s uncharted seas??

In common sense, we humans seek??

The simple truths that put life at ease.??

It lights our path with reason’s candle at full glow,??

A steady beacon on stormy nights;??

And just when the tide of folly approaches,?

Common sense steps in to keep us afloat.

Yet we scorn its quiet, timeless call,??

When in search of novel paths, we turn astray;??

But soon find, and often when we fall,??

That common lore had shown the safer way.??

Acknowledgments

Big thanks to my good friends from Australia, Jim, Dave, and Andrea who provided the encouragement and insights to pursue this exploration. Jim is an author with two great novels to his credit. Dave, who is also a great writer, has been sailing across the world in his yacht for the past ten years, and Andrea, who is a great science fiction writer with four novels self-published.