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It has often been claimed that the phrase ‘common sense’ occurs only three or four times in the Aristotelian corpus. However, the phrase ‘common sense’ can also be found in Historia Animalium I.3 489 ^a 17 and Metaphysics I.1 981 ^b 14. This chapter examines the two overlooked occurrences to see what the phrase ‘common sense’ means there. In the overlooked occurrences the phrase ‘common sense’ refers to the individual senses, to the sense of touch in particular, or to the five individual senses indiscriminately. There the phrase is not a proper name for any particular perceptual capacity, but rather a description applicable to the individual senses in certain contexts. Aristotle describes the individual senses as ‘common’ to bring out the fact that they are shared by animals of different species.

This chapter indicates that the phrase ‘common sense’ probably has not yet crystallized into a technical term with Aristotle. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that, owing to Aristotle, it became a technical term at some point between Theophrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias. There is consistency in Aristotle's use of the phrase ‘common sense’ which, on its own, would imply that the phrase is a technical term for Aristotle, functioning as a proper name for the sensory capacity of the soul. However, a survey of the other uses manifest variation which suggests that the phrase really did not have the status of a technical term for Aristotle. Depending on the context, the terms which make up the phrase can take different nuances in meaning within their respective semantic horizons and assume different word order to express different ideas. Aristotle takes advantage of this variability in different contexts, and it is possible that he would not be inclined to do so had the phrase been fixed in his mind as a technical term.

Common sense is one of the central values of Anglo culture reflected in the English language. This chapter begins by demonstrating the importance of this value for speakers of English by examining two areas of language use: book titles and the language of the law. It then discusses the meaning of common sense in contemporary English, Thomas Reid and the origin of English common sense, and common sense and the British Enlightenment.

One of the main purposes of De Anima III.1 is to show that there can be no sense in addition to the five familiar ones — that is, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Aristotle supplies an argument in which he concludes for the common perceptibles — such as change, shape, or magnitude — ‘we have an aisthesin koinen’. This is usually taken to imply that the common perceptibles are perceived by the common sense. The logic and the terminology of Aristotle's argument is analysed in this chapter, and it is shown that the phrase does not in fact refer to any higher-order perceptual capacity, but rather it describes an aspect of properly functioning individual senses, namely their sensitivity to the common perceptibles. This interpretation respects the logic of Aristotle's argument and accommodates the facts that the key phrase occurs without the definite article and in reverse word order.

This chapter describes one type of sublime experience that often tears open the sealed worlds that tend to mark our contemporary life, called “the liberatory sublime.” The liberatory sublime is the aesthetic experience of the opening of worlds onto a space between, in which the claims of one woman on another, of one person on another, can be heard and lived. It is the aesthetic experience of the other's presence as a person that interrupts the comfort of a world organized to reduce other persons (women in relation to men, women in relation to one another) to mere functions. Sublime experience is orienting for feminism because it breaks open a space for feminist practice across all kinds of differences. And if that space is a ground of fierce contestation, then it is also a common ground, a ground on which we are called to give an account of how we live, think, and work in relation to one another.

This chapter considers two perceptual operations which can be plausibly related to the common sense. These two perceptual operations are often regarded as functions of the common sense. In fact, the first one, perception of the common perceptibles, is usually regarded as the most salient function of the common sense, a view that is largely based on an erroneous reading of Aristotle's argument in De Anima III.1 425 ^a 12-27. It is argued that Aristotle gives us no reason to think that the common sense is necessary for perception of all types of common perceptibles, although it may be necessary for perception of some types. Moreover, it is plausible to suggest that the common sense enhances the sensitivity of the individual senses to the common perceptibles in a number of ways. The other perceptual operation in which the common sense might play a role is accidental perception. Both forms of accidental perception — perception of the accidental perceptibles, and perception of the special perceptibles of one sense by another sense (here called ‘cross-modal perception’) — are probably achieved not by the higher-order perceptual power, but by the sensory capacity of the soul, since these operations seem to require joint operation of perception and imagination.

In De Somno et Vigilia 2 Aristotle observes that sleep and waking are contrary states which simultaneously affect all individual senses of an animal. Aristotle argues that this occurs because there is a common sense organ which controls the peripheral sense organs in such a way that the peripheral sense organs are active or incapacitated depending on whether the common sense organ is active or incapacitated. Aristotle's argument seems to allow for the conclusion that the common sense, which is located in the common sense organ, controls the individual senses located in the peripheral sense organs. In the course of his argument Aristotle appeals to some ‘common power’ which accompanies all the senses. This power enables one to perceive that one is seeing and hearing, and to discriminate between heterogeneous special perceptibles. This chapter investigates what ‘perceiving that one is seeing and hearing’ amounts to. It is shown that perceiving that one is seeing and hearing refers to the awareness of the activity of one's own senses. This awareness characterizes the state of waking, just as its absence characterizes the state of sleep. It is argued that the ‘common power’ which enables one to be aware of the activity of one's senses is the higher-order perceptual power, i.e. the common sense. However, this conclusion has to be aligned with Aristotle's argument in De Anima III.2 in which he seems to claim that we perceive that we see by nothing other than sight, and in which he does not mention any higher-order powers or capacities.

If your five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — were completely independent from one another, you would not be a creature that wakes or sleeps because your senses would not all be operating in the state of waking or all resting in the state of sleep. Your body would be housing five yous, a visual you, an auditory you, an olfactory you, and so forth. Should your perceptual abilities be accompanied by other capacities, such as imagination and memory, these capacities would be bereft of their unity. Your body simply would not be able to serve all the yous at once, and there would be no means of reaching an agreement as to which you is going to use the body at what time. This scenario is developed from a suggestion made by Plato in his dialogue Theaetetus. The unpalatable suggestion is that the senses are sitting in us ‘as in a wooden horse’. Aristotle proposed to avoid this scenario by postulating a perceptual power over and above the five senses which monitors their states and co-ordinates their reports. This perceptual power is known as the ‘common sense’. Plato's Theaetetus is examined to see why Aristotle decided to avoid the described scenario in this particular way, rather than in the way proposed by his master.

This chapter explores the relations between ethics and common sense. It argues that (1) common sense is essential to ethics, but not sufficient for it; (2) ethics is also essential to common sense, which is an inherently practical capacity; (3) common sense is basically conservative, not innovative, and can be oppressive, and consequently on its own terms requires supplementation and correction by ethical thinking; and (4) developments — improvements — in ethics that lead to improvements in morality lead to improvements in common sense by leading to improvements in common-sense morality.

This chapter discusses formal theories of truth: the redundancy theory and its ilk, distinguished by the attempt to characterize truth in terms of its structural properties, in the context of the position adopted by Putnam in his John Dewey Lectures, here styled ‘Common-sense Realism’. This position is described, combining two principles called the Thesis of the Internality (according to which the elements of a representational system are internally related to their content) and the Thesis of World-Embeddedness (which holds that content is dependent on the world in a more than causal way), with a formal account of truth. It is argued that Common-sense Realism, along with all theories comprising a formal account of truth, should be committed to the flames, because they are cut off from exploiting the Fregean model of meaning, based on a recursion on truth.

The divergence between the world descriptions provided by physical science and by common sense has led to some of the oldest and most persistent arguments for eliminating ordinary objects. Some (inspired by Eddington) allege that there is a conflict between common sense and physical science, while others (such as Sellars) hold that there is rivalry between the scientific and manifest images, as each purports to offer the true and complete description of the world. This chapter addresses these two claims in turn, arguing that both at bottom rely on the idea that a generic, category-neutral use of “thing” can be made sense of. If, as has been argued in previous chapters, we reject that idea, then neither claims of a conflict nor a rivalry between the two can be sustained.

This chapter builds on the contrast between Hume and Kant by showing how the Critical philosophy can be understood as an ally of Reid's critique of empiricism and the whole tradition of the ‘way of ideas’. The general ‘anti-Cartesian’ and realist approach of Reid's common-sense philosophy has gained many distinguished adherents, but most analytic philosophers have continued to assume that this approach is the very opposite of Kant's. By building on extensive research by Manfred Kuehn on the role of common-sense philosophy in 18th-century Germany, it is argued that there has been a deep misunderstanding concerning passages that have been repeatedly taken to prove that Kant's philosophy completely opposes Reid's. Moreover, it is argued that common sense plays a crucial role in the first stage of Kant's system (in his theoretical and practical philosophy as well as his aesthetics), and that historical research has established that this fact was clearly recognized by a significant circle of early Kantians who worked in Jena right before the full development of German Idealism.

By attaching significance to the distinction between doing and failing to prevent and by recognizing special obligations to family members and others, common‐sense morality limits the size of an agent's moral world. Consequentialism, by contrast, upholds a more expansive notion of normative responsibility that neither assigns intrinsic moral significance to the distinction between doing and failing to prevent nor recognizes special obligations as a fundamental moral category. The conflict between restrictive and expansive notions of normative responsibility has a parallel in modern political life, in the opposition between nationalism and other varieties of particularism, on the one hand, and globalism or universalism, on the other. The opposing pulls of global integration and ethnic fragmentation pose a political problem that, Scheffler argues, we are unlikely to resolve without attaining greater stability in our thinking about normative responsibility more generally.

One prominent objection to externalism is that it commits its adherents to approving of epistemic circularity. This chapter explains and then responds to this objection by giving two arguments for the conclusion that we should sometimes approve of epistemic circularity, that being committed to approving of it is not, in itself, a defect of externalism. It then explains why approving of epistemic circularity misleadingly seems like a defect, and how epistemic circularity is likely to occur in an acceptable manner.

With an interpretation of Berkeley's view of spirits in hand, this chapter turns to the task of situating that view of spirits within his overall positive metaphysics and defending the connection it bears to “common sense”. The book argues that Berkeley's metaphysics is the metaphysics of the “mob” so long as the mob is properly understood to be the mob of professing monotheists. It further argues that core aspects of traditional monotheism inevitably tend toward support for immaterialism. Wilfred Sellars' metaphilosophy from Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man is used to both elucidate and map Berkeley's core metaphysical commitments.

In PA IV.10 Aristotle explains the upright posture of human beings with reference to physiological factors that determine the abilities to think and behave intelligently. A detailed interpretation of Aristotle's explanation is supplied by drawing on his physiological theory and contrasting it with Plato‗s explanation of human posture in the Timaeus. In the crucial passage Aristotle seems to couple ‘thinking’ with the rational capacity of the soul and ‘intelligence’ with the common sense. It is argued that the phrase ‘common sense’ is best taken with reference to the sensory capacity of the soul, that is the capacity of the soul which comprises perception and imagination. This capacity exhausts the cognitive repertoire of non-rational animals, and it accounts for their intelligent behaviour. In the next two chapters it will be argued that Aristotle uses the phrase koine aisthesis two more times in the same way, as a proper name for the sensory capacity of the soul, both times in the context of complex non-rational cognitive activities.