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Rationality and Common Sense

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Jacob Joshua Ross
Jacob Joshua Ross
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University, Ramat Aviv
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Extract

In everyday arguments we often meet with such phrases as ‘That's rational, it is mere common sense’ used in conjunction to approve of or back up some particular statement. The juxtaposition of these everyday locutions embodies a profound truth, the truth, namely, that the basis of rational communication between human beings is plain common sense. I call this point profound because it has been missed in all the discussions about rationality and its basis that I know; certainly its elusiveness thus seems to indicate that participants in these discussions have not delved deeply enough. But I concede that this truth is simple and obvious, and conclude, therefore, that it has been overlooked only because its very obviousness has been taken, wrongly, to indicate superficiality and inadequacy. In suggesting that it is neither superficial nor inadequate I shall be relying on Wittgenstein's interpretation of Moore's ‘Defence of Common Sense’, to which I shall be adding a particular twist of my own.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 53 , Issue 205 , July 1978 , pp. 374 - 381
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1978

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References

1 Agassi, Joseph, ‘Sociologism in the Philosophy of Science’, Metaphilosophy, 3, No. 2 (1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Particularly The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 5th edn (revised), 1966), Ch. 24Google Scholar, and Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 4th edn (revised), 1972)Google Scholar in the introduction ‘On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance’.

3 Extreme ‘justificationism’ would seem to lead naturally to W. K. Clifford's famous assertion (in ‘The Ethics of Belief’, originally published in The Contemporary Review (1876))Google Scholar that ‘It is wrong everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’.

4 Especially Chisholm's, R. M.Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), 24 ff.Google Scholar

5 See Hume's, Enquiry, Section V, Part 1.Google Scholar

6 See The Open Society and Its Enemies, 231.Google Scholar

7 Ayer, Notably A. J., The Problem of Knowledge (London: Penguin 1956), 74–75Google Scholar, and Strawson, P. F., Introduction to Logical Theory (London: Methuen, 1952), Ch. 9, Part II.Google Scholar

8 Kekes, J., ‘Fallibilism and Rationality’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 9, no. 4 (10 1972), 301–309.Google Scholar

9 See particularly Lakatos, Imre, ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A. (eds) (Cambridge University Press, 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Polanyi, M., Personal Knowledge (London, 1958) especially Ch. V and VI.Google Scholar

11 Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edn, enlarged, 1970)Google Scholar and ‘Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research’, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge.

12 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certainty, Anscombe, G. E. M. and von Wright, G. H. (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969).Google Scholar

13 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), §485.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., §217.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., 200.

17 On Certainty, §253.

18 Philosophical Investigations, 226.Google Scholar

19 A useful discussion of Wittgenstein's ‘form of life’ is to be found in High, Dallas M., Language, Persons and Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), Ch. IV.Google Scholar High also notes (p. 101) the similarity here between Wittgenstein and Polanyi.

20 ‘A Defence of Common Sense’, in Contemporary British Philosophy, 2nd series, 1925.Google Scholar See also ‘Proof of an External World’, Annual Philosophical Lecture, Trust, Henriette Hertz, Proceedings of the British Academy XXV (1939).Google Scholar

21 Lazerowitz, Morris, ‘Moore's Paradox’, in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, Schilpp, P. A. (ed.) (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University, 1942).Google Scholar

22 Malcolm, Norman, ‘Moore and Ordinary Language’Google Scholar, Ibid., 357, 362.

23 On Certainty, §§96–97.

24 Winch, P., ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1 (1964).Google Scholar

25 See further in my The Appeal to the Given (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970), 201–205.Google Scholar

26 This paper was originally presented at the First National Conference of Philosophy of the Israeli Philosophical Association at Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheba. in 1973.