Scottish Common-Sense Philosophy

Abstract

The topic of common sense is central to pragmatism. In different ways, Peirce, James and Dewey all wrote extensively on that notion, highlighting its theoretical complexity as well as its heuristic function in philosophical inquiry. It can well be established, therefore, that common sense represents a pivotal term within the pragmatist tradition in that it intersects with many other key-concepts such as the primacy of practice, contextualism, cognitive pluralism, the implicit dimension of action (know-how), the irreducibility of the ordinary world to the descriptions provided by the sciences, pragmatic realism – to name only the most relevant ones. In light of all that, it should not be surprising that even now the notion of common sense continues to receive attention from contemporary pragmatists. So, for instance, Nicholas Rescher has published a book, entitled Common sense (2005), in which he argues against those philosophical approaches that downplay the epistemological importance of common sense, and tries to provide »a fundamentally pragmatic construal of the conception of commonsense beliefs« (ibid., 42).