Common Sense Principles Research Articles

Tło filozoficzne teorii percepcji Thomasa Reida

The subject of this article is not explicity the theory of perception that Reid propounded. To present it would go beyond his modest framework because an essential part of Reid's view was the so-called common sense principles. The nature, number and cognition role of these principles would require a separate discussion. In this text, therefore, I concentrate on the specific preliminaries of the philosophy proposed by the founder of the Scottish school of common sense, which can be interpreted as a "negative reference point", which is the starting point for "positive" solutions, i.e. Reid's proposed theory of perception. He thus began with a critique of the "theory of ideas", which, in Reid's view, was the main reason for the failure to formulate a satisfactory philosophy of mind. Within this critique, we find his reflections on the method of philosophising itself, the differences that occur in the study of such different objects as material objects and cognitive mind, and his interpretation of the consequences of the adaption of the theory of ideas by the philosophers of modernity. The result of Reid's theoretical analyses is the rejection of the assumption of any mutual interaction between matter and mind, the questioning of the possibility of perception of material objects based on similarity of sense impressions and the things perceived, and the accusation of the proponents of this theory of dooming philosophy to idealism and scepticism.

Thomas Reid, Common Sense, and Pragmatism

ABSTRACT This paper deals with a less well-known connection between Thomas Reid’s conception of common sense and pragmatism. The paper starts with an exposition of the different principles of common sense one can find in Reid’s writings and a discussion of their epistemic status. The main focus of the paper is on what one may call ‘Reid’s dilemma of common sense’. I argue that Reid’s writings not only present us with a dilemma of common sense but that they also offer a way out of the dilemma, one that is pragmatist in a certain sense. I also discuss the question whether the proposed way out can work.

Obraz cholery v české populární literatuře počátku 20. století

This paper focuses on the refl ection of the cholera outbreak in Eastern and Central Europe after 1907, as observable in Czech media, especially popular literature. The discourse of cholera is a discourse of panic. The newspapers described the disease and its symptoms in great detail, but at the same time aimed to calm the readers down. The panic caused by the outbreak was also a prominent motif in humorous and satirical works. This theme, of course, brought no innovations to the genre, but that does not proclude its impact on readers. The cholera panic was generally ridiculed in such works as it is seen as a disruption of the status quo. Their authors perceived a glaring contrast between an exaggerated fear of disease and the principles of common sense. This common sense should guarantee a rudimental, self-explanatory understanding of the world, and therefore safety amid dangerous threats. The motif of disease serves, predictably, as a means of confirmation of certain stereotypes about the proper ways of living.

Developing an Anti-Biased, Anti-Racist Stance in Second Language Teacher Education Programs

Addressing race/racism and colonialism in French as a second language (FSL) education is essential to preparing culturally responsive teachers and meeting the Ministry mandate to teach students equitably and with respect. This article describes whether, and if so, how, candidates are being prepared to disrupt colonial ideologies and practices with data from a three-year project on FSL teacher preparation in two Ontario faculties of education. Interviews were conducted with professors and teacher candidates. Using a critical qualitative approach to identify emerging themes, the study applied an anti-biased, anti-racist (ABAR) lens to identify racialized power inequities that can form across French languages, cultures, and marginalized groups, oppressive common-sense principles, and systemic influences around three main themes: teaching culture and promoting intercultural competence; addressing equity, inclusion, and racism explicitly; and Whiteness, Eurocentrism, and representation in FSL. Findings indicate that while programs have begun to integrate equity, inclusion, interculturality, and the representation of the global francophonie, there is a pressing need for more preparation and training for professors and teacher candidates to develop critical equity skills that lead to their becoming culturally responsive teachers. Practical strategies and theory building through collaborative research are needed to support educators in taking up an ABAR stance in FSL teacher education programs.

A Participatory and Democratic Education Administration Model: Local Education Boards

This article presents a mixed method study on how to develop a participatory education management model as an alternative to the Turkish education administration system. Consisting of qualitative and quantitative methods, the mixed research method has been adopted to acquire the required data. Qualitative phase the education administration systems applied in OECD member countries, documents and reports available in the literature were evaluated. To reach wider masses, an online survey aiming at collecting the views of teachers and administrators was carried out by using the quantitative phase of the mixed method. This study has laid it bare that the principles of good governance, common sense, transparency, accountability, participation, democracy, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability stand forefront in educational systems that adopt the participatory education boards model. Eventually, a board/commission oriented local education administration model has been designed and developed as an alternative for the Turkish educational administration system.

Developing an Anti-Biased, Anti-Racist Stance in Second Language Teacher Education Programs

Addressing race/racism and colonialism in French as a second language (FSL) education is essential to preparing culturally responsive teachers and meeting the Ministry mandate to teach students equitably and with respect. This article describes whether, and if so, how, candidates are being prepared to disrupt colonial ideologies and practices with data from a three-year project on FSL teacher preparation in two Ontario faculties of education. Interviews were conducted with professors and teacher candidates. Using a critical qualitative approach to identify emerging themes, the study applied an anti-biased, anti-racist (ABAR) lens to identify racialized power inequities that can form across French languages, cultures, and marginalized groups, oppressive common-sense principles, and systemic influences around three main themes: teaching culture and promoting intercultural competence; addressing equity, inclusion, and racism explicitly; and Whiteness, Eurocentrism, and representation in FSL. Findings indicate that while programs have begun to integrate equity, inclusion, interculturality, and the representation of the global francophonie, there is a pressing need for more preparation and training for professors and teacher candidates to develop critical equity skills that lead to their becoming culturally responsive teachers. Practical strategies and theory building through collaborative research are needed to support educators in taking up an ABAR stance in FSL teacher education programs.

Critiquing Musical Ineffabilism: Rereading Kant’s “Analytic of the Beautiful”

Mapping out several interpretations of free play in Immanuel Kant’s Third Critique helps parse the argument that “music is ineffable.” Although the argument is an old one, recent scholarship by Carolyn Abbate, Michael Gallope, and others has helped the idea of music’s ineffability resurface in recent years as a special, dialectical property of music’s sonic presence that perpetually defers statements about music’s meaning. However, the polysemy that results from this deferral is anchored, by the claim that “music is ineffable,” in the ontology of a preconceived notion of what “music” is. Examining the conceptuality of free play in Kant’s “Analytic of the Beautiful” helps shift the crux of music’s meaningful plurality away from the ontology of “music” to language—which delimits aesthetic experience as “music” and makes it available for contemplation. The ineffabilist arguments that musical experience precludes or overwhelms language accord with the interpretations of free play that Paul Guyer has called “precognitive” and “multicognitive.” In contrast, Guyer proposes his own “metacognitive” interpretation, which requires an aesthetic stimulus to be grasped with a concept before any cognition can take place. By linking the beautiful to both the subjectively agreeable and the objectively good, Kant’s “Analytic” endows every person with the capacity to experience beauty individually. As a result, the judgment of something as beautiful depends, not on universal criteria, but on a “sense in common” (Gemeinsinn), which Gilles Deleuze described as knowledge’s precondition of communicability. Kant’s principle of common sense is what empowers discourse to communicate a shared idea of beauty by continually brokering agreement among a diversity of personal ideals. The insight that knowledge of an aesthetic experience is always framed with a concept, whose meaning is only ever tentatively agreed upon, preserves and democratizes the meaningfulness of “music” by attaching it to an idea admitting of many ideals, free from ineffability’s strong ontological claim.

The role of a judge in the formation of the Ukrainian legal system

Law, as a measure of freedom and justice, is created by the collision of diverse social elements, when the new collective whole can no longer be restrained by simple custom, morality. The divergence of moral convictions makes possible the existence of social cohesion and is reconciled by law, first in the form of the orders of elders, experienced, who act as arbitrators. And later this right becomes a custom and morality, but at the same time it becomes the content of a new morality.
 The new law determines only the direction in which the necessary life forms of a new social union should be formed and in which they should eventually take root in the general consciousness. Judicial acts of public authority were the primary source, and later they were included in the generally binding rules applicable to production, distribution and exchange.
 Due to the lack of strict law, a judge in Ukraine had a respectable status in ancient times, and trust in him in the early stages of the historical development of procedural law was an integral condition without which trial was impossible. There were no legal norms, and the judiciary had to establish them for each case under consideration, and the judicial process consisted of the creation of a norm and its application. The judge had to decide not only on the case, but also to find a rule of law, not only to judge a particular case, but also to declare in a casuistic form a universally binding provision that would be important for both litigants and the community as a whole.
 The main driving force behind the so-called case consuetude there is a kind of assessment of the parties to the dispute and their position in the family, so the decision was made taking into account the person and his economy.
 According to the villagers, the advantage of their local court over the state was that the latter, strictly guided by the law, was unable to make a decision that would not contradict the principles of rural life and common sense.
 The judge judges good people, whose presence complements the gaps in the process, which undoubtedly arise as a result of general illiteracy, most often of all persons involved in the process, not excluding the judge. Therefore, the record is not written, but orally and is engraved in people's memory.
 The inseparability of the judiciary until almost the middle of the 16th century led to the fact that the authority of the court decision was given the status of the person in society who made the decision, rather than its compliance with legal norms.

Common Sense in Reid’s Response to Scepticism

Le sens commun est au cœur des conceptions épistémologiques de Thomas Reid. Pourtant, tout comme sa théorie positive, la réponse de Reid au scepticisme – ce qu’elle est censée établir et la manière dont elle le fait – est sujette à débat. Certes, dans la mesure où elle respecte et défend notre conception ordinaire de nous-mêmes comme détenteurs de connaissances provenant d’une variété de sources, toute réponse au scepticisme relève bien du « bon sens », compris au sens large. Reste que des commentateurs récents de Reid, de même que des penseurs contemporains s’inspirant de ses conceptions, s’opposent quant au rôle que pourrait jouer, s’il en a un, le sens commun dans la réponse de Reid au sceptique, et donc sur le fait de savoir si cette réponse peut bien être dite de « bon sens » d’une manière plus substantielle. Je soutiens que même ceux qui lui accordent une place dans la défense par Reid de nos conceptions épistémologiques préthéoriques sous-estiment l’importance qu’y a le sens commun tel que le conçoit Reid. En particulier, ils omettent le fait que, pour Reid, le sens commun a un aspect irréductiblement normatif et qu’une adhésion aux premiers principes du sens commun est, pour lui, une obligation minimale à laquelle doivent se soumettre le jugement et l’action rationnels, obligation à laquelle même le sceptique ne peut se soustraire.

Not Yet Time to Abandon Cervical Collars in Blunt Trauma

In the evidence-based summary by Serigano et al. (Ref 1.) published in this issue of Academic Emergency Medicine under the Brass Tacks series, the authors critically appraise the evidence for the long-standing practice of prehospital and emergency department cervical spinal motion restriction (SMR) in blunt trauma patients. They highlight the absence of class I data demonstrating a benefit and describe some of the potentially harmful side effects of cervical collars.

Artificial Intelligence and the Common Sense of Animals.

The problem of common sense remains a major obstacle to progress in artificial intelligence. Here, we argue that common sense in humans is founded on a set of basic capacities that are possessed by many other animals, capacities pertaining to the understanding of objects, space, and causality. The field of animal cognition has developed numerous experimental protocols for studying these capacities and, thanks to progress in deep reinforcement learning (RL), it is now possible to apply these methods directly to evaluate RL agents in 3D environments. Besides evaluation, the animal cognition literature offers a rich source of behavioural data, which can serve as inspiration for RL tasks and curricula.

Risk management in museums in Czech Republic

Risk management in museums of the Czech Republic is inadequate and is not implemented in most museums. The presented issue of risk management in museums is only the first step towards introducing this knowledge into museums. The introduction of risk management as part of an integrated museum management system is essential, as emergencies and disasters are very democratic and unexpectedly affect all nations of the world and, thus, various institutions. Risk management should occur primarily by the application of common sense principles. When preparing a risk management plan, managers should avoid drowning the risk management plan in technical details, actuarial charts, and probability statistics. As a rule of thumb, the simpler the risk management strategy, the more likely it will be implemented. Those responsible for implementing risk management must plan to understand the importance of their activities. The risk management plan will certainly not address all of the institution's risks but will generate new responses to state of the art. Risk management is not a task and a goal but a long-term process.

Ethical Issues on AI Equipped Combat ROBOTS

Purpose: The Purpose of this research is to propose the ethical issues on AI equipped combat robot. AI equipped combat robot is called as Lethal Autonomous Weapons System, which means guard and attack enemies in autonomic way. Via this mission, human soldiers of both friendly and enemy armies could be harmed by AI combat robots. The most fundamental principles of common sense is that the robots should not hostile to human being, and this research tried to show some examples of ethical issues connected with the use of combat robots. Method: This research tries to find the way of regarding combat robot as a moral agent, which means combat robot does not only acts like a killing machine, but also holds moral responsibility. This code of action could also guide the human designer of AI structure of combat robot. This research extracted the core theme of debates on AI combat robot with analyzing current issues on AI and military technology reported on the media and internet. This research also used some materials published by institute under the Government depart of defense. Results: Combat robots has been evolved toward minimizing the intervention of human soldiers in recognize and evaluation of the battle situation. The introduction of such combat robots leads to changes in the aspect of war due to the introduction of autonomous weapons of destruction. The introduction of combat robots raises the issue of the formation of the judgment mechanism of the combat robot and the issue of responsibility as a subject of action execution in terms of individual judgment subjects. Conclusion: In terms of international relations, there could be problems related to the principle of proportionality, the problem of distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants, and problems of arms control. These problems brings up the request for an ethical approach aimed at expanding the reasoning intelligence beyond just the cognitive judgment function of combat robots and reinforcing metacognition.

Intravenous and intramuscular therapy in near fatal asthma. A response to Al-Shamrani.

The invited review by Al-Shamrani et al. (2020) [1] failed to address the management of a patient having an asthma attack who arrives in the Emergency Department with respiratory failure or in a moribund condition. The only route available for drug therapy in these patients is intravenously (IV) or intramuscularly in a final attempt to reduce bronchoconstriction. This could avoid tracheal intubation and lung ventilation, or make these procedures safer (Sellers, 2013; Williams et al., 1992) [2,3] for the patient if some bronchodilation occurs. Intubation and ventilation prevent coughing but tenacious mucus remains which blocks the bronchi. There are no randomised controlled trials or national asthma guidelines to inform practice at this stage of the disease, especially in under 18 year olds, so case report evidence, experience, common sense, and pharmacological principles must be engaged to save the patient’s life.

Essential Role of Patient Blood Management in a Pandemic: A Call for Action.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), the disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a pandemic. Global health care now faces unprecedented challenges with widespread and rapid human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and high morbidity and mortality with COVID-19 worldwide. Across the world, medical care is hampered by a critical shortage of not only hand sanitizers, personal protective equipment, ventilators, and hospital beds, but also impediments to the blood supply. Blood donation centers in many areas around the globe have mostly closed. Donors, practicing social distancing, some either with illness or undergoing self-quarantine, are quickly diminishing. Drastic public health initiatives have focused on containment and “flattening the curve” while invaluable resources are being depleted. In some countries, the point has been reached at which the demand for such resources, including donor blood, outstrips the supply. Questions as to the safety of blood persist. Although it does not appear very likely that the virus can be transmitted through allogeneic blood transfusion, this still remains to be fully determined. As options dwindle, we must enact regional and national shortage plans worldwide and more vitally disseminate the knowledge of and immediately implement patient blood management (PBM). PBM is an evidence-based bundle of care to optimize medical and surgical patient outcomes by clinically managing and preserving a patient’s own blood. This multinational and diverse group of authors issue this “Call to Action” underscoring “The Essential Role of Patient Blood Management in the Management of Pandemics” and urging all stakeholders and providers to implement the practical and commonsense principles of PBM and its multiprofessional and multimodality approaches.

Wolterstorff on Reid’s Notion of Common Sense

The paper addresses a mainstream contemporary view of the notion of common sense in Thomas Reid’s philosophy, as proposed by Nicholas Wolterstorff who claims that Reid was not clear about the concept of common sense, or about the principles of common sense. In contrast, this paper presents Reid’s conception as a clear and traditional Aristotelian notion of common sense and its principles as presuppositions of particular sense judgments, usually taken for granted. The alleged confusion about principles is resolved by a distinction between principles of common sense and first principles as such.

Analyzing the business roundtable statement on the purpose of a corporation and linking it to corporate governance

The 2019 Business Roundtable Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, endorsed by 183 CEOs of major U.S. companies, is not such a dramatic break from the past, but rather the next step in a steady retreat from a purely financial approach and an evolution to embrace a stakeholder approach, which is now gaining more and more lip service. The major purpose of this paper is to analyze this Business Roundtable Statement and relate it to three major corporate governance issues: CEO pay, non-financial performance metrics, and sustainability reporting. Then the paper introduces the Commonsense Corporate Governance Principles, which were initially published in 2016 and updated with Version 2.0 in 2018, sponsored by 21 CEOs of major U.S. companies. These Principles provide significant guidance and recommendations for corporations, boards of directors, shareholders, and other stakeholders to follow if they want to create an environment-friendly to meet the fundamental commitments in the Business Roundtable Statement. Accordingly, the major sections of this paper are introduction, CEO pay issues, non-financial performance metrics, sustainability reporting, corporate governance impacts, key points in both versions of the Commonsense Principles, key changes in the Commonsense Principles 2.0, discussion, and conclusions.

ПРИМЕНЕНИЕ СИСТЕМЫ ПОДДЕРЖКИ ПРИНЯТИЯ РЕШЕНИЙ «ДАТА» В ПРОЦЕССЕ УПРАВЛЕНИЯ НА РЕГИОНАЛЬНОМ УРОВНЕ

The article considers the process of making management decisions at the regional level involving the decision support system (DSS) “DATA”. The software package can be used in the management process at different stages. It contains a comprehensive information base, which allows the managers of a regional government to make a comprehensive analysis of the management situation. Also, using DATA DSS will allow forming alternative management decisions, as well as providing a choice of management decisions from possible alternatives based on the relevant criteria. The number of possible alternative management decisions and the criteria for their selection will be different for the lower, middle and top management of the regional government, so the automated program has the ability to change the criteria for listing recommended measures. The knowledge base of the software complex contains many relevant activities. The architecture of DATA DSS for application in the regional management structures. It contains a number of modules for intermediate calculations and user interfaces. Each module has its own software, which allows to separate the functions, provides flexibility to expand the functionality of the system and security of data access. It has been stated that the heads at different levels of the regional authorities can use DATA DSS at various stages of the management decision-making process. Automation of decision-making support allows optimizing management activities and is a high-performance alternative to decisions made on the basis of traditional methods by manager's intuition or the common sense principle.

Introduction

This issue of Soundings might be thought of as an extended consideration of the concept famously addressed in John Keats's 1820 “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and especially the canonical line from its closing stanza, “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.” What is the exact relationship between art, beauty, balance, and truth? Can and should considerations of beauty be used in assessing seemingly nonaesthetic ideas and concepts? What is the nature of the boundaries between “art” and “reality” and what is gained through pushing these boundaries to their breaking point? How are works of art and artists shaped by historical and philosophical notions of law, justice, morality? Can beauty and truth, however defined, be reconciled? These questions are unpacked and explored by the contributors in this issue.To begin, Junxiao Bai's “The Spectrum of the Divine Order: Goodness, Beauty, and Harmony” interprets the writings and ideas of Ptolemy and Augustine in considering the relation between a harmonious world order and the divine. Exploring deeply their notions of numerical and musical harmonic ratios and the connections of these ratios to the cosmos, the author concludes that Augustine saw such perfect relationships between numbers and music as evidence of God's divine order in both the physical and metaphysical realms.Devon Brickhouse-Bryson considers somewhat similar conceptual territory in his article on the relationships between judgments of beauty and judgments of theory. Interpreting a method of evaluating theories known as “reflective equilibrium” through which common sense principles are weighed against background theories, Brickhouse-Bryson makes an engaging case for both the centrality of the idea of coherence in this evaluative method, and for the idea that such judgments of coherence can best be conceived of as species of judgments of beauty. This insight, he argues, will help theoreticians more effectively understand reflective equilibrium and devise epistemically better theories.Next, Jenessa Kenway examines the “blurring of life and art” in the works of visual and literary realist and hyperrealist artists. Focusing particularly on nineteenth-century French realist painter Gustave Courbet, the late twentieth-century superrealist American sculptor Duane Hanson and the contemporary Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, she considers the intersections between their deep exploration of the repetitive, mundane reality that makes up most of human existence. Kenway imaginatively argues that these artists force their readers and viewers to confront the truth of what she characterizes as “the thought stream running through non-being,” but also to recognize the richness of considerations of daily “nothingness.”Finally, Mark Packer reinterprets Herman Melville's classic unfinished novella Billy Budd through the intersecting prisms of literary criticism, jurisprudence, philosophy, and American and British history. In “‘Yet the Angel Must Hang’: Billy Budd and Melville's Moral Skepticism,” Packer concentrates on the moral ambiguity that permeates so much of the novel and explores its legal and historical implications. He connects the struggle in the story (set in 1797), between how to balance admiralty law and natural morality in determining Billy Budd's fate for having killed a superior officer, with similar tensions experienced by Melville's anti-slavery father-in-law and Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice who reluctantly upheld the Fugitive Slave Act and similar legislation. Packer concludes that Melville's refusal to provide a morally definitive conclusion was a product of this history of the refusal of men in positions of authority to act on spiritual wisdom rather than legal mandate.Collectively, these works provide multiple approaches toward considering the nature of the boundaries and distinctions between art and life, law, and justice, and the everyday and the sublime—issues that remain as vexed and pertinent today as in Keats's time.

Common-Sense Causation in the Law

Judges often invoke ‘common sense’ when deciding questions of legal causation. I draw on empirical evidence to refine the common-sense theory of legal causation developed by Hart and Honore in Causation in the Law. I show that the two main common-sense principles that Hart and Honore identified are empirically well founded; I also show how experimental research into causal selection can be used to specify these principles with greater precision than before. This exploratory approach can provide legal scholars with a plausible new set of hypotheses to use in re-examining the decided cases on legal causation. If correct, the new common-sense theory that I develop has important implications not only for debates within legal scholarship, but also for judicial practice on issues of legal causation across both criminal and private law.