What is common sense?

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Common nonsense is what it is.

People tend to use the phrase 'common sense' when they know what is supposed to be done and expect you to know, too. I don't have common sense, often. Like with putting things in the dishwasher. I will forget what I was told to do and promptly do something else.

I think I would define it as a "logical conclusion".

You boiled some water, you turn the burner off. It is only common sense that the burner will still be hot for a short while even though it was turned off.

It is "common" because most people would have learned the obviousness of the conclusion of something.

For years I found myself telling people something that to me, seemed like something everyone would know, "it is common sense." The more attention and understanding you have shown throughout your life, the more "common sense" you should develop.

Funny though, because really based off of that, some things just wont be as common as others and I guess therefore that would mean it might just be "common sense" that not everything is "common sense" because people don't always commonly learn the same things!

Once my boyfriend said "Can you bring down the bathroom bin?" so I picked it up and brought it downstairs and put it in the dining room and then I went back upstairs and got on with the programming that I was in the middle of at the time.

He got cross. Apparently I should have known that he meant I should empty it.

I think it's a flawed term used by people who don't want to go to the trouble of explaining things clearly enough. So if the University of the Blindingly Obvious actually existed, the syllabus would be of zero size.

There are of course things that most people in a given group would know, but the key word there is "most." Some of them won't know, and anybody using a phrase such as "common sense" is probably just forcing things to fit, and shrugging off their responsibility to explain things properly. We used to get teachers like that - professionals in the art of explaining things - if they couldn't tell us exactly how to do a thing, they'd say "oh, just use your common sense." And a fat lot of help it was.

A related phrase is "it's a well-known fact" - but those who say that can rarely tell us how many people "know" or who exactly they are.......best gambit for that is to keep saying "yes, but how do you know it's a fact?" Another member of this prejudicial family of terms is the "stupid question." In my book there is no such thing as a stupid question.

I used to get quite annoyed by "axioms" in mathematics - assumptions deemed too obvious and simple to warrant proof. I felt that if those things weren't formally proved, then mathematics was built on "feet of clay." Though I doubt that any of those axioms would turn out to be wrong.

I suppose all human thought and activity is built on assumptions - there simply isn't enough time to check everything out. But we shouldn't forget that ultimately they are just assumptions. What bothers me about the term "common sense" is that it's so often used to justify an assumption at the expense of the person who doesn't fit the mould. If the assumption proves to be wrong, it's the assumer who should be apologising for lack of due diligence, not the one who "lacks common sense." That stance does rather open the door for people who want to deliberately act dumb, but I think it should be possible to sort them out by watching them carefully for evidence that they know more than they pretend to know.

The term 'Common Sense' is actually Deity language.

Rather like the word 'it'; as in;

'It's not right',

You can't argue against Deity language and you can't even discuss the Deity statement because 'IT is written'

Last edited by Blindspot149 on 03 Feb 2010, 1:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's not common sense that's him expecting you to read his mind.

Question: Is "Common Sense" the same as "Common Knowledge"?

I've heard both and it was implied that they aren't the same, which confuses me.

I think common knowledge is like a well-known fact. Those facts are usually 'argumentum ad populum' (appeal to the people) which basically means "If many believe so, it is so." It is also the basis of a number of social phenomena, including communal reinforcement and the bandwagon effect, the spreading of various religious and anti-religious beliefs, and of the Chinese proverb "three men make a tiger".

That's a good point. I wonder if part of what people mean by "common sense" is actually the ability to interpret somebody without them explaining literally what they mean - i,e., to read their mind.

I wonder if that's partly why people with AS are often told they have no common sense?

As for common knowledge, I think this refers to facts that everybody (apparently) knows or ought to know, whereas common sense is more like a habit of mind that everyone supposedly has. It's less about knowing things than about reasoning in a "normal" way.

My husband is highly intelligent. He is probably the smartest guy in the room, at almost all times. But sometimes interpersonally, there are things that make perfect sense to me that baffle him.

Typical interaction:

It's 7:45 in the evening - kids go to bed at 8. We have new ice cream in the fridge. I say kind of quietly, "Hon, after the kids go to bed, let's investigate what's in the freezer." (wink!)

He says loudly, "Do you mean the chocolate chunk ice cream we bought today? Sure, let's eat some!"

Immediately both children begin jumping up & down "YAY ICE CREAM!! !" and I have to either tell them NO, you can't have any, or sugar them up right before bed. I'm annoyed and he's like "What? You brought it up."

Ive come to view the common sense thing as, "watch what you're doing," scenarios. Using the laundry in the rain bit mentioned earlier: You did as you were told . . . the common sense part is, "If clothes are wet, do not put them on something that will also get wet. Throw them in the dryer or hang them up." We focus more on doing the literal task (bring the clothes in from the rain) rather than the ramifications of the results (putting the clothes that were wet from the rain on a futon). Its more like an innate form of analysis where you understand the implied and avert an accident. And yes, a LOT of NTs lack this (coughpoliticiansandbusinessmencough) and thats what causes troubles in societies because something looks good on paper, but its not practical in reality.

Common sensible topic

I use the term in at least two ways, and here are my interpretations:

1. CS refers to a rational, logical and teperate way of approach to a task or situation. This is something I practice constantly, and at WP I use it to moderate my responses so that I do not say something I would regret. I never mention anything that I would be embarrassed about. Mistakes happen, though, and I get rid of them as fast as possible. Best to reread everything before sending. I have made one major error, way back in the spring of 2008. I will never do that again.

2. CS means listening to an inner voice that tells me if I think something is wrong, it probably is, and I will not allow someone to dictate to me how I think. This takes a steely resolve, and because I am not bothered too much by title or class consciousness, this is an area in which I do not make many errors. I trust my own judgement, and defend my opinions/ideas.

bolding by me

YES!

Common sense is the ability to look beyond the task you are currently doing and make a logical prediction about the likely outcome of what you are doing.

It falls by the wayside so often (whether you have AS or not) either because you are so intensly focused on what you are doing that you don't think about the results or because you are so distracted by other things that you forget to even attempt a prediction.

Too much focus: you pour all your focus into the specified task and bring the clothes in. Since all focus is on that, no thought is given to the ramifications of [/b]where you put the clothes.

Too little focus: you are worried about something else and barely even think about bringing in the clothes. You do it on autopilot. Then the phone rings and the doorbell rings and you throw them down any old place and forget about them completely until something else drags yourt focus back to them. Meanwhile the futon gets wet.

Neurology may determine which of these scenarios is more likely (or something else entirely) but I think literally every human has done something that in retrospect was utterly lacking in common sense. I don't think it's an NT/AS thing (and you don't need to have ADHD to lose focus and get distracted). I've done silly things many times. Everybody has. Later you look back and say "what was I thinking????".

Last edited by Janissy on 03 Feb 2010, 3:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Common sense is just a judgement based on experience. It's not the same as logic. I think what they mean when they say Aspies (actually it's autistic people in general) is that we don't use past experience the way other people do. I'm not sure whether this is necessarily negative. It can be positive and negative. It can be viewed as just a different way of thinking but that's my view.

"Common sense" to me - in the expression "use your common sense" at least - means "I want something done my way but I'm not about to explain what my way is."

I'm not sure what you mean by "the way other people do." I definitely make use of past experiences, especially social experiences, to try and analyse where I went wrong in a particular situation and avoid doing the same in the future.

I like this. It makes me wonder if aspies are cut off from some collective consciousness. I am not exactly certain what it is but I know I have little if any.