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At a recent forklift training update workshop the instructor ( a hands-on-type of person and not a philosopher or university instructor) boldy asserted to his audience that "there is no such thing as common sense.....only common experiences". He repeatedly emphasized this position throughout the course of the seminar to all the attendees.
The members of the session shifted noticeably and uncomfortably in their seats. Every day at work they are encouraged to use their common sense when working in the warehouse. Now this upstart had the audacity to tell them that common sense was no longer workable. He was confident to the point of making this definition a part of the multiple choice questions given at the end of the lecture. There was no guess work involved in that response.
One dictionary's definition of "common sense" (or, when used attributively as an adjective, commonsense, common-sense, or commonsensical), is based on a strict construction of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that which they 'sense' (in common) as their common natural understanding.
Most commonly, the phrase is used to refer to beliefs or propositions that - in their opinion - most people would consider prudent and of sound judgment, without dependence upon esoteric knowledge or study or research, but based upon what they see as knowledge held by people 'in common'.
Thus 'common sense' (in this view) equates to the knowledge and experience which most people have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have. This notion has the flavor but not the authority of common experience. Was this merely a matter of semantic gymnastics?
On the other side of the equation is nonsense. Nonsense, according to another widely accepted notion, "is an utterance or written text in what appears to be a human language or other symbolic system, that does not in fact carry any identifiable meaning".
At the end of the seminar the audience all agreed to agree on one thing: that according to their "common experience" the instructor's definition of things didn't really fit into the real life experiences faced when driving heavy machinery in a warehouse filled with people and dangling placards. It was all nonsensical and lacking any real experience.
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