Who Is Afraid Of Common Sense?

On the attempt to dispossess people of their common sense

In recent times I have been struck by the frequency with which common sense is negatively framed by educators, especially in universities. It is also treated with scorn by the cultural elites in the media. Common sense is frequently represented as inherently flawed and charged with naïve acceptance of unexamined opinions. It is invariably dismissed as a medium for communicating prejudice. Those ‘accused’ of seeing the world through the prism of common sense are regarded as potential threats to expertise and science. Hostility towards populism runs is parallel with denunciating its ideological adherence to common sense. Apparently populist politicians politicise common sense and ‘exploit’ or ‘manipulate’ its influence over sections of the electorate. Appeals to common sense by populists are inevitably represented as an insincere demagogic ploy

Critics of common sense take the view that this sensibility favours conservative or populist narratives and therefore its acceptance by millions of citizens represents an obstacle to reform and social change. As I noted in a recent essay on Roots & Wings, attacks on common sense are often motivated by hostility towards democratic decision making and a fear of the opinions held by the majority of the electorate. One critic of common-sense asserts that it should be rejected because ‘it often operates in the service of conservatism, populism, or majoritarianism’[i]. This explicit rejection of the role of the majority in democratic decision making serves as testimony to what can best be described as an instance of demophobia.

In fact as a sensibility towards making sense of everyday life common sense tends to offer a reliable form of knowledge. That is why historically common sense constituted a source of authority and continues to be regarded as the epistemic foundation for judgment and decision making. The epistemic authority of common sense was based on its reliability as a trusted source of knowledge and practical wisdom. Tested through generations of community experience common sense is a culturally evolved accomplishment. It represents the legacy of a tried and tested historically validated medium for making sense of people’s daily reality.

As an evolved accomplishment common sense is a historical phenomenon that reflects the changing experiences of society. The knowledge communicated through common sense allows communities to engage with the moral and practical problems of everyday life. Although it embodies knowledge gained through tradition and the cultural legacy of society it is inherently empirical and evolves through its engagement with the problems thrown up in a changing world. Contrary to its naysayers who dismiss common sense as anti-science and anti-expertise, it has played a central role in the development of science and scientific thinking.

The relation between common sense and science was explained by Howard Sankey in his paper ‘Scientific Realism and the Conflict with Common Sense’ in the following way:

‘I wish to suggest that basic common sense provides the evidential basis on which science is founded. In our ordinary everyday interaction with the physical objects that surround us, we make routine use of our senses in determining how things stand in the world around us. It is precisely such use of our sensory capabilities which is involved in the collection of the observational data which forms the evidential basis for the sciences. Even where instrumentation is employed to extend the senses, our usual perceptual apparatus is employed in reading the outputs of the instruments. Given the involvement of basic common sense in establishing the observational basis of science, I suggest that scientific realism and basic common sense are well suited to each other. There need be no clash between science and basic common sense’[ii].

Alarmist warnings about the threat common sense thinking poses to science overlook the fact that these two different forms of knowledge can easily co-exist in a harmonious fashion so long as they engage with problems that pertain to their domain of experience.

Critics of populist common sense have become addicted to the prejudice that contends that its aim is to undermine the credibility of science and expertise. According to one anti-populist ideologue, ‘when populists elevate common sense as a virtue, it’s not just to celebrate how regular people understand the world. It’s to promote a worldview that rejects verifiable facts, exaggerates our biases, and paves the way for even more propaganda to come’[iii]. Yet the claim that common sense is an enemy of science is called into question by researchers dealing with this issue. As Sankey noted ‘basic common sense is sufficiently epistemologically robust to provide a foundation both for scientific knowledge and for scientific realism’.

In defence of common sense

So why is there so much hostility directed at common sense?

Most of the time common-sense provides the most reliable form of knowledge for dealing with the problems of everyday life. Of course, it does not always get things right. Like other forms of knowledge -such as science – common sense epistemology may fail to capture the different dimensions of a given reality and can lead to misleading conclusions. However, what is important about common sense is not simply the knowledge that it offers but its ability to express and communicate ideas and practices that are based on the experiences of a community. It is a sensibility that is not produced by individuals but by a community. That is why it is a sense that is common! Moreover, unlike science common sense is able to give meaning to those experiences and therefore equip people to engage with many of the existential issues that confront them.

The transmission of common-sense beliefs about morality, religion, practical issues assist the socialisation of members of a community. It provides the basis for people’s taken-for-granted assumptions about the conduct of everyday life and represents the basis for communicative solidarity. Without the implicit guidance provided by common sense the routines of everyday life would become a ceaseless challenge.

What’s important about common sense is the word ‘common’. Common sense is not simply the sensibility that individuals possess. Through its usage by people an important social bond is created. The philosopher Hannah Arendt has characterised common sense as a ‘vital form of social glue’[iv]. This bond is founded upon shared understandings and the everyday experience of ordinary people. Historically common sense served as the foundation of common law. That is why even today judges often invoke common sense when interpreting laws or deciding cases. Ideally their judgments depend on what an average person would consider reasonable or foreseeable. Common law worked because the ‘common sense of the judge was not far away from the common sense of the mass of the people’[v]. Unfortunately, this relationship between the law and the mass of people has been gradually undermined by the displacement of common sense by the technocratic and administrative turn of the system of justice.

Common sense thinking has become the target of the technocratic managerial elite because it implicitly challenges its dogma of scientism. Not science but scientism! Scientism seeks to depoliticise public life and subject the issues facing society to the imperative of expertise. Consequently, the views and beliefs of the public are trumped by the opinion of experts. Scientism continually attempts to expand the authority of science into areas of life where it has no useful role to play. Thus we have the science of happiness, relationship science, science of friendship. You can even get a degree in Batchelor Of Science of Life Coaching.

Sadly, scientism is now used to legitimate various policies and claims made by all sorts of institutions. Consequently, evidence, or rather evidence-based policy, which supposedly enjoys the authority of science, dominates the modern political landscape. Today, policies are judged not on the grounds of whether they are good or bad, but on the question of whether they are evidence-based.

The politicization science has led to the ascendancy of scientism, which aims to spread scientific discourse into our personal, cultural and social experiences, where actually other modes of non-scientific reflection are really needed. This is why, today, we have everything from the ‘science of parenting’ to the ‘science of happiness’ and the ‘science of the spiritual life’. The attempt by science to colonise the life world of communities directly challenges the epistemic authority of common sense. Such a challenge creates far more problems than it solves since questions to do with issues that touch on everyday human relations and with morality are not suitable targets for expert intervention. The conduct of human and community relations rely on the insights provided by common sense. Through the exercise of common sense communities can gain meaning about the predicament they face. Science is singularly unhelpful in endowing human experience with meaning.

Instead of trying to give meaning to the problems we face through reflection and debate, governments now embrace science as the unique source of truth. Scientific evidence is, of course, a useful resource for decision-makers. But not every research finding adds up to ‘evidence’ that can directly be used to forge a new policy. Evidence needs to be tested, interpreted and given meaning before it can become a reliable source of action. The use of scientific evidence for political ends is particularly troublesome in the sphere of social policy, where the problems facing people are context-specific and mediated through various different influences and factors. That is why, historically, so-called evidence-based policy has proven to be no more or no less effective than policies driven by a more explicitly political agenda.

Now, more than at any other moment in the modern era, it is crucially important to uphold the value of common sense. Why? Because common sense is not only derided but faces a ferocious ideological onslaught. The knowledge that people have derived from their everyday experience is frequently called into question to the point that even the most banal problems of life are said to require expert intervention. People’s lay knowledge is constantly dismissed as of little use for dealing with our supposedly ever-increasing complex world. There is an ever-increasing number of mentors, parenting coaches, sex therapists and life coaches whose very existence calls into question the relevance of common sense. Even the commonsense advice on parenting offered by grandmothers has been invalidated by expert knowledge.[vi].

In a roundabout way the hostility directed at common sense is motivated by a powerful anti-democratic impulse. The claims of relationship expertise are bad enough but when expertise gains influence over the conduct of politics than democracy itself is put to question.

The attempt to deny a central role for common sense in democratic decision making has its origins in Plato’s advocacy of relying of political experts rather than on the wisdom of the people. Plato was preoccupied by the authority enjoyed by the demos in democratic Ancient Athens, and argued that citizens lacked the expertise and the judgment required for governing a city state. Speaking through the mouth of Socrates, Plato asserted that politics was the business, not of the people, but of experts.

In his dialogue with Protagoras, Socrates complained that when it comes to constructing a building or a ship, the community relies on expert architects or shipwrights, yet when it comes to the administration of the state, every citizen is allowed to have an equal voice. He added that ‘when it is something to do with the government of the country that is to be debated, the man who gets up to advise them may be a builder or equally well a blacksmith or a shoemaker, a merchant or ship owner, rich or poor, of good family or none’.^[vii]

Socrates was in no doubt that ‘what most people think’ on political matters is far less important than the views of the one man who really understands the issues at stake – the expert.^[viii] From this perspective democracy was dangerous because it provided people with an opportunity to use their common sense to influence political decision making. Hostility towards the exercise of common-sense represents the contemporary version of this anti-democratic impulse.

Contrary to the present-day adherents of Plato it is important to uphold common sense as a precious resource on which democratic politics can draw. The common sense of ordinary people provides the wisdom necessary for the flourishing of the kind of rich community life required for democracy to flourish. What we have in common is what holds us together and creates the foundation for democratic solidarity.

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[i] Cochran, P. (2017) Common Sense and Legal Judgment. McGill-Queen’s University Press : Montreal.

[ii] Howard Sankey, ‘Scientific Realism and the Conflict with Common Sense’, https://philpapers.org/archive/SANSRA-17.docx

[iii] Dannagal G. Young (2025) ‘How populist leaders like Trump use ‘common sense’ as an ideological weapon to undermine facts’, The Conversation, 6 February 2025.

[iv] Rosenfeld, S. (2011) Common Sense: A Political History. Harvard University Press : Cambridge, MA

[v] Common Law and Common Sense Author(s): William Renwick Riddell Source: The Yale Law Journal , Jun., 1918, Vol. 27, No. 8.

[vi] http://http/www.epjournal.net/articles/the-association-between-grandmaternal-investment-and-early-years-overweight-in-the-uk/

[vii] Protagoras 319b-d. See http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/protagoras.html

[viii] See Crito (47b10-11) http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html