Common-Sense Intelligence

Discussion

On Common-Sense Understanding as a Field of Knowledge

Charles McKelvey:

"For Lonergan, common sense is a field of knowledge, existing alongside the fields of science (including social science), history, and mathematics. Common-sense knowledge originates from talking, which is a basic human art, through which each communicates to others what he or she knows, thus provoking contradictions that direct the attention of each subject to what he or she has overlooked, involving the discovery and addressing of relevant questions in everyday life. The spontaneous collaboration of individuals has the consequence that the discoveries and inventions of individuals become the possession of many, forging the communal development of intelligence in the family, the tribe, and the nation. Consequently, individuals are born into a community that already possesses collective common-sense intelligence, a common fund of tested answers that pertain to practical affairs.

Inasmuch as common-sense intelligence is rooted in the art of communication, in which the meaning of words is subtle and fluid, common sense understanding has little use for technical language. Common-sense knowledge is communicated not through exercises in formal logic, but as a work of art. Precision is not its strength.

Common-sense intelligence, moreover, has little in the way of theoretical reflection. Lonergan writes that “the supreme canon of common sense is the restriction of further questions to the realm of the concrete and particular, the immediate and practical.” However, even though the field of common-sense intelligence lacks the theoretical aspirations that are central to scientific inquiry, the two forms of knowledge (common sense and science) are complementary, and both are necessary for human progress and development.

The cumulative development of common-sense knowledge is the foundation of technological development and human material progress. Cooperation is necessary for progress, and therefore, continuous desire for human improvement leads to cooperation in the form of a division of labor, which assigns different tasks to individuals.

Accordingly, politics emerges as an area of specialization within common-sense intelligence. The field of politics necessarily includes a level of understanding of industry and commerce, but its special area involves knowing when to compromise, when to delay, and when to take action despite opposition. Political common sense must be able to understand the needs of the people and to win the confidence of the people.

To attain its most advanced expression, political common-sense intelligence ought to aim at being subordinate to science and theoretical knowledge. That is, common sense should subordinate itself to understandings of human history, particularly understandings that seek to direct human history toward progress.

However, what Lonergan calls the general bias of common sense subverts the attainment of a common-sense intelligence that is integrated with science. He writes that common sense, with its focus on the concrete and the particular and its indifference to abstract and universal laws, “is easily led to rationalize its limitations by engendering a conviction that other forms of human knowledge are useless.” When this occurs, timely and fruitful ideas are disregarded, leading to a cumulative deterioration of the social situation. In this context, “religion becomes an affair of the heart,” and philosophy has no practical purpose. No coherent solutions to social problems are put forth.

In this situation of social deterioration, social science can be of inestimable value in aiding humanity to understand and implement resolutions of social problems. However, this can occur only if it is a form of social science that is able to distinguish between progress and decline, “between the liberty that generates progress and the bias that generates decline.” It cannot be a merely empirical social science, but a critical social science that guides common-sense political and commercial intelligence."

(https://charlesmckelvey.substack.com/p/maga-and-common-sense-intelligence)

Example

The MAGA movement

Charles McKelvey:

"The common-sense political intelligence of MAGA

The social base of the MAGA movement is middle America, which consists of the industrial and service working class, farmers and agricultural workers, and the ordinary people of small towns and rural areas. These sectors of society have experienced in recent decades the decline in US manufacturing due to the relocation of factories; the preference of employers for foreign workers and immigrant labor, who sell their labor at a lower cost; the decline and deterioration of communities; and the rise of crime. They have experienced the incapacity of the political establishment to address these problems. They have experienced a preference in employment and college admissions for social groups designated as historically oppressed, contradicting their expectation of equality of opportunity. They have experienced the emergence of a widely disseminated ideology in the professional class that accuses them of racism, bigotry, or fascism when they attempt to criticize these tendencies. They have experienced US involvement in endless wars without benefit to the nation, for which they have sacrificed disproportionately as soldiers. And they have experienced the decline of the nation’s influence and prestige in the world.

In response to these tendencies, the MAGA movement has emerged as a project of common-sense political intelligence. It was called into being by Donald Trump during the Republican Party presidential primaries of 2016. With political intelligence, Trump put forth the phrase, Make America Great Again, at once implying a critique of the political establishment for failing to prevent the nation’s decline yet also expressing the hope for a national renewal. Trump’s speeches addressed issues of concern to the ordinary people of middle America, based in awareness of the above-mentioned negative tendencies that they have experienced, with particular emphasis on the phenomenon of uncontrolled immigration. And Trump addressed the issues in a conversational style, using the imprecise language that is the way of common-sense intelligence, devoid of theoretical analysis and precision, often expressing feelings with exaggeration. In substance and style, Trump presented himself to middle America as the genuine anti-establishment political candidate.

As the MAGA phenomenon evolved, it attracted conservative thinkers and think tanks. This led to the further development of the MAGA program, initiated decisively during the first year of the second Trump administration. It is a program of economic nationalism, which seeks to unleash national production of oil and gas from excessive government regulation; correct balance of payments deficits with trading partners; and attract domestic and foreign investment in national production. It is a program of cultural nationalism that seeks to revitalize appreciation of the nation’s history and to revitalize what it calls common sense with respect to gender and race. It includes a foreign policy of peace through strength, in which military force is used for decisive strikes but not for involvement in endless wars. It is a comprehensive program of political common-sense intelligence that responds to the everyday experiences of middle America.

But the MAGA movement is limited by the general bias of common sense, which prevents it from awareness of critical reflection on the role of the nation in world affairs from the perspective of the neocolonized peoples of the earth. It lacks consciousness of colonial analysis of the modern world, forged by the leaders and intellectuals of the Global South since the end of the Second World War.

The influence of the general bias of common-sense explains why MAGA has arrived to rejection of imperialist overreach, but not to rejection of imperialism itself. MAGA discerns, on the basis of its own direct experience, the folly of endless wars. But because of the general bias of common-sense, it does not take into account the theoretical reflections based in the experiences of the colonized peoples of other lands. MAGA, therefore, is unable to reflect on the question if it ought, as an anti-establishment movement in a declining imperialist power, align with the anti-imperialist governments of the world in common cause.

The common-sense intelligence of MAGA, therefore, has not yet connected to the critical social science that Lonergan sees as the complement to common sense, necessary for overcoming a national situation of social deterioration. This lack is understandable, given that the social sciences of US universities are not up to the task. They have undermined the possibilities for an integrated critical philosophical historical social science, responding to the needs and interests of the nation. They have fallen victim to the fragmentation of knowledge, shaped by the interests of the corporate elite.

The critical social science with which MAGA needs to integrate is being forged in political praxis by the leaders and intellectuals of the Global South, a process that has been unfolding for the last 100 years."

(https://charlesmckelvey.substack.com/p/maga-and-common-sense-intelligence)