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)