What is Common Sense?

I came across the following few passages from a book on the concept of unpopularity and realized that many of us, in more than one occasion, would fall into the perception that what is believed by the majority would somehow translate to be correct, just or even as common sense.

Every society has notions of what one should believe and how one should behave in order to avoid suspicion and unpopularity. Some of these societal conventions are given explicit formulation in a legal code, others are more intuitively held in a vast body of ethical and practical judgment described as 'common sense' ... ... ...

The same concept would apply to how we try to please everyone or to avoid being unpopular. Many try not to go against what is popular even though there exist doubts. The author describes his basic reactions to many daily activities with priority on the perceptions of 'common sense' and popularity in mind.

In conversations, my priority was to be liked, rather than to speak the truth. A desire to please led me to laugh as modest jokes like a parent on the opening night of a school play. With strangers, I adopted the servile manner or a concierge greeting wealthy clients in a hotel ... indiscriminate desire for affection. I did not publicly doubt ideas to which the majority was committed. I sought the approval of figures of authority and after encounters with them, worried at length whether they had thought me acceptable. When passing through customs or driving alongside police cars, I harbored a confused wish for the uniformed officials to think well of me.

... ... ... Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that society conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs and at the same time that we would be alone in noticing that facts.

It is so true indeed. However, the more important thing is why that is so and how things can be changed. Deriving from Socrates' philosophy on popularity or unpopularity, the author, following a Socratic method of thinking, came up with the following summary (or at least what I think is the summary):

What is declared obvious and 'natural' rarely is so. Recognition of this should teach us to think that the world is more flexible than it seems, for the established views have frequently emerged not through a process of faultless reasoning, but through centuries of intellectual muddle. There may be no good reason for things to be the way they are ... ... ...

... ... ... The validity of an idea or action is determined not by whether it is widely believed or widely reviled but by whether it obeys the rules of logic. It is not because an argument is denounced by a majority that it is wrong nor, for those drawn to heroic defiance, that it is right.

Next time when you come across something which is considered common sense by the majority, try to question the logic behind it as well as the reasons for it to be so. Any act believed to be right by most is not necessary the right thing to do. I am going to start doing that myself when there are doubts.

The above excerpts are from Alain de Botton's The Consolidation of Philosophy; Chapter on the Consolidation of Unpopularity. (Penguin Books, 2001)

Photo from http://www.alaindebotton.com/