Download Common Sense - SemioticSigns.com

Common Sense
“The Social Construction of
‘Common Sense’: A Semiotic
Sociological Analysis”
J. I. (Hans) Bakker
What is Common Sense?
Different Strokes for Different Folks
• When I asked people what common sense
is I got a range of different answers:
• “I like to think I have common sense.”
• “Common sense is sorely lacking today.”
• “Common sense is not very common!”
• “Everyone knows what common sense is.”
• “Have you read Gramsci?”
• “Tom Paine said it all.”
The Common People
• Lack of much formal
education
• Attachment to
traditional ways of
doing things
• Religious rituals
• Stereotyped views of
“outsiders” (“Other”)
• Still, however, often
very intelligent
• Greek hoi polloi
• Roman plebeians,
plebs, “plebiscite”
• “plebe” = new recruit,
freshman student
• Crude? Coarse?
• Are the “Mandarins”
more or less likely to
show common sense
in their decisions?
If the common people do not have
common sense then who does?
• The term is inherently ambiguous.
• We tend to think those who agree with us are showing a
measure of common sense.
• Legal arguments based on common sense tend to be
veiled ways of using “rhetoric”
• “Jury of one’s peers” originally meant “peers of the
realm” and not ordinary citizens (e.g. Conrad Black,
British Lord!)
• The “dozen” members of a jury comes from astrology!
Astrological symbolism is all around us.
• Kant’s “a priori synthetic categories” may simply be what
we are socialized to believe is common sense (e.g.
notions of time, space and causation)
It was once believed that it is
common sense to acknowledge:
•
Women are not physically capable of running a marathon since they
are the weaker sex; only men can do it.
•
People who come from Africa are inferior “by nature” and therefore
should be considered to be 5/8th of a citizen.
•
Philosophy should always be a subset of Theology since the
axiomatic principles of common sense involve a belief in God.
Everything in the Bible is the word of God and therefore one should
do everything the Bible tells us to do, including stoning adulterers
and not eating lobster.
Homosexuality is an abomination.
•
•
•
All of human knowledge can be summarized in a small set of
axioms.
Peirce’s Semiotics helps us to
locate the source of the problem
• Every “sign” is interpreted by a community of discourse,
a scientific or other group.
• The words “common sense” are a sign, and nothing but
a sign.
• What the words really mean is a matter of who is
speaking to whom and why.
• There is no inherent meaning to any word or set of
words. All “sign systems” are in the eyes of their
beholders.
• To search for one and only one correct meaning is a
fruitless task.
• Power tends to provide a means for imposing a definition
(e.g. Supreme courts, Executives/Kings, teachers)
Epistemology
• In order to really “know” something we
have to know how we know.
• The sub-disciplinary field of philosophy
that deals with knowledge is called
epistemology. (Gk. episteme = knowledge)
• In sociological theory we often have
implicit epistemological assumptions, but
most sociologists are not also, at the same
time, professional philosophers.
Social Construction
• For some the term “social construction” means
that EVERYTHING is socially constructed,
without exception
• For others, the term simply means that many
social aspects of life are socially constructed, but
there is nevertheless an “obdurate reality” that
includes biology.
• How the social construction takes place is a
topic which is hotly disputed. Is it a matter of
individuals’ “definition of the situation”? Or is it a
matter of Durkheimian “structures” sui generis?
Semiotics: Two Kinds
• Ferdinand de
Saussure
• Signifier (sign)
• Signified (object)
• Dualistic
• Leans on Descartes’
epistemological
notion of subjectobject relationships
• Charles Sanders
Peirce
• Interpretant
• Sign
• Representant
• Triadic
• Goes beyond
Cartesian dualism of
subject and object.
Rene Descartes’
subject-object dualism
Dualistic Epistemology
• The “subject” is often
thought of as an
isolated, billiard ball
• There is no
“sociological”
understanding in
Descartes
• He does not
understand how
groups socially
construct something
• The “object” is always
thought of as
“objective”
• When Galileo as
subject looks at the
moon as object then
that is “objectivity” par
excellence!
• But much of science
does not involve
looking at singular
objects.
Charles Sanders Peirce
• America’s greatest
philosopher?
• Founder of
Pragmatism
• Founder of
Pragmaticism
• Founder of American
Semiotics
• Still being
“discovered”
Antonio Gramsci
• Concept of
“hegemony”
• Power elite utilizes
ideological hegemony
to maintain rule
• Opposition to
Fascism admirable
• “common sense” is
what the “common
people” have when
they do not know their
true class situation.
Class in Itself; Class for Itself!
• When the common
people (Latin plebeians)
recognize their unity as a
class “for itself” they can
rise up against the
oppressive and
exploitative elites!
• Historical cases do not
seem to indicate that this
has ever really been the
case.
• Stasi in East Germany
William Shakespeare
“Coriolanus”
• Like most of the
patricians (nobles)
Menenius Agrippa
has little use for the
commoners.
• The fools have
elected two tribunes
(judges) who have
incited the
commoners (Gk. hoi
polloi) against
Coriolanus.
• Coriolanus has
defeated the
Volscians at least five
times (his name
comes from Volscan
city of Corioles)
• But he is exiled from
Rome because he
has been
contemptious of the
common people
Coriolanus:
Lacking in Common Sense?
• My name is Caius
Martius, who hath
done To thee
particularly, and to all
the Volsces, Great
hurt and mischief;
thereto, witness my
surname: Coriolanus.
Is common sense
the sense of the rabble?
• The situation in Rome
was that of a Republic
• The imperial Rome of
a later day was also
based in part on
pleasing the masses
with entertainments
• “bread and circuses”
• Coriolanus was “too
proud” to cater to
public opinion
John Dewey
• Pragmatist approach
to education
• Let kids actually
experience working
with tangible things
• Tendency to still
return to subjectobject dualism in his
writings
• Pragmatism but not
Pragmaticism!
Medieval Attitude:
Pre-Cartesian “One-ness”
• “Great Chain of
Being”
• Pragmatism is an
improvement on the
Medieval outlook
which is still central to
idea of a “university”
• The idea of a “woman
reading”, however, is
the exception in
Middle Ages in
Europe
Tom Paine’s Common Sense
• There is no real
discussion of what
common sense is in
Tom’s book (1776)
• Many things he
argues were against
Medieval ideas of
Kingship, ignoring the
slow rise of
Constitutional
Monarchy
Much of Tom Paine is no longer
Common Sense!
• Paine (2004 [1776]: 66) writes: “The present state of
America is alarming to every man who is capable of
reflection.” Many would agree when thinking of the U.S.
today! But was it true in 1776?
• (p. 23) “The nearer any government approaches to a
republic the less business there is for a king.”
• (p. 73) “…we are not insulting the world with our fleets
and armies, nor ravaging the globe for plunder.” Would
that it were true today! (It was not entirely true with
respect to the Native people in the Americas in the 18th
and 19th c…)
• Tom Paine did not include women or slaves as having
the common sense he was writing about.
Is common sense simply good
sense? Is good sense reason?
• “Good Sense” is also
difficult to define, so it
begs the question
• If common sense
were always good
sense then perhaps
alsmost everyone
would almost always
be sensible!
• In everyday life many
people are far from
sensible.
• “Reason” is also very
difficult to define.
• As an autonomous
Faculty it was
regarded by Tom
Paine as
characteristic of all
“Men” (not women)
• Sometimes it is not
common sense or
good sense to be
reasonable.
Common sense is
not all that common
• If we think of common sense as sound or good
reason and good judgment then there are
numerous examples of the opposite in every
newspaper every day.
• There is as much chance that well educated
people will not demonstrate sound common
sense and good judgment in their everyday lives
as there is that people who have little or no
education will not demonstrate sound common
sense in their everyday lives.
Thomas Sebeok
• Well respected
semiotician
• Interested in zoo- or
bio- semiotics
• All animals are
sentient beings
• Even plants respond
to signals, which are
natural signs (e.g.
sunflowers)
Seebeok’s “common sense”
• While Sebeok’s
notion of “signs” of life
is heuristic, it is also
somewhat beyond
what is normally
thought of as
common sense!
• Sebeok’s vision is
very ecological, but
most people do not
think the way he did!
Bakker’s IN-S-OR Model
• Peirce wrote a great
deal and his work is
complicated and
complex, hard to
follow
• For pedagogical
reasons it is worth
trying to simplify
some of his key
insights
• Bakker’s IN-S-OR
Model concerns:
• Interpretive Networks
• Signs
• Operationalized
Representations
The definition of common sense
varies among different IN’s
• Among some Neo-Marxians Gramsci’s use of
the term in The Prison Notebooks would be the
correct use.
• Among some philosophers the term evokes the
Scottish Common Sense School of Philosophy.
• Everyday people often think of common sense
as a kind of antidote to lofty ideas associated
with philosophers and other academics.
• There is no one, completely accepted definition
of common sense. That is normal. Semiotic
analysis of any terms reveals great variety.