Common Sense

Thomas R. Gildersleeve

Description

We’ve been given life. The question is: What do we do with it?
In what can I put my trust?
How do I tell right from wrong?
What is knowledge?
What is logic?
How do we make decisions?
What is love?
What is money?
What is property?
In what should the government get involved?
What should guide a nation’s foreign relations?
What can we do to improve our education system?
What should we do about drug use?
How do we avoid financial meltdowns?
How do we stop global warming?
How do we end income inequality?
Do we have a representative government?
How do I manage my money?
There are common sense answers to these questions.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 09 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663246875
• Langue: English

Extrait

COMMON SENSE
A PRIMER
 
 
 
THOMAS R. GILDERSLEEVE
 
 
 

 
 
COMMON SENSE
A PRIMER
 
Copyright © 2022 Thomas R. Gildersleeve.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
 
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
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ISBN: 978-1-6632-4686-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4687-5 (e)
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 11/08/2022
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1 Belief
Chapter 2 Ethics
Chapter 3 Knowledge
Chapter 4 Logic
Chapter 5 Instinct
Chapter 6 Love
Chapter 7 Money
Chapter 8 Property
Chapter 9 Government
Chapter 10 Foreign Relations
Chapter 11 Education
Chapter 12 Drugs
Chapter 13 Financial Industry Regulation
Chapter 14 Global Warming
Chapter 15 Income Inequality
Chapter 16 Representative Government
Chapter 17 Personal Money Management
We’ve been given life. The question is: What do we do with it?
INTRODUCTION
There’s nothing original in this book. Instead, it’s a collection of the thought given to a variety of subjects. It’s a primer of common sense.

CHAPTER ONE
Belief
All words have connotation . Connotation is what a word makes us think of.
When you hear the word dog, you may think of a large, longhaired animal. That’s your connotation of the word dog.
I may think of a small, shorthaired animal. That’s my connotation of the word dog.
The connotation that the word dog has for you is different from the connotation that the word has for me.
This is true in general. No two people have exactly the same connotation of a word.
However, various people’s connotations of a word are similar enough to allow us to use the word in communication. Thus, you may think of a large animal when the word dog is mentioned, I may think of a small animal, Joe may think of a barking one, Pauline of one wagging its tail, and so on. But we all think of a four footed, hairy animal with a tail, snout, and prominent ears and can, consequently, talk about dogs.
In fact, if our connotations of a spoken group of sounds or a written group of letters weren’t similar enough for us to use them in communicating with one another, they wouldn’t be words. Words are sounds associated with groups of letters about which we’ve a large degree of agreement with respect to connotation. It’s these common connotations that we find in the dictionary
Most words have denotation . Denotation is the relation that a word has to the thing it represents.
If we want to teach a child the denotation of the word dog, we may take him outside, walk around until we find a dog, point to the dog, and say the word, “Dog.”
If the child understands what we’re doing, he develops an idea of what a dog is. From this point on, the word dog has meaning for him. There’s some connotation that comes to his mind when the word dog is mentioned. And he knows that, somewhere out in the world, there are things wandering around that bear some resemblance to his connotation of the word.
Not all denotation is exemplified by pointing. For example, no one has seen the Big Bang beginning of the universe. But the Big Bang is the explanation that best fits the available observations and mathematical calculations based on the equations that most reliably represent the world as we know it.
We humans are symbolic animals. We’re forever inventing, using and modifying words.
We’re unique in our use of symbols.
John’s dog is a smart animal. He’s so smart that he recognizes his master’s name.
But when the dog hears the name John, his reaction is to start looking for his master. To the dog, the word John is a signal to indicate the presence of the word’s denotation, just as a clap of thunder is a signal to us to start looking for rain.
In contrast to the dog, when we hear the word John, our reaction is to respond, “Yes, what about John?” That question is beyond the dog.
A word causes the dog to act with respect to the word’s denotation. To the dog, the word is a signal.
A word causes us to act with respect to the word’s connotation. An image is drawn up in our mind, and we prepare ourselves to receive more information with respect to this image. To us, the word is a symbol .
Our symbolic orientation is what allows us to formulate, store and communicate knowledge. However, it also lets us create symbols that have no denotation.
A harmless example of this behavior is the “purple people eater”. The concept “purple people eater” draws up an image in our mind when it’s mentioned. That is, the concept has connotation. Moreover, my connotation of a purple people eater is similar enough to yours to allow us to talk about purple people eaters.
The above situation is harmless because everybody realizes that the concept “purple people eater” has no denotation. There’s nothing that you can point to and say, “There’s a purple people eater.” Nor is there anything that you can draw to people’s attention and use as a basis for reasoning to the existence of purple people eaters.
As long as we create symbols having no denotation and recognize that they have no denotation, we’re just amusing ourselves. However, if we create a symbol having no denotation but believe that it does, we’re deluding ourselves.
We then believe in the existence of something that can be anything that we want it to be. When we act on the basis of such a belief, we can be led into error.
An example of this kind of behavior is the concept “witch”. As Justice Louis Brandeis said, “Men feared witches and burnt women.” (S 346)
So it becomes critical to be able to distinguish between symbols that have denotation and those that don’t. The general procedure for doing this is to formulate a proposition about what the symbol stands for and then see if the proposition can be empirically verified.
For example, if the symbol is gravity, we can propose to drop a stone and see if it falls to the ground. Verifying that the stone did, indeed, fall to the ground doesn’t guarantee that it always will in the future. But it lends credibility to the belief that the symbol, gravity, does have denotation.
We have more difficulty in determining whether some symbols have denotation than we do with others.
For example, witches are known for being able to make other people sick. There’s an old woman who lives in a somewhat rundown house up the street. She has a black cat for a pet. She recently had a big argument with her next-door neighbor, and not two days after the argument, her neighbor came down with a chronic, disabling disease. Hmmm.
The data is often messy, which makes identifying words with no detonation difficult. We just have to do the best that we can.
However, there are several categories of discussion that are characterized by nonsense and delusion, because they deal with words that have no denotation.
One such category is aesthetics. It deals with beauty, a word without denotation.
You can identify things that you think are beautiful. But when it comes to talking about beauty in general, people don’t know what they’re talking about, because the word, beauty, has no objective referent. It’s an abstract concept.
However, dealing in this nonsense is harmless. The worst that can happen is a heated argument over what is and isn’t art, an argument that can never be resolved, because there’s nothing objective on which to base a decision.
Another category of discussion where the use of words without denotation is characteristic is metaphysics. Metaphysics is concerned with the “reality” behind our sense perceptions, which rules out the possibility of denotation.
Just to be clear about it, metaphysics includes religion. In further explication, let me point out that, when the atheist denies the existence of God, he’s dealing in the same nonobjective terms as is the believer.
When it comes to religion, the only tenable position is agnosticism. In contrast to the believer and the atheist, the agnostic maintains that all religious questions involve things about which it’s impossible to know anything. So there’s no point in even talking about them.
As Ludwig Wittgenstein has said, with respect to those things about which it’s impossible to speak, one should remain silent. (Actually, his words were, in translation, of course, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” (Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen, which is the final statement in Wittgenstein’s seminal book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . (K 220)))
When it comes to God, he/she/it/they can be anything that you want him/her/it/them to be, I can’t prove that you’re wrong, and you can’t prove that you’re right, so there’s no point in discussing it.
Religion is a subject about which it’s impossible to say anything definitive. And if you think that you can, you’re deluding yourself.
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