engleski

Common Sense in Evolutionary Perspective

In the primary sense Common Sense denotes a set of (typically unconscious) mental processes involved in every-day cognition and action: processes of perception, reasoning, linguistic competence, decision making, understanding other people’s minds, etc. In the second sense Common Sense refers to a system of (typically implicit) beliefs that can be viewed as outcomes of mental processing. In its third sense the term can be applied to objects and situations in the world corresponding to mental processes viz. belief systems: the »common sense world«. Accordingly, there are three kind of theories dealing with the three aspects of Common Sense: (1) theories about mental processes (e.g. psychological theories of perception, reasoning, mind reading, etc.) ; (2) theories about belief-systems (e.g. in social anthropology) ; and (3) theories of common sense world (e.g. formal ontological or AI theories of substances, situations, events, or other ontological categories). Traditionally, the three aspects of Common Sense have been studied separately, by different disciplines following diverse, often mutually incomensurable methodological guidelines. In the last decade and a half an important paradigm change took place, mostly due to a new research program (often referred to as 'cognitive science') integrating results and methodologies of some old and a host of new disciplines (evolutionary psychology, particularly). In respect to the topic of Common Sense, two insights stand out: (1) contrary to the »Standard Social Science Model« (Cosmides-Tooby), there exists something as a universal, panhuman cultural substrate (»metaculture«) that is invariant in respect to time, space or social contingencies ; (2) contrary to the long held orthodoxy about the human mind as a general purpose machinery, this panhuman »stock of beliefs« is the result of many functionally specialized, content-dependent, context sensitive and domain-specific mechanisms (»modules«) which evolved as adaptations to ancestral environments. While the first hypothesis is relatively unproblematic, the second deserves special scrutiny. In particular, there seems to be a problem about the coordination and integration of the diverse common sense generating mechanisms viz. their outcomes. Short of a solution to this problem the scientist of mind faces difficulties in integrating the two hypotheses in a unique theory.

common-sense; mental processes; evolutionary psychology; Standard Social Science Model; domain-specific mechanisms; content dependence

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