Common Sense: A Primer

By Thomas R. Gildersleeve

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663246875

Thomas R. Gildersleeve

I have no credentials. But I can write. And I’m smart, logical, organized, well read, and most importantly, interested. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy my book. I wrote it for me, but I published it for you. I live at 73 Oenoke Ridge Apt 205, New Canaan, CT 06840, my telephone number is 203-838-9947, and my email address is [e-mail].

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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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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.

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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.

From this perspective, religion is similar to aesthetics. It’s just nonsense and isn’t worth talking about.

But unlike aesthetics, religious delusion can be pernicious. Religious history has left a bloody trail, a process that continues into the present day.

And less catastrophic but still regrettable are the practices that religion imposes on people without a shred of evidence that the practices are of any value. Prohibiting efficient means of birth control and condemning women to an inferior role are examples.

Finally, objectively, ethics is out. It deals with right and wrong, words without denotation.

Sources

This material on connotation, denotation, signals and symbols comes from Philosophy in a New Key by Susanne K. Langer (Mentor 1951).

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CHAPTER TWO

Ethics

Ethics has to do with right and wrong, words that have no denotation. We can point to instances of what we believe are right and wrong behavior. But there’s no entity to which we can point and say, Look, there’s right. The same is equally true of right’s opposite, wrong. Nor is there anything that you can draw to people’s attention and use as a basis for reasoning to the presence of an entity constituting right or wrong.

Nevertheless, ethics is indispensable. Without it, we have no moral compass.

Because the words, right and wrong, have no denotation, an empirical approach is of no use in trying to develop ethics. Consequently, we have to find some other foundation on which to build our ethics.

Historically, religion has formed such a foundation. Despite this fact, religion seems to be a weak reed on which to rely for a guide to ethical behavior.

Never mind the apparently endless list of atrocities committed in the name of religion. Religion’s claim to be the font of ethical knowledge is subject to even more serious question.

Religion deals with terms having no objective referent and appeals to revelation for its justification. There are books of revelations, such as the Torah, Bible and Quran. But the final arbiters of religious thought are the priests whose job it is to interpret the revelations.

So religious conclusions ultimately rest on authority, always a dangerous situation. Authority is good at enforcing already agreed on regulations. But it’s not reliable when it comes to deciding what those regulations should be. It’s partial to regulations that redound to the benefit of those in power rather than to the people in general.

Toward the end of the 18th century, a school of ethical thought called utilitarianism developed. Its most well-known architect was Jeremy Bentham.

The fundamental idea of utilitarianism is that what’s ethical is that which results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Unfortunately, the calculus of figuring out what actions result in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people is formidable. It’s hardly a technique for making ethical choices on a moment-to-moment, personal basis.

And utilitarianism suffers from an even more grievous fault. Different people have differing concepts of what constitutes happiness, which in specific situations, can lead to different conclusions as to what the ethical thing to do is.

Who is it who’s going to decide of what people’s happiness consists? Once more, we’re back to an appeal to authority. Maybe the way to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people is to eliminate certain degenerate parts of the population. After all, that’s what Hitler thought, and not everyone disagreed with him.

Relying on authority doesn’t work when trying to come up with an ethical system. And consequently, utilitarianism doesn’t cut it when it comes to serving as a basis for an ethic.

However, utilitarianism did make one contribution. It moved the discussion of ethics down from the cosmic struggle between God and the Devil to a concern with human beings and their condition, namely, their happiness.

Happiness is a difficult term to define. Given this difficulty, maybe we could focus on a similar, but somewhat less complicated, concept that we could accept as a proxy for happiness – pleasure.

Pleasure is also difficult to define. A start might be to recognize that we suffer pain and that the inability to satisfy our more basic drives, such as thirst and hunger, leads to discomfort and, ultimately, death. At a minimum, we could define pleasure as the avoidance of such pain, agony and disaster.

We can probably do even better than that. Satisfying drives, such as hunger and sex, seems to bring some kind of satisfaction that we could call pleasure.

The trouble is that, as we move away from the basic physiological drives and get into more self-actuated ones, such as enjoying music or sports, it becomes harder and harder to make general statements about pleasure. There’s just too much variation from person to person.

But perhaps there’s a way out. Since there’s such variation in what people think of as pleasure, why not let each person decide for himself what gives him pleasure and then give him the right to act on the basis of his conclusions? In this way, we arrive at the idea that freedom, the right to act in whatever way a person sees fit, might form the foundation for an ethic.

If freedom gives us the right to act in whatever way that we see fit, then it should also give everyone else the same right. And this observation places restrictions on what we’re free to do.

We can do anything that we want as long as we don’t restrict the ability of anyone else to do what they want. This conclusion gives us an ethical principle that applies equally to all people, a rule that places your wishes on the same level as everyone else’s: As long as you avoid preventing anyone from doing what they want to do, you’re free to do anything that you want.

If we want to enjoy freedom, we have to constrain our actions to the extent that we avoid preventing anyone from doing what they want to do. This is an ethical responsibility. It’s not right to prevent people from doing what they want to do, and we shouldn’t do it.

As a further insight into the concept of freedom, consider the following series of steps, which are collectively known as the tale of the slave, a tale told by Robert Nozick in his book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. As you read the tale of the slave, ask yourself: In what step or steps did you, the slave, experience an increase in freedom?

1. You’re a slave. What meager possessions you have, a few rags for clothes and a place under a roof to sleep, you hold at your master’s sufferance. The products of your efforts go to your master, who uses them as he sees fit. The activities in which your efforts are invested are selected by your master. Your master treats you brutally. You’re whipped and otherwise abused at his whim, are often underfed, and receive inadequate medical attention.

2. Your master acquires other slaves. Ultimately, he owns 10,000 slaves besides you. He treats his other slaves in the same way that he treats you.

3. Your master publishes a set of regulations concerning slave behavior. He whips or otherwise punishes a slave only if the slave violates a regulation.

4. Your master improves the living conditions of his slaves — supplies more ample clothing,