Don't be fooled : a philosophy of common sense / Jan Bransen ; translated by Fulco Teunissen and Kate Kirwin, Twelvetrees Translations.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bransen, Jan, 1958- author.

Standardized Title:

Laat je niets wijsmaken. English

Language:

Dutch

English

Subjects (All):

Common sense.

Expertise.

Physical Description:

xii, 190 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

Summary:

In the debate leading up to the EU referendum in the United Kingdom, the British politician Michael Gove declared that "people in this country have had enough of experts". In the 2016 Presidential campaign in the United States, Donald Trump waged a war against the very idea of expertise. Yet if you are worried about your child's behaviour, don't know which laptop to buy, or just want to get fit, the answer is easy: ask an expert. Where do we draw the line? Why do we appear to know more and more collectively, yet less and less individually? Has expertise painted itself into a corner? Can we defend both science and common sense? In this engaging and much-needed book Jan Bransen explores these important questions and more. He argues that the rise of behavioural sciences has caused a sea change in the relationship between science and common sense. He shows how-as recently as the 1960s-common sense and science were allies in the battle against ignorance, but that since then populism and chauvinism have claimed common sense as their own. Bransen argues that common sense is a collection of interrelated skills that draw on both an automatic pilot and an investigative attitude where we ask ourselves the right questions. It is the very attitude of open-minded inquiry and questioning that Bransen believes we are at risk of losing in the face of an army of experts. Drawing on fascinating examples such as language and communication, money, the imaginary world of Endoxa, domestic violence, and quality of life, Don't be Fooled: A Philosophy of Common Sense is a brilliant and wry defence of a skill that is a vital part of being human. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Autism 1

2 Zoon logikon: talking animals 3

3 Independent of context and audience 6

4 Missing information subroutine 8

5 An investigative attitude 12

6 Philosophy's anteroom 15

Part 1 Living with common sense 19

1 Humaning on Endoxa

1 A new verb 21

2 Endoxa: a microcosm 25

2 Expectation between hope and prediction

1 A ferry tale 31

2 Folk physics 32

3 Expectations, entitlements and obligations 35

4 Life without experts 39

5 Looking for support: predictions 42

6 Hope: hearts beating in anticipation 44

3 Understandable, efficient and good behaviour

1 Everyday scenes 47

2 Rationalising 48

3 Understandable 51

4 Efficient 53

5 Good 55

6 Humaning 59

4 Trust and accommodation

1 Before you go to sleep 63

2 Emotions 65

3 Entrusting 67

4 Reliability 70

5 Vulnerability 74

6 Accommodation 76

7 Trust 79

5 Dealing with grey

1 A new job? 82

2 Grey 83

3 Questions 86

4 Desire 89

5 Money 93

6 Understanding 96

Part 2 Living with expertise 101

6 Humaning today

1 Back and forth 103

2 Self-evident 103

3 Dialectics 105

4 Let's reclaim our common sense! 108

7 Waking up without science

1 Universal prevention 112

2 Camouflage and consciousness 114

3 Science 116

4 Different route 118

5 Rationality and internal coherence 119

6 Metamorphosis 121

7 Awake 123

8 Now what? 126

8 Understanding without objectivity

1 Hockey coach 129

2 Response-dependent properties 130

3 Affordances and our language community 134

4 Normal language skills and favourable circumstances 139

5 Looking for trouble 143

6 Now what? 144

9 Life satisfaction without policies

1 Social worker 148

2 Quality of life 149

3 High-quality infrastructure 151

4 A knotty situation 154

5 Self-alienation 155

6 Helpless 158

7 Now what? 160

10 Responsibility without expert witnesses

1 In prison 163

2 Who is to blame? 164

3 Not accountable 168

4 Out of sorts 173

5 Fair, unbiased, neutral and impartial 174

6 Now what? 177.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781138716735

1138716731

9781138716773

1138716774

OCLC:

974794519