Sense and common sense in William James

The relationship between pragmatism and common sense is more complex and nuanced than it might seem at first sight. A double-sided attitude toward common sense is patently present in William James, and especially evident in lecture V of Pragmatism, titled “Pragmatism and Common Sense”. The premises for the lecture, in the context of Pragmatism, are set in lecture II, where James tackles the issue of how knowledge grows. Common sense, therefore, which in practical talk means good judgment, under the lens of philosophy means “the use of certain intellectual forms or categories of thought”. A good starting point for understanding James’s psychology of concepts is “The Sentiment of Rationality”, a paper in which he offers a broadly aesthetic description of the rationality of philosophical conceptions. An act of conception, James claims, is the result of an act of attention, by which people identify and single out something in the stream of thought.