In a message dated 1/11/2013 9:11:21 A.M. UTC-02, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: Popper is certainly an advocate of science but an opponent of "scientism" [which arises from a mistaken philosophy of science]. But Popper is also an opponent of that "Devil" that puts forward a false and uncritical worship of common sense knowledge, or that seeks to defend such knowledge from criticism by deeming it "the very system of ideas require to make intelligible the idea of calling in question anything at all". Where common sense is dogmatic it may come into conflict with science and, if the tests fail it, common sense should be rejected: but where common sense is essentially self-critical it is part of common sense to recognise mistakes, and so common sense tells us to reject our common sense notions if well-tested science shows those notions to be mistaken. The reification of common sense is as bad, and uncritical, as the reification of science that leads to "scientism". ---- Among the papers left by Grice in "The Grice Papers", UC/Berkeley, California -- Bancroft Library -- there is one entitled "The vulgar and the learned". In his later years, he dedicated a lot of his attention to this distinction and became a strong defender of the common man, the man of the street, and the lay man, the every man, So McEvoy's comments above -- his commentary on Grice's "devil of scientism" passage -- are very apt. We may need to elaborate on all that. Meanwhile, I'll re-read McEvoy's post to explore the issue of 'observation' and so on. I think, in the long run, Grice's influence there was Moore. As Austin was heard saying, "Some like Witters but Moore's MY man". He was certainly Grice's man, too, and a few papers in the Way of Words volume by Grice are dedicated to Moore's defense of the common sense (so miscalled by Aristotle). If Scientism was a Devil for Grice, perhaps Common Sense was the Deep Blue Sea (as per my previous post). After all, he was a Royal Marine, almost, and there was no dilemma for him THERE. Cheers, Speranza ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html