The Foundations Of Common Sense

First Published in 1999. This is Volume XV of thirty-eight in the General Psychology series. Written in 1949, this text seeks to explain how we come to believe in our common-sense world, and why, in spite of all philosophical criticism, we cannot help still believing in it. The aim is to show how we progressively build up the various constituents of that belief, and how those constituents tend to support and reinforce one another in a single, well-consolidated structure. Introduction; Chapter 1 Inadequate Psychological Data of the Current Philosophic Theory of Knowledge; Chapter 2 Chief Flaws of the Traditional “Philosophic” Approach. General Features of an Adequate Psychology of Knowledge; Chapter 3 Experiential Basis for the Distinction between Truth and Falsity. The Dynamics of Expanding Knowledge and Growing Logic; Chapter 4 Experiential Basis for Our Belief in the Objective World (I); Chapter 5 Experiential Basis for Our Belief in the Objective World (2); Chapter 6 Experiential Basis for Our Belief in Causality; Chapter 7 The Psychology of Puzzlement and of Explanation; Chapter 8 The Bearings of an Adequate Psychology of Knowledge on the Philosophic Theory of Knowledge;