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C00002 00002	PROLEGOMENA TO A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF COMMON SENSE
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PROLEGOMENA TO A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF COMMON SENSE


	This paper expounds and supports the view that philosophy
and especially metaphysics and epistemology in their
rethinking of commons sense concepts, should be
more like a natural science in certain important
respects.  This remark has been made before, and its
content depends on what aspects of natural science
are admired and to be emulated.  It isn't the quantitative
characteristics of natural science we have in mind; the opportunities
for applying quantitative reasoning in common sense situations
exist and are important (and are even more available to artificial
intelligence than to humans), but the essence of common sense
is qualitiative reasoning.  What we admire in natural science
is its construction of elaborate theories that are supported
by evidence from a wide variety of sources but which are concretely
applicable to particular cases.

[Somewhere here might go the rehabilitation of dormitive power].

Here are some doctrines:

	#. 
	#. 
	#. Common sense like physics is an elaborate theory.
The counterfactual sentence, "The match would have lit had it been
struck yesterday" or "The broken window was caused by the
baseball hitting it" are verified on the basis of a complex model
of the world, just as is the sentence "The flash was
caused by an alpha particile hitting the screeen.