“An affair of uncommon sense”. William Carpenter e la fisiologia del senso comune

This essay focuses on William Carpenter (1813-1885), professor of physiology at the University of London and author of an original interpretation of common sense. Developing Charles Bell’s theory concerning the reflex acts of the brain, Carpenter thought of the ‘original beliefs’ as cases of the reflex act of the nervous system and considered them to be a product of human experience: thus, in the course of an individual’s lifespan, primitive instinctive acts are reinforced and combined, resulting in complex notions such as causality and the existence of the material world. Refuting the idea that common-sense principles are innate and unchangeable, Carpenter reshaped the notion of common sense: far from being the clever invention of philosophers, common sense was defined as a product of a process that occurs in the nervous system, much like memory and the association of ideas. Carpenter’s theory was praised by empiricist philosophers such as John Stuart Mill and William James.