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Common sense versus collective memory
DOI link for Common sense versus collective memory
Common sense versus collective memory book
Common sense versus collective memory
DOI link for Common sense versus collective memory
Common sense versus collective memory book
ABSTRACT
Common sense and collective memory provide opposing paradigmatic images for the repository of social knowledge. ey are based on rather diff erent conceptions of knowledge acquisition. is diff erence, in turn, grounds the distinction between, respectively, Anglo-American and Franco-German philosophies of mind in the twentieth century. On the surface, the diff erence turns on the distinction between the individual and the collective as the locus of mind. But there is also a deeper distinction in metaphysical orientation. e common-sense approach envisages knowing as an attempt to solve the problem of the one and the many, namely, how to construct an economical yet faithful representation (the one) of reality (the many). In contrast, the collective memory approach takes knowing to be an attempt to solve the problem of the whole and the part, namely, how to provide direction, or “intelligent design” (the whole), to the collection of events that constitute history (the parts). ANALYTIC SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY, especially its conception of FOLK EPISTEMOLOGY, is wedded to the common-sense conception, whereas Fuller’s version tends towards collective memory, especially its institutionalization as INFORMATION SCIENCE.