Straggler writes:
Is it "common" or is it ultimately subjective and thus largely individual?
I would argue that common sense is neither "common" nor individual but somewhere in between.
I'd like to refer to an experiment I ran into while I was in college many centuries ago. In the experiment, the students are asked to roll a ball across a table in a path that the ball would not touch the rails on either side. The rails are curved. Student after student (we're talking about college students here) tried to roll the ball in a curved path before it entered in between the rails hoping the ball would continue to roll in a curved path. The physics students were the ones that noticed the rails were far apart enough that you could just roll the ball in a straight line to get it to go through without touching the rails.
The moral of the story is this. To the physics students, it was common sense for them that a ball will go in a straight line no matter what kind of path you set it to go before you let go. To other students, it was common sense for them that the ball could be manipulated to continue to roll in a curved path.
The
real moral of the story is common sense depends on the mentality of certain groups of people. It's common sense for folks like myself to seek answers through skepticism. It's common sense for folks like buzsaw to seek answers through prayers. Ultimately, trying to apply common sense from one group to the other is futile and a complete waste of time.