Talk:Sensus communis

needed

-- A section needs to be added on Kant's version of the sensus communis (unfortunately I am not knowledgeable enough on the subject to write this article). 160.39.165.210 17:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

It is handled already at Common sense but this raises a bigger question because the topic of this much newer article is also handled there, but there is not even any link to that article here. (These topics are often handled together.) The situation as it currently stands is therefore not how it should be.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 04:27, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

What is being proposed with the re-creation of this article?

@Shlishke: since 2013 the term Sensus communis has been a redirect to its normal English translation Common sense, which you have only mentioned in See also (so you are clearly aware of that article). It is covered there is a reasonable amount of detail in the Aristotelian, Cartesian, and Post-Cartesian epistemology sections. If you believe that we in WP need to split an article then this should be explained so that we can all work in the same direction, and the situation in the articles should be cleaned up. For example there would need to be disambiguation links between the articles, and one should be the main article, while the other should contain a smaller summary. Can you please give the rest of us some explanation about what you are proposing going forward? There is an obvious concern that needs to be at least mentioned which is that the sensory topic is often discussed together with the ethical one, although the actual connection is a bit hard to insist on. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 04:43, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

BTW the first sentence insist this is only a medieval topic and the second sentence proves this incorrect.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:36, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for so quickly coming in to help. I agree completely. Of course, this piece is discretely concerned with the anatomist/functional search. But ancient science [if not modern science, to a lesser degree] operated on a nearly inpenetrable "look for/find what you already know," and that science is natural philosophy. I cut th thing off at vesalius, and the later senses of the science/philosophy -- certainly the neuroscience -- is immaterial here. I think the overlap--briefly here, and rigorously focused on how the aristotelian-->galenic-->veselian [terminus] was considered as an anatomic problem. Naturally a "for more on the topic of [something something] see Common Sense for the entire sections NOT under "The Anatomists" makes perfect sense. Shlishke (talk) 22:36, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

A: this piece exists only still on the disambig page: the redirect on the direct title search is still there, and I dont want to futz with it, and I also dont know how to wikiformat the formal "For other uses, see disambiguation" at the top, not the "For more on the natural philosophy and later use [or something] [i would use this term of art 'natural philosophy'] see _Common Sense)_. B: I honestly do not think this article should be filed under philosophy in the disambig page. It concerns--in every graf, even the aristotle one--a neuroanatomic focus, which is where the lion's share of secondary literature place it. Shlishke (talk) 14:48, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I think this second post is more about the dab page and can be discussed on its talk page? We can't separate philosophy from what you call the "neuroanatomic" topic, because the neuroanatomic topic is a sub-branch of the philosophical one. Just in terms of words themselves, I also think you have avoid too much insistence upon the most specific, complex and technical terms.

Coming back to the main topic for this article I can't quite follow what you think we should do next. I can see that your main interest is in the "anatomical" part of the topic, but you've also included Aristotle and excluded Descartes (who was also interested in the neuroanatomic side, as it happens)? We can't cut up the article based on our own interests. We need to put together related clumps of topics so that people can all find their topic of interest. The division between the two articles right now does not make much sense yet. (And one obvious back up plan is that we should merge the two articles, because basically one is just using the Latin version of the other.)

My first thought on how to define this article in a way which covers both anatomical studies and the original philosophical ones, is that this topic is about a theory of sensory perception? (This perhaps also helps the dab discussion.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:15, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Excuse the question, but I don't know what "dab" means. _Labelling_ sensus communis as a theory of sensory perception is good as far as it goes--the issue is one of the history of science, at one level the growth of scientifi method, of where theorists met with anatomists [cf theory vs experiment]. Shlishke (talk) 17:47, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

dab stands for disambiguation page. You were working on what you called the disambig page, but the normal abbreviation is dab.

After this concept hit real anatomical study it soon ended, because it had never really been based on anatomical study, and it could not survive that type of study. The theory was originally based upon speculation about how senses function, and various locations were proposed over the centuries, including the heart. So the location was not the starting point of the hypothesis. Natural philosophers went looking for a location after they already came up with the concept. That's why it would make no sense to make this article an article only about a sub-section which believed the sensus was in the galenic ventricles for example. If we are going to split out the brain anatomy theories, then I think the whole sensory theory discussion also needs to come here. If there is eventually to be an article only about the anatomical studies at the end, then I think it would need to have a very specific article name (maybe "sensus communis (anatomical studies)"), but not just "sensus communis" which is simply the latin term for the common sense itself, which was defined by its function, and not its speculated location. So I think most of the Aristotle section in the other articles needs to be moved here and adapted to fit here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:11, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I've adjusted the dab page using the term "History of Ideas" to unite these philosophical and early scientific ideas. I've started introducing material from the Common sense article, but I realize it needs cleaning up and structuring.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:37, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

My current thinking is that the best structure is probably simply chronological, broken into periods and groups of writers.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:46, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

çan someone post this next to Leonardo [ more beautiful images coming

Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_RCIN_919057,_Recto_The_skull_sectioned.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_a_Skull.jpg Caption texts [both davinci media items] Leonardo da Vinci, sectioned skull, 1489. Leonardo located the senso comune at the intersection of axes drawn through the cranium. Other perfect ones, from the 13th to 15th c., are here: https://benedante.blogspot.com/2013/08/medieval-and-renaissance-brains.html, but I dont know how toexcerpt/credit--if necessary them.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Shlishke (talk • contribs) 15:03, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Please take the time to write more clearly. What do you mean by "next to Leonardo"? Are you talking about the Leonardo section in this article? Honestly I think you need to learn how to do that though, because it is a basic Wikipedia skill. Have a look here: help:pictures . I propose that you start by learning how to use pictures already available on Wikipedia or Wikimedia, but learning how to correctly upload new ones is another thing to aim at.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:19, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Grigoric

Andrew, since you reference Grigoric so strongly and often, on his first mention can you give him a little in-line appositive on who he was/what he did? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shlishke (talk • contribs) 06:23, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Can you please make sure you sign your posts? I don't think this is necessary? He just happens to have written one of the most detailed and recent works which other academics also cite. We don't need to explain every academic we cite, and if we want to make special remarks about him we also need to research him and find publications about him. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:33, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Thinking about this further: for now Gregoric looks prominent but obviously the article is far from complete. He probably won't look quite so important in the long run.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:24, 14 June 2026 (UTC)