Making Sense of Stebbing and Moore on Common Sense

Abstract This chapter argues that Susan Stebbing’s account of common sense is both more distinct from and more indebted to G. E. Moore’s than is typically acknowledged. Drawing on overlooked textual evidence, I show that Moore’s views on common sense are far less monolithic than traditionally assumed. On this basis, and against the grain of recent scholarship, I argue that Stebbing and Moore were largely aligned with respect to the extent to which the truths of common sense may be philosophically analyzed. Their key divergence, I suggest, lies in Stebbing’s effort to integrate the common-sense worldview with the scientific one. This is encapsulated in what I call her “unity thesis”: the idea that common-sense knowledge and scientific knowledge form a continuous, coherent whole. For Stebbing, common sense and science are not in tension but deeply interwoven—a commitment that underpins her broader philosophy of science and her vision for reconciling the everyday world with the world of science. The upshot is a distinctive, dynamic position in which common sense concepts may be clarified or revised by scientific progress, but not displaced wholesale.