Common sense common safety

"A report by Lord Young of Graffham to the Prime Minister following a Whitehall‑wide review of the operation of health and safety laws and the growth of the compensation culture" - Cover

Theorising Disability: Beyond Common Sense

This article seeks to introduce the topic of disability to political theory via a discussion of some of the literature produced by disability theorists. The author argues that these more radical approaches conceptualise disability in ways that conflict with ‘common-sense’ notions of disability that tend to underpin political theoretical considerations of the topic. Furthermore, the author suggests that these more radical conceptualisations have profound implications for current debates on social justice, equality and citizenship that highlight the extent to which these notions are also currently underpinned by ‘common-sense’ notions of ‘normality’

Science, Religion and Common Sense

Susan Haack has recently attempted to discredit religion by showing that science is an extended and enhanced version of common sense while religion is not. I argue that Haack’s account is misguided not because science is not an extended version of common sense, as she says. It is misguided because she assumes a very restricted, and thus inadequate, account of common sense. After reviewing several more realistic models of common sense, I conclude that common sense is rich enough to allow various kinds of extensions. Just as science can be correctly seen as an enhanced version of common sense, so also religion

Reclaiming Public Education: Common Sense Approaches

Bob Cornett, a former state budget director for Kentucky, describes himself as a "retired bureaucrat." But as a parent, grandparent, and a person who has been involved in education reform for more than 20 years, he's come to understand that, if public education policies are to be corrected, the impetus has to come from the citizenry.In this report, Cornett describes his journey to this realization, formed in part by observing how the small communities in Eastern Kentucky learn and educate. In Linefork, Kentucky, for example, an intergenerational community project aims to restore the American chestnut tree to the surrounding forests and has allowed the older community members to share their cultural legacy with the young people growing up there.Bob and his family have put on the Festival of the Blue­grass in Lexington, Kentucky, for more than 40 years, and he writes of the opportunities such festivals can provide by making use of traditional music in the education of young people. The Wise Village Pickers, from Stanton, Kentucky, is a bluegrass group made up of school children, from kindergarten to fifth grade. Every year, the group performs at the festival. Cornett writes, "Our rural musical legacy can be a powerful tool for strengthening communities. . . . young people learn much better when they are active participants in things that matter in their communities."Seeing the failure of top-down approaches to education reform, Cornett advises, "We citizens need to do everything we can at the community level to encourage and support professional educators who are committed to making students active partners in learning. . . . with our support, those educators will be better able to resist the pressures from the top-down hierar­chies. But there is another reason for citizens to work hard to connect with educators. The field of education, at its best, has much to offer to the learning that communities need to do. The Linefork community, to use my favorite example once again, is being educated. It is learning about itself. The best of our nation's educators have know-how that can contribute to a community's learning about itself.

Towards an ontology of common sense

Philosophers from Plotinus to Paul Churchland have yielded to the temptation to embrace doctrines which contradict the core beliefs of common sense. Philosophical realists have on the other hand sought to counter this temptation and to vindicate those core beliefs. The remarks which follow are to be understood as a further twist of the wheel in this never-ending battle. They pertain to the core beliefs of common sense concerning the external reality that is given in everyday experience -the beliefs of folk physics, as we might call them. Just as critics of Churchland et al. have argued that the folk-psychological ontology of beliefs, desires, etc. yields the best explanation we can have of the order of cognitive phenomena conceived from the perspective of first-person experience, so we shall argue that (1) the commonsensical ontology of folk physics yields the best explanation we can have of our externally directed cognitive experience and that (2) an ontology of mesoscopic things, events and processes must play a role, in particular, in our best scientific theory of human action

When Management Override Negates Common Sense

Write OK per big boss across the invoice and everything is fine! Or is it? This paper analyzes the human factor link related to the Debra Valice Case. The human factor is the weakest link of any internal control system. Understanding the human factors that cause people to not follow the rules, is key to strengthening this link. This research will utilize the human factors adapted from the Independence Education Program to analyze the DebraValice Case. Valice was responsible for ensuring a secure internal control system. The Chief Executive Officer was able to manipulate this system and unauthorized payments were made to him or on his behalf. Valices lack of good judgment allowed this to happen. The human factors allowing this breach were professional character, business culture and environment, the ability to recognize there is an issue and the quality of the decision-making process as outlined by the Independence Education Program