Your qualifications

[yoyo]

I have a Master's Degree in Town and Country Planning, a BA (Hons) in Geography and Archaeology and performing diplomas in piano and organ playing.

 

[barq]

I left school without particularly good qualifications and worked in retail and telecoms for a while. Eventually I went to college for A levels and a diploma in counselling. Then I did a Human Psychology BSc and MSc. Now I'm just finishing up my PhD. I think that qualifies me to know an awful lot about not very much.

 

[Amanda P]

I think that's true of most PhDs!

Should it be possible to get a PhD in General Knowledge, or Common Sense or something?

 

[Cycling Naturalist]

Should it be possible to get a PhD in General Knowledge, or Common Sense or something?

The problem with commonsense is that it's not very common.

 

[Amanda P]

No,and that's why I think perhaps there should be a recognized reward for it.

After all, having a PhD or any other qualification is certainly no indication that the holder has any.

Can it be taught? Or do you have to be born with it?

Should it be renamed? Can we actually define it any more?

 

[Flying_Monkey]

No,and that's why I think perhaps there should be a recognized reward for it.

After all, having a PhD or any other qualification is certainly no indication that the holder has any.

Can it be taught? Or do you have to be born with it?

Should it be renamed? Can we actually define it any more?

Common sense is basically what people agree to be the case. Except that when they don't this has to be qualified, by rather more subjective terms like 'reasonable people' or 'ordinary people'.

What results, is that all too often, claims to have 'common sense' are often just a way of trying to make unsubstantiated opinions sound more authoritative by appealing to populism.

Common sense then is just the view that someone making a statement thinks that others should have.

And of course, even if something could be agreed to be 'common sense', this has no necessary relation to it being etiher factually correct or morally right.

 

[Cycling Naturalist]

I don't want to worry the people here, but this question about qualifications was asked in the old days on Cycling Plus. Then, I think the first 30 respondents had at least one PhD. I accept that as BikeRadar, it's been diluted by MBUK ("I've got a ****ing ASBO, and who're you staring at?) but it does raise the issue, of whether standards are dropping?

 

[Arch]

I've got a BA (humanities), a BSc (Archaeology) and an MSc (Zooarchaeology). Currently banging my head agsinst the wall trying to finish a PhD, and then I don't think I want to learn anything ever again, well, not for a while...

 

[barq]

Common sense is basically what people agree to be the case. Except that when they don't this has to be qualified, by rather more subjective terms like 'reasonable people' or 'ordinary people'.

Yep, I'd agree with that. In psychology there are all manner of counter-intuitive findings, many of which are well supported by empirical evidence. Yet friends down the pub will refute them with a single example from their own experience and accuse me of being disconnected from reality. Conversely when people agree the response is "Well, duh! Obviously...". Can't win!