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Arabic-L: Mon 12 Apr 2010
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu">dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu</a>>
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1) Subject:more on 'common sense'
2) Subject:more on 'common sense'
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1)
Date: 12 Apr 2010
From:<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; white-space: normal; ">Benjamin Geer <<a href="mailto:benjamin.geer@gmail.com">benjamin.geer@gmail.com</a>></span>
Subject:more on 'common sense'
<br></span></font></p><p align=""><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; white-space: normal; "><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; "><pre><p align=""><font face="Helvetica" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12px; ">Many suggest بديهي and its cognates as a translation for commonsensical and commonsense. But doesn’t بديهي denote that which is intuitive or axiomatic, i.e. goes without saying? Isn’t this, then, a little bit different from commonsense?
</span></font></p></pre></div></blockquote><div><br>I think the issue here is that academic discourse often critiques common sense; thus the phrase "common sense" often connotes scepticism about what is commonly believed (much like the phrase "folk theory"). It seems to me that بديهي is not compatible with this connotation. While بديهي could be fine to translate an everyday sentence like (a), it won't work for (b):<br><br>(a) Of course, my son, you can't succeed if you don't try; that's just common sense.<br>(b) Common sense tells us that we have free will, but philosophers have disputed this belief.<br><br>Hence in contexts like (b), we find translations like الفهم الشائع or الحس المشترك.<br><br>Ben<br><br></div></div></span>
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2)
Date: 12 Apr 2010
From:<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; white-space: normal; ">Gunvor Mejdell <<a href="mailto:gunvor.mejdell@ikos.uio.no">gunvor.mejdell@ikos.uio.no</a>></span>
Subject:more on 'common sense'</span></font></p><p align=""><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br></span></font></p><p align=""><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; white-space: normal; ">It occurs to me that /musallam, musallama:t/ may be used in this <br>sense, with the connotation something uncritically taken over, <br>generally assumed, ?<br><br>Gunvor Mejdell<br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><br></span></font></span></span></font></p><p align=""><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">--------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Arabic-L: 12 Apr 2010
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