Free Will and Common Sense: Is Common Sense Really Common?

Looking Back at Parts 1 and 2

If you haven’t read Part 1 or Part 2, you may want to begin there before continuing.

Part 1

Part 2

In the first part, I examined predestination: the idea that our lives are planned out by a master creator versus being shaped by random events. In Part 2, I introduced the concept of free will. Does it truly exist regardless of whether you believe in predestination or randomness, or is it simply another illusion? You are free to choose, but everything that went into making that choice was learned.

The final piece is more personal. It deals with common sense—but what is it, and to whom is it actually common?

Is Anything Really Common?

No matter where you landed in the discussion about predestination or free will, the phrase common sense comes up constantly in everyday conversation. We use it so casually that it almost sounds as though everyone should naturally understand it. Yet that assumption ignores something important: every person’s experiences, upbringing, education, culture, and environment shape what they consider to be common sense. What seems obvious to one person may never have been learned or experienced by another.

If none of us starts from the same point, with the same understanding, education, and life experiences, how can we assume anything is truly common?

How Learning Shapes Our Choices

That question is what bridges the gap between free will and common sense. We are certainly free to make choices, but every lesson we’ve learned throughout life influences those choices. When presented with multiple options, we naturally gravitate toward what makes sense to us. We call that common sense.

The problem is that what seems like common sense to me may not seem like common sense to you. Your experiences, education, culture, successes, failures, and the people who influenced you have all shaped your judgment, just as mine have shaped mine.

We may both be exercising free will, yet arrive at completely different conclusions because our common sense was built from different experiences and different knowledge.

Free Will and Common Sense Work Together

Our free will allows us the freedom to choose what is common to us, and that freedom is shaped by learning that becomes our common sense. When common sense is filtered through a lifetime of learning, it influences how we think, even though the choice itself remains free.

In that sense, free will and common sense are not competing ideas. They are built on the same foundation of learning and experience, working together to guide each of us toward what we believe is the best choice based on what we know, what we have learned, and what we have

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