T
here's a certain kind of fashionable idea in certain intellectual circles that would probably describe themselves as materialists that seeks to show that "common sense" notions are illusory. I'll just go ahead and put a couple of these ideas in satirical (but accurate) form, so you can get a sense of what I think about them.
And so on and so forth. There's really not much to say to people like this. It's remarkable how quickly they will switch from a mode of "science-informed" condescension to a sort of grinning half-shrug of "that's just the way it is" when pushed on any of these obvious contradictions. Thank the Lord, none of these people actual follow through on any of these half-beliefs -- they tend to live just like everyone else, their bad argumentative habits aside. And bless them for it, for they would be much, much worse people if they did attempt to live as if there were no such thing as morality, for example.
This attitude is reminiscent of a point I made in a previous post about the order of knowledge. For some people, abstract theory is simply more convincing than concrete reality, and start talking nonsense about how our senses can tell us nothing about the world, based on scientific experiments which could only be imagined, designed, performed, and interpreted assuming extraordinary accuracy from those very senses. "Common sense" has gotten something of a bad rap in recent decades, but that which is common between us is literally our only tool in cooperating to understand the world better. If you throw it away, you rapidly look a fool.