<HTML>I <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> From: "Chris Doss" Scientific >realism -- realism about the spacetime manifold, >quarks and muons, genes and chromosomes -- has not a >trace of common sense to it. jks > We should keep in mind, I think, that "common sense" is a social construct. It was common sense in Augustine's time to believe in salamanders that live in fire (see the argument refuting the idea that the fires of Hell will not consume the bodies of the damned in the City of God). Action at a distance -- gravity -- is common sense today, but was thought to be loony tunes in the 1600s. </BLOCKQUOTE> ^^^^^^^^^ CB: Spacetime manifold, quarks, and genes aren't common sense. ( Well, actually, the notion of human inheritance through "blood" is common sense) But Lenin-Sokol-Bricmont vs Bishop Berkeley,  materialism vs idealism-solopsism, i.e. that there is an objective world, external reality ,to our minds that our minds don't just create, is common sense. </HTML>