What is Common Sense?

"Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are and doing things as they ought to be done". - A Collection of Maple Recipes from members of New Hampshire Maple Producers' Association (1980), pp. 31

There are five parts of the above "definition" that I would like to pay attention to:

• The suggestion that the reality of things is in-fact certain, exclusive and observable.  By what authority does one make this suggestion for another?
• The suggestion that there are different ways that people see things (both common-sensical and non-common-sensical).  Who is to say what is right and what is not?
• The suggestion that things ought to be done a certain, particular and doable way.  By what authority does one make this suggestion for another?  Who is to say what is right and what is not?
• The suggestion that there are different ways that people do things (both common-sensical and non-common-sensical).  Who is to say what is right and what is not?
• The suggestion that some people have a knack for this brand of common sense (and, presumably some others do not).  Who is to say what is right and what is not?

Historically, men have settled significant criminal and equitable questions alike by making their cases before a dispassionate, but respected authority.

Common sense is experienced as an act of forgetting how difficult and/or time-consuming acquisition of certain "obvious" truth was; especially when one having acquired the truth observes another who has not yet acquired it. - Glen C. Smith (2008)

Regardless of one's definition, there seems to be a consensus as to the nature of common sense: it is concrete (not abstract), it is absolute (not relative), it is obvious to at least the user of the term (not hidden), it is comprehensible (not overly difficult) and it is universal (not specific).  Furthermore, what one has to say about common sense is the same as what one has to say about truth itself.

When I do not have my glasses on, reality is a fuzzy, confusing world that is hard to understand, make sense of and interact with.  Someone with 20/20 eyes, who was wearing my glasses would have approximately the same experience of reality that I have without.  We implicitly assume that what we are experiencing is "the truth".

“What is truth?” Pilate asked. - John 18:38