You're true colors come out! You're no-one, and yet, you're oh so crucial to the existence of this forum.

Per the debate at hand about wisdom, fuck off.

Per the existence of this forum itself, thank you.

Now, what do you think about wisdom? Give me something new. — Noble Dust

The forum would have made it without me. I just happened to be at the right time in the context of my existence to thrust forward the cause a bit quicker... leading to my logical and justifiable banning from the old PF.

Irony is that soon after I took an extended break from it all.

... but this has really nothing to do with anything here, which is why my alternative name to Mayor of Simpleton would be Major Non Sequitur.

Anyway...

What do I think about wisdom?

Well... I don't really think it's a status. It kind of brings up the irrational image of finding the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

I think of it in general more as a work process... with no real particular goal in mind.

Then again... that's me.

Now if we wish to discuss very specific issues then one can have or hold much wisdom in such given fields, but this is only in respect to a very narrow scope.

I'd have to think about this more and continue the "work in progress".

Meow!

G

You must be a fan of Hegel then. Because that dialects in a nutshell. Heh. — Posty McPostface

I have to confess, I've read very little in spite of having a degree in philosophy. (dyslexia)

I've only read a few quips and quote from Hegel, but somehow I figured he'd be much more "clearerer" in expressing these notions.

Meow!

G

Here is some wisdom for you: You can never defeat an ignorant man in argument.

Man and woman I suppose.

I'm young and hairless, so let me try. — Noble Dust

I like the image somehow.

Cancer destroying what? — Noble Dust

Critical thought outside of the cancer's own worldview of worldview preference (cognitive biases) and domination?

Idealism opposing what? — Noble Dust

The possibility of adapation and refinement of position; thus having the bias to exclude any accumulation of information/experience?

To what end? — Noble Dust

For the cancer?

To dictate what is "the truth", "the answer", "the only possible question" by suspending the arrow of time and experiences accumulated leading to refinement/adaption of understanding by negating critical thought as idealisms will tend to field final, ultimate and absolute answers without having all the possible variables, but only tak into consideration prefered truths and prefered answers to maintain an idealistic faith. (idealistic faith and stubbornness are much the same thing and the opposite of critical thought/review)?

Meow!

G

Man and woman I suppose. — Posty McPostface

There have been a handful of examples in this thread using the word “man” to stand for humanity. Not the biggest faux pas, but seems outdated at best... (imho and fwiw) :chin:

Etymology speaking... It seems that there is some intertwining correlation between the roots and histories of the words wise, wizard, white, wizened. They all seem to be summed up by the saying “older and wiser”. (“White” here referring ostensibly to the hair color of most elders, rather than a shade of skin). Many hundreds of years ago, the elders in the group would most certainly be the repositories of knowledge, experience, and wisdom. But somewhere along the way (probably coinciding with the invention of advertising :wink: ), the “new” surpassed the “ancient” as a measure of worth. Now we have the internet and Goggle, so the elders now function mostly as consumers of pharmaceuticals and other health care related products. And for the young- the sensation of sailing on a fast and high-tech but rudderless boat, with each passing year taking more off your resale value...

Wisdom is either being clever enough to learn from other mistakes or knowing not to make a mistake twice after learning from it once.

Wisdom is either being clever enough to learn from other mistakes or knowing not to make a mistake twice after learning from it once. — SherlockH

Excellent point! (And a darn good first post). Turning mistakes into knowledge/wisdom is the lead-into-gold (or manure-into-marigolds, if you prefer) alchemy that is the ideal of philosophy. And there is an unending supply of leaden mistakes. I have a storage unit filled with them. :blush:

I define wisdom as deep knowledge. "Fine" he says. "So what is "deep knowledge"?

Deep knowledge is the best of the stuff one has learned, boiled down, fermented, dried, and cut up into 1 inch cubes and carefully arranged. In the arranging connections are made, insights gained, ignorance and knowledge discovered (along with the realization that it is too late now to learn what you missed the first time around, and that you were lucky to have learned anything at all).

So what variety of knowledge should one put in the kettle as one goes along? Really, ... whatever. Whatever you learned, whatever happens to you is good enough raw material. Whether one studied philosophy or one was a butcher, a baker, or failed at the hippie candle shop business doesn't matter.

One does have to keep thinking, though. That's the boiling down part. Wild yeast will fall into your pot as it cools. This critical stage is a matter of luck. It helps if one has occasionally been inoculated by other people's wisdom about the world.

One needs to be beaten down a few times. A good beating by the world every now and then helps the kettle boil and ferment better. You do not need to go out looking for the world to beat you up; the world is looking for you, and will come to you and administer the thrashing soon enough. Be patient.

None of this can happen until one is old enough to have filled the caldron and been beaten up a few times. It takes time. I suppose there are a few 30 year olds who have filled the kettle with learning, experience, and several beatings but not many, certainly. On earth, maybe 1 30 year old a year. Most filled kettles are like 50 or 60 and up. Some people don't come to a boil until they are 70 or 80.

the youth pastor took to me the most because I was passive and hungry to learn — Noble Dust

It wasn't wisdom that attracted him. Pastors, teachers, politicians, philosophers--all us ilk--love nothing better than a receptive audience, even if it is only one pair of ears. How lovely on the mountain are the ears of they who sit still and listen to me. If a human isn't available, an adoring dog will do. I suppose a cat might suffice, though dogs do a better job of faking interest.

As for you, Noble Dust, you have had many experiences and have been interested in learning. You seem to be boiling, and my guess is that you've had a beating or two. So you are well on your way. I'd have to stir your kettle to tell you how far along you are, and most people find being stirred during a boil a horrible experience, so we'll just skip that. Time will tell, in any case. If I were you, I'd plan on achieving a jar full of wisdom cubes at some point in the future.

By the way, not everybody here shows signs of having a full kettle, coming to a boil, or having been adequately beaten up by the world. I've submitted the names of a dozen or so forum members who the world should assault and batter once or twice more. The world told me it was well aware of the deficiencies of these learned fools, and would be sending its cosmic thugs to waylay them at some unexpected moment.

In reality, all I want to ask is: "What is wisdom?" — Noble Dust

In a nutshell?
Do your best to abstain from bullshit and self-hatred, and from asking others what those are.

The world told me it was well aware of the deficiencies of these learned fools, and would be sending its cosmic thugs to waylay them at some unexpected moment. — Bitter Crank

Oh, to have the ear of the world!

Cleverness is an idea that could work. Wisdom is a habit that does work.

That is why the old are wise. They have had the time to develop robust habits of thought.

It is also why the old eventually break down. They get so well-adapted to a familiar way of life that they lose the capacity to adapt to the crazy new ways of living that clever folk are apt to invent. :)

Wisdom is a habit that does work. — apokrisis

The problem is that a habit can work to reliably produce horrible, unwise outcomes. Surely not all, or even most, of the old should be considered to be wise!

Wisdom is the knowledge & the practice of living well.

Where is your evidence that on the whole habit is that which fails to work? How could that even be the case, logically speaking?

So yes, old habits can fail to work - due to a changed world. But by definition, growing old involves finding the habits that best accomodate your reality. We no longer need to think or invent. We can just know.

Wisdom does have its downsides. Just like cleverness.

And why shouldn't that be part of the (dichotomous) definition here? The strengths of the one are the weakness of the other.

This is only "paradoxical" if you insist on wisdom being something absolute and supreme rather than actually relative to the something else from which it develops.

Where is your evidence that on the whole habit is that which fails to work? — apokrisis

I didn't say that habit is that which fails to work; I said that habit is that which works reliably (until it is confronted by different circumstances obviously) to produce outcomes which may be either wise (desirable) or unwise (undesirable). So habit cannot be equated with wisdom; or, in other words, there are both wise and unwise habits.

Yeah, so unless Noble is suddenly a woman, I stand by my initial remark. :brow:

So habit cannot be equated with wisdom; or, in other words, there are both wise and unwise habits. — Janus

But you unwisely, if cleverly, ignore the argument I gave in support of my position.

I said wisdom is habit because it has that same essential character of being unthinkingly general. It does not involve a change of mind. It involves an application of a well-developed (because it has so far worked best) point of view.

And my definition was secured in contrast to cleverness. Cleverness involves novel thinking that has yet to prove it works in a general fashion.

So you need to focus on my actual characterisation of wisdom. Are you offering some different characterisation here? Or any at all?

It seems you are intent merely on conflating cleverness and wisdom as "ways of thought that achieve desirable outcomes" ... that are "wise" ... and probably "clever" too. ;)

So you are hoping to talk past my essential distinction rather than address it.

Well, actually... I was commenting there on Posty’s comment, and merely suggesting a more inclusive language (i.e. humanity instead of mankind). No worries. Though it might be wise for me to stay out of the way of others’ jousting- playful, clever, or otherwise. :monkey: :smile:

Yeah, so unless Noble is suddenly a woman, I stand by my initial remark. :brow: — TimeLine

What about a wise man?

I've had a few beatings, yes. Your bizarre analogies are strangely encouraging. I nominate your post as the closest thing to wisdom I've seen so far.

I said wisdom is habit because it has that same essential character of being unthinkingly general. — apokrisis

I don't think that habit qualifies as 'wisdom'. Plenty of creatures have instinctive behaviours, which are essentially a form of habit, and indeed nature herself forms habits (as both Peirce and Sheldrake affirm). But wisdom is something more than effective repetition as it requires the element of judgement.

I think the sense in which habit can be incorporated into the overall rubric of wisdom, is the sense in which 'habit becomes character, and character becomes destiny', which is an old saw found in both Confucius and Aristotle. But even there, it is assumed that the listener is able to take such advice on board and choose which habits to cultivate, and which to avoid, which is where wisdom really comes into it.

In a nutshell?
Do your best to abstain from bullshit and self-hatred, and from asking others what those are. — Janus

That doesn't seem very wise. I don't know what bullshit is; you'd have to elaborate. Self-hatred is corrosive, but it doesn't mean wisdom can't be gleaned from the corrosive experience; there's wisdom to be learned from hating yourself that can't be learned any other way.

Why can't I ask you what those are, if I want to be wise? Some kind of "silence" thing? Screw that, what the hell are those things you mentioned?

Cleverness is an idea that could work. Wisdom is a habit that does work.

That is why the old are wise. They have had the time to develop robust habits of thought.

It is also why the old eventually break down. They get so well-adapted to a familiar way of life that they lose the capacity to adapt to the crazy new ways of living that clever folk are apt to invent. :) — apokrisis

I'm gleaning that per your outlook, there's no perennial anything; there's always flux, and "cleverness" (I don't like that term) is the thing that...does what? Makes the world go round? Possesses the most power? Power for who? The clever person? The community? [nah lmao]. In your conception here, wisdom appears to be a certain resin-encased snapshot of something that was once helpful. What you're missing is that your "cleverness" just continues the cycle of the human condition of oppression. Cleverness is always neutral; it will always create innovative medicine, and innovative ways to gauge pharmaceutical prices. Cleverness knows nothing of the human condition. It just knows power. Wisdom doesn't know power; you don't know wisdom.

So it doesn't supersede death, right?

But wisdom is something more than effective repetition as it requires the element of judgement. — Wayfarer

Don't you mean an end to judgement? Once you have the answer, then you are wise. If you still need to judge, you at best only have a clever idea and are still seeking the kind of proof that life delivers.

Why diss habit as animalistic? It is actually a profound psychological fact that the mind develops by learning how to be as unthinking as possible in its coping with reality.

Our narrow focus of conscious attention is not a defect of evolutionary design. It is the whole point. The more of reality we can wisely and habitually ignore, the more selectively we will focus on whatever then that is left as significant and requiring our clever attentiveness and creativity.

So I might be making a bit of a joke in this thread. But it is completely in keeping with the neurocognitive facts. Habits are our wisdom - our hard-won right not to have to think in order to already know. And it is that which then, in complementary fashion, paves the way for our cleverness - our ability to home in on what is significant or surprising and in need of actual thought.

Getting old means that we then do have the time to assimilate almost everything about life to unthinking habit. Which is great - until we get caught out by significant changes in the world we need to predict.

This is just a straightforward logical model of how to "compute life". How else could the brain do its job?

But even there, it is assumed that the listener is able to take such advice on board and choose which habits to cultivate, and which to avoid, which is where wisdom really comes into it. — Wayfarer

Sure. There is a meta-level that takes this further. You can develop the habit of not forming habits and so maintaining a need to constantly rediscover solutions.

But that is just part of the story of a balance between stability and plasticity - the neurocognitive story I am telling. And in the end, it would be wisest if it were a habit that is well adjusted to your way of life.

Don't you mean an end to judgement? Once you have the answer, then you are wise. If you still need to judge, you at best only have a clever idea and are still seeking the kind of proof that life delivers. — apokrisis

What? Why would that be the case? Once you have the answer, you just have knowledge you "know". Why are you associating that state with wisdom?

God, reading this thread makes me so fucking angry.

Don't you mean an end to judgement? Once you have the answer, then you are wise. If you still need to judge, you at best only have a clever idea and are still seeking the kind of proof that life delivers. — apokrisis

But that's typical pragmatism, right? Whatever works - whatever is well-adapted. But at the end of the day, the only criterion for that judgement is adaption, survival, getting along.