The idea is that each situation is uniquely singular, and that wisdom consists in not falling into the habit of treating a situation as a generality: "one of those situations" where "this is what one does". On this reading wisdom involves more creativity than habit. — Janus

But for me, a generality, and thus a habit, is a constraint. A constraint does not dictate some particular path. It supplies the finality, the essential criteria, that define the limits by which freedoms or accidents need to be bounded.

To give an example, hitting a top-spin backhand is a habit, a phronetic generality. It took me quite a few years of practice to master it as a useful skill. So I eventually had a wicked dipping backhand return. I had a habit of constraint that was general - a topspin backhand - but was hardly fixed or rigid. It could be applied over a large range of situations. There was always something specific and singular about each time it was employed. The height of the ball coming at me could have a considerable variety of heights, spins and speeds. And the exact place I needed to hit it to would also change on most occasions.

So a physical habit has exactly that character of being a generalised ability to constrain action in a way that minimises the accidental and so maximises the ability to make particular deliberate or creative choices.

And the same would be the case with wisdom as a term for a generalised intellectual state of having developed a set of sound and useful mental habits of thought.

We can take a wise maxim like the golden rule - "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." Like setting up a wise backhand by focusing on the essential constraints - hit the ball high enough to get over the net/with enough spin to hit that strategically optimal bit of the court - the golden rule focuses us on the general thing of a rule of reciprocality in our social relations. And then - creatively, particularly - we can apply that general rule in ways that best befit any of life's highly variable situations.

So wisdom/habit/generality/constraint all have this causal character. They are not rigid and mechanical - except when we make the mistake of thinking they ought to be this way. In nature, for organisms, habits have a suitably loose fit. They focus on what are the generally desirable outcomes across a range of occasions. And then our actions become organised within that envelope of the desirable so that goals are achieved - again, within a tolerance of error that is generally wise or acceptable. We don't have to mechanically/rigidly sweat the detail if our goals are being achieved well enough.

So the argument you are making is against a rigid/mechanical/reflexive notion of habit. And yet psychology tells us that habit is not like that at all in reality.

Sure, it is hierarchical. The nervous system starts off with very simple hardwired reflex loops - the spinal cord jerking our hand off the hot stove. And then the brainstem might also develop its Pavlovian conditioned reflexes that are stereotyped.

But as the brain keeps adding extra levels of plasticity, we get to the kind of habit that psychologists (and Peirce) are focused on. We get to the generality of practical skills that are wise because all the painful learning and thinking is now in our past. We are fully equipped with a mastery over an area of skill that allows us to just do stuff, focused only on how our general goals need to be achieved on this or that specific occasion.

We don't need to invent a top-spin backhand or a golden rule anew every day, repeating that cleverness continually. We just seek to apply our developed skill to a world that is always somewhat different on every occasion, and yet we don't need to worry about that. With the unthinking smoothness of habit, we can act in a way that achieves our usual goals with the maximum of efficiency, the minimum of fuss or waste.

There's some ethical element to it that isn't there with cleverness, intelligence etc. A sense of humility. Some kind of extra weight. — Baden

The ethical aspect would be that wisdom - by my definition here - is characterised by its stability, balance and pragmatism. It contrasts with cleverness in that it seems to have a high tolerance for exceptions. That is part of its generality. It makes it possible to ignore quite a lot as not really mattering (any more).

So our cultural image of the wise person does target natural features of a state of well-developed, well-adapted, habit. Smartness by definition is confrontational, novel and risky. Wisdom is its contrast in being smooth, integrated and fault-tolerant.

So when you look up the definition, how do you react to that?

Psychologists tend to agree that wisdom involves an integration of knowledge, experience, and deep understanding that incorporates tolerance for the uncertainties of life as well as its ups and downs. There's an awareness of how things play out over time, and it confers a sense of balance. It can be acquired only through experience, but by itself, experience does not automatically confer wisdom.

Wise people generally share an optimism that life's problems can be solved and experience a certain amount of calm in facing difficult decisions. Intelligence—if only anyone could figure out exactly what it is—may be necessary for wisdom, but it definitely isn't sufficient; an ability to see the big picture, a sense of proportion, and considerable introspection also contribute to its development.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/wisdom

See, you've done the unwise thing and asked another what bullshit and self-hatred are. — Janus

Your definition was oddly specific or personal. But you can see how it relates to the very characteristics I have outlined.

Wisdom would be achieving the goal-achieving generality of knowing what can be tolerated or ignored as meaningless noise. Constraint only needs to suppress material accidents to the degree that they "actually matter" - which in this case is the degree they would actually matter to "you" as the person wanting to know what external bullshit to ignore, and what internal criticism is likewise lacking any real useful meaning.

Probably we are not disagreeing; it might be just a matter of emphasis. For me, wisdom consists in how the 'golden maxims' and "topspin backhands" are creatively used in particular circumstances, so I just don't characterize the habit itself as wisdom. Of course there was wisdom (singular and creative application) involved in the historical human acquisition of any good or useful habit, and maybe that is what you are speaking about.

So, of course there is no creative freedom without a foundation of diligently acquired habit. Musicians and artists of all kinds exemplify this fact.

Wisdom would be achieving the goal-achieving generality of knowing what can be tolerated or ignored as meaningless noise. — apokrisis

This can be inverted as knowing what particularities to pay attention to. And it's not as though we run through all the generalities saying "Not this, not this...".

But of course, this shows again that you are considering the mediated evolutionary perspective whereas I am taking the existential or phenomenological view of immediate experience.

Probably we are not disagreeing; it might be just a matter of emphasis. — Janus

Business as usual then. :)

For me, wisdom consists in how the 'golden maxims' and "topspin backhands" are creatively used in particular circumstances, so I just don't characterize the habit itself as wisdom. — Janus

For me, what is I am interested in emphasising is this counter-intuitive - because it ain't the usual mechanical way of thinking about it - fact that constraints are creative in this particular way.

A constraint is an optimisation function. It is a generality saying you want to get from A to B in the best way possible - exactly how on any occasion doesn't matter. And to be able to do that, a constraint also has to be able to define what level of goal-missing is tolerable - the detail that doesn't need to be sweated.

So the point is that constraint has this inherent dichotomisation. It allows you to know what generally matters (getting from A to B according to some general standard of what is optimal). And you do that by learning what it is that are the particulars of some actual occasion which are ignorable. A constraint is what separates signal from noise so that goals get achieved within practical tolerances.

So, of course there is no creative freedom without a foundation of diligently acquired habit. Musicians and artists of all kinds exemplify this fact. — Janus

Yeah. The classic creative geniuses are those who have mastered the habits and can then "throw them away" and "free-form it".

Again, my stress is on what the mechanists find surprising about the world - that constraint is what shapes our actually useful freedoms.

We are the product of modern machine culture where the opposite approach must be taken. A machine can only operate reliably if we take away all its creative possibilities.

This was quite literal in the early days. We would take a horse and harness it between a pair of handles attached to a cart with a set of wheels. Add blinkers, whips and reins. Hey presto! Nature constrained to the degree that it reduces any creative possibility to the status of an accident - but an accident of the kind that can't be ignored because it is now a critical problem. If the horse and cart don't function mechanically, some part of the mechanical system has to be fixed before we can get going again.

But I am talking about the causality of autonomous organisms. And now it is about habits or constraints - semiosis - that divide life into signal vs noise. The usefully creative possibilities are what states of constraint develop. And they achieve that by building up a fault-tolerant organisation. The system becomes hierarchically organised so that it can focus on general goals by being able to ignore the messy particulars.

This can be inverted as knowing what particularities to pay attention to. And it's not as though we run through all the generalities saying "Not this, not this...".

But of course, this shows again that you are taking the mediated evolutionary perspective whereas I am taking the phenomenological view of immediate experience. — Janus

But here you are talking about cleverness rather than wisdom - so attentional-level processing and hence phenomenology, rather than habit which has its own particular phenomenology.

So we need to note sharply when we are struck by an unpredicted surprise or the eventual occurrence of some salient event. At some point, our state of happy habit gets hit by an accident that actually matters.

And now cleverness kicks into gear. We have to experiment or figure it out. We must take risks to try something new.

It is because we have that state of generally well-adapted habit that we can so accurately pick out exactly when something novel and cleverness-worthy has happened. We need to turn off any stereotyped response and be prepared to learn and fine-tune.

So you are talking about the phenomenology of cleverness, sure. But have you considered what the phenomenology of wisdom is actually like by contrast?

Why are sages characterised as unshockable and unbothered by all the stuff that everyone else reacts to with unbalanced alarm or delight? What do we really think it is like to be in a wise state of mind?

Of course a wise person can move smoothly to assimilate what looks like the kind of event that would perturb others much more strongly. So they can be clever as befits the occasion.

But phenomenologically, it is the unthinking practiced ease with which they can either ignore or create that is the deep characteristic. They don't have to try hard.

For a Picasso, Federer, or whoever, even useful novelty comes easy as their skills are so sure that mistakes have become really difficult to make. They are in the zone where only the prize needs to be kept in mind. The details take care of themselves.

Wisdom is not forgetting that there are other ways to look at things, knowing some of those ways, and being able to rank them. Wisdom often has this form: sure, that's true, and that's important, but looked at this other way, you can see there's something else that's more important. Wisdom is inclusive this way, doesn't need to deny any of reality.

It's the antidote to the tunnel-vision we all naturally fall into.

I was always learned wisdom meant 'applied knowledge' or something such there-other.

But phenomenologically, it is the unthinking practiced ease with which they can either ignore or create that is the deep characteristic. They don't have to try hard. — apokrisis

You will like this clip. It features several philosophers making exactly this point (and also a really talented young jazz pianist who has sadly passed away since it was made):

You will like this clip. It features several philosophers making exactly this point — Wayfarer

Yep. But note the big difference also. This is the Romantic version of the psychology where becoming skilled is an expression of your truest self. And I take the pragmatic social constructionist approach which says becoming skilled is how a selfhood gets forged.

We would stand on opposite sides of the issue in this regard. (Although I wouldn't seek to deny some kind of genetic or biological nature - like the extrovert vs the introvert - that would run deeper than the social construction of that self.)

So the psychological facts are the same. This film would talk up the same phenomenology. The structure of our self is down to the structure of our skills. We exist in definite individuated fashion because we have developed various forms of mastery.

But against the Romantic model, I would say the self is not another transcendent pre-formed entity - a primal thing seeking its rightful forms of expression. Instead, selfhood itself is the immanent product of that development of mastery. Learning skills and habits is how we come to be created as something more than the initial dumb blob of cells.

In the beginning there is certainly always potential. But it is vague and undifferentiated, not the further thing of a preformed state of being.

So you are talking about the phenomenology of cleverness, sure. But have you considered what the phenomenology of wisdom is actually like by contrast? — apokrisis

You seem to reading what I say through the lens of your own definitions. Wisdom for me does not consist in following rules but in having creative insight into uniqjely particular situations in different contexts.

Learning skills and habits is how we come to be created as something more than the initial dumb blob of cells. — apokrisis

And learning wisdom is how we come to be something more than an evolved hominid species.

(Which reminds me - only got the symbolism of Planet of the Apes years after seeing it.)

And now one is President. :sad:

You seem to reading what I say through the lens of your own definitions. Wisdom for me does not consist in following rules but in having creative insight into uniqjely particular situations in different contexts. — Janus

Where for a minute did I say it was rule-following?

Talk about reading things through your own lens here. Rules or laws reflect a mechanical belief in deterministic absolutes. Procedures to be followed that then make every exception an unwanted accident.

So I said wisdom - understood organically as generality, constraint, habit, etc - is very different on that score. That was my whole bleeding pitch.

And further, I make the distinction to cleverness. That speaks to the actual phenomenology in doing justice to the actual psychological mechanisms.

You are confusing two things - even if the two things go together in a functionally integrated fashion.

So of course we would want to be wise and clever. We want to have a foundation of sound habit or knowledge from which we then can innovate and create in particular ways to suit particular contexts.

But the way we achieve that in practice is a brain that is organised by that very dichotomy. It is organised into the two general systems of a wise habit-level foundation and a clever attention-based innovative capacity.

So yes, you could now define wisdom as creative insight applied in uniquely particular situations. But who else is defining wisdom that way? Not Psychology Today for a start. Yet who would deny that was a good definition of cleverness? Do you?

And learning wisdom is how we come to be something more than an evolved hominid species. — Wayfarer

Yep. Romanticism in a nutshell. Society and brute nature holds us back. If only we could tread the transhuman path, we could all turn into happy angels living in eternal bliss and harmony.

If only we could tread the transhuman path, we could all turn into happy angels living in eternal bliss and harmony. — apokrisis

I generally associate 'transhumanism' with the attempt to artificially augment human capacities with technology, medicine and genetic engineering. I think from the 'romantic' viewpoint (to use your terminology) such attempts miss the mark, in that 'eternal bliss' has to be sought along a different plane altogether, rather than along an extension of this one. It is similar to the role that 'interstellar travel' plays in the popular imagination, as the 'conquest of heaven', which however has completely lost any sense of what 'heaven' originally denoted. 'Warp drive, Scottie!'

generally associate 'transhumanism' with the attempt to artificially augment human capacities with technology, medicine and genetic engineering. — Wayfarer

Yes. I meant transpersonal.

A long while ago, I used to edit a newsletter for The Australian Transpersonal Psychology Association. The term has fallen into disuse nowadays, but I got a lot out of it at the time. Abraham Maslow was one of the leading lights although it was a very eclectic group. But I still think Maslow's model has some merits.

I say "I don't take a definition of wisdom created by psychologists via research very seriously."

I have to agree with Janus here.

I seem to remember reading somewhere in a secondary work on Heidegger that his concept of authenticity could be equated with Aristotle's conception of phronesis (practical wisdom) in that phronesis consists precisely in knowing what to do in particular situations.

The idea is that each situation is uniquely singular, and that wisdom consists in not falling into the habit of treating a situation as a generality: "one of those situations" where "this is what one does". On this reading wisdom involves more creativity than habit. — Janus

Another way to put the same point is that the practically wise person is phenomenologically open to the unique situation, whereas the unique situation remains phenomenologically closed to the unwise person. It also seems important to practical wisdom that one is not only open to the unique situation, but that one acts 'appropriately'/'hits the mark' (I'm unsure of the right word) in their unique situation. So, not just seeing, it also involves doing. One is what one does, as Heidegger says.

Affectivity is also crucially important for both Aristotle and Heidegger with regards to practical wisdom and authenticity.

See, you've done the unwise thing and asked another what bullshit and self-hatred are. — Janus

Yeah I know; like I said, I can't imagine what's unwise about asking you questions about the propositions you espoused which you claim are wisdom. If I can't ask "why?" questions in response to your wisdom, then surely you aren't wise for setting up such a rule.

There may be wisdom for you in hating yourself, I can only tell you about my experience. I have found no wisdom in hating myself, although obviously I needed to know what self-hatred is, since I have blindly hated myself, in order to know what to abstain from. — Janus

I said there's wisdom to be learned from self-hatred; not that it's wise to hate oneself.

So, it has nothing much to do with "silence" but rather more to do with learning how to talk to yourself kindly and authentically (with your own voice, that is). — Janus

I don't know what you mean here.

Not bad, I like that. It seems a very logical definition of wisdom, so my intuitive sense of wisdom isn't satisfied, but there's certainly some wisdom in your idea.

I'd say there's some wisdom to be found there. Which I like; I like "defining" things analogically; rather than saying "wisdom is applied knowledge" or whatever, we can point to examples of wisdom. "What is wisdom?" "That is wisdom." What this does is forces us to reflect and critically analyze ourselves to ascertain what exactly is wise in a given example. And critical thought is one aspect of wisdom (but only one).

I'm just bored by the concept of cognitive bias because everyone has it. So it's important to get to the point where we recognize that we have it, but from there, there's no reason to put it on a pedestal or use it as an intellectual weapon. When we do that, we undermine intuition; you have an intuition about wisdom; so do I. It's a fantasy to imagine that you or I or anyone is abstractly analyzing human thought from a neutral vantage point at which cognitive bias doesn't exist.

Maybe the fact that you'd rather be editing photos than talking about wisdom is indicative of what wisdom is.

There's certainly wisdom to be gained form Ecclesiastes, as well as Job. It's funny, I used to secretly love Ecclesiastes when I was still in the church. I guess I can see why, now.

:100: :party:

They’re not burdened by the requirement to make choices. See this. — Wayfarer

:up:

That makes me wonder...

Do we really have choices? Aren't we all slaves to our nature?

A good book I read encourages us to take charge of our lives. It empowers us and restores control over our lives. However even in the drivers seat we must go where we want but what we want isn't something that we have power over.

Isn't that why there's so much variety in life, including human existence. We've artists, scientists, freedom fighters, rapists, altruists, murderers, etc?

Perhaps it's not our fault or, said otherwise, we could have choice but there's no good reason to prefer one option over the other and so we do what must follow naturally - give into our subconscious inclinations.