Talk:Wisdom

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I would suggest that wisdom not be combined with the entry for philosophy. Philosophy seems, to me, to be humankind's attempt at finding or joining themselves with a larger, super-existant or co-existant 'Wisdom' that is either larger than us all, and/or part of us all; that is always attempted to be explored and possibly found, by Philosophy. -jb

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[edit] regarding the suggested merger

Philosophy and wisdom are not the same thing. Philosophy is formal and rigorous thought, whereas wisdom has been construed as a character trait, and is at the very least nowhere near the level of formality connoted by the term "philosophy." You would say someone has wisdom, but you wouldn't say someone has philosophy. Verditer 01:12, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Wisdom should be its own article, and while it is connected with philosophy, the latter is too broad of a category. iatom 13:44, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Wisdom is another broad concept that is best separated from Philosophy. Pydos 09:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


Please use Plato's definition of Wisdom..."knowing if a specific activity (or lack of activity) will lead to a good time or a bad time." For example, young children lack wisdom because they don't know the consequences of many activities. They don't know that touching a hot stove can lead to pain. Adults have greater wisdom because they know the consequences of many activities. Knowledge is not limited to Wisdom. Knowledge includes much more information that is not just regarding the consequnces of activities.

[edit] Development of the Wisdom Entry

I wanted to attempt to carefully define "wisdom." I respect that my definition was removed, and have not wanted to force it back in, though I profoundly believe in the concept I tried to express. I invite all to consider the concept/definition. Though it may seem like a strange place, the discussion I offer is below, in the "Copyedits" section, since the editor that removed my definition did so with an invitation to discuss the wording in there. Feel free to reflect, and offer words that might help the "prose," but that do express the defining and distinguishing aspects of wisdom. -- Dr. Richard Carter rscarter@microconetics.com


Thank you all.

Andrea/ibiji Passaggio 13:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


The entry is not exactly in conformance with some of the most recent psychological literature on the subject. Specifically I would recommend some of the work of Sternberg and others who have studied wisdom extensively. Additionally, Howard Gardner (of multiple intelligences fame) has done some recent work on societal trustees - the people other people agree are trustworthy and knowledgable, etc. There are many "opinions" on wisdom, especially from religious perspectives. But the recent psychological work seems to offer a more substantial basis for an encyclopedia article. If no one objects within the next week I will attempt to edit the main article page to introduce some of these scientific perspectives.

George Mobus, 1/21/06

[edit] Older Commentary

I came across this article while I was working on DIKW... it appears to have slowly accreted over time without ever having an overall plan. I've giving it some structure, an improved first paragraph. I did remove a bit of stuff because it seemed like opinion or advice. It might be worthwhile to have a look at the other languages - for example fr:Sagesse seems to have a solid cover on the Greek philosophy of wisdom. Sbwoodside 07:32, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not — he is a fool; shun him.
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not — he is ignorant; teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows — he is asleep; awaken him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows — he is wise; follow him.

— Persian proverb

  • There are other possibilities
He who knows, and knows that he knows not — he is  ??; ???? him.
That would be "deluded", wouldn't it?

Interesting... wouldn't that be more appropriate for Wikiquote:Wisdom though? Sbwoodside 18:57, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Published Wisdom Poem

Poem taken from "The Age of Poetry" by C.J. Williams:

"Soft, but square. Sturdy, yet fragile. Like the ocean, but a swimming pool of dreams that last forever - like all these things, but more, bound together in eternal piece of heart worth struggle and sacrifice to the death of the glorious struggle between life and the supernatural such as everything we want in this alienated world of despair that entangles our relations and ideals of the world as one perfect being which will never be but may eventuate with a little hope, have a little faith in me! Have a little faith in me.."

[edit] Copyedits

Let's start with the changes on this page, first. The edits should be readable, before posting them to the article. --Ancheta Wis 10:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


____

Reply, discussion from me/Passaggio, below.(Pls note: 1st time in talk page. If my protocols fails or i make faux pas, i honestly apologize.) I occasionally use a word in allcaps for emphasis, since I've no clue at all how to make it bold or italic. No shouting or emotion implied.
This is my attempt at defining "wisdom":
"Wisdom" is a state in which a being can judge with congruity (the same way across different contexts) one or all of the following: action, thought, behavior. Wisdom can apply to the ability to make such evaluation about action, thought, or behavior, in the present, or in the past."


Though I am aware that it is somewhat "involved" to read, I offer the following considerations:
1) It may be far from fluid, but it is "readable" (although...)
2) ...I am quite open to making it much more readable, fluid, but...
3) ...the definition must take priority over the "prose."
1 and 3 are pivotal. While I thank you for wanting to improve the prose, the problem with the definition I found before my edit (and that you reverted to) is that it seems flawed.
This is the definition currently posted, wich I find flawed:
"Wisdom is the ability to make correct judgments and decisions."
The 2 main flaws I see with the current wikipedia definition:
(A) the word "correct" (I would argue that this is beyond flawed: it seems to me that given the current state of knowledge, education, and culture, using the word "correct" is actually unacceptable, and not just from a philosophical and cultural perspective, but also from a multitude of problems inherent to the combined use of "wisdom" and "correct" within the same definition;
(B) the words "the ability to make ... judgments and decisions" - The ability to make decisions --even good judgments/decisions-- is something that one can experience through states OTHER than wisdom. One might have predisposition, luck, contexts and circumstances that result in the ability (even for a moment in time) to make a good judgment decision. In the extreme, I could trip, see a lucky number, decide to go to Vegas, win, be happy ever after. Good decision, and perhaps wise in hindsight, but I'm not sure it was wisdom that made me go to vegas. Or: I could see a speeding car headed toward me as I walk, and dodge. The decision to dodge would be the result of my "ability to make the correct judgment / decision," but it is a wide, perhaps overarching stretch to include or even imply within the definition of "wisdom" the decision to dodge speeding objects.
So, I tried to offer a "wise" definition of "wisdom," above. I am unhappy with the sounds of the words I selected, and open to more fluid/readbale words, but I offer that we ought to provide a sound definition.
To name a few elements that I think are crucial to a sound definition of the word "wisdom", I begin by listing these from my original definition above:
- "a state" (as opposed to just ability)
- "can" (as opposed to do: wisdom enables us to judge a thought/behavior, etc. (whether ours or someone else's). Without getting too philosophical about the fact that non-action is an act, by using the word/concept "can" above i'm trying to say that wisdom does not necessarily imply action--ditinguishing judgment from action, even from decision.
-"action, thought, or behavior" (or short but comprehensive list of what wisdom primarily enables us to judge)
-a concept that includes the ability to judge a behavior (etc.), and not just the ability to judge if that behavior is right/good/correct. (Wisdom lets us judge a behavior as it is: that behavior we are judging wisely may be a behavior that is right, wrong, hurried, justified, impulsive, conditioned by this or that -- wisdom doesn't just let us see if it's wrong or right, it lets us see how that behavior is, period.)
- "with congruity" - ugh -ugly word and consequent parenthetical phrase, but why "with congruity"? Because if the state that enables us to make a sound judgment is a fleeting state, then it's not wisdom. Wisdom necessarily entails that I'll be able to value that judgment or decision the same way over time/moods/factors. I cannot strees enough that this is to me THE definition of wisdom. Ironically, and hypothetically, this does not always and necessarily mean that my decision was "right" --all the more reason to avoid the word "correct". In other words, I may make a sound judgment/decision that is wise; however, years later I may suffer negative effects that I might not have suffered if not for that decision; but I will still be able to later look back and say: "given my knowledge and context a that time, despite what happened later, I did the wise thing." For example: decision to make: eat rotten food knowingly or don't eat rotten food knowingly. My wise decision is to NOT eat the rotten food knowingly. But because I don't eat the rotten food, I go to the grocery store to get fresh food. The ceiling of the grocery store collapses that very moment, and I die, painfully. Had I eaten the rotten food --or at any rate not gone to the grocery store that time-- I would not have been under that collapsed ceiling. So, in this scenario, if given a simplistic dichotomy of "good" and "bad" decisions, and if "dying painfully" is defined as "bad," then the "good" decision would have been to not go to the grocery store for fresh food. But it was still a wise decision. If you food is rotten, it is wisdom to not eat it and instead get fresh food.
The word "congruity" is one I don't like at all. But the concept of it is, I profoundly believe, paramount to the very definition of "wisdom," and such concept DISTINGUISHES wisdom from other states or circumstances that would OTHERWISE enable us to make good judgments. And again, it is tricky but crucial to observe that this does not imply a consisent, unchanging "correctness" of the decision made.
The idea of the concept of congruity is to set wisdom apart from the following: good judgments achieved by states other than wisdom; and any judgments (even good ones) that are due to a state that is fleeting. These are included/implied in the current wikipedia def., but I argue that they are not wisdom.
There is an additional sentence in my definition, not so much to define as to clarify. It's tothe effect that wisdom "can apply ... in the present or pas.t" It's something I added to the core definition, because even though one could argue that experience typically gives us wisdom in "hindsight" ("that was so dumb of me to do that years ago"), wisdom can/could be applied also to judgments we make at the present. I would add that's what we must strive for, and achieve. But that's outside the scope of this discussion...maybe
Ciao,

ibiji.com

Passaggio 14:22, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Passaggio, Welcome to Wikipedia. Here is a link for starters. I took the liberty of

  1. moving the thread to this location, as it is the custom to append comments to the bottom of the talk page, and
  2. lower-casing some words in your contribution to demonstrate some formatting mechanisms, such as italic and boldface, which you might learn about later.

You can

  • sign a contribution thus: ~~~
  • sign and timestamp a contribution thus: ~~~~
  • timestamp a contribution thus (5 tildes (~)): ~~~~~

May I recommend some sample articles which are under active development by some very good editors:

these links are included because I wanted you to see some typical protocols followed by editors during the development of some very good articles.

Regarding your points above, I do not disagree with them. It is very easy to write words, but to choose the right ones is the difficult part of the art.

If I do not respond immediately, it may be because I have a lot on my agenda this weekend, as a brother-in-law is getting an honorary degree, and a daughter is also graduating. So I will be underway soon. --Ancheta Wis 14:25, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

What comes to mind, upon reading your contribution, is Kurt Lehovec, one of the inventors of the integrated circuit, his opinion of the "Measure of a Man". I am not disclosing it, as I have never seen it published, but your opinions seem to echo his. --Ancheta Wis

Thank you Ancheta Wis!

Good luck w/ all your family and lives!

I wanted to reply to your msg with a msg 2 U specifically, but coulnd't figure out how. Apologies for using this section for it!


will study!

ciao, ibiji.com Passaggio 14:33, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

____

just had a thought rereading:

something like:

"wisdom is that state that enables us to look a at decision, a thought, or a behavior, in the same way across time, moods, and other factors."

excited : )

i'll try & post and see what happens!

ibiji.com Passaggio 15:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


The two should not be merged because one subject is classically about the love of wisdom, and the other is about wisdom itself. The two cannot be merged into one subject. --joseph 03:31, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


Another thought -- there are all kinds of wisdom -- not all find their source in philosophical wisdom. Some wisdom involves common sense or "street wise" thinking that involves an awareness of people and culture and how to successfully interact with them/it. Other sources of wisdom involve understanding what facts mean - an overall perspective om reality. The sources of this wisdom is not philosophical reasoning as much as the accumulated knowledge of how things work and how we can use them to our advantage. For example, a person who knows how to easily prepare a pinapple for serving has a "kitchen" wisdom.

"Wisdom" is hard to define? not for Plato..here are some basic definitions from Plato....

1. Wisdom (Scarecrow)....knowing if a specific activity leads to a good time or a bad time.

2. Courage (Lion)....facing an unpleasant activity now in order to have a good time later.

3. Virtue (Dorothy)...avoiding a fun activity/vice now that leads to a bad time later.

4. Compassion (Tinman)... attempting to improve the times of another.

Enjoy.

[edit] Removed opinion ?

Moved this paragraph here. Interesting opinion but requires attributation / references before inclusion in article text ? Johnmarkh 04:27, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

These are some of the ingredients of wisdom-1.The ability to tell the important from the unimportant.2.The ability to "put yourself in someone else's shoes.You may notice that the first is subjective while the second is not


[edit] Left brain and right brain

I removed the sentence about intuition and wisdom belonging to parts of the brain as non-scientific and not supported by modern Neuroscience. The link that supported this sentence was also to a non-scientific web page expressing non-scientific opinion.


[edit] Second Edit

I removed the link to left brain-right brain from the opening section. There was also an unsupported statement that wisdom is particularly rare in American Society in the same sentance; which I also removed. Furthermore I separated the teachings of religion as they apply to Wisdom from those defined by philosophy. I also added some information regarding Buddhist definitions of wisdom from the Dhammapada. It would be good to have some explicit definitions of wisdom from different religions or philosophers as at present the term is nebulously defined.

MacShimi 21:00, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Scientific perspective

I doubt that the additions under the scientific perspective should be classified as scientific in a sense distinct from philosophical. There is a branch of philosophy that deals with science as a system of thought, and these additions seem related to that area of philosophy. A counterargument may be that ideas about scientific wisdom are being advanced by scientists and therefore should be classified and identified as the scientific perspective. My objection to that claim is that scholarly endeavors are usually classified by what they are rather than who performs them. For example, a biologist who puts forward a theory of the origins of the universe is doing cosmology not biology. The so-called scientific perspective on wisdom is not scientific because it (apparently) neither collects nor analyses data. Nesbit 19:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Replaced that text with a link. --Ancheta Wis 05:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Stevenson-Perez, the concepts in this section have been covered in other articles; literally hundreds of editors have added their wisdom to those articles. Perhaps a few more links to the other articles in the encyclopedia are in order. --Ancheta Wis 15:32, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
The content formerly placed in this section by Stevenson-Perez has apparently migrated to other pages of the encyclopedia. --Ancheta Wis 11:04, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Psychological perspective

The section on Erikson should be reduced to focus only on the last stage of his theory, which is relevant to this article. The whole stage theory should be, and probably is, covered elsewhere. Agree? Nesbit 05:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I'd like to point out that there is newer and more developed research on wisdom beyond Erikson. The document I am familiar with is called "The Manual for the Assessment of Wisdom-Related Knowledge" and was researched and written by Paul Baltes and others at the Mack Planck Institute. Its ISBN # is 3879850372 according to this page: http://edoc.mpg.de/234761. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about wikipedia editing than I could make a note of this on the wisdom page? Kehaiji 22:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)Kehaiji

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