Forum: Featured Discussions: What is the role of reflection in practical wisdom?

For ancient philosophers, wisdom required knowing the good and a wise person could live a flourishing life, in part, because he or she possessed this knowledge.  These days, we are less certain that there is a good to be known that will help us live flourishing lives.   Further, if we want to measure how much wisdom different people have, we would need to operationalize “knowing the good”, which seems daunting if not impossible.  These problems are reflected in the definitions of wisdom used in psychological research.  Of the ones I have seen, none make explicit reference to knowledge of the good.  Baltes and Staudinger (2000) do include knowledge about the “fundamental pragmatics of life” as one of the two main criteria for wisdom, but this knowledge turns out to be about

such topics as human nature, life-long development, variations in developmental processes and outcomes, interpersonal relations, social norms, critical events in life and their possible constellations, as well as knowledge about the coordination of the well-being of oneself and that of others (p. 125). 

Baltes and Staudinger recognize (correctly, in my view) that wisdom must include the kind of knowledge that is necessary for living a good or meaningful life, but this knowledge, on their view, is not knowledge of values.  This is entirely understandable.  If you want to be able to figure out who has wisdom and who doesn’t, the criterion “must know the good” is at best unhelpful if we don’t have clear standards for what counts as such knowledge.

One way to solve the problem would be to make some uncontroversial assumptions about the good and stipulate that knowledge of the good is knowledge of these assumptions.  This is problematic because truly uncontroversial assumptions are likely to be bland and general and therefore not very revealing about wisdom.  Another way would be to give up on the connection between wisdom and the good.  I think this would also be a mistake.  If wisdom is of interest, it really should have something to do with living a good or meaningful life and this means we cannot avoid the evaluative (or “normative” as we say in philosophy) domain when we are thinking about wisdom.

A better way to solve the problem, I suggest, is to move from metaphysics to epistemology:  from what is of value to the process by which we acquire knowledge of it.   On this line of thought, an important component of wisdom is the set of reflective capacities that allow us to think constructively about what is good, to formulate ideal conceptions of a good life and of the kind of person we want to be, to assess how we are doing at living up to these ideals and to reevaluate our ideals in the light of new experiences.  I think we need an argument to show that it is fruitful to think about what these capacities are without presupposing particular substantive assumptions about the good.   Though this isn’t obvious, I do think such an argument can be made, and this is one of the subsidiary goals in my own wisdom research.

The idea that in our thinking about wisdom we could replace THE GOOD with REFLECTION ON THE GOOD invites some questions.

First, could this philosophical idea be helpful to social scientists concerned with measuring and teaching wisdom?  My sense is that it could.  For example, consider this passage from Baltes and Staudinger:

The second wisdom-specific metacriterion, relativism of values and life priorities, deals with the acknowledgment of and tolerance for value differences and the relativity of the values held by individuals and society. Wisdom, of course, is not meant to imply full-blown relativity of values and value-related priorities.  On the contrary, it includes an explicit concern with the topic of virtue and the common good. However, aside from the recognition of certain universal values (Kekes, 1995), value-relative knowledge, judgment, and advice are part of the essence of wisdom (2000: 126).

What exactly is the distinction between universal values and relative values?  What are universal values and how do we know?  A focus on reflective capacities (rather than knowledge of the good) might provide sufficient answer to these questions without making prescriptive (or normative) assumptions. If reflective capacities enable us to engage in sorting out which values are universal and which are subjective or parochial, then we can look for these capacities as evidence of wisdom.  Moreover, we can do this even if we don’t have a criterion for distinguishing universal and relative values.  

Second, some psychological research seems to pose problems for the idea that we can improve our values by reflecting.  Timothy Wilson’s work on reflecting on reasons seems to cause certain problems (see Nahmias 2007 for problems related to autonomy), as does, Jonathan Haidt’s work on the causal irrelevance of reasoning to our moral judgments.  I think philosophers ought to be concerned about the psychological assumptions that underlie philosophical conceptions of normative notions such as the virtue of wisdom.  If our normative notions are supposed to have, ultimately, some practical upshot, we cannot ignore the psychology.  Hence I’m concerned about these studies from Wilson, Haidt, and others, and keen to discover what other research in psychology might bear on these questions about the role of reflection in wisdom.  Of course, the kind of reasoning that is shown to be irrelevant or unfruitful by psychological studies is not the only kind of reasoning or reflection there is (see my 2009 and Bortolotti forthcoming for discussions that emphasize this point).  What I would like to do is to use the empirical research to help shape a picture of reflection that is psychologically possible and beneficial.  Toward this aim, I would be particularly interested in hearing about research on reflection (on values, on life-plans, on self-conceptions) that tells us about (1) how people might develop and improve their capacities for such reflection, or (2) how reflection on values is related to well-being indicators.  For example, I am currently looking into therapies like narrative therapy and cognitive behavior therapy, because these seem to be programs that encourage a certain kind of reflection on one’s life for the purpose of improving well-being.

"The Role of Reflection in Practical Wisdom"

- Valerie Tiberius, Professor of Philosophy, University of Minnesota

REFERENCES

Baltes and Staudinger (2000) “Wisdom:  A Metaheuristic (Pragmatic) to Orchestrate Mind and Virtue Toward Excellence”, American Psychologist  Vol. 55, No. 1, 122-136.

Bortolotti, L. (Forthcoming).  “The epistemic benefits of reason giving”. Theory & Psychology.

Nahmias, E.  (2007) “Autonomous Agency and Social Psychology.” In Cartographies of the Mind: Philosophy and Psychology in Intersection, ed. by M. Marraffa, M. Caro, and F. Ferretti (Springer) 169-185.

Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review. 108, 814-834.

Tiberius (2009) “The Reflective Life:  Wisdom and Happiness for Real People,” forthcoming in Lisa Bortolotti (ed.) Philosophy and Happiness (Palgrave). 

Wilson, T. D. & Dunn, D. S. (1986). Effects of introspection on attitude‑behavior consistency: Analyzing reasons versus focusing on feelings.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 22, 249‑263.

Wilson, T. D., Hodges, S. D., & LaFleur, S. J. (1984).  Effects of Analyzing Reasons on Attitude‑Behavior Consistency.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47(1).

Wilson, T. D., Lisle, D., Schooler, J., Hodges, S. D., Klaaren, K. J., & LaFleur, S. J. (1993). Introspecting about reasons can reduce post‑choice satisfaction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 331‑339.
 

Photo from Flickr by GreenNetizen.

          This statement raises a number of questions in a genuinely inquisitive manner and comes to the right conclusion, in my opinion, that some form of self reflection might reveal the true roots of wisdom. But the author is constrained time and again by the main thrust of the Western analytic tradition, which I define as the Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman, Western European, and Anglo-American definition of reality. There are other non-Western epistemologies, but these are not considered, thus relativising the definition of wisdom in the Wisdom Project by confining it to Western modes of thought but generalizing to all cultures. Even the Muslims structure reality in a different way. The essay also is presented next to the picture of a statue of the Buddha, but the Buddhist definition of wisdom (prajna) is not considered either. So the essay should begin, “For ancient [WESTERN] philosophers, wisdom required knowing the good and a wise person could live a flourishing life, in part, because he or she possessed this knowledge.” In the context of Buddhist epistemology, for instance, one acquires wisdom (prajna) through the depth of interior spiritual states of consciousness. This is confirmed in such works in the Western literature as William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), the first text to propose a cross-cultural comparative psychology of mystical states as psychology’s most important contribution to an objective science of religions. Buddhist prajna, however, is not just wisdom of the world, samvritisattya, the deceptive truth of conventional appearances. It is also paramartyasattva, the higher spiritual wisdom, which is that all things are empty (sunya). One gets this through meditation (dhyana).

        At the same time, one does not say about oneself, “I have wisdom,” or “I am wise,” which is a tremendously egotistical pronouncement. Others must say, “He or she has wisdom,” as an opinion conferred, though the standard must be different in every case. Otherwise, the person descends into the ‘touch the hem of my garment “ syndrome and develops what Jung called “the manna personality.” Rather, Wisdom is selfless. With this quite radically different frame of reference the original question ‘What is wisdom?” seems more or less culture-bound, if presented as if it was something we could catch in a net, or reason out.       

         The author then goes on to maintain that “These days, we are less certain that there is a good to be known that will help us live flourishing lives.” Here, she is on the right track by pursuing a pragmatic course. William James addressed this issue in his essay “The Will To Believe,”(1897), where he maintained, in response to the idea that ‘if good men do nothing in the face of evil, then evil will come into being just by our inertia’ ; in other words, that we must intentionally choose the good, so that evil will always be held at bay. One does not defeat evil and that is that, but the process of developing character means that to live righteously one must continually stand the watch with regard to one’s own thoughts, decisions, and behavior.

        I then take friendly issue with the author’s discussion of wisdom in psychology. First, there are many other forms of psychology besides Western laboratory empiricism. These include the classical depth psychologies of Freud, Jung, and Adler, Existential-Humanistic psychology, phenomenological psychology, Transpersonal psychology, an intuitive psychology of character formation that each person develops for themselves, and others. To say as the author does “If we want to measure,” this implies first that reductionistic empiricism is a desire, which I take to mean the desire to be seen as a scientist, as if this was some superior form of knowledge, a point on which not everyone is in agreement. Second, it suggests that measuring things as an ultimate way of knowing is a profoundly Western urge. What other culture pursues understanding in that way? Third, measurement oriented, reductionistic laboratory psychology implies capturing wisdom in such a way that it can at last submit to the scientist’s manipulation, prediction, and control. Only those variables that we control can be studied scientifically, according to the dictates of experimental psychology. And in this form of psychology, the author finds no studies investigating the relation between wisdom and ‘the good.’ Is it any wonder?

        This is the main fallacy of scientific psychology in the West. It purports to make a statement about the whole, when by itself, it remains confined to the rational ordering of sense data alone. Its operations may be correct for the variables operationalized, but it cannot generalize to any domain of human experience beyond the logical ordering of sense data. For the experimental psychologists, the good, which implies within it a judgement of value, cannot be approached because it lies within the domain of meaning and value, and because by its own terms science must remain neutral. Thus, it can only make a statement about wisdom in this domain. So, of course, there would be no statement that could be made between some empirical measure of wisdom and “the good,” which is an experiential value judgement. At the same time, how much can we learn about wisdom when operationally defined? The mistake here is thinking that wisdom is a trait. Wisdom is not a trait. It is reflected in a process of maturation and growth in personality development. Thus it relates to one’s definition of development. Is development strictly the linear progression across the life span from birth to death? Or, as James maintained, is consciousness a field with a focus and a margin, where the margin keeps expanding and contracting? What then is the meaning of the expansion of consciousness? Abraham Maslow maintained in defining the self-actualizing personality that transcendent breakthroughs into higher states of wisdom can occur anytime along the life span, such that a 15 year old who had experienced the profound heights and depths of interior experience had, in fact, become wiser than his 65 year old father, who in despair of meaning had spent his life as an alcoholic. The Russian existentialist Nicholas Berdeyev proposes a horizontal as well as a vertical mode of time. The horizontal runs from birth to death and the vertical is the expansion of consciousness at any moment in time along the way. The depth and beadth and expanse of consciousness experienced becomes the standard upon which the person decides what to do in any given situation. This is the source of spiritual wisdom. 

        The author then definitely begins to hit her stride when she suggests that a better way to solve the problem is to move from metaphysics to epistemology: from what is of rational value to the process by which we acquire knowledge of it. I suggest that the process by which we acquire an understanding of wisdom is through self-knowledge, insight, and the direct experience of transcendence. On this line of thought, the author wants us to turn to certain capacities of cognition, namely: our ability to “think constructively about what is good, to formulate ideal conceptions of a good life and of the kind of person we want to be, to assess how we are doing at living up to these ideals and to reevaluate our ideals in the light of new experiences.” I agree, but these are all very rational, the summum bonum and also the bain of Western philosophy. Western philosophers begin as if “the rational” is the highest state human beings have achieved on the evolutionary scale. And that the way to get there is to begin by arguing the point. So she says, “Though this isn’t obvious, I do think such an argument can be made, and this is one of the subsidiary goals in my own wisdom research.” We account this as a noble contribution to the rationalist approach to the problem, but it backs into the problem somewhat, if, as James hinted, the rational is derived from the spiritual and not the other way around. Socrates did not contest this idea. He only said “Know thyself.”

References:

James, W. (2002/1902). The Varieties of Religious Experience. With introductions by E. Taylor and J. Carrette. Official Centenary Edition. NY, London. Routledge, Taylor, & Francis.

Taylor, E. (2008) “Come Hither and be Measured: On the problematic Relation between Spiritual Experience and Cognitive science.” Presented as the keynote address to The Conference on Religion and Cognitive Science, Co-sponsored by the Cognitive Science Program at the University of California at Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. Berkeley, California, January 16, 2008.

Thakchoe, S. & Jay Garfield, J. (2009). The Two Truths Debate: Tsongkhapa and Gorampa on the Middle Way. Wisdom Press.

I would like to emphasize that I (the webmaster) chose the statue of the Buddha picture to go with this blog entry without Dr. Tiberius's knowledge.

 Thank you for your interesting comments! -Joy

Your idea to move from metaphysics to epistemology, and specifically to distinguish between THE GOOD and REFLECTION ON THE GOOD seems like a promising innovation.

It also seems true that what you call universal values and relative values have different epistemological processes; for example, maybe something along these lines:
 
Epistemology of universal values

• involves the Nous (Greek philosophical term; no modern English equivalent)
• occurs by insight, intuition, direct apprehension (noesis)
• traditionally associated with 'illumination', 'grace', 'inspiration'
• has an affective/aesthetic component (associated with awe, love, beauty, joy)
• associated with conscience and 'synderesis' in the moral realm
• involves eternal, immaterial perspective
• always correct if followed faithfully

Epistemology of relative values

• involves the reasoning part of mind
• involves discursive thought (dianoia)
• involves temporal, material perspective
• subject to distortion by ego or appetitive desires; sometimes false

I should add that I am by no means convinced that most modern people are relativists.

John Uebersax 

The role of reflection in the development of wisdom is paramount.

Prospects are not exactly rosy for the human species. In recent times, our extinction has become a realistic possibility, occuring either through cataclysmic climate change or through a holocaust with weapons of mass destruction.  If this occurs, it will have come about through our own actions as a species.

In our time we are already long past the age when wisdom was about individuals being able to live a flourishing life.  We face the much more daunting challenge of reversing our own destructiveness.

In effect, facilitating and proliferating the emergence of wisdom across the human species has, in our time, become our most important project for the foreseeable future.

This project is so important that failure cannot be an option.  Those who want to contribute meaningfully to this critical project must eschew the outmoded fragmented and disorganized worldview that has been the birthright of every human over as many centuries as we can remember.

We must apply the best available disciplines for grasping and guiding the complex interactions of components and forces among the hierarchies of systems within which we are inextricably interwoven.  We must consider the systems approach.

The systems approach identifies us, the human species, as having the richest known transformative impact upon the larger world system in which we are a very small subsystem.  Our transformative impact upon our larger system includes cities, buildings, highways, railways, tunnels, bridges, dams, ocean liners, airplanes, trucks, automobiles - and all the electronic technologies and media that have us now plummeting inexorably toward an exponentially accelerating rate of change, and an explosive proliferation of information, neither of which we can control.

Applying the systems approach would reveal the quality of our conceptual interface* as the definitive influence upon the human species' operations.

It would also highlight that the conceptual interface of every one of us was neither chosen nor built by the individuals who have them, and that the conceptual interface we each start out with is full of outdated and false assumptions and notions, and that we are thus primed to live out our lives interpreting and responding to our experiences with very little development of our conceptual interface.

This is not acceptable.  Now that some of us know that it is our inherited 'legacy' conceptual interface that corrupts our interpretations and misdirects our responses, and that we can each work toward reducing such distortion and misdirection, if only because we can no longer expect to survive with the prevailing conceptual interface.

No. The better the quality of the content and organization of our conceptual interface can be, the better the quality our subsystems' actions can be expected to be, and likewise, the better our impact upon our larger world as well.

'Wisdom' refers to that configuration of the content and structure of our conceptual interface that is least likely to produce distorted interpretations, and therefore, also, least likely to generate destructive actions by the human subsystem, and thereby, also facilitate the best possible transformations in our larger world system.

In short, as almost all of us start out with an outdated and flawed conceptual content and structure, reflection, i.e., focusing our observing function upon our conceptual interface increases our chances of being able to weed out the errors and becoming able to integrate our remaining conceptual content into an integral structure that improves both interpretation and response-generation.

This is why the role of reflection in the development of wisdom is paramount.

*Conceptual interface refers to the conceptual content and structure that is present at every human node of the species subsystem, which interface mediates the experiential input into individual human nodes from the larger world system and also mediates the output of the human species subsystem as actions.