Philosophy Now Forum

hajrafradi wrote:

Jaded Sage wrote: I had two other questions. Why ignore them.

Hola. I don't know how possibly I could have missed them. Please issue a new post here stating the other two questions. I can't find them in this hajstack.

Don't worry about it. One was semi-rhetorical, and the other was next to impossible.

Jaded Sage wrote:What is wisdom?

wisdom [wiz-duh m]

noun
1. the quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight.
2. scholarly knowledge or learning: the wisdom of the schools.
3. wise sayings or teachings; precepts.
4. a wise act or saying.
5. (initial capital letter) Douay Bible. Wisdom of Solomon.


wise1 [wahyz]

adjective, wiser, wisest.
1. having the power of discerning and judging properly as to what is true or right; possessing discernment, judgment, or discretion.
2. characterized by or showing such power; judicious or prudent: a wise decision.
3. possessed of or characterized by scholarly knowledge or learning; learned; erudite: wise in the law.
4. having knowledge or information as to facts, circumstances, etc.: We are wiser for their explanations.
5. Slang. informed; in the know: You're wise, so why not give us the low-down?
6. Archaic. having knowledge of magic or witchcraft.
verb (used with object), wised, wising.
7. Slang. to make wise or aware: I'll wise you, kid.
Verb phrases
8. wise up, Slang. to make or become aware of a secret or generally unknown fact, situation, attitude, etc.: They wised him up on how to please the boss. She never wised up to the fact that the joke was on her.
Idioms
9. be /get wise to, Slang. to be or become cognizant of or no longer deceived by; catch on: to get wise to a fraud.
10. get wise, Slang.
to become informed.
to be or become presumptuous or impertinent:
Don't get wise with me, young man!
11. put /set someone wise, Slang. to inform a person; let a person in on a secret or generally unknown fact: Some of the others put him wise to what was going on.

Both definitions from http://www.dictionary.com. (no affiliation whatsoever)

So to me wisdom is simply that which is arrived at, through the time required, to sort out what is in fact truthful knowledge, what isn't, and how it all interplays.

Edit: Typo

I'm looking for something a little more than a dictionary definition.

hajrafradi wrote:Most people fail this, because people can't shut up, given any even slight opportunity to say something. Hence the popularity of Internet forums.

Exponential mea culpa

hajrafradi wrote:I would also add that wisdom is a transient quality, for most people; and wisdom is not absolute, but relative. Furthermore, it is liable to be situation-driven as well. What gets you a Nobel-prize nomination in one country, has a perfect chance to get you into the loonie bin or in front of the firing squad in another country.

Wisdom, like all attributes, runs in cycles. Sometimes more, sometimes less, and about average in between.

My personal wisdom tracks inversely with my ego. Things go well, the ego inflates, the inflated ago causes problems and the downswing begins. At the lowest point there is a stillness, a peace, where the ego has been shrunk by life's blows. At that point life improves, getting better and better until the ego starts to inflate again. The experience of age tends to reduce the amplitude and frequency of this and other cycles, thankfully.

It also depends on your starting point. A severely uncentred person may occasionally approach sanity at the peak of the upswing while a highly intelligent and balanced person might only do worse than occasionally being a little unwise.

hajrafradi wrote:Getting at the definition of wisdom from a relativity theory angle, a person is wiser than the other if calmer, his/her gross prophet margin is narrower (i.e. more precise in the predictions), and sees a bigger picture with more clarity; the meme is more impressive or the wise person is more impressionable to memes ...

That's why I claimed the question is easy - most will come to fairly similar conclusions. What makes the question especially intuitive is that we only need to consider what is unwise and pick the opposite.

Most seem to associate wisdom with calm, stillness, self-control and acceptance. One of the more influential things said to me on forums was an old Yankee ex-cop living in Mexico who (wisely) said that most people in his experience didn't have a sense of "enough". I've since found it's helpful to remember that when my instinctive greed is pulling me from my centre.

Greta wrote:we only need to consider what is unwise and pick the opposite.

Good technique. Will apply it here and in other applicable situations. Thanks for the tip.

Greta wrote: people in his experience didn't have a sense of "enough".

No animal with a gathering/hoarding instinct or behaviour has it. Hamsters have been known to gather over fifty Kg (5000 times their body weight) of grain for one single winter season.

Prehistoric man, who needed to survive the winter, never had a sense what is enough. He just kept on gathering until the fields lay barren. No sense in saying "enough" when 1. you don't have a feeling for it, and 2. you have no clue either, but 3. not having enough meant extinction for the tribe. It was impossible for her to tell for sure. We now have the capacity and ability to predict how much food is enough, but other things we like to hoard to no end: wealth, money, friends and fame, military power, land, influence. MP3 songs, and in my case in the past, antique maps.

Greed and hoarding are human nature. In some applications it has been positively influencing man's historical progress. In some other sense, greed has been instrumental in upsetting the ecobalance in nature. (No amount of propagation of humans is too much, has been the motto until very recen times.)

It all boils down to how ten to 50 thousand years ago our genetically influential ancestors had no clue or feeling what would be "enough" supplies to survive the winter.

Jaded Sage wrote:I'm looking for something a little more than a dictionary definition.

A trictionary definition for you:

"Wisdom is on one hand what you can distill from the forum posts replies to your enquiry, and on the other hand, bolcsesseg."

One more than a dictionary definition. And in the world of integers, you can't get any less little more than one. Triction is one ction more than diction.

Greta wrote:

hajrafradi wrote:Most people fail this, because people can't shut up, given any even slight opportunity to say something. Hence the popularity of Internet forums.

Exponential mea culpa

Hey! This has also been the driving force of "famous last words of famous people."

The scenario that lends itself to the routine of filling up all available listening space is as follows:

Fred, the famous whatever is on his death bed. The entire nation is in a pre-mourning readiness. Famous Fred's best friend leans over the reclining, emaciated, disease-ravished body of Fred. Checks his watch. "Fred, according to the doctor you have five more minutes. Why don't you say something?"

No human being can resist the allure of filling up any available listening space with his or her own voice. We soak up silence with our words like a thirsty sponge.

Naturally, Fred jumps on the opportunity like a cheetah on a nearby unsuspecting gazing gazelle and says something. It does not matter what, because only Fred's friend can hear it, and for the papers and for all eternity, the friend can sub anything she wants for posterity to attribute as to Fred's parting sentiments.

Talking, for humans, is a win-win scenario all around. That's one thing that you can get even less enough of than grain for the winter or antique maps cataloged, indexed, and filed away, indeed.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Right on, Sister.

Wisdom is Gazpacho.

hajrafradi wrote: It all boils down to how ten to 50 thousand years ago our genetically influential ancestors had no clue or feeling what would be "enough" supplies to survive the winter.

Before the winter of 1864, in the Sierra mountains, a bunch of settlers were settling in for the winter. Being new to the area, they were unsure how much wood to chop for the winter to keep warm.

They sent therefore an emissary to the nearby Indigenous native American tribe, and he asked the chief, "How hard is this winter going to be?" "It's going to be hard, my son," replied the chief.

So the settlers sent out more of their men to chop wood.

Sent the emissary agian. "How hard is the winter going to be?" "Very, very hard, my son," replied the chief.

The settlers therefore went to bed, and next day they doubled their efforts to chop wood. A week later they sent the emissary again. "It's going to be an extremely hard winter, son, a winter we haven't often seen in these parts for his harshness," said the chief. The emissary grew a bit suspicious. "How exactly do you know this, o, chief?" "Well, my son, here we've been looking at the settlers across the valley, and they've been gathering and chopping wood like something nuts, as if there were no tomorrow."

hajrafradi wrote:

Jaded Sage wrote:I'm looking for something a little more than a dictionary definition.

A trictionary definition for you:

"Wisdom is on one hand what you can distill from the forum posts replies to your enquiry, and on the other hand, bolcsesseg."

One more than a dictionary definition. And in the world of integers, you can't get any less little more than one. Triction is one ction more than diction.

I have no idea what you are saying. Also, it seems that what's in the quotes describes or refers to reading comprehension, not wisdom.

There needs to be a distinction made between wisdom and intelligence. They are not perfect synonnyms, and as far as I can tell, hardly synonymns at all.

Wisdom is a way of thinking that is appropriate to the situation. It is optimum thinking.

Jaded Sage wrote:So we are definitely saying then that there is a difference between wisdom and intelligence, and wisdom is greater, meaning both more important and involving something more, and sometimes, if not often, includes a measure of intelligence. Is that correct?

Consider: If you are still saying that "wisdom" is a "type" of thinking, then you are wrong to compare it to "intelligence".
Both intelligence and wisdom are not 'types' of thinking, they are capabilities, not methods.
Intelligence is not a type of thinking is it. So how can you measure it against your view of wisdom.

You might like to consider these "types" of thinking.
http://www.slideshare.net/mukulchaudhri ... f-thinking
Of these possible ten suggestions, there may be many more, I suggest that wisdom is the capability of knowing when and how these apply with validity to the situations at hand.

The way most of us are describing wisdom, it is as if it were a perfect synonymn of intelligence. I have to do this in steps apparently. First, what isn't. Next, what it is.

Jaded Sage wrote:The way most of us are describing wisdom, it is as if it were a perfect synonymn of intelligence. I have to do this in steps apparently. First, what isn't. Next, what it is.

The first step with any word is to grasp the truth that there is no such thing, and to console yourself with the truth that a word is a collection of connotations and denotations which only represent a sign directing us to qualities which it attempts to describe. There is no 'perfect' wisdom in the land of Forms which the wise tend to more or less attain.
In effect Wisdom is nothing more that that which we seek to describe, but is not a natural category.

It would help you were you to address my last post. Seriously.

You and I are just on two different pages, man.