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Ep. 45 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - The Nature of Wisdom

Vervaeke continues his lecture series on wisdom, critiquing Sternberg and Grossmann, and proposes a model linking propositional, procedural, and perspectival knowing to meaning in life.

Key Takeaways

  • Wisdom must be understood as a process, not only a product, to account for how one becomes wise.
  • Propositional, procedural, and perspectival knowing together form the core architecture of wisdom.
  • Sternberg's theory can be reinterpreted through relevance realization and optimization, but needs clearer specification of values.
  • Mindfulness practices serve as the developmental mechanism for cultivating wisdom's competencies.
  • Wisdom involves existential transformation, not just accumulated knowledge.

What the video covers

  • Lecture continues a long discussion on the nature of wisdom as crucially connected to meaning in life.
  • Recaps prior critiques of Vervaeke's Ferraro-style product theory of wisdom, which lacks an independent account of foolishness and a process theory of becoming wise.
  • Analyzes Sternberg's wisdom theory, linking his balance of interests and adopting/shaping/selecting to relevance realization and optimization.
  • Criticizes Sternberg's claim that wise people direct their efforts toward the common good, and his unclear invocation of values, which needs explicit specification and justification.
  • Presents a framework with inferential (propositional) and insight (procedural/perspectival) competencies, protected by active open-mindedness.
  • Argues that mindfulness, understood as coordinating meditation, contemplation, flow, and environmental interaction, is needed to cultivate these competencies.
  • Distinguishes knowledge of facts (cross-contextual patterns) from knowledge of events or processes (unfolding in time and space).
  • Identifies a missing element of transformation: existential and modal change, the aspirational shift toward wisdom.
  • Discusses understanding as a profound grasp of principles, with optimization of grip and transparency-opacity balance.
  • Frames wisdom as a performative rather than merely propositional commitment, where aspiring to rationality is itself a form of rational practice.

Chapters

  1. 00:00Introduction and Recap of Wisdom Discussion
  2. 04:00Critiquing Sternberg's Theory of Wisdom
  3. 07:53Propositional, Procedural, and Perspectival Competencies
  4. 12:01Mindfulness and the Cultivation of Insight
  5. 20:01Existential and Modal Transformation
  6. 30:00Understanding, Optimization, and Plausibility Generation
  7. 44:00Performative Contradiction and Rationality
  8. 56:00Aspirational Change and Gnosis

Answers

Questions about this video

What criticisms does Vervaeke raise about Sternberg's theory of wisdom?

Vervaeke argues that Sternberg's claim that all wise people direct their machinery toward the common good is contentious, and suggests a less controversial version would be virtue and meaning in life for oneself and others. He also finds the invocation of values ambiguous and says specific values must be stated, justified, and linked to specific mechanisms.

How does the speaker connect wisdom to relevance realization?

He argues that Sternberg's ideas about adopting, shaping, and selecting, along with implicit processing, tacit knowledge, and balancing interests, are clearly ideas about relevance realization. He also links the balancing of interests to optimization, which he treats as directly relevant to relevance realization.

What role does mindfulness play in the proposed model of wisdom?

Mindfulness is presented as the developmental style that coordinates meditation, contemplation, flow, and environmental interaction to cultivate the procedural skills of attention. This protects the insight competence from undue influence by faster automatic processing and strengthens the foundation for wisdom.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00
Speaker A
[Music] welcome back to awakening from the meaning crisis so we are continuing and it deserves this much attention our long discussion about the nature of wisdom because since the actual revolution is just crucially connected to the project of meaning in life last time we finished
00:34
Speaker A
up look at bolton slaughtering there I made some criticisms and that led into important criticisms made by Monica or Delta then we looked at our doubts theory and the way it brought in an important distinction about not just
00:48
Speaker A
having a good theory of wisdom but the process of becoming a wise person and then the emphasis on what are the features of a wise person as - as opposed to what are some of the central claims made by a theory of wisdom and
01:03
Speaker A
then we talked about how Monica insightfully brings together and the the cognitive the reflective and the affective and I pointed out how within at least the cognitive directly because of the invocation of Keeks and understanding we've got a relevance
01:23
Speaker A
realization grasping the significance I would also point out that I think that's at least even complicit in the reflective machinery and there's potential deep potential connection there with both prospective all-knowing and the cultivation of rationality at least respectable rationality and the
01:42
Speaker A
affective ties to agape which I've already argued too has very important connections to relevance realization and that affords our doubts theory a powerful way of connecting wisdom to meaning in life as something different from connecting wisdom to virtue and
01:57
Speaker A
that's a very important thing to do we still noted some criticisms but largely it's still a product theory it doesn't have an independent account of foolishness and a processing theory of how one becomes wise and in that sense
02:13
Speaker A
it's not picking up as well as it could the philosophical heritage given to us by people like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius etc we then took a look at the theory of Sternberg just extremely pivotal figure
02:34
Speaker A
in the psychology the cognitive science of wisdom and we took a look at his theory and I pointed out his ideas about adopting shaping and selecting are clearly ideas about relevance realization he invokes implicit processing tacit knowledge you know in
02:56
Speaker A
order to bring understanding in that in sort of intuitive grasping of the significance of information I think is what he's implying and we talked about the how he involves a balancing of interests and there's the interpersonal how you connected to yourself the
03:13
Speaker A
interpersonal how you connected to other people the extra personal how you connected to the world and so that's at least important connections to implicitly at least I mean important connections to meaning in life that we've been talking about
03:26
Speaker A
throughout this course he invokes balance throughout and I tried to make a good case that you should see that as optimization and directly relevant therefore two accounts of optimization of processing that we discussed with connection to relevance realization
03:44
Speaker A
there were some issues I had with Sternberg the idea that all wise people all of this machinery is directed towards the common good that strikes me as an Akron estate I think a less contentious claim would be that it's
04:01
Speaker A
directed towards virtue and meaning in life for oneself and others in some unspecified way there was also the invocation of values as affecting or constraining the whole process again it was unclear to me what this is there's an ambiguity here it could be the
04:22
Speaker A
relatively trivial claim that the wise person is being regulated by normativity you know by considerations what's true and good and beautiful and that would be definitional because wisdom is a normative term and therefore relatively trivial or it could be that specific values are being
04:40
Speaker A
invoked here but if that's the case they should be specifically stated and then justified for why those ones are chosen and explicitly explain how those specific values make an impact on specific aspects of the machinery so that's all sort of missing and needs to
04:57
Speaker A
be addressed it's ultimately a product theory not a process theory Sternberg does have a theory of foolishness but it's not independently generated and it doesn't really pick up on the centrality of seeing through illusion and into reality so if you'll
05:13
Speaker A
allow me to make use of all of that machinery not only the machinery that we've talked about in the psychology of wisdom but the machinery that many of these theorists are either explicitly or implicitly invoking all of the
05:25
Speaker A
philosophical work we already covered in the first half of the course connected to wisdom I want to try and humbly draw upon that and talk about proposal made by myself and Leo Ferraro if you know remember Leo and I have done work
05:45
Speaker A
together on flow which I've talked about work on mindfulness that I've talked about this is worth from 2013 so the place to start is to go back to what we saw and what a argued for so I hope I
06:02
Speaker A
don't have to recapitulate that whole argument right that we have these two competencies we have sort of an inferential competence that has to do with our propositional knowing and we have an insight competence right over here and that has to do with control and
06:21
Speaker A
that has to be that's more sort of procedural perspectival I'll come back to that point because that's one of my criticisms of Verve achey and Ferraro and then the idea here is that this is enhanced and protected from undue influence from
06:41
Speaker A
sort of more s1 processing by active open-mindedness and then I argued and following Jacobs and Teasdale right and also arguments derived from being the need for an independent competence on controlled etc right that while this is really clearly the case for theoretical
06:59
Speaker A
context and more therapeutic or at least extent X essentially developmental contexts we want this to be foreground 8 and we want it protected from that and so we want it developed by mindfulness really and you understand that by
07:13
Speaker A
mindfulness I mean a style that coordinates psycho technologies together of meditation contemplation perhaps flow interaction with the environment that brought up the immediate question of okay how are these coordinated together now one answer might be that they are
07:35
Speaker A
just opponent processing and there are self-organizing and and and that's potentially viable but there's we already at this point sorry that sounds so self congratulatory I don't mean it that way okay we argued let's just state it that
07:53
Speaker A
way we argued that whereas this is giving priority to propositional knowledge this has to do with procedural knowledge skills of attention basically with cultivating certain skills of attention and then the idea was that active open mindedness and propositional knowing basically we
08:15
Speaker A
argued then give you knowledge of facts this this gives you knowledge of events right or processes so right this basically tells you about we're understanding what a fact is as cross contextual patterns events or processes are things that are unfolding like
08:38
Speaker A
idiosyncratically right in time and space I'm not I mean I that's sort of right perhaps a better way of putting this that would align it with the stuff we talked about with it's worked and sharp is this is your
08:54
Speaker A
grasping of principles and this is your grasping of processes and this would therefore largely be sort of like what's being talked about in Sofia and this is largely what perhaps what was being talked about in phronesis we suggested
09:10
Speaker A
that I'm still open to that suggestion I'm not quite sure that it Maps as cleanly as that now but in addition to this clearly propositional and at least centrally procedural we invoked prospective oh right so this is propositional this is largely procedural
09:41
Speaker A
and then this is perspectival and then right so if this has to do with inference this has to do with insight and we've already got a good sense we've seen this we didn't we were not aware of cuz it hadn't been generated we are not
09:56
Speaker A
aware of Grossman's work at the time but we knew the Berlin work and this is of court what's being managed here is internalization how do you learn to take adopt and take other people's perspectives and internalize them within
10:13
Speaker A
your own processing so they become metacognitively effective and then we we said well what perspectival knowing did and here's where I want to launch or what am I I think first criticisms we said well what perspective knowing does
10:30
Speaker A
is it integrates knowledge of facts with knowledge of events it sort of helps you to use I think maybe a better language it helps you to put principles into process and have processes governed by principles and that's what sort of
10:48
Speaker A
perspectives are doing so this is we're talking about the the epitome of this as a skill and the epitome of this is a theory and what a perspective does is put theories and skills together I think that's kind of right still in a sense
11:03
Speaker A
but I think the relationship is and this is a what I would argue for here the relationship is more like this the propositional knowledge is grounded in but affected by procedural knowledge your skills knowing how to interact and
11:24
Speaker A
then that this your your ability to cultivate skills and then apply them to the propositional knowledge is grounded in your perspectival knowing because that's going to give you your situational awareness that you need to cultivate the skills and so that you can
11:43
Speaker A
apply your knowledge of principles and then I would argue that that and you've seen me make this argument before this is ultimately grounded in your participatory knowing the agent arena attunement that affords your being in the world and your ability to go through
12:01
Speaker A
modal transformation existential change so that also brings up I might as well mention it now another criticism of this of this theory which is although it's talking about propositional and procedural knowledge and prospective unknowing there there is no clear
12:19
Speaker A
discussion here of participatory knowing and that's a significant lacunae in the theory for the following reason without an account of participatory knowing for all of its claims the verve a keen for our theory of being a process theory rather than a product theory
12:36
Speaker A
without talking about the participatory knowing it really can't incorporate into its account of becoming wise how one goes through transformational experience how one goes through modal change I mean modal in the existential sense not the logical sense so without connecting participatory
12:58
Speaker A
knowing to this overarching schema the connections between wisdom transformative experience altered states of consciousness all of these things that we've discussed are actually crucially missing from this theory and therefore its claim to being an adequate process theory can be rather significantly
13:20
Speaker A
challenged I own I think that that so that needs important development we did talk about a cognitive style that you could cultivate and one more thing I think what we were doing is also we were smuggling in that the prospective
13:40
Speaker A
all-knowing with the process of identity creation that's central to participatory knowing so I think that was also part of the problem now what we did argue is that this is set within a cognitive style that will give you a higher-order
14:03
Speaker A
way of regulating active open mindedness and mindfulness and here we took directly from the philosophical tradition and we talked about internalizing the sage right internalizing Socrates internalizing the Buddha internalizing Jesus internalizing the sage and we talked about what what
14:29
Speaker A
impact that has so we you know what this is internalized we talked about this repeatedly what the process of internalization is what it's like to internalize Socrates etc etc and we've already seen how central that is to wisdom it's so well this is overcoming
14:43
Speaker A
fallacious reasoning right this is overcoming miss framing misconstrue what this is doing is it's helping you to overcome egocentrism in a powerful way these are all ways in which we can fall into illusion so it's self-deception but we also talked about
15:16
Speaker A
what does internalizing the sage do what's when you get that meta cognitive enhancement you get that perspective of ability what's it doing so here we talked about a virtue that you haven't heard me talk about very much and it's
15:29
Speaker A
it's unfortunate because in some ways this this this is okay so the the Asia Greeks had four cardinal virtues wisdom which is really kind of a meadow virtue justice which we talk a lot about courage and then the fourth is this word
15:47
Speaker A
softer son now softer son is often translated as temperance doesn't capture it well moderation doesn't capture it well so I want to to put aside that and try and come back at this but you see if you went to the Delphic Oracle there
16:06
Speaker A
were things inscribed on the wall there and one was know thyself and that's clearly you know connected and Socrates made it a zone and we've come to know what that means how the knowledge of one's self is of course not they're not
16:19
Speaker A
romantic autobiography but a deep understanding of the principles by which you're operating but the other one was everything in moderation which was like this and it but that's not right that again moderation is good but it's not quite right it's and we know this is
16:38
Speaker A
connected to something like Aristotle's notion of the golden mean that all virtue and remember what that is you tried to create you're trying to create a virtual engine that right right generates enough options so you don't suffer vices of deficit but also
16:55
Speaker A
generates enough right there's enough governance there's enough selective constraints so that it also forts vices of excess so there there's there's a kind of optimization going on there and as I said there which you get a little bit in the word moderation but modern
17:13
Speaker A
raishin sounds more like averaging and settling i we argued that there's a better way of trying to understand this by understanding it in something that it was often contrasted which which is in Crotty a-- so you know this word this is
17:31
Speaker A
democracy uh right power or rule by the people and and krithia is sort of exercising power on yourself so this is kind of like self-restraint self-control and so a way of getting at this is to think about the the fact that you could
17:59
Speaker A
be practicing a virtue a virtue and kradic lee or in a sort of cynic manner let me give you an example so here's two people there's Tom and there's Susan Tom is honest or at least he's trying to
18:19
Speaker A
become honest no Tom goes into situations and Tom sees clearly the potential to lie and he thief clearly the benefit that would accrue to him if he lies and it comes with a tremendous sort of temptation at there's a
18:39
Speaker A
tremendous impulse and so he exercises self-control and he doesn't lie and Tom is to be commended for that that is an important kind of honesty but consider Susan Susan comes into a situation she clearly sees the opportunity to live
19:02
Speaker A
she clearly sees the advantages that were the crew to her if she lies but that's it it's like when we talked about Frankfort and whether or not some it's unthinkable to her not in this sense that she can't think the thought I can
19:16
Speaker A
lie or think or imagine to herself like it's not a viable option to her she can't she can't get into the existential mode where that draws on her anyway so although she can think it in one sense in a Frankfort Ian sense it is
19:32
Speaker A
unthinkable to her it just she's not tempted to lie in that sense many of us myself included would side with the Greeks and saying susan is more honest than Tom right because honesty is now second nature to Susan in a way it isn't
19:54
Speaker A
to Tom so that's soft resan but at least one aspect of it do you remember we you you see that remember when we were doing Paul and agape and Paul says now I will show you the most excellent way and then he's
20:12
Speaker A
talking of course about agape as the most excellent way and then he says remember in order to try and get you to understand that the transformation when I was a child I thought like a child I spoke like a child that acted like a
20:25
Speaker A
child but when I became a man I put childish things behind me and remember we talked about that when your child your your deeply tempted by toys your salience landscape automatically organizes in a certain way but when you're an adult when I'm a man I come in
20:41
Speaker A
and I see Spencer's toys I know that they're there I know that I can play with them but they have no pull on me they do not call me they do not tempt me and as the child is to the adult the
20:53
Speaker A
adult is to this age this age has a salience landscape in which they are not tempted to self-deception in the ways that we so readily are that's soft person it is to have a salience landscape that has gone through a kind
21:11
Speaker A
of fundamental reversal it is not I mean these are all differences of emphasis but like the way our seance landscape is less oriented towards the self deceptiveness of a child the sages salience landscape is less oriented towards our prevalent and pervasive
21:35
Speaker A
forms of self-deception they see through illusion and into reality so this is of course deeply perspectival and and I want to add a little bit more to it because it it's not just write it sorry you see the seat like in Taoism it
21:55
Speaker A
comes through right the idea that right well look once you've trained enough you just have to you just have to let you the sage can just let things unfold naturally and you see this and you know even in
22:11
Speaker A
Augustine you know love God and then do what you want of course you have to love God it that means if you really truly love God if agape is flowing through you as paul recommends then you have sovereign and then you will just you
22:23
Speaker A
will and this is what I want to say you will be tempted to the good you will be tempted just like you can be tempted right your salience landscape naturally self-organizes towards self-deception your salience landscape if you're wise
22:40
Speaker A
naturally self-organizes towards seeing through illusion zeroing in on what's relevant and important and how it is relevant to the project of becoming more virtuous and having a more meaningful life you're tempted you're naturally tempted to the good that's some person
23:00
Speaker A
and so we argued that what's what you're doing here is your call to you know you are internalizing the sage and what that's doing is helping to overcome ego centrism in this deep sense of helping you to realize software son and so this
23:20
Speaker A
means we argued that there's deep connections and I don't think these have been explored enough between wisdom and sorrow soon and of course our forsen is a kind of optimization of your perspective of knowing it's that I've optimized my perspective all knowing so
23:36
Speaker A
it's always certain service and this is what was to some degree missing from this theory right it's in the service of my agent arena relationship and how that is being developed being developed that reciprocal realization so that I can go
23:52
Speaker A
through the import transformations that are needed to become a wise person we argued that what the softer sin is directed towards were three M's obviously morality more broadly construed as not just knowing the rules but the capacity for being
24:13
Speaker A
virtuous realizing meaning in life now a deficit there is we only we only had self-determination Theory ricey and DC and Ryan on this kind of stuff and much more work much more significant work has been done with meaning life working on
24:33
Speaker A
doing with tally of rancid Asst Jensen Kim for the grass wick and we're presenting at APA this year and so this theory needs to be revised and I've tried to show you that in the course to more directly connect this machinery to
24:50
Speaker A
meaning in life so this needs significant improvement we did argue that meaning in life is irreducible alla wolf to morality and then something we talked about as mastery we use the three ends because they're helpful we did I'm
25:08
Speaker A
not I'm not comfortable that term anymore because of all of its political connotations we were thinking of it more like in almost in the academic sense like when you get your MA on the end and when you know in the oldest sense like
25:21
Speaker A
when you did your masterpiece what we met here was you know a terrific capacity for caring and coping with reality you had sets of skills you had sets of psycho technologies you had sense of roles that you could take so
25:35
Speaker A
this gives you roles like propositional sorry propositional knowing gives you rules your procedural knowing gives you you know various routines this is a perspectival knowing gives you various roles and being able to use you know rules and routines and roles you know
25:51
Speaker A
with with mastery in coping and caring was central again always guided under the governance under the regulation of sovereign so I've already I I mean so this is a processing account you how to become wise you cultivate active open-mindedness you cultivate
26:11
Speaker A
mindfulness you cultivate internalizing this age we used sports psychology here as a way of trying to get what that looks like or we also used of course developmental psychology but got ski but sports psychology talks about very much
26:27
Speaker A
how people go through a process of internalizing the coach and that's strongly analogous to internalizing this age and so we talked about you call debate active open mindedness you cultivate mindfulness you cultivate internalizing this age and you're guided
26:44
Speaker A
overall by trying to become softer cynic in that and so this is a processing theory as I've mentioned I think there's a deficit in it it does not take you into account it it's what's absent from it is transformational experience
27:03
Speaker A
transformational development these are all very telling things the role or relationship between this and altered states of consciousness who is not properly developed the participatory knowing which of course connects to the transformational experience is missing so wisdom is not connected to gnosis and
27:24
Speaker A
here in any important way so those are some important criticisms I would have the relationship between the kinds of knowing wasn't well developed we sort of just argued that well perspective on our sort of synthesizes these together I
27:46
Speaker A
think that's too simplistic a much more complex relationship I you see me argue for in this course I think needs to it is being developed and needs to be developed two things that were strongly implicit in other people I should
28:06
Speaker A
mention a core aspect of this theory that I think is still central is that all of this all of this and we made this very explicit all of this is and this came out I so part of this conversation that I
28:21
Speaker A
forgot to take a moment and explicate it that all of this is about enhancing relevance realization our main argument is that wisdom is some kind of comprehensive optimization of cognition and then I would extend that now consciousness character etc and that in
28:36
Speaker A
order to optimize cognition in a comprehensive fashion and of the developmental fashion that means that what you're doing is enhancing relevance realization and we all we all ready saw that at work throughout this and we saw that relevance realization is central in
28:53
Speaker A
the theories that the explicit psychological theories that we've already examined now in connection with that there's another serious lacunae in this theory which is that although it does something I think this is very important it connects wisdom to
29:16
Speaker A
to insight let's start here I mean it's it's it would be odd to say you know Sam is very wise but he's not very insightful that seems wrong we could we could say things like you know Sam is
29:29
Speaker A
very wise and he's maybe not very educated he might not be sort of super intelligent that's fine right but to say that Sam is wise and not insightful well that seems to trespass on that McGee and barber point about seeing through
29:44
Speaker A
illusion right wisdom definitely has to do with you know gaining knowledge in the best way theoretical knowledge obviously gaining procedural knowledge so the wise person knows how to believe well and that seems also deeply deeply right the the wise person is overcoming
30:07
Speaker A
ego centrism internalizing the sage the traditions point to this very clearly and they point towards software son the most excellent way and and of course one way in which this we could understand this is exactly the Paul line recommendation
30:26
Speaker A
right that the best form of software sin is agape so but what's missing so I've already pointed many things a minute but something that central here is a theory of understanding to say that you know like Oh bill is very wise he's so
30:44
Speaker A
insightful he's you know he's so capable of self-transcendence and overcoming ego centrism he believes things really well like he's not easily duped but he doesn't understand he doesn't have deep or profound understanding of things see no no that's not right why speak one of
31:03
Speaker A
the ways people zero in on relevant information is by being more insightful yes one of ways they zero in on relevant information is like like avoiding bias and fallacy in their inferential changes of their beliefs right one way in which
31:19
Speaker A
they over write one way in which they zero in on relevant information and overcome egocentrism is all of the the respect rival internalization the cultivation of sovereign but what's missing and we saw this you know our delt work very clearly we saw it implied
31:38
Speaker A
in Sternberg's and so right we should have taken this into account wisdom should also have within it a clear theory or connected to a clear theory of understanding and so I think that's also missing what is it to
32:01
Speaker A
enhance understanding what is it to develop a profound understanding so I want to try and at least discuss that or not I'm not in the place where I have a complete theory of understanding I've been doing a lot of work on it work that
32:21
Speaker A
I'm actually doing with Leo Ferraro and I and because that theory is still very much a work in progress I'm also not clear quite how right it would fit into this what would be the cognitive style for tapping into the participatory
32:40
Speaker A
knowing and how does that relate to enhanced under Danny I'm not sure I don't know I don't know so the criticisms have shown me many ways in which there's important lacunae there's things that are underdeveloped and things of which I am ignorant
32:58
Speaker A
however and I'm going to try and address the understanding issue in a moment I would like to say nevertheless we we can see how all of the theories right converge including this one on relevance realization intelligence rationality these different kinds of knowing and
33:21
Speaker A
integrating them together optimization they're all zeroing in on this so that we see remember back to this old diagram everything converging onto our R and then coming out into all these aspects of human spirituality and here's one I've made I think a plausible case for
33:38
Speaker A
that it really helps plays a crucial role in helping us to give a naturalistic account of what wisdom is that I think I made a plausible case for now what about understanding well we already saw it invoked with this
34:00
Speaker A
grasping of significance and it's interesting in a completely independent and convergent manner when you look through a lot of the current philosophy of understanding this is where people are now distinguishing understanding from knowledge distinguishing understanding from just possessing an
34:16
Speaker A
explanation because of an explanation as a set of propositions right so there is the idea that understanding is something beyond possessing an explanation it's something above and beyond simply knowing we already saw with Keeks this idea of grasping the significance and I
34:36
Speaker A
pointed out to you that that could be understood in terms of control and relevance realization what I am saying is if you take a look at the philosophy understanding literature this idea that understanding goes beyond knowledge and explanation in the grasping of the
34:52
Speaker A
significance of the knowledge is something to which you can make you can draw a quite powerful convergence argument many people are converging on this idea there's there's some variation on what they think right what they think this grasping the significance is I
35:13
Speaker A
think to go back to smellin right that it has to do like we saw with grasping the relevance of what you know that he remember that was one of the key features of his account of understanding so in addition to all the implication
35:29
Speaker A
relations and logical relations there were relations of relevance non propositional and then I argued that that construal plays a central role and that control can be understood in terms of problem formulation the relevance realization machinery that's found within problem formulation so I would
35:54
Speaker A
argue that what we're talking about is a particular is a really good construal and we have a way of talking about that already right we have the notion of an optimal grip I have a really good con stool has a structural functional
36:15
Speaker A
organization I've sized up the situation well you know featural to get all the right degree of transparency opacity I'm getting an optimization on my grip on things so this is good contact right that's the good control and then what it
36:32
Speaker A
does is it affords me to write to grasp the the the what's relevant in this situation how I sized up the situation and got an optimal grip on it affords remember inmates and good problem formulation right now we also saw
36:51
Speaker A
something else if you remember we the connection to good problem finding and that's what I talked about the problem nexus and I promised to come back I talked about Arland but I also mentioned at that point the work of very recent
37:14
Speaker A
work all my markers are running out of two reget and I've never met this person so I hope I get their name right I just want to copy this very carefully Pittsburgh I'm not sure if that's right or not this is work from 2017 and then
37:35
Speaker A
there's also direct own book on understanding and there's a lot of good work going on about this it's very exciting stuff they point towards what they call the standard of effectiveness for understanding I understand something what's the contrast here okay you don't
38:00
Speaker A
want to say that somebody has understood something and what that means is they've they've grasped from the truth now they they have to be trying to grasp the truth that's important but and and that will come out in a moment right
38:16
Speaker A
but you can't say well if they didn't grasp the truth they don't understand because then you're faced to say the following thing that you know most people have never understood anything because most people's beliefs in the past are faults and most of my beliefs
38:30
Speaker A
right now are fault so I'm actually not understanding you don't want to try understanding too tightly to truth in that fashion so instead of trying tying it to truth you might want to try it more to something like rationality where
38:43
Speaker A
you are trying right you're using the best methods for trying to get out the truth that's more plausible and this would also help to explain why in the prototypical instances within science we use things that aren't true in order to
39:00
Speaker A
generate understanding you go at you open a science textbook and they'll show the atom with this little circle and things going around it right and that's all that's pretty much completely false it doesn't matter that it's false it is
39:16
Speaker A
effective for helping you to grasp the significance of the scientific model of the atom to draw as journey AK would say the right implications look for the right connections it helps you zero in on the relevant information in the right
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Speaker A
way and that's why it's used nobody right you're making a mistake if you think most of the diagrams and the idealizations that are at work in science are attempts to represent the truth accurately they are not they are
39:45
Speaker A
attempts to effectively get you to zero in on the relevant implications make the relevant connections as mental and would say this is what is meant by effectiveness all right effectiveness is exactly doing and then they talk about how what what it is to say that somebody
40:05
Speaker A
understands something is that they're good at you know being able to apply their knowledge right find new domains open up new areas of research so of course it's this multi apt ability to apply what they're they're good problem
40:21
Speaker A
formulation here to transfer it and transform it and specify it in many different ways and what's implied in here of course is in important capacity for problem finding somebody who has good understanding can facilitate a need for they can motivate
40:38
Speaker A
and facilitate a need for cognition because they can use that to go out and find and formulate problems perhaps zero in an important important problem Nexus so and of course this optimal grip is giving me something that regret the
40:59
Speaker A
regret or dirige it i don't know how he pronounces his name also talks about a many people talk about the idea that understanding is contextually sensitive it's contextually relative to know that I understand something is relative to the situation at hand and relative to
41:19
Speaker A
the person at hand you and I can both know the same things right but if you're in situation in situation you're in situation a in situation B you might understand those things because you can apply them in a I know I couldn't be
41:34
Speaker A
said to understand them as well cuz I can't apply them in situation B also right we could be in the same situation but I have a different set of skills and so I can apply my knowledge better than
41:47
Speaker A
you can I understand better than you can right so there's very much that this is context relative and I would then of course context sensitive and you write and that of course is the context sensitivity whereas this is the ability
42:05
Speaker A
to do things in a much more context general way and of course I'm invoking the machinery of relevance realization I'm invoking in in in good control and then the ability to transfer it right insightfully I would also argue that one more thing
42:22
Speaker A
is needed right and you know where this because we've already got the idea that when if I am making these kinds of forward commitments cognitive commitments they need to be backed by a law of convergence so that my construct
42:50
Speaker A
is also trustworthy I've done a lot and of course to overcome self-deception so if basic understanding is to grasp the significance grasp right through relevance realization the relevant implication the relevant connections right this is what I'm trying to suggest
43:09
Speaker A
to you the basic understanding becomes profound understanding when basic understanding is used to generate plausibility I don't think that's enough because if you'll allow me a sort of schematic way of putting it this is very horizontal it tells you how to bring different domains
43:41
Speaker A
right together into your good Const role and then apply them to many domains and you're doing the compression right and then you're doing the variation you're doing the relevance realize the compression variation right good problem formulation optimal gripping right this
43:55
Speaker A
is contextual e sensitive this is effectively right applied across in a cross contextual manner etc etc right but I think understanding also has if you'll allow me a vertical domain because I think part also of what profound understanding does is it aligns
44:16
Speaker A
and optimizes the relationship but so if this is plausibility generation what's being aligned and optimized here I think are right the propositional knowing right the procedural perspectival and the participatory I mean this goes back right somebody who really knew physics wouldn't just be
44:54
Speaker A
grasping the propositions of physics they would be able to they'd have the skills they know how to do physics and they'd have the situational awareness they would know you know which skills to apply and which skills to develop in
45:10
Speaker A
order to do physics well there might even be a participatory aspect to it they might have come to identify with the physicalist worldview and taken up their agency with respect to that although that might be problematic given arguments from the meaning crisis but
45:28
Speaker A
the the more there's right so the more deeply these are aligned and interconnected and mutually facilitating each other the more capable they are I would say of understanding the material so I think what needs to be developed is
45:46
Speaker A
a way of theoretically integrating the horizontal that understanding is to generate at least profound understanding is to take basic understanding grasping the relevance connections and make those relevance connections convergence and elegance optimal gripping so that profound understanding is to generate
46:06
Speaker A
plausibility that's the horizontal but profound understanding is also to align so you're getting grounding downward and you're getting emergence upward right the relationship between propositional knowing procedural knowing prospective all-knowing and participatory knowing and then all of that needs to be of
46:26
Speaker A
course integrated into an account of wisdom as I said what also needs to be aligned is transformational experience and that means an account of nasus needs to also be integrated into the account of wisdom so that notion of transformative of
47:16
Speaker A
transformation of knowing through transform transformation and becoming so that knowing and becoming knowing oneself and knowing the world and becoming a different agent in a different arena bound together right we've talked about this that transformative knowing that transformative experience there's of
47:39
Speaker A
course many instances in which it's rather sudden or somewhat sudden and I and so it has very much important features of insight and we've taken a look at that and that of course is again to recommend it one more time the
47:54
Speaker A
seminal and powerful work of the LA paul now agnes card in her book aspiration has I believe it's 2016 has recently argued that there are also instances where people go through this transformative knowing that are much more incremental in nature
48:18
Speaker A
she doesn't deny this but she argues that there are very many instances about this so all of the the all of the stuff we talked about here hasn't been dispensed with this is being added as a complement and a supplement so what's an
48:36
Speaker A
example of this more incremental process she gets she gives many examples let's do one you join a music appreciation class okay and so we're using the word appreciation here not in the sense of gratitude but how it's used when we
48:50
Speaker A
people talk about music appreciation art appreciation so you joining music appreciation for class class what would make you a good student and the music appreciation class if you're there because you want to impress your girlfriend or your boyfriend or you're
49:05
Speaker A
there because every time you go you pass the chocolate store and you buy some chocolate right and that sort of or you're there because you're just trying to get a credit the person teaching the music appreciation is not going to
49:18
Speaker A
regard you as a good student because why because the goal of music appreciation is to come to value music for its own sake it's it's to come to front it is to come to finding music intrinsically valuable and therefore something that is
49:30
Speaker A
directly relevant to your meaning in life something that you directly care about now the thing is if you were a good now think of the paradox here and this is so beautiful the way keller brings it up if I was a good student I
49:44
Speaker A
would appreciate music for its own sake but if I appreciated music for its own sake I do not need to take the music appreciation class right do you see the paradox here and then Keller points it this is the same thing when you decide
49:58
Speaker A
you're going to undertake a liberal education the liberal education is going to give you values and preferences that you don't currently have right so the idea is the music-appreciation so what do you do there how do you how do you
50:19
Speaker A
break through that dilemma now let's be very clear colored is in agreement with la paul that you can't get through this in an inferential fashion for all of the arguments we've already seen right she talks about it she does make something
50:36
Speaker A
clear that I don't think this is clear in Paul's work she talks about the fact that this process this process of trying to acquire right an appreciation for something as intrinsically valuable she calls this process aspiration where you
50:56
Speaker A
might call this process more inspiration the sudden insight right inspiration versus aspiration so you're aspiring and she points out something that I think is really clear that this has to be a forum this has to be something that can be seen as a
51:14
Speaker A
rational process now of course there's ways in which we can screw this up but what she wants to argue is that there's a form of rationality appropriate to aspiration she calls it proleptic rationality probably like when you gave
51:28
Speaker A
when you were doing proleptic things in the ancient world you were trying to encourage people right to call today particulars or values the rationality why because if we were to say that the person who is engaged in aspiration who is trying to become
51:47
Speaker A
somebody other than they are to go through the transformative experience to have a perspective on knowing a participatory knowing that they do not currently have if we were to say right and because they're not operation they cannot do that inferential e they cannot
52:02
Speaker A
use decision theory to do that if we just say oh therefore they're irrational notice the paradox we fall into because we would have to we would have to conclude this that if I am aspiring to rationality because you have to
52:21
Speaker A
that would be an irrational thing to do if I'm aspiring to virtue that would be an irrational thing to do if I decide to take up a liberal education to become a better person a different better person then that would be an irrational thing
52:38
Speaker A
to do on pain of kind of a not a propositional contradiction but a performative contradiction remember we talked about performative contradiction this to call that irrational would be a performative contradiction my aspiring to rationality has to be itself a kind
52:55
Speaker A
of rationality that's proleptic rationality or to use something older my loving of wisdom my loving of wisdom by aspiring to becoming wise cannot itself be an irrational process it has to be rational not inferential rational for sure so first
53:18
Speaker A
of all she does that excellent work of saying look this is we've got to broaden our notion of rationality to include aspiration I would argue we have to broaden our notion of rationality to include inspiration as well and that's a
53:32
Speaker A
way in which I'm being radically sort of reconstructive of Romanticism so now the issue becomes what's going on here well I'm going through a process of identity change transformative experience participatory knowing right and here's where is where coloreds work is a little bit lacking
54:03
Speaker A
because well she makes a very good case for aspiration and very very good case that for the nature of aspiration that it's proleptic Li rational she doesn't give us very much towards a psychology of aspiration and that's of course
54:18
Speaker A
perhaps because she's a philosopher she does offer a couple of cues let's go back to the music-appreciation so I want to be I want to and think about how this connects to Sophos in trying to tempt yourself into the good but you could you
54:33
Speaker A
got to do it in this tricky way and think about also how it's related to gnosis and trying to get out of the existential entrapment so what I got to do is I've got to give myself I got to
54:42
Speaker A
have a value that will get me currently engaged here's here's my frame now it'll get me currently engaged with music right but I will be able to give up that value right when I actually value music for its own sake so you see what's going
55:00
Speaker A
on here you need to she calls it a placeholder but it's actually in our sense it's a symbol it's something that connects the future you and its way of life or your way of life to the to the current you
55:12
Speaker A
and it does it by having this double-faced not duplicitous because you're aware of this that's what makes it a rational process this right this double phase thing so right I'm a right go to the music class because I
55:27
Speaker A
currently have the value of sort of making myself do things that I find difficult right now that's not the same value as appreciating music but I do that right on with the understanding that right that is temporary that is to
55:47
Speaker A
try and get me into a liminal place where I can start to play with what it's like to value music for its own sake to enter that world you can see right the connections to gnosis here you can see the
56:02
Speaker A
connections to symbolic enactment here aspiration is deeply bound up I would argue with gnosis and then something that Callard doesn't talk at all about but we've already talked about I think aspiration is deeply connected to wonder wonder gets you to question
56:25
Speaker A
almost like Socratic aporia your world view your sense of self it opens up and it motivates you right it opens you up and motivates you to go through aspirational change I think if you have a wonderful kind of gnosis that's got
56:46
Speaker A
the appropriate placeholder in place that's the beginnings of a psychological account of how we can go through aspiration so I think we can bring what was needed for a theory of wisdom because of course philosophy ah we aspire to wisdom and and we always
57:06
Speaker A
aspire to wisdom because to claim and this is a deep point that we've achieved wisdom is kind of a mistake so we need an account of understanding an account right of gnosis and and these are all related and an account of aspiration we
57:22
Speaker A
need them to be further explicate it integrated and then integrated with the of the accounts of wisdom that I've been arguing for already okay I want to try and draw this all together now so I'll point to what's going on because I'm
57:49
Speaker A
going to need more time I'm gonna need time from the next episode to try and draw this all together what I want to do in the drawing together is I want to try and draw this all together into an
58:02
Speaker A
account of what wisdom is I'll say what this is now so and I'll just leave you completely hanging but I want to come back and develop it and then I want to try and connect this notion of wisdom
58:14
Speaker A
back to enlightenment and back to responding awakening from the meaning crisis here's the account of wisdom I'm going to leave you with and then I'm going to come back and try and at least defend a develop and defend a bit wisdom
58:31
Speaker A
is in ecology psycho technologies an ecology of styles that dynamically and that means reciprocally right in a reciprocal fashion constrain and optimize each other such that there is an overall optimization enhancement of relevance realization relevance realization within inference within
58:59
Speaker A
insight and into intuition it's like the connection to implicit processing internalization understanding gnosis transformation and aspiration wisdom is an ecology of psycho technologies and cognitive styles that dynamically enhance relevance realization in inference insight and intuition internalization understanding and gnosis
59:28
Speaker A
transformation and aspiration and that sense what's happening right is something that's already overlapping with the machinery of enlightenment we're seeing that wisdom is a dynamical system a dynamical system that is counteractive to the machinery of self-deception and that helps to afford
59:50
Speaker A
the self organized transformation into the life of flourishing a life that is deeply meaningful thank you very much for your time and attention [Music] you [Music] you you [Music]
Topics:wisdommeaning in liferelevance realizationVervaekeSternbergmindfulnessphilosophy of mindpropositional knowledgeprocedural knowledgeawakening from the meaning crisis

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