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[Music] welcome back to making awakening from the meaning crisis so last time we took a look the theory of Schwartz and sharp and that was an important theory for linking wisdom to virtue and positive psychology and we saw the deep
Vervaeke revisits Sternberg's theory of wisdom, linking it to relevance realization, bounded rationality, perspectival knowing, and the ancient ideas of Sophia and phronesis.
Key Takeaways
- Wisdom likely requires both Sophia and phronesis and cannot be reduced to expertise.
- Sternberg's theory implicitly relies on relevance realization and bounded rationality.
- Perspectival knowing and fallibilism should replace relativism in accounts of wisdom.
- Product theories of wisdom must be complemented by process theories to explain development.
What the video covers
- Recaps the previous episode on Schwartz and Sharp, arguing wisdom requires both Sophia and phronesis and that their expertise-based framing is confused.
- Introduces Robert Sternberg's theory of wisdom and its link to virtue, meta-heuristics, and pragmatics of life.
- Argues Sternberg's theory implicitly invokes relevance realization through terms like generativity, flexibility, efficiency, and bounded rationality.
- Notes Sternberg's five criteria, including propositional and procedural knowledge, contextualism reframed as perspectival knowing, and applicability under uncertainty.
- Criticizes relativism in the theory and recommends humility and fallibilism instead.
- Discusses empirical findings: judgment-related cognitive styles predict wisdom, and imagining dialogue with another person enhances wise reasoning.
- Connects dialogue-based wisdom to Platonic dialogue, Stoic internalization of Socrates, and Grossman's Solomon effect of third-person perspective-taking.
- Identifies a key criticism: Sternberg's approach is a product theory lacking a process theory of how wisdom develops.
- Contrasts wisdom with theoretical knowledge, stressing practical problem-solving and the developmental, teaching-oriented nature of ancient wisdom traditions.
- Concludes that wisdom should be understood through rationality and process rather than expertise, with further criticisms to follow.
Chapters
- 00:00Recap of Schwartz and Sharp's Theory of Wisdom
- 03:36Introduction to Sternberg's Theory and Relevance Realization
- 06:58Empirical Findings on Wisdom and Dialogue
- 16:40Product versus Process Theories of Wisdom
- 30:00Wisdom, Teaching, and Practical Knowledge
- 44:10Relevance Realization and Sternberg's Model
- 49:00Further Criticisms of Sternberg
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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connections between wisdom and the cultivation and practice of virtue we made some criticisms of Schwartz and sharp I argued that they should include Sophia and not just for nieces if you remember those they were invoking Aristotle's two notions of wisdom and
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giving priority to phronesis I think you need both as Aristotle argued Sophia and phronesis in order to be virtuous I also argued that their attempt to explain four nieces with expertise I think it was confused and we should put that
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aside and then we took from that some ideas about the you know the developmental aspect that's of course central to Aristotle remember he brought the developmental dimension to wisdom how much wisdom is becoming a virtuous person other things I think are lacking
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in the theory and we'll come back to this you know there wasn't much discussion about the connection between wisdom and meaning in life but we then passed to taking a look at a theory that took very seriously the connection
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between wisdom and virtue and this is the seminal theory work of Alton Thunder we took a look at the idea of the meta heuristics pragmatics right for orchestrating mind and virtue in excellence and they talked about the fundamental pragmatics of life I pointed
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out to you that a way making sense conjointly of the invocation of Medicare sticks and both senses of pragmatics is this idea of that it's core to wisdom is this capacity for relevance realization obviously improved in some fundamental
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way which i think means that there's integral connections between wisdom and intelligence via the notion of rationality that we've already been developing together and then we took a look at the five criteria there was clear indications of propositional knowledge procedural
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knowledge the contextualism I argued can be best be seen as perspectival knowing I argued against their I their notion of relativism and argued instead for humility and fallibilism and then obviously I I think that's sorry that that that was maybe too harsh them I
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think it's pretty clear that many of the seminal figures of wisdom fingers from the past were not moral relativist or relativists in any significant way so we strongly recommend replacing relativism with fallibilism and humility and then finally the fifth criteria is that
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wisdom is applicable to domains in which there is uncertainty and of course as I've already argued that a huge aspect of our life and our cognition because of ill-defined and this combinatorial explosion etc etc which again means relevance realization is being strongly
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presupposed I want to give you some further quotes to indicate what's going on about that so they talk about wisdom having to do with generativity flexibility and efficiency in application and of course the generativity and put the flexibility but
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also the efficiency are bringing together many of the ideas that we've been talking about with relevance realization they talk about it taking place listen to this language within the frame of bounded rationality they're invoking the notion here from Simon of
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bounded rationality this is rationality that it's taking place within a framing you know it's taking place within the constraints of combinatorial explosion within the constraints of building with ill divided Ness it's a notion of rationality deeply enmeshed with relevance realization they
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talk about highly calm these are all quotes I'm giving you by the way highly complex sets of information about the meaning and conduct of life are highly complex okay are reduced quickly listen to this to their essentials without being lost
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in the neverending process of information search notice that Commodore explosion directly being invoked here that were to occur if wisdom was treated as a case of unbounded rationality so I think it's pretty clear from all of those quotes that they are directly
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invoking the machinery of relevance realization I pointed out that they with their criteria they were able to begin the operationalization of wisdom and the some of the first experimental work they found that you know cognitive style in which one had excellent skills of
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judgment seemed to be predictive of the ability to do well in the experiments they also found that discussing with another person or imagining discussing with another person enhanced your capacity for wisdom challenging an individualistic notion of rationality going back to descartes and assumed if
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you remember by cohen in his argument and the but was really interesting about that is of course this brings up the relevance of platonic dialogue but also the stoic idea of internalizing this age because the case where people imagine
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talking to the significant other was just as efficacious is actually talking to a significant other and both of those were more efficacious than just giving more time to think and reflect on your own i pointed out that one plausible
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explanation for why this works is that you're getting something like what igor Grossman has shown with the the solomon effect that the move to take the perspective of other people move to a third-person perspective really enhances I'm sorry I'm gonna have to get a drink
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I seem to have something caught in my throat really enhances one's ability to overcome the transparency and the bias induction of one's own perspective and that right it can be facilitated of course if you not only are taking the
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perspective of somebody who's present but you can do that by simulating them internally and eventually you could internalize that perspective the way we've talked about with the Stoics internalizing Socrates and one can learn to remember this one can learn to
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converse with one's self dialogue with one's self do something like an Linkous with oneself and provoke aporia provoke the challenge and the demand for transformative change mmm-hmm I think all of this is really excellent work on their part I noted
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that they also like Schwartz and sharp I think make the mistake of trying to understand the wisdom in terms of expertise and I'm not going to repeat that argument and I think that is um it is a kind of fundamental mistake I think
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understanding wisdom on the lines of something like rationality is a much more fruitful connection now what are some further criticisms of Vulcan starting there I think one of the most important criticisms I would make other than the ones I've made about expertise
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and not being very clear on explicating the role of perspectival knowing that's kind of an unfair criticism because it's anachronistic but we should at least endeavor to bring that into our account of wisdom given their own experiment and
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given the further work Igor Grossman I would also say that one of my criticisms and this is a criticism that I made with Leo Ferraro in the 2013 our article weap published on wisdom I would argue that there's a mistake here a more
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theoretical and conceptual level it's it's a mistake of omission not commissioned what we're getting here is a product theory of wisdom in which what you're trying to do is to come up with sort of the account of what
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wisdom is and that that's a valuable thing you should definitely do that you should try and come up with not just a feature list of course that's a little bit of a problem with just the list of criteria of course but what you do is
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you want to come up with you know what am I gonna do I'm gonna find wise people or I'm gonna get sort of you know widely shared definitions of wisdom and try and come up with an account of what wisdom
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is based on that and that and that's that's a that's a legitimate thing to do it it's it emits something that's very important though and it emits what we saw as so central to the ancient theories of wisdom that we were looking
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at it right if you'd look at Plato even Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics and if you look at the Buddha right and the the centrality of transformational change in wisdom is being lost in a product theory what you
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also need and these two should talk to each other you need a process theory you need a theory and this is what I think the ancient theories of wisdom are you basically are what you're getting is an account that works something like this
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in a process theory you have an independent account of what is foolishness right and what is flourishing and then when a process Theory tells me is how I could overcome foolishness and how I can afford flourishing and then from that it tries
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to derive what wisdom is and I think this is a very important thing to do to try and figure out what wisdom is from an account of how one becomes wise because first of all it taps into this
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long-standing and important philosophical heritage so there's a tremendous legacy that we've explored in this course that we should be making use of and secondly it does something that I think is much clearer than what a product theory which is it picks up on the central
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insight the McGeehan barber talked about which is seeing through illusion and into reality the process Theory gives you an account of what self-deception is and how you can see through it and into reality so that you can be better
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connected to yourself to other people to the world and thereby flourish so I would advocate that in addition not in competition but complimentary to a product theory we should be developing a process theory tells us what foolishest is how foolishness develops how we can
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overcome foolishness how we can afford flourishing and then on the basis of that get into a dialogue with accounts of what wisdom is so I think that's important I think I mean the fact that Aristotle's being invoked really says we need to
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bring in the developmental and transformative aspects of wisdom in a more serious manner so that's one of my most central criticisms balton spa nagar the other one like i said is they seem to make a mistake around expertise I
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would now like to share with you some central criticisms made by a really seminal thinker somebody i've had i've had the chance to meet a couple times and interact with and this is Monica are dealt I think she did something really
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important she's the critique she published at Bolton sauna in 2004 and her ongoing work she's generated one of the wisdom scales that has used experimentally she's generated a lot of experimental work Monica's work is really important in central now I'm gonna use some of my
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language that we've developed in this course to talk about Monica and I hope it's not imposing on her but III think it's plausible that it's not her main criticism of the bolts installing their paradigm or approach is they confuse
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this is her criticism and I agree with it they're confusing Harvey theoretical knowledge about wisdom with being a wise person so there's there's a sense in which there's a bit of a modal confusion going on in the bolts
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installed under theory it's like I have a lot of knowledge about wisdom that doesn't make me wise so I'm like I'm an excellent case in point of that I would think I mean I've read a lot of the
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wisdom literature both the philosophical no psychological I teach on it I you know I'm involved with currently some experimental work etc so I think I have quite a bit of theoretical knowledge about wisdom I would not in any way dare
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to equate that with the claim that I'm a wise person well that knowledge I think could be argued to be necessary I think what our dealt is clearly pointing to is that it's nowhere near sufficient it's nowhere near sufficient and so what I
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think she's pointing to is the fact that a wise person and we can think of the Socratic example here about the truth and the transformative relevance needing to be kept together the wise person must realize these theoretical truths within
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a process of self transformation must realize this within a process of self transformation so people that are wise have gone through a process of self transformation they have achieved a significant kind of self transcendence that allows them to embody and enact
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these truths rather than just having them in a propositional fashion so our delt is clearly pointing towards something missing right the importance of the process of development she's also important important Lee pointing to the way in which wisdom is
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the project of you know becoming a particular kind of person and so she write a pretty good a person living in a particular kind of world right and so she's directly pointing towards what I've articulated in this course as participatory knowing
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so she then brings out something very important about this distinction she makes use this distinction between having knowledge and being wise and she makes use of a distinction from a really important philosopher John Keeks I've mentioned him before that's done some
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important work on moral wisdom in its relationship to virtue and Keeks makes a very important distinction between descriptive knowledge and interpretive knowledge which Monica points to and what our Delta is pointing to is of course that wisdom has to do more with this so
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descriptive knowledge is basically your knowledge that you know the cat is a mammal your knowledge that the cat is a predator or something like that the interpretive knowledge is your ability right to grasp of the significance of your descriptive knowledge now that
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that's going to be important because that actually turns out to be a central feature and most of the theories that are now being developed about what with what understanding is and how it differs from knowledge and I think what
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our Delta is pointing to here by invoking Keeks notion of interpretive knowledge right is the centrality of understanding to wisdom and of course grasping the significance is putting us I'm going to argue later that this of course is going to be have to do with
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Const rule and this is going to have to do about of course with relevance relevance realization now I think that's very important work and I think the fact that there's so much happening in this theories and the thing
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is it's happening in a very sort of concise fashion so let's gather what we've got here we we we've got their realization that we shouldn't be just talking about having knowledge about wisdom we should be going through the
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process of self transcendence by which we become wise that that involves right as I said a process theory we're gonna need a process Theory not just a product theory and that what the wise person has above and beyond knowledge I would call
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descriptive knowledge knowledge and interpretive knowledge whether that's knowledge I don't know but that's at least what many people are considering understanding and this has to do as I'm going to argue with that that I'm going to argue that grasping
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the significance of your knowledge is you know good construal that realizes what's relevant so adult then talks about the personality characteristics that you should see in the wise person so she thinks that if we want to talk about what it is to be a wise person we
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shouldn't just be talking about the knowledge obviously we should be talking about the kind of characteristics that the wise person has and that's important because we've already seen the deep connections between wisdom and virtue so she thinks that there are three ways in
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which we can judge the relative value we can grasp the significance of information there's three domains mom that's not right I don't want to say too I mean there's three dimensions of our personhood that are crucial for being a
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wise person she thinks there and up until now we've been clearly giving these emphases there are cognitive factors so what are the cognitive factors here this of course is your ability to you know have a comprehension of the
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significance and meaning of information okay and and not just theoretically the significance of the information for your development for your going through a process of self transcendence and becoming a wise person then there are reflective and I think the distinction
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here that this is picking up a bit on the the way rationality has this reflective component into it as opposed to intelligence which is just your ability to grasp what's relevant so I think that's that's something that can
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be integrated quite well with the discussion we had on rationality so the reflective factors a person who has been cultivating wisdom is multi perspectival they're capable excuse me I don't know what's wrong with my throat they're capable of engaging in multiple
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perspectives they're capable of self-examination self awareness self insight so notice again that the reflection here has an existential import you're taking these perspectives but you cannot ultimately write internalize this perspective of ability onto yourself in self reflection self
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examination itself insight so I think that's very valuable and then there's an affective component and I'm doing this because our dealt clearly thinks that these three are mutually influencing mutually constraining causally interacting with each other so the affective dimension she talks about in
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terms of compassion I've made a case that so because of some of the model she's invokes from Buddhism I don't think this is inappropriate I've made a case that the the the capacity for agape is the best way of understanding
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compassion the main idea here is and this is why invoking agape as opposed to either file Leah or eros is because it helps to overcome ego centrism and you can see how these two are working together right how the this is
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helping to overcome ego centrism in kind of a powerful way so this is sort of overcoming eco-center ISM respect I believe and this is overcoming egocentrism attitudinally and in terms of your core motivations your core set of priorities and preferences the
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basically the way in which you're caring about the world and that you're caring is directed towards the the flourishing of other persons so I think that also is an important improvement in the theorizing the fact that our Delta is
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clearly giving equal priority to cognitive I would call you know these are perspectival and the the prospective of all aspects of rationality and of course the important affective things and if you remember and this does something also at least implicitly that
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we don't have in the vaults and stronger and so this is one other criticism I would make on behalf of Monica are dealt of the bolts installed under theory which is agape right starts to I've argued so I'm not attributing this
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argument to adult but I'm supplementing it to her theory because what agape gives is it at least gives a way of trying to talk about meaning in life the way Wolfe talked about and I argued that agape helps us to get that kind of
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connectedness and caring that is right it's so central to grounding meaning in life you don't have to ground meaning in life in being subject alia tracted to something that's completely objectively attractive we just have to be trans subjectively couple
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- right - those things we find inherently valuable because of their connection to meaning making coherence right and caring and so the this allows well what it affords and I would argue enables our adults theory to do is to
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connect her account of wisdom to meaning in life in a in a much more direct fashion that connection to meaning in life is not clear in Bolton's doneger and and if you remember wolf argues that you can't reduce meaning in life to
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morality so the connection between wisdom and virtue while central and being discussed well by Schwartz and sharp and by bolts and started her is right not reducible to it's not sufficient for the connection between wisdom and meaning in life by bringing
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in this affective component and the idea that we are becoming wise not just thinking about wisdom and so the process of identification the modal existential aspects are dealt is doing a lot more with about connecting wisdom to meaning
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in life and I think that's very very important okay so you know this is sort of understanding in a sense I'm gonna hope develop later right but the disc did this ability to pick up on what you know to to realize the significance of
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your knowledge and allow you and again in an existential fashion not just abstract theoretical but in a way that allows you to I would argue ultimately see through a lot illusion and it's reality so that you can afford your
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development then you you that is connected to your reflective capacity to perspectival knowing which ultimately could be linked to the stuff we saw with Grossman's work and Ian Berlin Berg the Berlin paradigm of Alton starting er right right the ability to take the
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perspective of others being multiple perspective and ultimately turn that back on oneself in self-examination lies it right in self insight and that those two are also linked to something like a capacity for agape and I would argue that you need these two for
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overcoming ego centrism and it also I haven't seen Monica develop this very explicitly in connection especially with Wolf's work but there's the real potential here of connecting wisdom to something other than virtue it should be connected to virtue but it should also
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be importantly connected to meaning in life what are some of my criticisms of our delts work well it it clearly invokes transformational processes it doesn't really incorporate a theory of transformative experience or an account of it you know like like we have in LA
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Paul's work it doesn't really give us a processing theory it points towards that and this is important it points towards the need for a processing theory but it doesn't give us an account of what that process looks very much like and it
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doesn't have an independent account of foolishness it doesn't really tell us very much what foolishness is and that's something needed if we're gonna I would argue to have a good process theory of wisdom there is an untapped potential
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this isn't so much a criticism as as encouragement that there's an untapped potential given this theoretical machinery of connecting wisdom to meaning in life in a way that complements the connections between wisdom and and virtue so I think these
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are all some very important features about this I've already indicated you know grasping the significance I think this points towards our our we've already talked a lot about agape and the relationships I tried to draw between it and relevance realization and of course
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I've already indicated this is bringing in the recursive aspects is bringing in prospective or knowing and there's also there's also at least in the background sense the participatory knowing because one is right one is coming to know oneself
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differently is cut the one is coming to know the world differently because one is going through this inherent transformational process so we're seeing how the theory of wisdom is sort of building up it's becoming more complex it's bringing in different aspects you
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know different kinds of the different kinds of knowing there is you know quite important aspects of relevance realization in Schwartz and Sharpe clearly involves installing er quite strongly implied in the central role at least in the cognitive aspects although
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I would argue also and the reflective and the affective aspects of our doubts theory relevance realization is playing an important role and we can see how it's getting RAM we see how it's getting sort of developed and specified into and
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connected to other important cognitive processes all right I think the next important theory we should turn to is Sternberg so and this this is because you can see stern Birds work running throughout the history Robert Sternberg work that running
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through the history of the psychology of wisdom Robert Sternberg basically really gets this off the ground with his pivotal work not only in his own theories but the tireless work he's done in putting together anthologies various anthologies on wisdom or related
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anthologies on foolishness why smart people can be so stupid as one of the best anthologies on the psychology of foolishness I've seen but he has also been tireless in trying to connect the psychology of wisdom to pedagogy he gets
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right again something that is important in central and we see it crucially in the ancient theories of wisdom it's not so clearly present in the current psychological theories but the deep connection between wisdom and teaching that's of course clearly the case in
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Socrates it's clearly the case in Jesus of Nazareth it's clearly the case in Buddhism that they're like in the work of the Buddha that there's a deep connection between wisdom and education and so he's been very tireless not only
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sort of theoretically pointing out that connection but trying to work out and you'll allow I mean this word in a complementary Sun trying to engineer some psycho technology sets of practices for how to bring the cultivation of wisdom into the educational domain so
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and so for many reasons Sternberg is a pivotal figure in the wisdom into the wisdom I hope it's gonna call the wisdom industry that sounds like an industry for producing wisdom in the community of people who are endeavoring to come up with a
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psychological cognitive scientific even neuro scientific theory of wisdom there are some people who are pursuing this beak suggest our other people are pursuing the neuroscientific aspects but I'm not going to go into that in great detail right now I'm just trying to concentrate
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on the psychological theories precisely because they are the ones that are most directly accessible and relevant to trying to respond to the meaning crisis so in 1998 Sternberg he had an earlier theory where he was talking and he's
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come back to this many times he has a book where he tries to talk about the relationships between intelligence wisdom and creativity and I'm trying I tried to follow that out but you know in my own way trying to show you the
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relationships between intelligence rationality wisdom insight etc so definitely influenced by Sternberg in that way but he he then came up with a more I'd oh I don't I want to be complementary of the newer theory without being completely dismissive of
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the older I would say the newer theory is sort of more coherent more tightly integrated more explicate 'add so in 1998 he came up with what he's called and maintained a balance theory of wisdom that's actually the title of the
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1998 article a balance theory of wisdom so the notion of balance is going to play a crucial role in this theory now what he Sternberg starts by talking about sophia and phronesis and a paestum epistle me which is at the core of
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epistemological that's that's what I would call propositional knowledge he calls it scientific understanding he quickly dropped that as not being particularly relevant to wisdom not because knowledge is unimportant because everybody knows the centrality of knowledge to wisdom that's what we're
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spending so much time on getting knowledge in this course but everybody pretty much also understands that wisdom is something above and beyond scientific theoretical propositional knowledge okay so that that's sort of easily understandable he also like I said he
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invokes Sophia and talks about a sort of contact connection with contemplation and from esis and practical wisdom he zeroes in like Schwartz and sharp on phronesis I think that's again a little bit too much of a neglect of the important role of
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Sophia he also draws on polanyi's idea of tacit knowledge remember we talked about that when we talked about subsidiary awareness and he talks about the the the tacit knowledge having having to do with our procedural abilities it's relevant to attaining
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goals it's not explicitly taught we experience it intuitively so he's in the he is invoking all kinds of important aspects about implicit learning intuition and procedural knowing I think that's that's good I think he needs to also add to that Tecna what what are
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some important psycho technologies especially since I can I think in fairness say that he is trying to engineer such micro technologies in his pedagogical endeavors I also think he needs to try to do what Aristotle did which is integrate how phronesis which
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is largely happening in an implicit intuitive sort of s1 kind of fashion is integrated with Sophia which can have a more reflective perhaps more s2 aspect to it all right that being said what's the core theory well the idea is we and
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this is important because it's just sort of directly invoked right he invoked the the the the tacit knowledge is is also right it's it's used as a way of because he starts talking about it as tacit understanding so the the tacit knowing the tacit right
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the implicit learning it is also a way in which Sternberg tries to invoke the capacity for understanding now that isn't very well explicate 'add in the account I'm thinking I'm trying I'm speculating that what I think he's trying to get at is that the machinery
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by which we sort of grasp the significance of our knowledge and use it to directly and intuitively cope with the world is a significant component of understanding so I think that's why the shift is there he then talks and the way
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the reason why I want to invoke that is because the what the tacit understanding is doing its again so pregnant with aspects of relevance realization because he talks about the understanding guiding our ability to adapt to listen to that
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language to adapt to situations to shape them and that doesn't necessarily mean physical it can mean how we construe them how we formulate our problems and the selection of environments the selection the moving around the exploring or exploiting this is all very
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much doing with relevance realization he talks about these their abilities are needed to deal with practical problems and this is why he's emphasizing wisdom not as the same thing as theoretical knowledge he's picking up on the same point that Monica resulted but he said
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these practical problems quote are unform alized or in need of weave so I misquoted and that miss quotation was an important mistake these problems are unform elated much more relevant to problem formulation or unform elated or in need
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of reformulations and so he's invoking problem formulation here he of course with the notion of reformulations he's invoking the notion of insight and so we can see again the relevance realization machinery being invoked so he his theory quote invoke
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involves sorry his theory involves quote views let me start that again his theory quote views who is 'dom as inherent in the interaction between an inventor and an individual and a situational context whose inherently trans jetsam outfitting in fact he then goes on to say wisdom
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depends on the fit of a wise solution to its context so notice the fitted Ness right all of the language that we've developed is being directly invoked is being put at the center of the theory and I'm gonna argue that what he's our
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what he what he's invoking when he's invoking balance is he's invoking optimization and of course argued that relevance realization is an optimization theory so what's sort of beautiful about the theory is he gives a mattock diagram of it and draw this for you so here's
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our tacit understanding that's that implicit processing etc remember we talked about that so much in connection with flow and what's happening is it is dealing with trying to balance your interests balance your interests what you're interested in what you find salient important and he
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talks about three kinds there's the intrapersonal the interpersonal and the extra personal so this of course is interest between people this is interest within a person so you can think of Plato here trying to get your various centers and what they're interested in
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coordinated together and extra personal having to do I think this is ultimately how you're connected to yourself how you're connected to other people and how you're connected to the world I think he's invoking at least implicitly the the three dimensions of
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connectedness that go into meaning in life and so I think at least implicitly we could make a clear argument here that he's trying to connect wisdom to meaning in life okay and that this capacity for sort of zeroing in on relevant
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information is playing an important role in that and the reason why I say that is because it's not clear to me why the arrows only going one way it seems to me that I well this is a criticism I would
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make I think the arrows right should go both ways because there's a there's also going to be feedback but anyways they feed forward to the three things that are clearly I would argue RR which is right the adapting the shaping and the
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selecting I'll come back to that notion the triangles are meant to indicate balance and I've tried to indicate to you that I think I'll put that down here and we'll come back to it the balance has to do
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with optimization okay so what's going on here is right this is a balance of your response to write the environmental context so this is balancing your interests and this is balancing your response okay like I said that's pretty
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clear our relevance realization stuff this then is directed towards he argues the common good here again is where I have to step aside from the value he's articulating and the theory he's generating I agree especially within a liberal democratic
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framework framework deeply influenced by Christianity that the common good is an overarching value for us I'm not sure that that is going to be universally shared by all people who I think can reasonably be deemed wise individuals so
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if you're in a culture that's firm what this means maybe you have to bend this so much then if it's then trivial it doesn't mean maybe it doesn't mean common in the sense of shared by everyone it might be you know you you're
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in some sort of hierarchical feudal society and the common good isn't that everybody equally benefits from it it might be more than or that you know everybody is working well together some sort of justification like that I'm not trying to justify a
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hierarchical Society or anything like that I want you clearly to understand I think this is an important value I'm just concerned here that Sternberg is being anachronistic here and he's using one of our central values and attributing it to
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every person who has been wise I'm not I'm not sure I mean I think you could make a case that that's clearly the case in Jesus or the Buddha not sure that it's the case for Marcus Aurelius and
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all of the Stoics it's clearly not the case for a pic tutors so I'm hesitant about putting that up there I I'm gonna advise that there's something I think more more broadly comprehend I think the things that we should put up here are
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things that there's already a consensus on a broader notion of virtue oh sorry that really makes it sound like I'm making an emphasis here that what we're connect what we're really concerned with is virtue right and because of this I
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think and meaning in life okay I have changed that is not in his model I have changed it because of again I'm worried that his particular term is anachronistic and idiosyncratic to our particular historical cultural context it's important to also note that running
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alongside of this is values and then arrows that are kind of indeterminately pointing so trying to interpret what that means it is something like the wise person is being constrained by values what those values are are not clear again is it that we're
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talking about things like meaning in life and the virtues perhaps so another criticism I have is that this part of the theory in this part of the diagram the way it's operating is unclear it might be something as basic as the wise
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person is is working normatively they're trying to get the best and then this is not that not that interesting a claim because wisdom is itself a normative notion and therefore the fact that the wise person is being governed by
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normativity is is almost definitional if it if it means something specific like the wise person has a specific set of values that needs to be explicate a' dand defended so i don't know what quite what to do with that so III have to sort
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of leave it somewhat inert what I would argue and I think what these triangles indicate and what the language indicates is the the balance is used to adapt to shape and select environments and what is this balance he argues that something
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like SPEA JS equilibration between assimilation accommodation he argues that it's a balance between coping with novelty and procedural ization do you see what he's doin sphere is it's balanced that is directly invoking a lot of the machinery we've talked about
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about relevance realization and he's clearly not invoking sort of a spatial balancing he's invoking optimization he's invoking optimization so I think this theory is also a theory that is deeply integrated well with a lot of the material we've been discussing the
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relevance realization is playing a key role in terms of the balancing and the this process here also down here at the level of grasping the significance at least intuitively of our knowledge and the patterns we picked up from the
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environment there's deep connections to at least there's a real potential in Sternberg theory for making deep connections to meaning in life because as I said I think this is pretty clearly how you connect to yourself how do you connect
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to others how do you connect to the world right there's important possible connections possibly it's I'm unsure between this and virtue and meaning in life so this is all very good and like I said overall this is clearly a dynamic
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optimization and it's invoking something very much like relevance realization all right what are some of criticism that on the board for now what are some of the criticisms of Sternberg this is still in the end a product theory it's not a
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process theory it doesn't make this sort of I mean this avoids equating wisdom with expertise and that's that's a powerful advantage of this theory but there like I said this this domain the values unexploited it you could either
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be a somewhat trivial because it's almost tautological that the wise person is acting according to normative standards or it could be a much more controversial claim that specific values are involved I don't know I've already told you I don't think that the common
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good is the goal of all wise people that seems anachronistic to me an important way the theory could clearly be improved by getting clearer about the nature of tacit implicit learning getting clearer about optimization getting clearer about relevance realization getting clearer
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about how relevance realization connects to meaning in life so all of those things would be developed the if one started to develop a process theory and not just a product theory so Sternberg needs an independent theory of with
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foolishness now he has a theory of foolishness but it's not independent his theory of foolishness is basically foolishness is an imbalance in these things so what foolishness is is basically a lack of wisdom and again while that's definitiely the case what
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you need is an gently constructed theory of wisdom a theory sorry a theory of foolishness you think media theory of foolishness that takes in hand right the centrality of seeing through illusion and into reality that has an independent account of how
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we're self-deceptive our self destructive how that operates how that unfolds because we see that in many of the ancient wisdom theories and how we can ameliorate that so I think that that that is missing in an essential way from
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Sternberg's work ok so I think in the end what I want to do is try and draw all of these together I've tried to indicate important points of improvement one one from one theory with respect to the other relative strengths and
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weaknesses I've also tried to indicate powerful points of convergence and connection to the ideas of relevance realization that we've been developing in this course because that's part of the big plausibility diagram to show how the machinery of relevance realization
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right can help to explain what it is to be wise and help to explain noise I'm going to argue what it is to become wise to give a processing theory so I want to take that up and the next account oh and
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I'm somewhat hesitant about that because you know I I'm sort of okay with you know offering you proposals of well I'm not I mean I'm very cautious about proposals about consciousness and other things like that but you know we've got
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proposals about higher states of consciousness and insight and that I've tried to make arguments for that and I'm going to make an argument that and then that I have made with Leo Ferraro about wisdom but there it is something you it
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borders on hubristic to talk about this in that way but I'm gonna try and draw on this and at least show you a plausible way in which we can draw all of this material together with the theory of relevance
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realization and come up with an account of wisdom and then I think you also subject that theory at least the version that was published in 2013 to some important criticisms and and then hopefully then be in a place where we
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can fold it back into the connections between wisdom the cultivation of wisdom the cultivation of meaning in life the cultivation the pursuit there are these the right verbs of enlightenment how these are all connected and how that can
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be situated into the larger project of awakening from the meaning crisis thank you very much for your time and attention [Music] you [Music] you you
Topics:wisdomrelevance realizationSternbergbounded rationalityphronesisSophiaperspectival knowingvirtuemeaning in lifeVervaeke
