Spring 2015 Wisdom Course Lecture Notes

Return to Wisdom

JAN 14

1st Day of Class Information

• Websites in the course

• Course Website: Alfino.org -- courses -- Spring 2015 Wisdom -- access grading schemes, ereserves (pdfs of readings), audio files, email.
• Course Wiki: Alfino.org -- wiki -- Wisdom (or from course website). All course information is linked from the course wiki page.
• Turning Point] -- Download and install Responseware ($19)
• Peerceptiv -- Register for this peer review site ($5) -- enter expert44 to register for the class.

• Assignments for your grading schemes.
• Grading approach -- friendly grading curve.
• Two rubrics: Flow/Content and Flow/Logic/Insight

The Prep Cycle

• Read for class. Get main ideas. Show reading knowledge on clicker quiz. (Content portion of class.)
• Come to class. (Method portion of class.)
• Note study questions and work to answer them during class. (We will do some short answer exercises to work on this.) Review if you don't feel you can answer the study questions after class. The Flow/Content rubric applies to this.
• Repeat.

This is our basic pattern, but as we learn more we will build toward larger theoretical questions which are the basis of the exam essays and paper.

JAN 21

Hall, Chapter 1 "What is Wisdom?"

• opening story, point about wisdom
• p. 11: some traits of wise people, 12: some wise people
• Perceptions of wise individuals and gender.
• his approach, p. 16 (using science) - definition of wisdom, bot. 17 -- list these --
• Hall's initial theoretical definition: bot 18 -- read & note

Small group questions

Apply Hall's trait list and definition to people you regard as wise, places where wisdom is taught or occurs, or states of mind that promote it.

Hall, Wisdom, Ch. 2: Socrates + Axial Age

• Socrates: There is a human version of divine wisdom.

• Socrates' definition. 24
• Does his example support the claim that wisdom is real? Consider his fate.
• Axial Age Hypothesis - 26: thesis about humans coming to accept responsibility for events. Emancipation from magical thinking.
• Greek wisdom linked to Peraclean age: 450's bc.

• Greek

• Contrast between Pericles and Socrates, p. 28

• both selling "deliberation" as a virtue
• Socrates' treatment of emotion unique -- Anti-body

Primary class interest here is to get contrasting images of wisdom across the so-called Axial Age.

• Confucius

• 6th century BC China
• characteristics of confucian ideas of wisdom 30-31

• Buddha

• 563-483bc, India
• "awakening" vs. "wisdom"
• characteristics: 33-34. "mindfulness"

• Some broad historical observations on wisdom:

• What is the relationship of wisdom and religion? (Note p. 36: hypothesis on connection/disconnection)
• Over history, wisdom theorized as "received" from God, but also as product of hard nosed investigation of nature.

Robinson, "Wisdom Through the Ages"

• Socrates

• note on Homeric concept --- p. 13-14: Greek concept of soul/nous; nous found in Homeric epics along other terms for psyche, motivations, impulse (menos) and rage (lyssa)
• distinctions among sophia, phronesis, episteme
• 14: differences between wisdom and cleverness. wisdom v. intelligence. possible argument for including morality in def. of wisdom.
• Socratic "anti-body" view of wisdom (again). The soma is a sema.

• Aristotle

• Naturalist, empirical, first "biologist". Practical and this worldly in contrast to Plato.
• Aristotle's concept of wisdom. idion ergon (life lived in conformity to dictates of reason, governed by mission or purpose)/ prohaireseis(deliberated choices) / hexeis (dispositions). This structure of soul/noos is connected to happiness as "eudaimonia" a kind of fulfillment and flourishing of life that brings deep satisfaction. Very developmental thinker.
• Knowing Final Causes. Review argument on p. 17. Discuss to self-identify in relation to these claims about final cause and the contemplative life.
• Practical wisdom (phronesis), theoretical (scientific) knowledge (theoretikes), practical knowledge (ergon)

• Epicureans & Stoics (Helenist Schools)

• comment on his gloss of stoics.
• not much now since we'll study this later.

• Christian Wisdom

• the difference that revelation makes to your model of wisdom. (cf. back to Hellenists) sophia vs. pistis theon
• Christian split (influences): Aristotelean vs. Platonic
• Aquinas: quote on p. 20 -- "perspective shift" is a common theme in wisdom accounts
• Post-classical world (Renaissance, scientific rev and beyond)
• Scientific revolution as challenge to ancient conceptions of wisdom and divinity

Labouvie-Vief, "Wisdom As Intergrated Thought: Historical and Developmental Perspectives"

• This article applies a psychological analysis of Platonic thought on wisdom, so it makes a nice transition to the pscyh literature.

• Thesis: The revival of interest in wisdom is important for highlighting the differences between models of cognition in classical thought and over the life span."Many recent writings suggest, instead, that theories of cognition or intelligence that are based on ^ the assumption of the primacy of objective forms of knowing provide an incomplete and possibly distorted picture of the human mind." 52
• Piaget: inner/outer processes. assimilation/accommodation (Other theorists "oral mode/written mode"), mythos/logos.
• Good quote: "Prior to Plato, many philosophers already asked such questions as: What is the nature of reality? or What is our nature, and what is our place in the order of things? To the pre-Platonic philosophers, answers to these questions still were permeated with mythic and highly concrete images. Reality still presented itself as an organismic happening integrated with the world of nature. Like nature, reality was animated with life and subject to growth and decay (see Collingwood, 1945; Frankfort & Frankfort, 1946). Mythic and organic conceptions of the universe were mixed with the beginning of systematic and abstracting thought. 57
• Platonic thought represents a huge break from this. "For Plato, the adult is no longer embedded in a concrete, organic, and participatory reality." 59
• Piaget: model of child development is initially organic, but only in early stages of life. goal of development. Goal is independence of subjectivity (66)
• Homeric heroes not self-reflective, embedded in action, see themselves moved by divine forces.
• "reintegrated thought," seeing goal of adulthood in term of balancing of logos and mythos, 67. embodied thinking 72.

JAN 28

Clayton and Birren, "The Development of Wisdom across the Life Span"

• Note from historical treatment: East/West differences. Compare to Gisela.

• Western biblical tradition: Three paths. formal education for leadership, parental, faith/devotion (wisdom as gift from divine). 105-106.
• Eastern traditions. comparison on role of intellect 109. words vs. experience and deeds. meditation (110)
• Nice definition at p. 112. "for some time, mankind has held the conviction that there is a superior, complex, and understanding and experience of the ultimate nature of reality and man's relationship to this reality."

• Multidimensional Scaling Study: Note method (see link on wiki) and results. Cognitive, affective, and reflective qualities.

• Note discussion at 119. Older subjects place wisdom further from age.
• Conclusion at 130: Older subjects also connect wisdom more closely with affective understanding and empathy
• All age groups perceive wisdom as "integration of cognitive, affective, and reflective components."

• Erickson, Kohlberg - focused on wisdom as an extra stage near end of life.
• Piaget -- not well positioned to consider life span.

Small Group Discussion #1

• Topic of discussion for small groups: Are older people wiser? If experience alone isn't enough, what other factors are required? Also, try to evaluate that cognitive, affective, and reflective capacities are crucial to wisdom. Give examples of each.

Ardelt, Wisdom and Satisfaction in Old Age

• three tiered theory of wisdom: wisdom occurs on cognitive, reflective and affective levels.

• note bottom of first page. leaving the cog/delib model in earlier theories.

• "the domain of wisdom-related knowledge is interpretative knowledge, or the rediscovery of the significance of old truths through a deeper and more profound understanding of phenomena and events." 16

• associates wisdom of old with decentered self - awareness of limitations liberating. "paradoxically, it is the awareness oof one's subjectivity or one's projections that allows one to begin the task of overcoming that subjectivity" 16

• Research hypothesis: "wisdom, rather than objective life conditions, explains most of the variation in life satisfaction during old age."
• working with population from the Berkeley Guidance Study. administered a life satisfaction instrument "satisfaction with different areas of life, satisfaction with one's lot in life, and congruence between desired and achieved goals." 17 (note: goal-achievement gap model)

• 17: wisdom as latent variable. integration of cog, affective, reflective. note use of validated instruments within the research.

• 21: alternate correlates considered: objective health and financial condition might be 35% (poss. 46% in men!) of variation. but authors claim better fit from wisdom as independent variable.

• results p. 22-- pos. correlation for both men and women, but stronger for men.

• 24: follow theoretical discussion, argument for focusing on wisdom. note at 25.

Carstensen, "The Influence of a Sense of Time on Human Development"

• The subjective sense of future time plays an essential role in human motivation. Gradually, time left becomes a better predictor than chronological age for a range of cognitive, emotional,and motivational variables. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that constraints on timehorizons shift motivational priorities in such a way that the regulation of emotional states becomes more important than other types of goals. This motivational shift occurs with age but also appears in other contexts (for example, geographical relocations, illnesses, and war) that limit subjective future time.

• interesting point: child dev mostly about time since birth. she's interested in time remaining.

• sst: two categories shift: motivation for knowledge acquisition and regulation of emotion.

• presents the theory in this short article. notes research, such as that older people process negative emotion less deeply and spend more time on positive emotions.

Small Group Discussion #2

• Can the subjective sense of future time be manipulated by attentional effort or contemplative practices?

FEB 4

Birren and Svensson, Wisdom in History (2005)

• 2005 -- Wisdom in History -- This article gives us a broader historical perspective than earlier ones, but also a good summary of the paths taken by researchers (14-29).

• 1st historical treatment (in the course)that hits on the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution.

• Connects with ancients on relation between knowledge and wisdom.
• Uncertainty: maybe wisdom is required where there is uncertainty. Knowledge reduces uncertainty. What follows?

• Group Discussion Topic: Compare the following two hypotheses:

• 1. Wisdom disappears after the Scientific Revolution because we know a lot more now about how to live. (post renaissance, Bacon anyone?)
• 2. Wisdom disappears after the Scientific Revolution because scientific culture downplays the problem of finding "precetps for living" (I'll add notes on each.)

• Discussion of Plato: repeats a version of Laouvie-Vief's thesis: note p. 5
• Note Aristotle paragraph at bot of 5. Perfect answer to last week's exercise!

• What follows from the way wisdom can move from secular to religious culture so easily?
• Recurrent theme in historical discussion: models of wisdom that involve transcendence or paradigm shift (Greek, Judaic, Christian, Islamic culture, , vs. models that remain "immanent" in daily life (Confucian, Hellenistic, some biblical sources, Aristotlean, contemporary secular (post renaissance/enlightenment)

• Wisdom in the psychological sciences
  • Not really a central topic immediately. Not susceptible to rigorous definition or a bottom up approach (though now we'll see that in Hall's reporting, in the day (pre-80s), this was harder to see. So you have to have really good vision (like William James and John Dewey) to see it). Also, Erikson, Jung.
  • Definitions of wisdom present in Sternberg. table on 16-18. Look at Baltes and Smith. Note how the relative weight cognitive capacities changes across the definitions. Can you notice tensions between particular definitions. Page through the brief discussion of research projects, p. 16-25. Quick group consultation.

• Discuss "meta-cognitive" dimension of wisdom. (17)
• Wisdom and age (19)

• First characterization of Berlin Wisdom Paradigm: also Hall 49. Note method, model included historical study. criticisms (note positive aspect here). Ardelt trajectory (Hall)
• Sternberg's direction: relation of wisdom to intelligence and creativity (note on method here: use of constructs.)
• Taranto: focus on human limitation.
• Kramer: organismic. cognition/affect. five functions.
• McKee and Barber: "seeing through illusion"
• Meacham: fallibility of knowledge. balance of positivity/doubt.
• Chandler and Holliday: most well developed construct after Baltes. (23)

Hall, Wisdom, Chapter 3 "Heart and Mind"

• Note that Hall is telling something of the "sociology of knowledge" about the rise of wisdom research.
• Vivian Clayton -- reflects on family member's traits. poses question of meaning of wisdom and relation to age. Follow statement on p. 43. Also, note from the end of the chapter about her story. Choice.
• Erikson -- idea of wisdom as end stage "8" of process of self-realization. (really more "rationalist psychology")

• Interesting hypothesis in face of growth of knowledge in gerontology about decay of faculties. Correction to last week's

• Hall's account of Genesis myth as also about acquiring "original wisdom" -- wisdom as the price of seeing things clearly. wisdom as necessarily acquired through transgression vs. living within limits. also "dark wisdom".
• Baltes, Smith, Staudinger, Kunzemann. -- Berlin Wisdom Paradigm -- brief overview, 49ff. Note how he derived his construct and method of research. +96
• Early critics: Sarstensen and Ardelt -- felt BWP didn't focus enough on emotion.

Hall, Chapter 4, "Emotional Regualtion"

• Emotional regulation as a compensating strength of aging. (Hypothesized as an achievement, but let's reflect on that a moment.)

• "Carstensen and her colleagues have proposed that successful emotional regulation is tightly connected to a persons sense of time—usually, but not always, time as it is reflected by one's age and stage of life. "According to our theory, this isn't a quality of aging per se, but of time horizons," she explained. "When your time perspective shortens, as it does when you come closer to the ends of things, you tend to focus on emotionally meaningful goals. " 63

• socioemotional selectivity theory (Cartensen's) - How can the benefits of this view become available to the young?

• Job's emotional resilience. Is it patience or resilience? What is the diff?

• problem in history of philosophy -- downplaying of emotion. But then Hume, and James' "What is an Emotion?"

• Gross: "reappraisal" and "reflection" as techniques of emotional regulation. vs. rumination 66. note mechanism suggested for each. (Note connection to therapeutic writing.)

• Cartensens' research in assisted living homes. counterintuitive answers. (67) "time horizon" theory. Implications.

• Carstensen on the paradigmatic tasks of the young: "knowledge trajectory" (70); "collectors" 71,

• 71: neuroscience on learning from loss; affective forecasting; young as steep "discounters"; greater appetite for risk, less for ambiguity,

• 73: emotional resilience in Davidson's longitudinal neuroscience research: correlation of emotional regulation and brain pattern. Gabrielli studies on young amygdalas. Gross on male/female emotional processing.

• postive illusion (optimism bias)

• "Grandparent hypothesis"

• Concluding Group Discussion: Is emotional regulation something that a young person could use to mimic the emotional regulative experience of older people? Is such a goal possible, desirable?

FEB 11

Baltes & Smith, "Toward a Psychology of Wisdom and its Ontegenesis"

• Motivations for the Berlin Paradigm's research: study of peak performance, positive aspects of aging, work on intelligence that reflects a concern with context and life pragmatics, Baltes & Smith p. 87

• Interesting discussion of problem of giving a scientific treatment of wisdom, p. 89.

• Fundamental assumption #1: Wisdom is an "expert knowledge system" (what is an expert system - mention Affectiva)
• Fundamental assumption:#2: A dual-process model of intelligence (Mechanics / Pragmatics) is most relevant to understanding wisdom.
• Fundamental assumption #3: Wisdom is about life pragmatics, understood as life planning, review

• The "Baltes Five" Criteria Construct for Wisdom:

• Rich factual knowledge: accumulation of knowledge which facilitates predictive ability to see how relationships, causes, and meanings will interact in a situation. "a representation of the expected sequential flow of events in a particular situation"
• Rich procedural knowledge: accumulation of knowledge which facilitates understanding of strategies of problem solving, advice seeking.
• Life span contextualism: understanding a problem in awareness of it's place in the life span.
• Relativism: Understanding and taking into account the range of values, goals, and priorities in human life.
• Uncertainty: awareness of limits of knowledge in general and in particular factual cases.

Kunzman and Baltes, "The Psychology of Wisdom: Theoretical and Practical Challenges"

• Challenges:

1. defining wisdom in a way that separates it from other human excellences.
2. formulating a definition of wisdom that can be empirically investigated.

• source for distinction between implicit and explicit (112).

• Three types of wisdom constructs:

1. wisdom as aspect of personality development in later life (Erikson)
2. post-formal thinking (gisela); "Dialectical thinking derives from the insight that knowledge about self.others, and the world evolves in an everlasting process of theses, antitheses, and syntheses. From this perspective, wisdom has been described as the integration of different modes of knowing" 115
3. form of intelligence and expertise (Baltes)

• clearer explanation (than Baltes and Smith) of "cognitive mechanics" vs. "cognitive pragmatics" (116)

• Review Model on p. 120. Note how it points to further topics that we will discuss in the semester.

• Empirical Results from "Think Aloud" research:

1. High scores rare.
2. Late adolescence and early adulthood is primary age window for onset of wisdom. Age doesn't predict score increases after that.
3. Development of wisdom beyond it's early onset depends upon "expertise-enhancing" factors, such as development of social/cognitive style, presence of role models, and motivational preferences such as an interest in understanding others. Personality not predicted as a factor (note contrast to happiness research).

Baltes & Freund, "Wisdom as Meta-Heuristic and SOC"

• Selection, Optimization, and Compensation is a collection of behavioral strategies for managing life pragmatics.

• Note definition of wisdom p. 251: strategies for peak or optimal functioning.

• Good review of Baltes (Berlin) Paradigm: note detail on "recognition and management of uncertainty" p. 253.

• Wisdom as Meta-heuristic. Definition p. 255. "a heuristic can be defined as a "useful shortcut, an approximation, or a rule of thumb for guiding search" "If wisdom as a meta-heuristic operates effectively, the expectation is that its use creates the cognitive and motivational foundation from which well-being can be achieved. In this sense, wisdom can be seen as the embodiment of the best subjective belief about laws of life that a culture has to offer and that individuals under favorable conditions are able to acquire."

• SOC -- a heuristic for delineating, pursuing, and reviewing goals.

• Selection -- of goals -- can be either elective selection or loss selection. Deliberate, articulate...
• Optimization -- of means. "Acquire and invest" - subskills like "monitoring between actual and desired state" - ability to delay gratification (Mischel)
• Compensation -- response to loss of means. Response to events.

• Proverbs as heuristics -- study found that SOC strategies were selected more often and faster than non-SOC strategies.

• Study showing SOC associated with "positive functioning" (NOTE: This relates to the "hard problem" of wisdom. Figuring out whether wisdom really "works".)

• Consider types of research questions you can pose regarding heuristics and SOC.

Misc

(Some notes on Ontogenesis of wisdom from these three readings.)

• Note how you can explain the "age of onset" of wisdom as optimization of cognitive mechanics and pragmatics (suggests it can't be too old and that oldsters who maintain good mechanics (rare) might be outliers (high in wisdom)).

• from Kunzman and Baltes: "... the period of late adolescence and early adulthood is the primary age window for a first foundation of wisdom-related knowledge to emerge." p. 122 for details.

• from Baltes and Smith, p.110. research on old/young, normative/nonnormative, target age of problem. Suggests that older are not the optimal performance group when considering the different conditions the research looked at.

• from later reading -- Baltes & Freund, "... we know that the body of knowledge and cognitive skills associated with wisdom has its largest rate of change gradient in late adolescence and young adulthood (Pasupathi & Bakes,2000; Staudinger, 1999a). St). Subsequent age changes are a result of specific circumstances of life and nonintellectual attributes. For instance, the development of wisdom-related knowledge during adulthood is more conditioned by personality, cognitive style, and life experience than by psychometric intelligence (Staudinger, Maciel, Smith, & Bakes, 1998). "