Spring 2009 Wisdom Course Supplemental Notes

Return to Wisdom

I'll use this page for supplemental notes from the class. -Alfino

Jan 13: Introduction

Early Questions

1. What are the characteristics of wise people?

empathetic, knowledge, virtuous, innovative, realistic, cautious, accepting experience

age/experience, "street smart" (as opposed to book smart), personality and charisma, serenity

abstract thinking, simple lifestyle, moral transc., discipline

insightful, open-minded, humble, developed capacity for self-reflection

sacrifice, experience, age, character, education (formal/informal), well-spoken, just, awareness of world / others.

unconventional

application of knowledge, rational, open minded, looking at the bigger picture, reflective.

2. Give examples of wise people in your life. Describe them.

3. Wisdom illusory or real?

maybe real, but the subjectivity of wisdom literature is a problem.

can't identify it with specific emotion like happiness.

recognizable in others.

4. Give a preliminary definition of wisdom.

1. Practicing one's knowledge.
2. Wisdom is like other things that look simple, but are really complex.
3. Good judgement and advice about important but uncertain matters.
4. Expert knowledge system in the domain, fundamental life pragmatics.

Note to Class

Class,

Thanks for a good first class. I think we've got a really interesting group.

I'll be asking for volunteers to present a brief overview of key ideas or "highlights" from specific readings. This is not a substitute for my presentation of the material, but it really helps me gauge what you took from the reading and where I should come in. The presentation itself is very informal. Just identify, in 3-5 minutes the key ideas you took from the reading and some questions you have after doing the reading.

For next week, I need volunteers for the five readings assigned. Once you volunteer, you don't need to do this again until the whole class has gone.

So please email me with a particular reading (1-5) from next week's class that you could give a "Highlights" presentation on.

Thanks.

Jan 20: Greek/Hellenistic Wisdom 1

Pre-class summaries and class plan

Here are some notes on the readings to provide context. My goals for this class are:

1. . To get the Platonic/Socratic view of wisdom articulated with an initial assessment.
2. . To see something of the relationship between Homeric and philosophical models of wisdom. (Theory point on sources of wisdom)
3. . To see how a developmental psychologist Gisela might look at the the dynamics of classical thought on wisdom.

excerpt from Apology

The excerpt from the Apology which we read for this week gives the classic statement of Socratic Wisdom, also refered to as socratic ignorance. For Socrates, wisdom is a property of the divine. Paradoxically, humans are wise primarily to the extent that they realize that they do not possess wisdom. Socrates (and Plato) are pretty clear in other dialogues (cf. Meno) that knowing that you do not know something is better than thinking that you do. The Sophists, whom Socrates refers to as the paid teachers of the youth, help people acquire a pretense of knowledge. Poets don't even understand their own poems, so how could they have wisdom? Craftsmen, interestingly, do have some wisdom according to Socrates, but they overgeneralize from the domain in which they do have wisdom to areas in which they do not.

excerpt from Symposium

The Symposium is presented by Plato as the record of a drinking party in which each participant was obligated to give a speech on the nature of love. You can check the wikipedia for an overview of the specific speeches. Our excerpt is taken from Socrates famous speech on love, in which he quotes Diotima, a real female ancient Greek philosopher (rare then). Love turns out to be a semi-divine force that motivates us to pursue the highest forms, including Wisdom. Wise people do not get stuck chasing pretty lovers (especially boys for these guys); they realize that beyond the specific beautiful people, there is the form of beauty. Climbing the "ladder of love" reorients our lives in a practical way toward less transitory things. That is supposed to be a wise thing to do. Start at 201D for the main part of the reading.

excerpt from Phaedo

The Phaedo is the dialogue recording a lengthy conversation about the immortality of the soul. The setting for the dialogue is the jail in which Socrates' will soon be executed by lethal ingestion of hemlock. The incredibly dramatic ending is the death scene itself. Our two passages are from the end of the dialogue and include that scene. In the first passage, roughly 78B to 86E, Socrates is giving some arguments for associating the soul with the sort of reality that might not perish. Specifically, he imagines that souls that practiced philosophy have less matter clinging to their souls upon death. Simmias and Cebes have an objection to his view, but they are afraid to put it forward since, in the present circumstances (Socrates' immanent death), it might be disturbing if they are right and the soul isn't immortal. After assurances from Socrates, Simmias makes the objection that the soul may be like the attunement of an instrument, but then, when the instrument perishes, the attunement does as well. This "Pythagorean" view is imcompatible with Socrates, yet trades on the same analogy.

In our second passage, 107D to the end of the dialogue, you get to full scale Platonic myth of the afterlife and reincarnation. Drink it in and analyze it as myth. What vision of the wise life is implied by this vision of the afterlife?

• Note connection of purification practices in life (philosophy as a contemplative practice?) to the state of the soul in the afterlife at 82c-d and 114C.

Class Plan

• Some basic distinctions in Robinson: sophia/phronesis, body as tomb, Aristotle's approach,
• Image of Socratic wisdom in Apology (Student presentation)
• Images of the movement of the soul toward wisdom and absolute knowledge in Phaedo and Symposium.
• Wisdom and developmental psychology
• Starting our list of theoretical issues for Wisdom theory building

Jan 27: Greek/Hellenistic Wisdom 2

Aristotle's View of Virtue, Happiness, and Wisdom in Book 1-5 of NE.

Main discussion of Aristotle's view of telos, the end of human action (happiness), human function, and virtue as the golden mean.

Notes on Evolution and Wisdom

Brief discussion of Csik.' evolutionary hermeneutics. Distinction between "adaptive" and "adaptation".

Look up something on "memes"

Next Morning

Follow up email:

Class,

Just a couple of follow-up notes from yesterday's class:

I've just posted the study questions from yesterday's class. I realized after class that I forgot to review, in class, the answers to last week's questions. We'll look at both sets of questions next week. Please keep following the roster to determine which question you should answer.

Here's an event some of might want to check out. "Catholicism for New Millennium will sponsor its next talk on Monday evening, February 2, from 7:30-9:00 in the Globe Room at Cataldo. Dean Brackley SJ will be speaking on his recent book "The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola." Dean Brackley is Professor of Theology and Ethics at the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador. When the Jesuits at UCA were martyred by the army in 1989 the leader of the Jesuits sent out a call for volunteers to replace them. Dean Brackley was one of the many who made themselves available, and was selected to be sent to UCA for this work. he has written extensively on Jesuit spirituality and on the Jesuit mission in higher education. He also serves on the board of trustees at our brother Jesuit school, The University of San Francisco."

The reading schedule for next week is updated with the two readings I passed out in class. Thanks for checking it.

Finally, please work on your grading schemes. In addition to my regular office hours, M-W 8-11, you can catch me on Thursday afternoons and Fridays.

It would be great to get some feedback on your experience of the course so far. I'm a little concerned about the difficulty of some of the reading. Tell me how things look so far from your perspective.

Alfino

Feb 3: Greek/Hellenistic Wisdom 3

Part A: Baltes & Baltes: Wisdom, its ontogenesis, and as meta-heuristic

First article, "Toward a Psychology of Wisdom and its Ontogenesis" -- two main parts to this article, the first focuses on method and theory, the second on empirical research on our collective concept of wisdom.

-Wisdom as "as "expert knowledge involving good judgment and advice in the domain, fundamental pragmatics of life."

-Summary of the life span developmental psychology literature, p.88.

-Method: cultural phenomenon vs. scientific phenomenon. p. 89

-Motivations: study of peak performance, search for positive aspects of aging, study of nature of "contextualized knowledge"

-Wisdom as peak performance (show image of liberal arts). (issue of attainability)

-Do people become wiser as they become older (91-92)

-working framework for study of wisdom p. 95 Discussion of the five criteria----

-data on ontogenesis - follow results.

Second article, "The Intermarriage of Wisdom and Selective Optimization: Two Meta-Heuristics Guiding the Conduct of Life"

Thesis, p. 250: Wisdom offers the most general meta-frame of the nature of optimal human development. Further, wisdom may be achieveable in behavior by following the SOC model from life span psychology.

Wisdom, another defintion: "entails a convergence of means and ends toward excellence involving the personal and common good."

Berlin Wisdom Paradigm:

First two criteria from expert theory -- rich factual knowledge and rich procedural knowledge, next three are "wisdom specific" : contextualism, relativism of values and life priorities, and recognition of an management of uncertainty.

Empirical Research

think-aloud protocols, using 5 criteria to score.

maturity and onset of wisdom greatest in transition through early 20s!!! Later life wisdom gains may be more contingent.

results of research? assessment?

Wisdom as meta-heuristic [Consider in relation to meme theory]

"aimed at organizing and guiding the overall conduct of life toward excellence.

Heuristic -- def. "shortcut", rule of thumb.

SOC -- described, correlation with proverbs. SOC outcomes are adaptive?

Part B: Aristotle's distinction between Sophia and Practical Wisdom (Prudence)

see notes from class and Owen notes.

Feb 10: Greek/Hellenistic Wisdom 4

Preliminary results on wisdom, sophia and phronesis

Stoic Dates

"The Stoic Worldview"

Theology & Ontology

Determinism & Choice

Importance of Hegemonikon

Model of Growth and Development toward Sagehood & Wisdom

Large group and Small Group discussion and assessment.

Passages from "The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, Bks 1-4

• Epictetus, Dialogues, BK1, Chapters 18 and 29 (up to line 30)
• Epictetus, Dialogues, BK1, Chapters 9 and Bk 11 ch. 8
• Epictetus, Dialogues, BK1, Chapters 24 & 25
• Epictetus, Dialogues, BK2, Chapter 6
• Epictetus, Dialogues, BK3, Chapters 12 & 13
• Epictetus, Dialogues, BK3, Chapters 21 & 22

Next Morning

Class,

Thanks for a good discussion yesterday. Study questions are posted and there's an audio clip summary of the class on ItunesU.

We didn't have time to look at your grading schemes, but please finish posting them if you haven't already. If you are planning to do the experiential learning exercise on Greek/Hellenistic thought, you such decide soon. Note the new journal due dates on the Assignment page of the course website.

Have a great week and please be on the look out for opportunity to apply your views of wisdom to everyday situations. This is clearly a philosophical topic where you get to run the full range from abstract philosophy to everyday life.

Alfino

Feb 17: Greek/Hellenistic Wisdom 5

Epicurus

• Review of main philosophical positions, similarity and diff from Stoics.
• Gods
• Death
• Desire
• Pleasure - kinetic/katastematic, adjustment of self to simple pleasures, "restraint".
• Virtue and choiceworthy pleasure

"Hellenistic Wisdom"

Wisdom Exercise

We'll do an exercise in class which attempts to determine the extent and coherence of our "tacit" understandings of wisdom across a variety of pragmatic domains.

Feb 24: Yoga/Samkya Wisdom 1

Notes on method / transition to Yogic thought

-Follow up thoughts on our work from last week's exercise: getting from agreement about general traits to the "hard problem" of wisdom (How do we determine how to map general conditions for wise action on our particular, 1st person, experience. 3rd to 1st person perspectives again. This suggests a limit of sorts to Baltes-type theories.

-Note on method approaching Yoga and Judeo-Christian thought. Philosophical anthropology vs. 1st person perspective.

-Overview of dates and traditions.

Yoga Philosophies

-Historical Introduction (Feuerstein 1 & 2): role of teacher, gnosis in yoga, "crazy adepts" and cynics.

-Specifics on:

• Hatha
• Jnana
• Bhakti
• Karma
• Mantra
• Laya
• Integral

Our goals in this introductory review of yoga thought and practice are to: 1) fix an accurate historical and intellectual understanding of the diversity of yoga traditions; and, 2) begin to probe yogic theories of enlightenment and the movement toward wisdom.

Contemporary Writing on Yoga

Fahri, "Yoga as Life Practice"

Next Morning Blog

Class,

Thanks for a good class, yesterday. I'm sorry I'm so new to working with this material, but I hope we gained a sense of the uniqueness of Yogic traditions, as well as the ways that major diverse schools of yoga distinguish themselves from their historical predecessors. I didn't put this in terms of cultural meme theory last night, but you could say that Yoga has some unique features as a meme. We discussed how it is experientially based and eschews institutional frameworks or a great concern with orthodoxies or creeds. Specific Yogas can have very substantial metaphysical commitments, but it is not always clear that these involve the supernatural as Western thought conceives it. While yoga is often practiced in the U.S. as a group exercise class, we also discussed examples of individuals (often yoga teachers) who practice the comprehension (8 limbed practice for Patanjali) assortment of moral, physical, and meditative practices that constitute yoga as a contemplative life practice. As a meme, these features make yoga something that is easy to start, often delivers noticeable benefits even to beginners, and coexists reasonably well with the moral or metaphysical outlook of many philosophical and religious traditions. As we noted, there's not much cognitive dissonance between yoga and Catholicism.

While we will be studying classical yoga in some detail over the next few weeks, I thought it was also important that we distinguished the several major varieties of yoga. As Feuerstein makes clear, each of these involve a specific "path" or mix of the "spiritual technologies" available within the historical tradition. As we get further into classical yogic thought and Samkhya metaphysics, we should remember that each yoga has a distinctive view of wisdom and the steps needed to achieve it. As with Stoicism and Epicureanism, yoga involves specifying a mental, physical, and psychological regimen for approaching sagehood. While the model here is less about adjustment of the self to reality and more about the transformation of the self, in both Greek and Yogic traditions we find normative ideals of the self and methods to bring our identity and responses into line with that ideal. Both acknowledge that this process of transformation is quite individual on one level and requires a direct relationship with a teacher, though yogic discipleship is different from Hellenistic.

We also spent some time try to understand the core insight of classical yoga ("Yoga is the cessation of the turnings of consciousness.") in light of experiential evidence of "meditative effects" and "yogic effects" from a typical class of asana and pranyama methods. Those of you with experience in meditation or yoga spoke quite clearly, I thought, about how you would distinguish those experiences from simple relaxation or stretching. Whether you achieve this quieting of the mind from focusing on a specific pose and experiencing deeply your physical reaction to that pose and your body, or by meditation, we need to ask how that experience is understood (along with other practices) as moving us toward wisdom. That will be our job as we proceed with our study of yoga over the next few weeks.

I do recommend that you try the basic mindfulness meditation exercises on the wiki. Also, you might want to drop in on a yoga class over the next few weeks.

Mar 3: Yoga/Samkya Wisdom 2

We have a shorter class today because of the mid-term, but here are a couple of things I'd like to focus on:

Some Classical Yoga Teachings: Kleshas and Brahmavihara

Kleshas Patanjali lists the five causes of suffering, or kleshas, as:

1. Avidha: Ignorance of our eternal nature
2. Asmita: Seeing oneself as separate and divided from the rest of the world
3. Raga: Attraction and attachment to impermanent things
4. Dvesha: Aversion to the unpleasant
5. Abhinivesha: Clinging to life because we fail to perceive the seamless continuity of consciousness, which cannot be broken hy death (Yoga-Sutra 2.3)

-note rough parallel to Buddhist thought -return of the issue of the body - clinging to body a source of suffering.

The four Brahmavihara (attitudes):

1. Friendliness toward the joyful
2. Compassion for those who are suffering
3. Celebrating the good in others
4. Remaining impartial to the faults and imperfections of others (Yoga-Sutra 1.33)

-note outward and social orientation - discuss individual / social in connection with justice. -role of visualization in this (see later on cog. psych.)

Discipline

Will discipline makes us joyless? 73-74: Milarepa's image of a disciplined but "spirited horse"

Is discipline just for the bad part of us? 77 - 78 analogy 77: alignment, reduction of friction, "swimming"

Using Cognitive Psychology to Explore Wisdom Traditions

Pascal Boyer and Justin Barrett. cognitive anthropology and cognitive psychology.

-How must the mind be structured or have evolved given the cognitive landscape of religion?

-Modularity -Mental Tools. RB/NRB -MCIs beliefs

Analogy to wisdom. Individual / Social, Memes, Discipline

With this in mind, what stands out in Feuerstein's account of ancient shamanism and ritual (ch. 4) or the Upanishadic tradition (ch. 5)?

• Can shamanism, be seen as an "extraordinary use of an ordinary mental faculties"?
• Magic and the Arthava-Veda - invocation of the presence of Agni
• Basic Upanishadic teaching (126)

Mar 17: Yoga/Samkya Wisdom 3

Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

Part 1: The Aim of Yoga

"The aim of yoga is to eliminate the control that material nature exerts over the human spirit, to rediscover through introspective practice what the poet T. S. Eliot called the "still point of the turning world." " This is a state of perfect equilibrium and absolute spiritual calm, an interior refuge in the chaos of worldly existence. In the view of Patanjali, yogic practice can break habitual ways of thinking and acting that bind one to the corruptions of everyday life." (Miller, p. 1)

Concise summary of Yoga method:

Use the 8-limbed approach to still the mind. Achieve contemplative poise and the observer standpoint. This standpoint allows you to perceive the true self, liberated from it's obstacles. The rationale for this goal is found in the analysis of the current obstacles to self-knowledge. Implicit in this is a claim that we are in a state of self-alienation.

5 kinds of "turnings" that are either immune or corruptable:

1) valid judgement

2) error

3) conceptualization,

4) inference, and

5) verbal testimony

Doctrine of memory traces - nothing is lost (Later, connected to idea of "seedless Contemplation" and action.

YS12-16: Mastery of desire, absence of craving. (Connection to Stoic/Epicurean thought)

[Note relationship between cessation of thought and wisdom. Wisdom promotes cessation of thought. (Consider dynamics. How would that work?]

Sources of cessation of thought: YS17-22.

Obstacles: disease, apathy, doubt, carelessness, indolence, dissipation, false vision, failure to attain a firm basis in yoga, and restlessness.

[Small group topic] Tranquility of thought

Part 2: Practice of Yoga

• Forces of corruption - involution and Samkhya metaphysics. (Feuerstein, p. 76)
• Practical examples of involution. - in physical and mental awareness

Major Issues for Critical Discussion:

1. Is sense withdrawal and the quieting of the mind compatible with active commitment to others and engagement in the world?
2. Are we really in a state of self-alienation and corruption?
3. Does Yoga turn nature on it's head?
4. How the 3 Gunas help you figure out how to move toward the observer standpoint.