Posted on 06/14/2008 7:15:38 AM PDT by RangerM
I certainly can believe there is (a corollary), but my focus is more science/engineering, not philosophy. (as has been mentioned above)
It would be worth reading a article on the relationship between wisdom and morality. I’ve listened to Dennis Prager and others speak at length on each, but never both as they relate to each other.
What would wisdom be, in practical usage, other than the ability to make good choices? Morality is a little harder to pin down since moral codes vary from culture to culture. (Unlike ethics.) But basically morality is a code of good conduct in most systems so what would be the result of following the moral code? What would be the result of breaking the moral code? There you have a test, in typical scientific paradyme, to empirically evaluate how morality relates to wisdom.
As for the difference between wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom is the ability to see things as they are and from that one can act appropriately in any situation. Knowledge is an accumulation of information OTOH. With knowledge one can understand things that pertain to that body of information. But knowledge doesn't necessarily give any guidance as to what to do with the information and even if it does any factor that enters the situation that falls outside that body of knowledge renders it less useful or even useless.
Knowledge is limited wisdom is not.
Hugely, hugely interesting question, and contemplating this one brings great rewards. I am a M.Sc. in Biochemistry from Europe. Which means that I am well acquainted with the world of material facts in this discipline.
What bothers me is that in this same scientific world there is little place for real culture, or the Great Books tradition, or meditation on spiritual qualities (and I don’t mean the Uri Geller kind, mind). It’s mostly, if not only, about facts.
Now, I myself read Plato, Hume, Kant, Descartes, and Popper. What I find intriguing is that even science philosopher Popper, a most intelligent and well-read liberal thinker, is not even remotely a household name in the sciences anymore (beware: ‘liberal’ means: ‘non-dogmatic’ here).
Whilst I am not specifically thinking about ‘left’ vs. ‘right’ here, my thoughts are surely linked to your question. The left, from the ‘60s onwards, is all about the material world, and the distribution (or redistribution, if you will) of material goods. There’s no room for any thought on entities that don’t necessarily have the property of being not extended in space (sorry to get really philosophical here). So in some strange way, left points of view and scientific materialism seem to be connected. Many eminent scientists even harbour the idea that we will eventually be able to explain the mind and consciousness in full, in material, molecular terms. Which is, for any person with a bit of education in philosophy, baloney: it is necessarily impossible that this will ever happen.
It is a telling sign that Karl Popper lost his general appeal in the ‘70s and at the same time Thomas Kuhn (he of the paradigm-change conviction) became hugely popular. In brief, Kuhn wrote that revolutions in science are on the whole ideological changes and transitions in power structures. So, no wonder then that Kuhn became sort of a popstar in Marxist and Leninist student circles in the West. I myself attribute this to the fact that Kuhn is an easy read and thus an attractive household name for anyone wanting to drop a name and at the same time being to lazy to read real thinking. It seems to elude Kuhn’s followers that the laws of optics, for instance, are stable over time and hold true in communist as well as western civilizations, and even in the world of the Inuit, so to speak.
OK, I am meandering a bit here. But my thoughts fit your argument. The left loves materialism, and easy theory-forming, that suits a one-dimensional view on life; and that even expects total materialistic explanations of life eventually, as well as total materialistic solutions to all human pain and suffering. As I wrote, this is simply not feasible, never.
The right, although I myself would not describe me as a conservative hardliner, seems to live more in what Karl Popper calls: ‘World 3’, that is the sum total of all human achievements, including spiritual qualities and deep thoughts and feelings on all painful things that are tied to our mortality and the frailty of all our human bonding. I deeply agree with this view. And I do sorely miss this attitude in the utilitarian world of hard science, although at the same time love all endeavours in this world to alleviate human suffering (in a medical sense). But we must at all times be aware that that suffering won’t ever be annihilated totally, and that getting rid of one particular disease will always carry the possibility that people will pass away from another, as yet unknown disorder.
Please let me know if you appreciate my contribution and if I made myself clear.
Respectfully submitted, A13.
Correction: he prioritizes STATUS over wisdom.
There is a positive feedback mechanism operating there. To a Leftist, a place has status to the degree that the Left has suppressed any dissenting opinion from being aired there. Example: Fox News allows conservative opinions, therefore Fox News is not credible
It’s stating the truth of the direct relationship between morality and wisdom.
Living the way that you’re supposed to (by God’s will) is the wise thing to do, with the promise of a prosperous life.
Read Dr Sowell's "Conflict of Visions".
Political belief, ie worldview, IS a binary.
You either believe in the inherent sin nature of man, and thus restrict his power to oppress others,
or you believe in the perfectability of man, and seek to empower those who are more perfected than others with the power to impose their enlightened ideas on everyone else.
And those with the latter belief, logically, think they are wiser than anyone who ever lived throughout history, even wiser than God.
Thank you for your nice words. You hit it on the head: what your friend was driving at is the view on life known as ‘eliminative materialism’, or in simpler words: that there is no soul, no ‘ghost in the machine’. Which is philosophically untenable.
I just finished a superb book by Karl Popper and John Eccles (the latter being a neuroscientist, a brain man so to speak). In this study (revised edition 1976) they already finish off that materialistic take on things in no uncertain terms.
Main point: we will never be able to explain everything in material terms. This is an attractive illusion that many learned people secretly or openly harbour, but it is just that: an illusion. You could also say: it is characteristic of terrible vanity to think that everything could be solved that way.
If you can, read: ‘Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus’ by Mary Shelley-Wollstonecraft, a superb novel. The movies that were made about it were enjoyable bowdlerizations, but the novel is rich literature, as good as it gets.
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