Practical Wisdom, Well‐Being, and Success

Soochow Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2023

What is the nature and structure of phronesis or practical wisdom? According to the view widely held by philosophers and psychologists, a person S is wise if and only if S knows how to live well. Given this view of practical wisdom, the guiding question is this: What exactly is "knowing how to live well"? It seems that no one has a clear idea of how to answer this simple but fundamental question. This paper explores knowing how to live well (or "life know-how") by showing how its nature and structure can be understood through contemporary epistemology of knowledge-how. I will achieve this by doing the following. In Section I, I highlight the two as-yet unanswered "integration questions" about life know-how. In Section II, I explain why the epistemology of knowledge-how has good potential to address the integration questions. In Sections III and IV, I construct two positions-intellectualism and anti-intellectualism-for the epistemology of life know-how and show how they address the two integration questions. In Section V, I show how the epistemology of life know-how established in the previous sections can be used in the philosophy of wisdom and the psychology of wisdom.

The Cambridge Handbook of Wisdom, 2019

The literature that has investigated the association between wisdom and well-being has yielded conflicting results ranging from positive associations through zero to even negative associations. After defining and explaining the central constructs, the chapter will provide a review of this literature. While it seems intuitively right that wisdom should be positively associated with well-being, researchers have argued that the association depends on the type of definition and measurement of wisdom and well-being. The chapter will review and discuss the association between wisdom and well-being as a function of the notion and assessment of these constructs and will interpret the seemingly contradictory findings accordingly. Furthermore, the distinction between two types of positive personality development, that is, adjustment and growth, is used to help clarify the relationship between wisdom and subjective and psychological wellbeing. We conclude with a discussion of directions for future research on wisdom and well-being.

This is a pre-proofs version of a paper forthcoming in Acta Analytica. I argue that a necessary condition for being wise is understanding how to live well. The condition, by requiring understanding rather than a wide variety of justified beliefs or knowledge, as Ryan and Whitcomb respectively require, yields the desirable result that being wise is compatible with having some false beliefs but not just any false beliefs about how to live well – regardless of whether those beliefs are justified or not. In arguing for understanding how to live well as a necessary condition for wisdom, I reject the view, proposed by both Ryan and Whitcomb, that subjects such as chemistry lie within the domain of wisdom. I show that the argued for condition yields the desirable result that being wise is not a common achievement, but that it is not something that can only plausibly be achieved in the modern era.

The Cambridge Handbook of Wisdom, Eds. Robert Sternberg and Judith Gluek, 2019

Practical wisdom (hereafter simply ‘wisdom’), which is the understanding required to make reliably good decisions about how we ought to live, is something we all have reason to care about. The importance of wisdom gives rise to questions about its nature: what kind of state is wisdom, how can we develop it, and what is a wise person like? These questions about the nature of wisdom give rise to further questions about proper methods for studying wisdom. Is the study of wisdom the proper subject of philosophy or psychology? How, exactly, can we determine what wisdom is and how we can get it? In this chapter, we give an overview of some prominent philosophical answers to these questions. We begin by distinguishing practical wisdom from theoretical wisdom and wisdom as epistemic humility. Once we have a clearer sense of the target, we address questions of method and argue that producing a plausible and complete account of wisdom will require the tools of both philosophy and empirical psychology. We also discuss the implications this has for prominent wisdom research methods in empirical psychology. We then survey prominent philosophical accounts of the nature of wisdom and end with reflections on the prospects for further interdisciplinary research.

2013

Practical wisdom (hereafter simply "wisdom") is the intellectual virtue that enables a person to make reliably good decisions about how, all-things-considered, to live and conduct herself. Because wisdom is such an important and high-level achievement, we should wonder: what is the nature of wisdom? What kinds of skills, habits and capacities does it involve? Can real people actually develop it? If so, how? I argue that we can answer these questions by modeling wisdom on expert decision-making skill in complex areas like firefighting. I develop this expert skill model of wisdom using philosophical argument informed by relevant empirical research. I begin in Chapter 1 by examining the historical roots of analogies between wisdom and practical skills in order to motivate the expert skill model. In Chapter 2, I provide the core argument for the expert skill model. I then use the remaining chapters to pull out the implications of the expert skill model. In Chapter 3, I show that the expert skill model yields practical guidance about how to develop wisdom. In Chapter 4, I address the objection, due to Daniel Jacobson, that wisdom is not a skill that humans could actually develop, since skill development requires a kind of feedback in practice that is not available for all-things-considered decisions about how to live. Finally, in Chapter 5, I apply the expert skill model to the question, much discussed by virtue ethicists, of whether a wise person deliberates using a comprehensive and systematic conception of the good life.

Current Psychology, 2022

Narrowing the debate about the meaning of wisdom requires two different understandings of wisdom. (a) As action or behaviour, wisdom refers to well-motivated actors achieving an altruistic outcome by creatively and successfully solving problems. (b) As a psychological trait, wisdom refers to a global psychological quality that engages intellectual ability, prior knowledge and experience in a way that integrates virtue and wit, and is acquired through life experience and continued practice. Thus, we propose a two-dimensional theory of wisdom that integrates virtue and wit. Wisdom can be further divided into "humane wisdom" and "natural wisdom" according to the types of capability required. At the same time, we propose that wisdom classification should integrate the views of Sternberg and Wang and be divided into three types: domain-specific wisdom, domain-general wisdom, and omniscient/ overall wisdom. We then discuss three pressing questions about wisdom, and consider five issues important to the future of wisdom research in psychology.

2015

What is it that makes someone wise, or one person wiser than another? I argue that wisdom consists in knowledge of how to live well, and that this knowledge of how to live well is constituted by various further kinds of knowledge. One concern for this view is that knowledge is not needed for wisdom but rather some state short of knowledge, such as having rational or justified beliefs about various topics. Another concern is that the emphasis on knowing how to live well fails to do justice to the ancient tradition of "theoretical wisdom." I address both of these concerns in filling out the account.

Topoi, 2024

What are the relations among wisdom, virtue, and expertise? Wisdom can be defined broadly as knowledge about how to live well. At the least, the task of living well requires some conception of what it means for a life to be good as well as the knowledge and skill needed to actualize the good in one's spheres of life. While this idea is easy to assert, it is difficult to examine empirically. This is because the scientific study of wisdom immediately runs up against the challenge of the fact/ value dichotomy. While psychological science seeks to study "what is", the "wisdom" of any given decision, act or person is something that can only be assessed against some conception of the good. Thus, the study of wisdom calls on us to seek ways to bridge the fact/value dichotomy. In this paper, we pursue this goal. We suggest that the study of wisdom requires the integration of at least two forms of inquiry: psychological-empirical analyses of the development of knowledge and skills, and philosophical-conceptual inquiries into what it means to live a good life. In elaborating this approach, we first differentiate the concepts of wisdom, wise decision-making, and wisdom-supporting skills. Then we describe conceptual and empirical tools for assessing the development of wisdom-supporting skills as well as an evaluative framework for assessing the "wisdom" of any given act of decision-making. To illustrate these ideas, we report the results of a study demonstrating how the capacity for wise decision-making can be cultivated through participation in a program devoted to fostering the development of wisdom-supported skills.

2016

Wisdom is associated with old age from common sense. This is based on ancient traditions linked to sacred texts, key principles and narratives since the beginnings of civilizations. From a psycho-gerontological point of view, the hypothesis holds that skills would not decline with age; in fact, they would develop throughout the course of life and reach its peak in late adulthood and old age, leading to higher forms of knowledge. In the last decades of the twentieth century, psychology has become interested in wisdom in line with the principles of Positive Psychology and Psycho-gerontology. Wisdom can be considered as a degree of human development in its higher forms, both in its cognitive and affectiveemotional side, or even as a higher degree of integration of both aspects. The importance of each component has generated debates among theorists. Several authors have characterized wisdom considering it as a skill linked to solving problems of human life; a sort of pragmatics of life....

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2019

sophical texts. It is often viewed as a fuzzy psychological construct analogous to consciousness, stress, and resilience. This essay provides an understanding of wisdom as a scientific construct, based on empirical research starting in the 1970s. The focus is on practical rather than theoretical wisdom. While there are different conceptualizations of wisdom, it is best defined as a complex human characteristic or trait with specific components: social decision-making, emotional regulation, prosocial behavior (such as empathy and compassion), self-reflection, acceptance of uncertainty, decisiveness, and spirituality. These psychological processes involve the fronto-limbic circuitry. Wisdom