Dear Friends of Wisdom,
I am delighted by the discussion that has broken out amongst us. I do hope we can find a way of acting together rather more than we have in the past to get our message across - and make some headway towards creating the kind of institutions of learning that humanity so urgently needs.
A comment on the question that has been raised: Can wisdom be taught? This seems to me the wrong question to ask. The glaring disaster that ought to stare us in the face, it seems to me, is just this: Academic inquiry devoted to the pursuit of knowledge is an intellectual disaster and a human disaster when judged from the standpoint of the basic aim of helping to promote human welfare.
The successful scientific pursuit of knowledge (and technological know-how) has, of course, led to a multitude of good things. It has made the modern world possible. But the successful pursuit of knowledge dissociated from a more fundamental concern to help solve problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways has led to all our current global problems as well: global warming, population growth, habitat destruction and rapid extinction of species, lethal modern war, gross inequality around the globe, pollution of earth, sea and air, nuclear weapons - even fake news and Trump.
At the root of our world's problems there is a monumental intellectual blunder: rationality demands that inquiry pursues knowledge in a way dissociated from human concerns, from problems of living. The scientific community is convinced that this is the proper way to proceed. The idea is never taught; it is simply implicit in everything that is taught. Academics are, in effect, brainwashed to accept the idea without question. But it is a fallacy - a fallacy built into the institutional/intellectual structure of science, of much of academia, with disastrous human consequences.
A kind of inquiry that is genuinely devoted, rationally, to helping to promote human welfare, would give absolute intellectual priority to the basic problems that need to be solved - namely problems of living, problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to achieve what is of value in life.
Solutions to problems of living are not, primarily, facts, theories, items of knowledge: they are actions, what we do or refrain from doing. A kind of inquiry devoted to helping to promote human welfare in a genuinely intellectually rigorous way, would give intellectual priority to the tasks of:
1. Articulating, and improving the articulating of, problems of living;
2. Proposing and critically assessing possible and actual actions - policies, political programmes, ways of living, philosophies of life.
The enterprise of acquiring knowledge and developing technology would emerge out of, and feed back into, these two intellectually basic activities, 1 and 2.
(And furthermore, natural science would put aim-oriented empiricism into scientific practice instead of paying lip service to standard empiricism, as at present; and social inquiry and the humanities would seek to help humanity put aim-oriented rationality into practice in personal, social, institutional and political life, to facilitate the realization of what is of value in life.)
Academia as it exists as present is an intellectual and human disaster. The intellectual failings of academia have a great deal to do with the failings of the modern world. As I see it, there is hardly any more urgent thing that we need to do than to spread awareness among whoever will listen - but ultimately among the academic community, and especially among those who have the power to influence its character - that what we have at present really is very, very, very seriously intellectually defective, in a wholesale, structural way, there being an urgent need to put right these glaring intellectual defects. The future of humanity may depend on this being done.
Academia has been labouring away under the wrong paradigm. We urgently need a new, better paradigm. We need an academic revolution.
What would this entail? I have tried to make a brief summary of the changes that need to be made here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom/whatneedstochange .
But the crucial issue, it seems to me, is to see clearly what is wrong, intellectually, with the academic status quo, with knowledge-inquiry (insofar as it dominates academia today). Only then does it become apparent what needs to be done to put matters right.
And, incidentally, the whole tendency of wisdom-inquiry, with its encouragement to put heart and mind in touch with one another, so that we may develop heartfelt minds and mindful hearts, would be to enable us to discover, as we learn and live, how to realize what is of value in life, for ourselves and others - the task of wisdom-inquiry, and a good aim to bear in mind as one lives!
All good wishes,
Nick
Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom>
Publications online: http://philpapers.org/profile/17092
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html
