Abstract
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.
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Notes
Developmental changes in the structure of participant reflections were assessed using dynamic skill theory (Mascolo & Fischer 2015). In skill theory, the unit of developmental analysis is the individual skill—the capacity to organize elements of thinking, feeling, and acting within particular contexts and conceptual domains. Granott (2020) has shown that when accomplished people, who are otherwise capable of functioning at high skills levels in their areas of expertise, take on the task of learning new skills, their level of skilled action drops to relatively low levels and develops slowly over time. In the current study, for any given utterance, the level of structural complexity of each utterance was assessed over a series of four levels: Concrete representations (Level 1) are statements that refer to the tangible aspects of an event or process (e.g., “we talked for hours”; “he sent me a long rude message accusing me of multiple failings”). Single abstractions (Level 2) consist of ideas that represent intangible meanings that are free of any particular content (e.g., “I want to be more responsible”; “I am more civilized now”). At the level of abstract mappings (Level 3), participants are able to represent the relationship between two single abstractions (e.g., “When I have moments of clarity, something clicks, and I can see the emotion that made me behave in a certain way”). Level 4 consists of abstract systems, which consist of an integration of two or more abstract mappings into a seamless whole (e.g., “The decisive thing is to keep my meditation practice and how that creates a cascade of insights from this sage mentality. This is wisdom that I incorporated and now comes out of my head. It is like having the ability to permit yourself to take those feelings seriously. It is so important to incorporate those feelings in your life, putting aside the Western worldview, for me it has been a complete worldview shift”).
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Mascolo, M.F., Stammberger, I. Bridging the Fact/Value Divide in Wisdom Research: The Development of Expertise in Wise Decision-Making. Topoi (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-10006-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-10006-7