Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,talk.philosophy.misc,talk.religion.newage,alt.atheism,alt.pagan,alt.consciousness
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!demon!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: Wisdom...
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Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 08:34:28 +0000
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"Wisdom" means what we use the word to mean in common parlance, and any
dictionary will have a reasonable description of what this is. To ask 
what wisdom *is* constitutes semantic nonsense when the verb 'to be' is
used to mean 'made up of' or 'generated thus'. That is to say, phrases
such as "wisdom is made up of f(X,Y,Z...)" are frank bollocks and a
distraction.

Social science may feel that it can equip itself with a wisdom detector:
a Delphi process of the academic world in order to home in on a population
which is generally deemed to be wise. It will then indulge itself in 
phenomenalogical analysis: it will compare the general environmental, 
societal and economic background of this group and a control group; it
will probe both groups for everything from their serotonin metabolism to 
their fluency in verbal association tests. Undoubted regularities will 
emerge which serve as theoretical predictors that a given person who falls
into a part of the space so described will be either healthy, wealthy,
wise or - if lucky - all three at the same time. The system may work in
the sense that figures not included int he trial but identified by the 
Delphi exercise fall are correctly allocated to their respective groups
by the predictive tool.

This does not mean that "wisdom" either is consituted of or results from
the measured variables (or that it does not). It tells you that when the
sky is light and lunch is served, the cuckoo clock will tootle either
one of twelve times in most households in which there are cuckoo clocks.
Does lunch "cause" this bifurcation? Would a sandwich and a flashlight serve?

Sometimes language gets in the way of thought ;)
________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
