From: jimruttshow8596
The relationship between wisdom, rationality, and virtue is crucial for individual and collective flourishing. These concepts are deeply interconnected and mutually supporting, forming a core aspect of addressing human challenges like self-deception and foolishness [01:35:40].
Re-evaluating Rationality and Wisdom
Historically, particularly in “Enlightenment 1.0,” the notion of rationality was often reduced to inferential propositional rationality [01:36:58]. This perspective is considered inadequate because many forms of self-deception are not related to inferential practices, but rather to intentional practices [01:37:06]. A more comprehensive understanding emphasizes that wisdom should make individuals both “more insightfully rational and more rationally insightful” in a systematic and systemic way, affecting both individual and collective agency [01:37:22].
It is important to distinguish between intelligence and rationality:
- Intelligence (g, or IQ) is largely fixed [01:42:42].
- Rationality is highly malleable [01:42:42].
Intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for rationality [01:43:21]. There is substantial experimental evidence that rationality can be significantly improved, leading to a reduction in self-deceptive foolishness and an enhancement of connectedness to reality [01:43:32]. People often conflate rationality, logicality, and intelligence, but they are distinct [01:43:41].
The Role of Virtue
Wisdom and virtue are deeply intertwined with rationality. The cultivation of intellectual virtues is essential, even in scientific endeavors [01:39:09]. For instance, a scientist needs to balance humility against courage when defending a theory [01:39:18]. There’s no algorithm for this; it requires virtuous judgment, such as the “golden mean” between perseverance and humility [01:39:42]. Scientists should exemplify intellectual virtues like being open to self-correction and external criticism [01:39:50].
Active Open-Mindedness
A key cognitive style that links these concepts is active open-mindedness (AOM) [01:44:54]. AOM is a practice akin to Stoicism and can help combat common cognitive biases [01:44:58].
One way to practice AOM:
- Identify a cognitive bias: Choose a specific bias (e.g., confirmation bias) [01:45:32].
- Observe in others: Practice recognizing this bias in other people, as this is often easier [01:45:45].
- Self-reflection: Turn those honed observation skills on oneself to catch personal instances of the bias [01:45:56].
- Active counteraction: Deliberately act against the bias. For example, if prone to confirmation bias, actively seek evidence that could falsify one’s propositions or ask others for potential criticisms [01:46:05].
This practice cultivates epistemic humility [01:47:17].
Another form of AOM is steel-manning an opponent’s argument [01:47:36]. This involves summarizing another person’s position, especially one you disagree with, in its strongest possible formulation, demonstrating that you understand it thoroughly before offering criticism [01:47:51]. Beyond just summarizing, AOM involves “dialogical movement” – genuinely moving towards the other person’s position with integrity as much as possible [01:48:08]. This encourages reciprocal movement and fosters genuine collaborative thinking [01:48:41].
“When two people are engaged together in thinking, [it] is a dance of active open-mindedness” [01:51:50].
The goal of such dialectical engagement is not necessarily agreement, but for both participants to reach a place of “rational insight” they couldn’t have achieved on their own [01:52:05]. This emphasizes focusing on the process of thinking rather than just the product [01:52:27].
Holistic Development
Ultimately, the goal is to couple wisdom and “enlightenment” [01:36:21]. This involves creating “ecologies of practices” that provide tools for “wise enlightenment” by cultivating individuals who are “insightfully rational and rationally insightful” in a profoundly developmental and transformative way [01:38:07]. This holistic approach aims to achieve “systematic seeing through illusion and into reality” [01:23:23].