what do you define wisdom as? i once read in a wado book that wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.
I'm not feeling this whole philosophy thing, so I'll just have to go with the dictionary definition of 'good judgement', which is enough for me. Clearly you do know some things, even ignoring the contradiction.
To me, smartness splits into 2 categories: Intelligence, and wisdom. Intelligence is how much book smarts you have, and wisdom is knowing how to apply everything you know. PL
'Knowing that you know nothing' is meaningless and an escape from reality. Wisdom is not knowledge or knowing. Wisdom is how you view knowledge and reality, which can mean to know some things, but to realize the limits of 'knowing'. Willingness to change, positive outlook and and an open and unbiased as possible view to everything are some of the attributes of wisdom. Its easy for someone to say 'Knowing that you know nothing' is wisdom and remain in the dark and do nothing and know nothing.
How do you know anything? When I 'look up' Ecuador and see that Quito is the capital of Ecuador, I am trusting the volume in which I am looking it up and/or I am trusting the sayso of whomever it was who pointed me towards the Britannica. Moreover, isn't all that I know through historical documentation ultimately a matter of accepting on faith, on trust? The most that I can do in the way of checking these sources is cehck them against other similar kinds of sources about which one can ask, how do these others sources attain their status. The only thing we might know is that we exists, "I think therefor I am"...maybe
None of the things you mentioned are really questions of faith or 'knowing . . . maybe'. Knowledge of science, geography and much of history can be known and verified beyond a reasonable doubt. When it comes to topics like God, ah . . . well ah . . . maybe and here is where faith comes in. One of the 'biggy' questions of wisdom is how to seperate reasonable verifiable knowlwedge from questions of faith. Ecuador and Quito exist and I know where they are beyond a reasonable doubt.
The point he was trying to make was to bring in a form of skeptisism. Absolute certainty is impossible. See Descartes etc.
Wisdom: knowing when to hold up, when to fold em and when to take the last train to the coast with the three men you admire most
If that was true he would not have referred to 'faith' or ah . . . maybe as a basis for the belief in these facts. Descartes, ah . . . yes, no and maybe. In reality most of our knowledge that forms the foundation of our world such as science and history is based on reasonable certainty and not absolute certainty. In fact geography unless changed by catastrophic events or major wars approaches the realm of near absolute certainty. Skepticism is an excellent tool for the investigation of knowledge, but not perpetual illogic to avoid conclusions. Conclusions are always subject to change based on new evidence.
Knowledge, wisdom and intelligence are three different things. Knowledge is simply a measure of how much you know, i.e. how many facts you know. Intelligence is a measure of how quickly and easily you can learn things. Wisdom is knowing when and when not to apply the things you have learnt.
You have to have faith that you know something. When people thought the world was flat it was a fact but they were wrong. They put faith in there knowledge that the world was flat, what's to say we are not wrong now. I am not trying to avoid conclusions. I have made a conclusion that absolute certainty is impossible.
We use the word 'faith' somewhat differently. I use 'faith' to more often describe a belief in the intangable. In the academia of science, geography and history 'faith' is not normally used to describe the knowledge acquired or believed. Scientists, mathametitions, geographers and historians use many terms to describe degrees or types of 'knowing' the tangable existence like facts, true, false, unlikely. likely, relative certainty, knowledge, probable, possible and theories. Some people, like fundimentalist Christians, argue that 'faith' is an element of belief in academia for knowledge of the past that cannot be observed and tested in the present, like the knowledge of the past in the debate concerning evolution vs literal creationists.
