An exploration of the umbrella notion‭ '‬knowledge‭' ‬and related notions,‭ ‬truth,‭ ‬wisdom,‭ ‬knowing,‭ ‬insights,‭ ‬understanding,‭ ‬perception,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬The‭ ‬philosophical approach,‭ ‬such as that of Gettier,‭ ‬to this notion.

1. ‘How do we know the material world?’, ‘What is it to know the material world?’, ‘In what ways is knowledge of the material world like and in what ways is it unlike other sorts of knowledge?’ We know how we know the material world and what it is to know the material world and in what ways such knowledge is like and unlike other sorts of knowledge. But a man who knows what poetry is like (...) and how it is like and unlike prose may ask ‘What is poetry?’, and a mathematician who knows what it is like to do mathematics may ask ‘What is mathematics?’ It is in a rather like way that we ask ‘What is knowledge of the material world?’ The ways in which knowledge of the material world is like and unlike other sorts of knowledge are familiar to us but we wish for a still better grasp of these likenesses and unlikenesses. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, (...) and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Hegel's main problem derived from reflection on the tradition since Descartes in which the problems of the search for certain knowledge and the relation of mind to matter were dominant. If the question is pressed further even into extraphilosophical problems there can be detected a desire to demonstrate the realm of something personal, the presence of and communication with others, thus demonstrating the unreality of isolation, loneliness, and depression, the solipsism that is the philosopher's ultimate belief.

A conceptual exploration of the umbrella notion Wisdom, as well as dimensions, characteristics and components of the idea of wisdom as suggested by experimental philosophy, neurosciences and other studies and a comparison of the notion of wisdom with those of knowledge, truth, insight and understanding. https://www.academia.edu/34339690/PHILOSOPHY_PHILO_SOPHOS_LOVE_OF_WISDOM.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Modern Vs. Contemporary Medicine: The Patient-Provider Relation in the Twenty-First CenturyRobert M. Veatch (bio)The revolution in medical ethics of the past quarter century has begun reshaping the patient-provider relation in such a way that it will never be the same. 1 Dramatic changes have occurred at the level of specific decisions such as consent, forgoing treatment, and birth technologies, but the most significant impact will be on the way (...) the relation is conceptualized and the kinds of authority each party in the relation will be assumed to possess. The change is so fundamental that it deserves to be called a change from modern to contemporary medicine.Contrasting Modern and Contemporary MedicineModern MedicineMedicine of the modern period can be said to have had its origins in the sixteenth century with the emergence of the scientific mentality in such figures as Francis Bacon, but it really took off in the enlightenment of the eighteenth century. While intellectuals in medicine up to that time tended to be in conversation with those of philosophy, theology, and the arts, the emergence of medicine as a science changed that communication.The effect of the scientizing of medicine was that physicians tended to lose contact with the humanists. It was as if a physician, if he mastered the medical science, could, without any intervening value judgments, know how to treat the patient. In fact, for some conditions, there was (and still is) so much consensus [End Page 366] on the values that it is as if they were not present at all. If a patient has pneumonia, the most important element in a clinical decision seems to be pharmacological knowledge of whether a drug can produce a cure. The clinician knowledgeable of penicillin seems all that is needed.Upon reflection a suppressed premise becomes obvious: if it is better to live with the penicillin than to die without it, then one ought to take the penicillin. Since almost no one doubts the wisdom of that value judgment, all that seems to be needed is pharmacological knowledge. This view of medicine implies that certain treatments are “medically indicated,” as if the knowledge of the science could demonstrate that certain treatments were appropriate, in fact, were “treatments of choice.”Of course, on rare occasions, someone would question the value presumption. We discovered that certain patients with metastatic cancer who developed pneumonia might not automatically agree that it is better to live with the penicillin. Also Christian Scientists might deny that use of the drug led to the best possible consequences. These were set aside as unusual cases, ethically exotic problems, to be addressed outside the normal bounds of medical science. We still believed that medical science together with competent diagnostic skills were the critical factors in deciding what the appropriate treatment was.Some clinicians spoke as if these decisions could be made with no value judgments at all (except in cases in which outside “religious” or “cultural” influences contravened). Many more sophisticated clinicians, however, understood all along that an implicit value system was built into the medical profession. Some have even claimed that the very concept of medicine contains within it a set of norms or goals or values that are “intrinsic to the practice” (Pellegrino and Thomasma 1988, p. 116). For many those values are encapsulated in the Hippocratic tradition, particularly the core Hippocratic principle that the physician should act always for the benefit of the patient according to his ability and judgment.When physicians began spending their time learning medical science, the richness of their conversation with the philosophical and religious traditions of the day was lost. Clinicians, without a rich knowledge of those traditions, hit upon the Hippocratic ethic, embracing it as the epitome of their goals without real understanding of its implications and potential conflicts with other ethical traditions (cf. Veatch and Mason 1987).Contemporary MedicineThe most critical contribution of the medical ethics of the current generation has been the calling into question of the Hippocratic ethic, especially the presumption that science by itself (or aided by a single, core ethic intrinsic to all practice of medicine) is sufficient to practice medicine. This generation’s medical ethics... (shrink)

This research investigates the efficacy of business ethics intervention, tests a theoretical model that the love of money is directly or indirectly related to propensity to engage in unethical behavior (PUB), and treats college major (business vs. psychology) and gender (male vs. female) as moderators in multi-group analyses. Results suggested that business students who received business ethics intervention significantly changed their conceptions of unethical behavior and reduced their propensity to engage in theft; while psychology students without intervention had no such (...) changes. Therefore, ethics training had some impacts on business students' learning and education (intelligence). For our theoretical model, results of the whole sample (N = 298) revealed that Machiavellianism (measured at Time 1) was a mediator of the relationship between the love of money (measured at Time 1) and unethical behavior (measured at Time 2) (the Love of Money → Machiavellianism → Unethical Behavior). Further, this mediating effect existed for business students (n = 198) but not for psychology students (n = 100), for male students (n = 165) but not for female students (n = 133), and for male business students (n = 128) but not for female business students (n = 70). Moreover, when examined alone, the direct effect (the Love of Money → Unethical Behavior) existed for business students but not for psychology students. We concluded that a short business ethics intervention may have no impact on the issue of virtue (wisdom). (shrink)

The following document is a very brief summary of a thesis and argument that I have devoted the last 30 years of my life to trying to get across to my fellow human beings. It was first spelled out in What’s Wrong With Science? (Bran’s Head Books, 1976) and subsequently in From Knowledge to Wisdom (Blackwell, 1984), Is Science Neurotic? (Imperial College Press, 2004) and numerous articles. Three years ago an international group was formed, called Friends of (...) class='Hi'>Wisdom, which seeks to get across to academics and the public the compelling arguments and urgent need to transform academic inquiry so that its basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom. The document below is taken from the website of Friends of Wisdom. It is the mission statement of Friends of Wisdom. You are invited to join. (shrink)

This book argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change (...) in the fundamental, overall intellectual aims and methods of inquiry. At present inquiry is devoted to the enhancement of knowledge. This needs to be transformed into a kind of rational inquiry having as its basic aim to enhance personal and social wisdom. This new kind of inquiry gives intellectual priority to the personal and social problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to realize what is desirable and of value – problems of knowledge and technology being intellectually subordinate and secondary. For this new kind of inquiry, it is what we do and what we are that ultimately matters: our knowledge is but an aspect of our life and being. (shrink)

A bad philosophy of inquiry, built into the intellectual/institutional structure of universities round the world, betrays both reason and humanity.

Kevin T. Fitzgerald, S.J.; Knowledge Without Wisdom: Human Genetic Engineering Without Religious Insight, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical.

This paper traces the shifts in relative emphasis on knowledge and wisdom as educational ideals from the time of Plato to the present. In the Industrial Era, the increasing pressure towards specialization made professors serve primarily as content experts. This role, however, often threatened to trivialize the academic calling, and there were many attempts to restore a lost unity to knowledge. Today, with the advent of the Internet, the easy accessibility of information diminishes the importance of specialized (...) knowledge. It is no longer essential for an instructor to serve as a provider of factual material. He or she will, however, be more necessary than ever to assist students in placing information in a meaningful personal, professional, and socio-historic context. Pre-industrial, even ancient, educational models such as those of Aesop or Socrates assume renewed importance. Wisdom, rather than knowledge, may again become the most important quality of the educator in post-industrial society. (shrink)

From Knowledge to Wisdom argues that there is an urgent need, for both intellectual and humanitarian reasons, to bring about a revolution in science and the humanities. The outcome would be a kind of academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to create a better world. Instead of giving priority to solving problems of knowledge, as at present, academia would devote itself to helping us solve our immense, current global problems – climate change, war, poverty, (...) population growth, pollution... of sea, earth and air, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, injustice, tyranny, proliferation of armaments, conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear, depletion of natural resources. The basic intellectual aim of inquiry would be to seek and promote wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. This second edition has been revised throughout, has additional material, a new introduction and three new chapters. (shrink)

This article argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change (...) in the fundamental, overall intellectual aims and methods of inquiry. At present inquiry is devoted to the enhancement of knowledge. This needs to be transformed into a kind of rational inquiry having as its basic aim to enhance personal and social wisdom. This new kind of inquiry gives intellectual priority to the personal and social problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to realize what is desirable and of value – problems of knowledge and technology being intellectually subordinate and secondary. For this new kind of inquiry, it is what we do and what we are that ultimately matters: our knowledge is but an aspect of our life and being. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a kind of intellectual inquiry which has, as its basic aim, to help all of us to resolve rationally the most important problems that we encounter in our lives, problems that arise as we seek to discover and achieve that which is of value in life. Rational problem-solving involves articulating our problems, proposing and criticizing possible solutions. It also involves breaking problems up into subordinate problems, creating a tradition of specialized problem-solving - specialized scientific, (...) academic inquiry, in other words. It is vital, however, that specialized academic problem-solving be subordinated to discussion of our more fundamental problems of living. At present specialized academic inquiry is dissociated from problems of living - the sin of specialism, which I criticize. (shrink)

At present the basic intellectual aim of academic inquiry is to improve knowledge. Much of the structure, the whole character, of academic inquiry, in universities all over the world, is shaped by the adoption of this as the basic intellectual aim. But, judged from the standpoint of making a contribution to human welfare, academic inquiry of this type is damagingly irrational. Three of four of the most elementary rules of rational problem-solving are violated. A revolution in the aims and (...) methods of academic inquiry is needed so that the basic aim becomes to promote wisdom, conceived of as the capacity to realize what is of value, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. This urgently needed revolution would affect every branch and aspect of the academic enterprise. (shrink)

There are these two absolutely basic problems: to learn about the universe and ourselves as a part of the universe, and to learn how to create a civilized world. Essentially, we have solved the first problem. We solved it when we created modern science. That is not to say that we know everything that is to be known, but we created a method for improving our knowledge about the world. But we haven't solved the second problem. And to solve (...) the first problem without solving the second problem is very, very dangerous. The crisis is this: the crisis of having science without civlization. (shrink)

If we define the ontological value of X as "given-in-experience," we attain the concept of object-experience. If this experientially given is a sensuous, external image we have "physics." If we interpret such images in terms of psychical functions as their apparent expressions we have psychology. Both together comprise the whole of natural-historical object-experience. Its truth lies in the agreement of those who investigate. We call this scientific kind of knowledge immanent.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-BeingDaniel H. FrankHava Tirosh-Samuelson. Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 596. Cloth, $50.00.Franz Rosenzweig tried hard to convince the neoKantian Hermann Cohen of the merits of Zionism and the normalization it would bring to Jews and Jewish life. His attempt met with this response from Cohen: "Oho! So (...) the gang now wants to be happy, does it?" For those ignorant of the history of Jewish philosophy, one might imagine that Jewish philosophers, no less than their non-philosophical kinsmen, were so weighed down by the burdens of history and persecution that happiness could play no role in their theorizing. But happiness plays a key role in the history of Jewish moral and political philosophy, especially in the premodern period. Even Spinoza, the last of the medievals and the first of the moderns, the great critic of the rabbinic tradition and of Maimonides in particular, is concerned in his Ethics with identifying those activities that together constitute human well-being and the good life. Only lately, since the Enlightenment and Kant, has non-eudaimonism been a live option for Jewish thinkers. Only with the rise of (modern) Orthodoxy, and its predilection for construing goodness as rectitude and rule-following, has eudaimonism fallen out of favor. But with Tirosh-Samuelson's weighty volume on happiness in premodern Judaism, there can be no excuse in the future to imagine that all Jews are, or must be, closet Kantians, strict deontologists. To think otherwise seems to come close to taking on the classical (anti-Semitic) dichotomy of legalistic Judaism vs. spiritual Christianity. In it own way, Happiness in Premodern Judaism is a critique of such a one-sided, monochromatic view of Judaism, whether from the Christian or even from the Jewish side.Tirosh-Samuelson writes explicitly as an intellectual historian, rather than as a philosopher. She understands herself and her project as one that presents just the facts, without evaluating them. While one may cavil at a lost opportunity, in the present case this would be churlish, given the enormous erudition on display. After an introductory chapter outlining the foundational moral theories of Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic philosophers, the text presents the (Greek-inspired) areteic wisdom literature of the Second Temple period, the teleological theocentrism of the rabbis, the Greco-Arabic Islamicate culture that nurtured Jewish philosophers from Saadia in the tenth century to Maimonides in the twelfth, the rabbinic and kabbalistic critiques of the philosophical ideal of happiness commencing [End Page 338] with the translation (into Hebrew) of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and finally, very important and the focus of much recent scholarly work, the transformation of Jewish eudaimonism through direct contact with Christian Scholasticism and later with the humanist Renaissance. All in all, a millennium and a half of Jewish intellectual history is presented in a sober and scholarly way.Not surprisingly Maimonides plays a pivotal role in the story that Tirosh-Samuelson relates. A Janus-like figure, he represents the culmination and height of accommodation with Greek and Greco-Arabic philosophical culture. However, with the gradual worsening of the socio-economic condition of European Jewry in the thirteenth century, his accommodationism seemed traitorous, and as a result generations of thinkers, mystics and philosophers alike, strove to critically distance themselves from Maimonidean Aristotelianism. Tirosh-Samuelson is admirably clear in pointing out that such anti-Maimonidean tendencies are ill-characterized as anti-philosophical. Hasdai Crescas in the late-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries launched a massive critique of Maimonides' physics, metaphysics, and moral philosophy, but did so in as rigorous a manner as any philosopher would. The picture that enfolds over the course of the text is one of vigorous dialectic between partisans of 'alien' (Greek) wisdom and those who viewed such wisdom with considerable suspicion. Such a dialectic parallels, not surprisingly, developments in Christian philosophy.The trajectory of the story of premodern Jewish musings on happiness is from the centrality of reason and intellect, and the contemplative activity that is reason's preeminent actuality, to the primacy... (shrink)

Many human beings have considered the powers and the limits of human knowledge, but few have wondered about the power that the idea of knowledge has over us. Steven Connor's The Madness of Knowledge is the first book to investigate this emotional inner life of knowledge - the lusts, fantasies, dreams, and fears that the idea of knowing provokes. There are in-depth discussions of the imperious will to know, of Freud's epistemophilia (or love of knowledge), (...) and the curiously insistent links between madness, magical thinking, and the desire for knowledge. Connor also probes secrets and revelations, quarreling and the history of quizzes and "general knowledge," charlatanry and pretension, both the violent disdain and the sanctification of the stupid, as well as the emotional investment in the spaces and places of knowledge, from the study to the library. In an age of artificial intelligence, alternative facts, and mistrust of truth, The Madness of Knowledge offers an opulent, enlarging, and sometimes unnerving psychopathology of intellectual life. -- From Publisher, page 2 of cover. (shrink)

Nicholas Maxwell argues that the growth in academic work devoted to policy issues could mark the beginning of a shift from ‘knowledge-inquiry’ to ‘wisdom-inquiry’, leading to importance benefits for society.

: Feng Qi is widely acknowledged in mainland China as one of the few consummate and most original thinkers to have emerged there since 1949. The essence of Feng's thought is to provide a solution to the time-honored problem of the confrontation between fact and value, between a positivistic/ scientific approach and a humanistic/metaphysical approach. Feng tries to solve this conflict by constructing what he calls "epistemology in a broader sense," at the core of which is his theory of the (...) "transformation of knowledge into wisdom.". (shrink)

We are in a state of impending crisis. And the fault lies in part with academia. For two centuries or so, academia has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how. This has enormously increased our power to act which has, in turn, brought us both all the great benefits of the modern world and the crises we now face. Modern science and technology have made possible modern industry and agriculture, the explosive growth of the world’s population, (...) global warming, modern armaments and the lethal character of modern warfare, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, immense inequalities of wealth and power across the globe, pollution of earth, sea and air, even the aids epidemic (aids being spread by modern travel). All these global problems have arisen because some of us have acquired unprecedented powers to act, via science and technology, without also acquiring the capacity to act wisely. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities so that the basic intellectual aim becomes, not knowledge merely, but rather wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. (shrink)

We are in a state of impending crisis. And the fault lies in part with academia. For two centuries or so, academia has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how. This has enormously increased our power to act which has, in turn, brought us both all the great benefits of the modern world and the crises we now face. Modern science and technology have made possible modern industry and agriculture, the explosive growth of the world’s population, (...) global warming, modern armaments and the lethal character of modern warfare, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, immense inequalities of wealth and power across the globe, pollution of earth, sea and air, even the aids epidemic (aids being spread by modern travel). All these global problems have arisen because some of us have acquired unprecedented powers to act without acquiring the capacity to act wisely. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities so that the basic intellectual aim becomes, not knowledge merely, but rather wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. This is an argument I have propounded during the last three decades in six books, over thirty papers, and countless lectures delivered in universities and conferences all over the UK, Europe and north America. Despite all this effort, the argument has, by and large, been ignored. What is really surprising is that philosophers have paid no attention, despite the fact that that this body of work claims to solve the profoundly important philosophical problem: What kind of inquiry best helps us make progress towards as good a world as possible? There are, nevertheless, indications that some scientists and university administrators are beginning to become aware of the urgent need for science, and universities, to change. This is prompted, partly by growing awareness of the seriousness of environmental problems, especially global warming, and partly by a concern to improve the relationship between science and the public. So far, however, these changes have been small-scale, scattered and piecemeal. What we require is for academics and non-academics alike to wake up to the urgent need for change so that we may come to possess what we so strikingly and disastrously lack at present: a kind of inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity make progress towards as good a world as possible. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the philosophical theory of Feng Qi, an important modern Chinese philosopher, who is practically unknown in the West. I argue that his theory of knowledge is not limited to epistemology in the strict and narrow sense, but also refers to ontological and metaphysical issues. The paper shows how Feng Qi integrated ontological and ethical suppositions into the framework of what he called ‘expanded epistemology’. In this way, he offers an innovative solution to several problems, linked (...) to the dichotomous relations of substance and phenomena. The article analyses and interprets his theoretical system in order to highlight that it represents an important contribution to comparative epistemology and its underlying methodology. (shrink)

SOCRATES’ CLAIM THAT VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE implies that if we behave in an unvirtuous way we must be ignorant of what goodness really is. No allowance is made for the possibility that we may know what is good but act otherwise because we are too weak to resist temptation or fear—in other words that we may lack self-mastery. In a famous passage Aristotle rejects the Socratic model.

This paper provides a general philosophical groundwork for the theoretical and applied normative evaluation of information generally and digital information specifically in relation to the good life. The overall aim of the paper is to address the question of how Information Ethics and computer ethics more generally can be expanded to include more centrally the issue of how and to what extent information relates and contributes to the quality of life or the good life , for individuals and for society. (...) To answer that question, the paper explores and provides by way of a theoretical groundwork for further research, the concept of wisdom understood as a type of meta - knowledge as well as a type of meta - virtue , which can enable one to both know in principle what a good life is and how to successfully apply that knowledge in living such a life in practice. This answer will be based on the main argument presented in this paper that the notion of wisdom understood as being at once a meta - epistemological , meta - axiological and meta - eudemonic concept, provides the essential conceptual link between information on the one hand and the good life on the other. If, as we are told, this is the Age of Information, both the theoretical examination and analysis of the question of how information relates to the good life and the provision of an adequate answer to that question are essential for developing a deeper understanding of how to evaluate the theoretical and practical implications and ramifications of information for the good life, for individuals and societies generally. (shrink)