Relevance, meaning and the cognitive science of wisdom

Abstract

Let us begin the study of wisdom by noting that it involves some kind of cognitive improvement that affords the living of a good life. When we use the term 'cognition' or 'cognitive', it should be broadly construed as the terms are used in cognitive science, meaning thinking, reasoning, memory, emotion and perception. There are factors such as good fortune that can improve life, but wisdom centres on a kind of self-transformation of cognitive processing that enhances the quality of life in some comprehensive manner. Philosophers (especially ancient philosophers) have devoted a lot of time to addressing the related questions of what wisdom is and what it is to live a good life. Recently, psychologists have also broached the topic because of the central role of cognitive processes in wisdom (Brown, 2000; Sternberg, 1990, 2003; Sternberg & Jordan, 2005). Neuroscientists have also begun to explore the topic as they have forayed into explaining higher cognitive processes, and wisdom seems to involve higher cognitive processes such as selfregulation and problem solving (Goldberg, 2005; Hall, 2010; Meeks & Jeste, 2009). It stands to reason that cognitive science, which attempts to create theoretical links between philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific constructs (by making use of information processing ideas drawn from the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence), could have a lot to say about wisdom. In a sense, wisdom is a quintessential cognitive science topic: cognitive science offers both a diverse and integrated theoretical perspective that makes it uniquely suited to investigating and explicating a phenomenon as cognitively complex as wisdom.