What Is Intellectual Wisdom Good for?
It's Worth Asking; Five Benefits
About the Author
Bryan Frances is the world’s only intellectual wisdom coach. He’s a former professor of philosophy & logic, doing research & teaching at universities in the US, UK, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He teaches you how to become the wisest thinker in the room—which is different from being the most knowledgeable or having the highest IQ. Contact for a free session.
If we are honest with ourselves, and rebel at the prospect of swallowing whole everything we’re told, then we will question why we need wisdom. It’s pretty clear that love and money are stupendous. People will look at you funny if you ask why anyone would want them. But wisdom? What’s so great about it? Set aside the platitude that of course wisdom is valuable. Also set aside the social unacceptability of even questioning the value of wisdom. For once, let’s ask why it might be valuable.
I go over this issue in more detail elsewhere, but we can take a quick look at five real-world benefits of acquiring intellectual wisdom.
First benefit. I don’t care how smart, successful, rich, good-looking, prolific, knowledgeable, or well-educated you are. If you’re honest with yourself, then you have felt the embarrassment of being like me—and everyone I know—in realizing that
You have been duped in the past. A real fool.
You have to live with thoroughgoing uncertainty regarding something you once were supremely confident about.
You are wildly incompetent about things that a great many other perfectly normal people can do quite well.
There are oodles of things you “should” know but don’t know at all.
I’m not going to give you false promises here, like in many self-improvement books. When you have intellectual wisdom, (1)-(4) are still going to happen once in a while. Even so, there is some seriously good news.
First, (1)-(4) won’t happen nearly as frequently as they did in your past. In particular, the number of times that (1) and (2) happen will definitely decrease dramatically. Scenario (1) won’t happen because you’ll know how to adjust your opinions in accord with evidence. Scenario (2) won’t happen because you almost never start out “supremely confident” in much of anything of importance. So wisdom will help there too. For (3) and (4), your islands of incompetence aren’t going to go away, and you’re still going to be woefully lacking in knowledge that lots of other people have. Deal with it, as it’s unavoidable.
Second, (3) and (4) won’t bother you nearly as much as before, which is a huge benefit for any intellectual. I know many intelligent and successful people who can just barely summon the courage to introspectively admit that (1)-(4) are true of themselves. Acquiring intellectual wisdom will jettison that weakness of character.
Let’s move on to the second benefit of gaining intellectual wisdom: knowing the differences amongst just the following six basic epistemic states of mind is crucial to being able to successfully navigate the world of information--and disinformation--we live in.
True belief
Confident belief
Evidentially reasonable belief
Practically useful belief
Socially accepted belief
Knowledge
It turns out that these are wildly different, contrary to expectations. Google, Wikipedia, and AI chatbots provide almost no reliable help in figuring out how these six are related to one another.
Third benefit of gaining wisdom. Intellectually curious people often read abstract, difficult, and impressive-sounding philosophy about how knowledge and belief are related to political power, sex, gender, success in life, cultural perspective, economic class, social class, race, and other interesting and vital matters. This is an excellent idea. However, in a great many cases this admirable effort is premature and inevitably riddled with misunderstanding, despite serious intentions and efforts on the part of the curious and intelligent person. The reason it doesn’t go well in the vast majority of cases is that most of us have only a weak understanding of the basic concepts of epistemology and logic, such as knowledge, truth, and belief. Until one improves that understanding, one will not be able to grapple with the impressive-sounding philosophy.
Fourth benefit. Knowing one’s way around the key epistemic and logical concepts has benefits for one’s personal and professional life. Knowing how to deal with colleagues, employees, friends, neighbors, and family members is a lot easier if you improve your understanding of their minds. Knowing the basic relations amongst the epistemological and logical notions is a bit like getting the right prescription lenses for the first time in one’s life, and then peering into the minds of others. If that sounds like a superpower, well, that’s because it is.
Fifth benefit: it helps one figure out one’s own mind, and how to deal with it. It helps one do each of these:
discover the origins of one’s beliefs
be comfortable in withholding judgment
be at ease in having unpopular opinions
change belief without embarrassment, even when the belief was highly valued
know when one has evidence sufficient for reasonable belief
know when one should think for oneself
avoid numerous common mistakes in reasoning in life
And so on.
So, there are at least five benefits to increasing your amount of intellectual wisdom.