Howard Lipin / UNION-TRIBUNE
Dr. Dilip V. Jeste, M.D., UCSD professor of psychiatry and neurosciences.
The next time you say, “That was a wise decision,” consider that you might be wrong — or setting yourself up for an argument.
People have discussed wisdom forever. There’s no clear definition of the word, said Dr. Dilip Jeste, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at UCSD.
Jeste has been consulting with experts around the world about this issue, and he shared his thoughts with us recently.
Question: Modern humans have existed for at least 200,000 years. How is it possible that science hasn’t come up with a widely accepted definition of wisdom?
Answer: Wisdom is an abstract concept. It’s not like an object such as a tree or animal, which you can see and describe easily. That makes it harder to define. It is like stress, which everyone experiences but there’s really no good definition for it.
The same could be said of intelligence or pornography. As they say, you know pornography when you see it, but it’s difficult to come up with a definition that people agree on.
Wisdom also has been hard to define because it historically has been part of religious and philosophical literature, but not part of scientific tradition. There are mentions of wisdom in the Bible and other religious documents. Likewise for philosophy, but not in science.
Q: You asked experts to consider intelligence and spirituality as key traits of wisdom. Why did you choose those traits over things like life experience?
A: Intelligence has always been considered to be a central element of wisdom. It has only been in recent years that emotion has also been thought to be an important part of wisdom.
Similarly, in the religious literature, you read that you cannot be wise unless you are religious or spiritual. The examples of wise people that are commonly given are those of people like Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr., who are clearly religious or spiritual individuals.
Q: Does a person have to be intelligent to be wise?
A: I think intelligence is necessary but not sufficient. We published a paper in which we cited the elements we thought are part of wisdom. One is intelligence, or a general knowledge of life. The other is “emotional regulation.” The third is insight.
Then there’s pro-social behavior — things like empathy, compassion, altruism. Another component is decisiveness, being able to act on things, even when you face a situation that’s not black or white, but gray.
And finally, there is something called value relativism, where different people may have different values and you accept that fact. For example, another person may have strong opinions about abortion or the death penalty that are different from yours, and you feel it is OK that these opinions aren’t the same as yours.
We developed our definition by reading many different scientific papers in which researchers referred to wisdom. We looked for elements that were common to at least three of the published definitions of wisdom. This let us come up with our definition of wisdom, but that doesn’t mean that what we believe is shared by others.
Q: How does spirituality play into all of this?
A: Things like empathy, compassion, altruism are essential parts of wisdom. Spirituality can involve these things, too. But spirituality doesn’t necessarily include other elements of wisdom I’ve mentioned, like the general knowledge of life, or insight, or value relativism, or even decisiveness. A person can be spiritual but not necessarily wise.
Q: The experts you consulted consider wisdom to be uniquely human. Do you agree?
A: It all depends on how you define wisdom. If you define it as strictly based on intelligence, then, yes, animals can be wise. But if you also include insight and value relativism, it is hard to think of animals as having those abilities. The exception might be the higher-level non-human primates.
Q: The experts also said wisdom increases as a person ages. Wouldn’t that make life experience the most important factor in developing wisdom?
A: Life experience is not enough. It’s what you do with your life that’s important. Some people suffer post-traumatic stress disorder because of stress, while others may have post-traumatic personal growth and development.
Q: Are you a wise man?
A: Anybody who thinks he or she is wise is a fool. I think it is up to others to decide whether you are wise. The more you learn, the more you realize that you don’t know so many things in life.
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