{"id":519,"date":"2012-09-17T12:16:13","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T10:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/filosofille.wordpress.com\/?p=519"},"modified":"2026-05-12T09:12:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T08:12:59","slug":"qa-36-sept-2012-knowledge-v-wisdom-which-leads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/qa-36-sept-2012-knowledge-v-wisdom-which-leads\/","title":{"rendered":"QA 36. Sept 2012. Knowledge vs wisdom: which leads?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Someone recently pointed me to Philosophy v science: which can answer the big questions of life?<\/a> (The Observer<\/em>, 9 Sept 2012), a conversation between Julian Baggini, philosopher, and Lawrence Krauss, physicist, both well known for accessible writing on complex topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As philosophy\u2019s champion, Baggini concedes far too much ground. His basic position is that \u201cit is an ineliminable feature of human life that we are confronted with many issues that are not scientifically tractable, but we can grapple with them, understand them as best we can and we can do this with some rigour and seriousness of mind.\u201d I agree, but I would change the emphasis: the grounds, aims and conduct of science are among those issues that empirical knowledge can\u2019t satisfy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the two express surprise at how much they agree with each other, it\u2019s not that surprising: they share an astonishingly optimistic and uncritical view of science which tends to flatten and impoverish our understanding of our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Are the achievements of science really \u201cclear and indisputable\u201d, as Baggini suggests? (Is that Thomas Kuhn<\/a> spinning in his grave?) And if they were, would it really be \u201cwonderful\u201d if philosophy\u2019s answers were equally so? Mightn\u2019t we be better off trying to find some significance \u2013 and humility \u2013 in the uncertainty of our knowledge?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baggini suggests that psychology has quite properly taken over important questions that were once seen as philosophy\u2019s domain. He seems to mean the scientific trends of neuro- and evolutionary psychology, as if their answers to questions of human behaviour are also decisive, clear and indisputable. They are not. As a scientist friend commented<\/a>, \u201cWe don\u2019t really have much of a clue about simple things like how particular wavelengths of light being absorbed on the retina give rise to the perception of red, let alone something as elusive and multifaceted as love.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krauss says that \u201cscience provides the basis for moral decisions, which are sensible only if they are based on reason, which is itself based on empirical evidence\u201d. Well, sensible decisions and moral ones may overlap but they are different. The good may transcend what is sensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krauss says that evolutionary biology allows us to understand sacrifice and altruism as driven by gene propagation. I don\u2019t see how that could be validated with much scientific rigour \u2013 or say anything meaningful about the ways we experience and value selfless concern for others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he says, \u201cIt is not a large leap of the imagination to expect that we will one day be able to break down those social actions\u2026 to biological reactions\u201d. That\u2019s one scary ambition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an old story of a man looking for his keys under a streetlight on a dark night. A stranger stops to help. \u201cWhere did you drop them?\u201d \u201cOver there,\u201d replies the man, \u201cbut the light is much better here!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over this prevailing and futile compulsion to bring everything to light, philosophy still regards the wisdom \u201cover there\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone recently pointed me to Philosophy v science: which can answer the big questions of life? (The Observer, 9 Sept 2012), a conversation between Julian Baggini, philosopher, and Lawrence Krauss, physicist, both well known for accessible writing on complex topics….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[103,104,105,106,107],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-everyday-philosophy","tag-big-questions","tag-julian-baggini","tag-lawrence-krauss","tag-philosophy","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2348,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions\/2348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}