Abstract
Efforts to educate for wisdom are sorely needed in order to solve humanity’s most pressing problems, as explained by philosopher Nicholas Maxwell and psychologist Robert Sternberg, among others. This paper explains that the handful of wisdom pedagogies that have been put forward to date, however, are inadequate for developing the sort of wisdom that can solve our major problems, because they fail to identify and target for development four cognitive functions necessary for wise decision-making. These functions are causal analysis, prospection, social cognition, and metacognition. I show how adequately performing these cognitive functions, which constitute the core of systems thinking, is necessary for solving our most serious global problems, as various systems-thinking experts have also argued. Drawing on recent research on learning and the development of expertise, I explain how the capabilities to perform these functions can be developed by pedagogical methods that help students construct more adequate cognitive models of (i) natural, social, and psychological systems of cause and effect and (ii) the cognitive procedures required to comprehend and effectively intervene in these systems. The basic principles for implementing this wisdom/systems-thinking pedagogy across academic disciplines are explained, and examples from different disciplines are provided.
Highlights
Wisdom, which I will define as the ability to respond to actual or potential problems with decisions that maximize flourishing for all affected parties, both and in the future, produces wide-ranging and profound benefits for those seemingly rare individuals who possess it—for whom it provides empirically verified social, economic, psychological, and even physical health benefits [1]—and for the countless other people who are affected by the wise decisions made by such individuals
The shaded inner circle of the wisdom/systems-thinking diagram in Figure 1 is such a model: it is an explicit graphic representation of the basic cognitive processes one needs to enact in relation to basic features of the world in order to produce the sorts of wise decisions necessary for solving major global problems
In order to develop the sort of wisdom necessary for solving humanity’s most pressing problems, instruction in the academic disciplines in the university should include explanations of (a) the nature of complex systems, (b) the systems nature of the discipline’s subject matter, (c) the nature and importance of the four systems-thinking skills, and (d) the role of these four skills in the discipline’s practices
Summary
Wisdom, which I will define as the ability to respond to actual or potential problems with decisions that maximize flourishing for all affected parties, both and in the future, produces wide-ranging and profound benefits for those seemingly rare individuals who possess it—for whom it provides empirically verified social, economic, psychological, and even physical health benefits [1]—and for the countless other people who are affected by the wise decisions made by such individuals. If humanity had possessed wisdom sufficient first, to foresee the likely undesirable consequences of the use of science and technology, and second, to take action to prevent their occurrence, our global problems would not have arisen either. “In order to acquire a bit more social wisdom,” he advises, “we need our institutions of learning to be rationally devoted to the job. At present they are not, and that is the underlying source of our current global malaise” In a political and social age that devalues cognitive and moral nuance, ignores the determinative force of cultural difference, and leaves both empathy and cognitive humility in short supply, we have no choice but to consistently, and self-consciously, teach for wisdom” [7] (n.p.)
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