Alfred North Whitehead on Instinct, Intelligence, and Wisdom
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- Опубліковано 21 тра 2024
- From "Adventures of Ideas" (1933), pp. 47-48.
"Our consciousness does not initiate our modes of functioning. We awake to find ourselves engaged in process, immersed in satis¬factions and dissatisfactions, and actively modifying, either by intensification, or by attenuation, or by the introduction of novel purposes. This primary procedure which is presupposed in con¬sciousness, I will term Instinct. It is the mode of experience directly arising out of the urge of inheritance, individual and environmental. Also, after instinct and intellectual ferment have done their work, there is a decision which determines the mode of coalescence of instinct with intelligence. I will term this factor Wisdom. It is the function of wisdom to act as a modifying agency on the intellectual ferment so as to produce a self-determined issue from the given conditions. Thus for the purpose of understanding social institutions, this crude three-fold division of human nature is required: Instinct, Intelligence, Wisdom.
But this division must not be made too sharply. After all, intel¬lectual activity is itself an inherited factor. We do not initiate thought by an effort of self-consciousness. We find ourselves think¬ing, just as we find ourselves breathing and enjoying the sunset. There is a habit of daydreaming, and a habit of thoughtful elucida¬tion. Thus the autonomy of thought is strictly limited, often neglig¬ible, generally beyond the threshold of consciousness. The ways of thought of a nation are as much instinctive-that is to say, are sub¬ject to routine-as are its ways of emotional reaction. But most of us believe that there is a spontaneity of thought which lies beyond routine. Otherwise, the moral claim for freedom of thought is with¬out meaning. This spontaneity of thought is, in its turn, subject to control as to its maintenance and efficiency. Such control is the judg¬ment of the whole, attenuating or strengthening the partial flashes of self-determination. The whole determines what it wills to be, and thereby adjusts the relative importance of its own inherent flashes of spontaneity. This final determination is its Wisdom or, in other words, its subjective aim as to its own nature, with its limits set by inherited factors.
Wisdom is proportional to the width of the evidence made effec¬tive in the final self-determination. The intellectual operations con¬sist in the coordination of notions derived from the primary facts of instinctive experience into a logically coherent system. Those facts, whose qualitative aspects are thus coordinated, gain importance in the final self-determination. This intellectual coordination is more readily achieved when the primary facts are selected so as to dismiss the baffling aspects of things into intellectual subordination. For this reason intellectual activity is apt to flourish at the expense of Wisdom. To some extent, to understand is always to exclude a back¬ground of intellectual incoherence. But Wisdom is persistent pursuit of the deeper understanding, ever confronting intellectual system with the importance of its omissions. These three elements, Instinct, Intelligence, Wisdom, cannot be torn apart. They integrate, react, and merge into hybrid factors. It is the case of the whole emerging from its parts, and the parts emerging within the whole. In judging social institutions, their rise, their culmination, and their decay, we have to estimate the types of instinct, of intelligence, and of wisdom which have cooperated with natural forces to develop the story. The folly of intelligent people, clear-headed and narrow-visioned, has precipitated many catastrophes."
I'm always left amazed at Whitehead's capacity for introspection and insight, and doubly so in his ability to intuitively convey his ideas. It's such a treat to read him. Thanks for uploading!
This is great. I always wish these kinds of descriptions were then followed by different instances in everyday life. If anybody reading this can bring these terms into an experience of say, suddenly realizing exactly what is missing from the party I am planning for my niece, I'd appreciate it.
Moments like that contain the cosmos, so any complex description of cosmic becoming should be able to translate itself into such moments and help explicate them anew and afresh.
So far, I THINK Whitehead's notion of process is tracking the same events that Gendlin's was tracks. Gendlin, because he starts his study smack in the middle of the creation of meanings, always can tie is oddest terms to daily events. I know that Whitehead can as well, but I just haven't found the book or thinker who does this.
Maybe that is the key difference; if you start within the phenomenology of the creation of meaning, you tend to be in daily life, so daily experiences are instances of the most complex aspects of process and can continuously deepen the model. Just noticing how you attend to your kitten can suddenly open up a new insight into the model itself.
Boom!
"The folly of intelligent people, clear-headed and narrow-visioned, has precipitated many catastrophes." 💀
Brilliant.
This was more helpful than I'd care to admit or even can and strangely I chose 20 minutes or so ago to finish the book after perhaps over a year of not reading it, but I recognized immediately its 'tone', idk; I was loosing it isolation but his words brought some much needed silence. He was not a regular person.
🙏❤️🌍🌿🕊🎵🎶🎵
Beauty
Truth
Love
This mad had/has a beautiful mind.
Good day to you, professr,
I am a young student of philosophy how constderder himself a platonist, an idealist and a nominalist. Could you tell me do you consider yourself more a realist or an idealist, a nominalist or a realist, a platonist or an aristotelian ?
Where do I start with ANW? I’m coming from a Rupert Sheldrake angle.
I’d hang in with Matt for a while… so much depth here … then the path will present itself… a book will get mentioned that tickles yer fancy perhaps
The channel formscapes is a great resource.
I just picked up a book called process theology, if you don't mind a Christian take on process metaphysics
The music is distracting.