As audacious as that question might sound, I think there really is an answer, or at least a direction toward an answer. Actually there are three directions.
Before considering what these directions might be, we should ask another question, namely, what is tacit knowledge and how does it form?
Everyone knows what we mean by expertise. Experts make doing their job look easy. And if you were to ask an expert how s/he does her/his job they would actually have a great deal of difficulty answering you. This is very similar to the situation where someone asked you how you ride a bicycle. You would not be able to answer questions like: How do you balance yourself. You could offer tips, and make generalized observations: Well when I feel myself falling to one side I shift my center of gravity the other way! But in reality you do not actually know what you are doing and, when you do ride you never think about what you are doing. Yet, once, long ago, you learned how to ride. You actually did think about every move you made and you practiced until after a while your body just automatically did the right thing (most of the time). This is skill learning. We do it whenever we need to accomplish some physical task, play a sport, or other activities involving dexterity and motion control.
It turns out expertise is just like this. We generally think of expertise as a form of knowledge rather than a skill, but the two are closely related. We use our intelligence to focus on specific knowledge bits and decision processes needed to perform a knowledge-based task. We learn to read, we learn to write, we learn subjects in school (sometimes), and later we learn our jobs. We practice these learned capabilities until one day they are basically automatic. We don't need to think about what we are thinking. It just happens.
This is what we mean by tacit knowledge. Whatever we have become expert in doing/thinking is ineffable when we try to explain it to someone. We have lost contact with the HOW and only think about the WHY and WHAT. As with all expertise there are both levels of accomplishment and scope of problem domains in which expertise can be applied. Some people learn their expertise quickly and perform subsequently with great facility. Others are less competent. This, again, is a function of intelligence. Some people can learn a wider scope of expertise while others, indeed most people, are content with a more narrow range. This is also a function of intelligence along with a storage capacity.
There is one form of expertise that is not a common and that is expertise in matters of emotion and social life, what Dan Goleman calls 'Emotional Intelligence'. People require a high level of special attention to matters of social interactions and human affect, and be able to learn from their experiences. This is another kind of expertise. It can extend in scope to just the immediate family, friends, and associates, which is typical. Or it can extend in scope to a larger domain of inclusion — seeing many more strangers as part of one's own group vs. as 'others'. It can be limited by ideological influences or racial perceptions. Or it can extend to all of mankind and even to the whole biota, what is called biophilia. And a few individuals on this planet do achieve expertise in the area of affect over the whole of the planet.
So by tacit knowledge I mean all of that background knowledge that one gains over one's life that is stored in a form that is not directly accessible (though one can recall episodes that contributed to it), and, depending on their level of expertise, contributes through sapience processing to generate judgments. The greater the expertise, the better the judgment.
As it happens, there are some evolutionarily established 'guidelines' or templates for developing expertise in matters of life. These templates are essentially hardwired into our brains but they are extraordinarily malleable in terms of what specific knowledge gets chosen to represent the form.
Over several of the last months I have been touching on two main themes. One is systems science as a way to understand the world and tackle the finding solutions for many of our serious global challenges. The other is strategic thinking/management/planning as a necessary aspect of system governance. Clearly, as that last sentence indicates, these two themes are not independent of one another. But now I want to put these into this larger context of what kind of tacit knowledge goes into sapient thinking as the basis for wise decision making. But in addition to these two themes, there is another equally important template for human sapience and that is moral sentiment. Let me touch on this briefly first.
Moral sentiment
Much has been written of late about the evolution of moral sentiment or the moral mind (c.f. Mark Hauser's Moral Minds or Elliot Sober's & David Sloan Wilson's, Unto Others). The growing picture of human morality as developed by several lines of psychological (including economic psychology) research along with correlative evidence from brain research indicates that humans care about right and wrong behavior in others and themselves (c.f. "The Roots of Morality", Science 302:5877, 9 May, 2008, page 734). They care about caring for one another. Human altruism seems to be about as 'true', that is actually selfless, as it can be given the evolutionary history. But humans are still plagued by tribal urges as well. The US-THEM mentality is still prevalent in the human psyche. Nevertheless, it appears that humans earnestly and continually care what other humans think and feel (empathy). And this built-in moral sense drives much of what our learning system attends to in daily life. To the extent that a person can attend to the circumstances, context, emotions, and outcomes of social situations, and internalize those, that person can leverage and understanding of right and wrong behavior to a higher level of what is good for the group. And if that person has the capacity, in sapience, to extend the scope of that understanding to all of mankind and the world, then... But therein is our problem, no?
Still, built-in moral sentiments, not the dogmatic rules of, say, a religious belief system, are there to guide and condition our construction of tacit knowledge about social life. It is this natural tendency to organize our thoughts around moral poles (right/wrong, good/bad) that led to the development of explicit rules associated with religion (Thou shalt not...this and that); the latter being a consequence of, not a cause of moral sentiment.
Systems knowledge
I have made the argument that systems science is a fundamental framework for learning all other sciences and a guidance to understanding the way the world works. In future posts I plan to delve more deeply into what systems science is, but for now I will just point out that it is the formal version of systems thinking and systems knowledge. The latter two are what brains do automatically to a greater or lesser degree. That is, your brain already does an informal kind of systems science in the very way it works. Systems thinking is about seeing systemness in the world and being able to track the dynamics of interactions between systems. It is what the brain does when identifying objects, categorizing things and ideas, and building models of process. It is the basis for representing real things in abstract form (concepts) and manipulating the interrelationships between those represented forms to play 'what-if' games. It is what allows us to use metaphors and allegories to create maps between similarly patterned things in an attempt to understand the new in terms of the old and provide guidance to others who may follow.
Systems thinking guides our attention to how the world is constructed and how it works. We build systems in our minds as we learn. Systematization is why we categorize knowledge into disciplines and subjects. It is all a matter of understanding organization and dynamics, and hence, consequences (cause and effect) in the real world. And the models we construct allow us to anticipate the world of tomorrow.
Sapience is systems thinking to construct systems knowledge in order to think systemically! As I said, everyone does it. Only some do it much better than others. Some have achieved a kind of transcendence from the particulars of specific systems to see that systemness is inherent in all of nature. And using that transcendent level of understanding to be able to grasp nature as a system of systems. To be able to understand never before encountered systems by applying knowledge of systemness to the new. Wise people always seem to be able to grasp the essence of a problem even when it is something seemingly new to the ordinary mind. They can accomplish this feat because they think systemically with systemic knowledge. And this is part of the way in which sapience conditions and guides intelligent decision making.
Strategic knowledge
The other part of guidance of intelligence is from strategic thinking and strategic knowledge. Remember hierarchical control theory? Remember strategic level (planning) control in a hierarchical system? It now starts to come together. Strategic thinking is when you consider the world and what it will be like in the future, and you consider yourself, and what you will be like in the future (or at least what you want to be like). And then you plan for what you need to achieve to bring these scenarios into being. From strategic thinking the planning goes down the hierarchy to tactical (what resources do you need and how will you get them) and logistical (how should you spend your time and use your resources). Finally it gets down to day-to-day operations — the things you actually do in order to meet your strategically set goals.
Strategic thinking depends on strategic knowledge. Your planning (even if it is subconscious) depends on how well you understand the world (the system of systems) and how well you understand yourself (what are you good at, what should you avoid). That knowledge is systems knowledge that has strategic use.
Sapience is strategic in its operation. The more sapient a person is, the longer into the future s/he thinks. The more sapient a person is, the more people will be included in the strategic view.
So now, putting these three elements together we can start to understand what sapience is, operationally, and wisdom is as a form of knowledge in action. Moral (motivated for the good), systemic (seeing the connectedness of all the parts and the dynamics of the whole), and strategic (seeing the possibilities and consequences in pursuit of better life) knowledge/thinking is what supports the sapient individual. These three factors guide the acquisition of knowledge that becomes the expertise of the wise mind. A wise person doesn't need to be completely conscious of this knowledge or how s/he acquired it or even how s/he uses it. It is a natural process of the sapient brain.
Here is a simple diagram of the breakdown of sapience. As with the prior diagram where I showed sapience, intelligence, creativity, and affect as overlapping ovals, representing functional aspects, this diagram shows the three aspects of sapience in more detail, along with the storehouse of tacit knowledge. I've not shown flows out of sapience to intelligence, etc. in order to simplify the basic idea.
Now we can complete the picture of judgment. Judgment made from a strategic, holistic, and moral (including ethical) perspective is more likely to guide intelligent decision-making toward more comprehensive solutions to problems. Sometimes those judgments will not be recognized as wise by others who do not have that same perspective, a reason why wisdom is not often recognized or appreciated in this day and age. Most people have just enough sapience to deal with local, greedy-type problem solving, taking care of the immediate or short-term needs without recognizing the long-term consequences of their short-term solutions. You know, sort of like the modern version of capitalism! And the modern version of politics. The wise version of these institutions suggest long-term investment with modest profit put to development (not growth) or statesmanship and stewardship. But we don't see these practices today. Today's business and political leaders are largely seeking short-term, high gain solutions. But that is mostly because the majority of people also seek these solutions. No one is to blame, and everyone is to blame.
We have to find wisdom and wise solutions, I think, in order for humanity to have a successor species.
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