The nature of wisdom: people’sconnection to nature reflects a deepunderstanding of life

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The nature of wisdom: people'sconnection to nature reflects a deepunderstanding of life

T. Andringa, N. Angyal

Abstract

This paper shows that wise young adults formulate phenomenological intuitions about their relationship to nature that contain many references to advanced modern conceptions of life and `core cognition'. Enactive cognition - summarized as “being by doing”, focuses on a living agent's ability to remain alive through the selection of proper `behaviors' from the set of coping and co-cre- ating behaviors. Co-creating agents satisfy their immediate needs while improving the quality of the environment on which their need satisfaction depends. They contribute to a thriving environment in which long-term need satisfaction is greatly facilitated. We refer to this skill as `agent adequacy' that we associate with wisdom. Inadequate agents continually cope with need satisfaction. They might end up in a `coping trap' where their coping strategies gradually degrade the habitat on which their long-term viability depends. In doing so, they lock themselves in an endless cycle of marginal need satisfaction. We propose concise and precise formulations of three fundamental concepts of the agent-environment relation: adequacy (the ability to satisfy needs in the short and long term), connectedness (referring to a personal bond with other agents or nature as a whole that is experienced as mutual), and beauty (that derives from the environment's ability to produce fragile perfection that is a measure of environmental quality). Analysis of our interviews showed that our (rather wise) group of respondents addressed all three fundamental concepts. We conclude that our theoretically derived agent-environment framework is exemplified by the human-nature relation. satisfaction need behavior

Keywords: enactive cognition, agent adequacy, wisdom, life, nature, beauty, connectedness, peak experiences, phenomenology, core cognition, need satisfaction, self-actualization.

В статье описывается процесс, в ходе которого обладающие мудростью совершеннолетние молодые люди формулируют основанные на интуиции феноменологические знания об их отношении к природе, включающие многочисленные отсылки к современным представлениям о жизни и «базовому познанию». Энактивизм, или «бытие через делание», определяется как способность живого субъекта оставаться в живых посредством выбора правильного поведения из набора способов совладающего поведения и совместного творчества. Люди, вовлеченные в процесс совместного творчества, удовлетворяют свои насущные потребности, одновременно повышая качество среды, от которой зависит удовлетворение этих потребностей. Они способствуют процветанию и динамичному развитию среды, в которой надолго значительно упрощается удовлетворение потребностей. Мы называем этот навык «адекватностью субъекта» и связываем его с мудростью. Неадекватные субъекты вновь и вновь сталкиваются с необходимостью удовлетворения потребностей. Они могут попасть в «ловушку совладания», когда применяемые стратегии совладания постепенно ухудшают среду обитания, от которой зависит их жизнь в долгосрочной перспективе. При этом они оказываются заключенными в бесконечный цикл удовлетворения критических потребностей. Мы предлагаем краткие и точные формулировки трех основных понятий отношения «субъект-среда»: адекватность -- это способность удовлетворять потребности в краткосрочной и долгосрочной перспективе; связность -- это личная связь с другими субъектами или природой в целом, переживаемая как взаимная; красота, истоки которой - в способности окружающей среды создавать хрупкое совершенство, являющееся мерой качества окружающей среды. Анализ проведенных интервью показал, что наша (довольно мудрая) группа респондентов оперировала всеми тремя основными понятиями. Мы делаем вывод о том, что наша теоретически разработанная концепция «субъект-среда» находит отражение в реальных примерах отношений между человеком и природой.

Ключевые слова: энактивизм, адекватность субъекта, мудрость, жизнь, природа, красота, связность, пиковые переживания, феноменология, базовое познание, удовлетворение потребностей, самореализация.

Introduction

This paper shows that (wise) young people formulate phenomenological intuitions containing many references to advanced modern conceptions of “life” and wisdom about their relationship to nature. We combine theoretical work on the origins of cognition from the perspective of enactive cognition (Andringa, van den Bosch, & Wijermans, 2015) with an (initially) unrelated thesis addressing the phenomenology of connectedness to nature (Angyal, 2018). In our discussions we realized that the interviews with (apparently) wise young adults, on which the thesis was based, provided many insights and clear formulations about the properties of the connection between a (living) agent and its environment. Here we connect our theoretical approach to the insights conveyed in the interviews and we show a high level of coherence.

Enactive cognition (Di Paolo, Rohde, & De Jaegher, 2010; Thompson, 2004, 2007; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1993) is an approach to cognitive science that starts from defining properties of life as initially formulated in the field of “auto- poiesis” (Maturana & Varela, 1991). Autopoiesis means self-production and refers to life's central ability to maintain and produce itself without external direction. Self-production and self-perpetuation occur on the level of living individuals, but the interdependence of living individuals in habitats and ecosystems and the interdependence of the different ecosystems on Earth entails that life as a whole -- the biosphere -- produces and maintains itself as well. Within enactive cognition, individuals are referred to as “living agents” or “agents” for short. Agents, unlike rocks or hurricanes, are sources of self-initiated activities: “behaviors”. Agents are free to select their behaviors as long as these behaviors keep them alive (death obviously ends the self-initiation of behavior). Enactive cognition can therefore be summarized as “being by doing” (Froese & Ziemke, 2009).

The enactive framework allows us to develop cognitive science from the defining properties of life (5 Gya, 5X10⁹ years ago) and hence from well before the advent of brains and neurons (about 0.5 Gya), and even multicellular (1 Gya) and eukaryotic life (2.4 Gya). Enactive cognition allows us to study key aspects of cognition without human and cultural biases and idiosyncrasies. In fact, what we summarize below is the cognition shared by all of life that we refer to as “core cognition” (Andringa et al., 2015). We argued that human cognition is scaffolded, via many evolutionary innovations, on core cognition and manifests core cognition in its own idiosyncratic and culturally colored ways. Still, we argue and demonstrate that references to core cognition emerge both spontaneously and clearly in conversations with young individuals who address their connection with nature.

In this paper, we do something that is unusual for psychology: we do not start from a human subject, rather we start from an abstract living entity -- the agent -- that ensures its own existence through its own doing. And it does so by attending to its own needs and only on success promotes an environment in which need satisfaction is facilitated. In doing so we aim to derive a concise and precise formulation of fundamental concepts of the human-environment relation: adequacy, connectedness, and beauty.

In the next section, we first outline core cognition and identify aspects that we expect to feature in conversations about people's connection to nature. This leads to a number of concepts that we use to analyze the interviews. After the methods section, we present the results as examples of how the expected concepts are formulated by our participants. We conclude with a discussion. Note that when we talk about “agents” we refer to the domain of core cognition: cognition shared by all of life. When we refer to humans, e.g., participants or young adults, we are in a human context in which core cognition is implemented in uniquely human and cultural ways.

Theoretical Framework: Enactive Cognition

Agent Adequacy

Because life self-produces, it is not directed by external forces. Nevertheless, it is subject to the environmental conditions that may promote or impede its viability. Living agents exist on a viability axes with languishing (low viability) on one extreme and thriving (high viability) on the other extreme. In our previous paper (Andringa et al., 2015, figure 2) we described how a number of key concepts of cognitive science arose from these defining properties of life.

In particular, we separated two modes of existence: the coping-mode that aims to protect existence by satisfying pressing needs, and the co-creation mode that aims to contribute to an environment in which the occurrence of pressing needs -- and hence the activation of the coping mode -- is ever less likely. Success for the coping mode entails satisfaction of immediate needs, and with that its own deactivation. For the co-creation mode, the measure of success is its own continued activation, and hence a thriving state characterized by continually satisfied needs. Therefore, a key difference between the two modes is an association with (coping) states that agents want to avoid or end, and (co-creation) states that the agent aims for and wants to perpetuate. We refer to “agent adequacy” as the ability to be in the co-creation mode often and to return to it quickly when brought in the coping mode. Vice versa, “agent inadequacy” refers to the inability to avoid or end states that the agent does not want to be in.

“Intelligence” as the ability to solve (i.e., end) problems, is a key skill of the coping mode, and “power” defined as “the ability to reach intended results” (Russell, 1938), is a measure of how well an agent copes. Negative emotions and moods, those that we want to end and avoid, are naturally associated with the coping mode (Andringa et al., 2015). So an agent that is driven by deficiency needs (Maslow, 1954) is in the coping mode. Although the purpose of the coping mode is to be discontinued as soon as possible by satisfying pressing needs, this is preconditioned on the successful resolution of the deficiency needs. If the coping agent solves one problem by creating another problem, it can inadvertently ensure its own continuation. We refer to this as a “coping trap”.

Agents in a coping trap are often self-responsible for being and remaining in the coping mode by their inability to satisfy needs without creating new or more (future) problems/needs. Being and remaining in a coping trap is a telltale indicator of the agent's inadequacy. An inadequate agent maintains a situation it rather wants to end. And it typically does so because of the inability to select behaviors that would end the unfavorable situation. A richer behavioral repertoire, an increased sense of realism, and improved strategies to execute effective behaviors when appropriate makes the inadequate agent (more) adequate. Learning counterproductive strategies and sticking to them (perhaps because the strategies provide some fleeting benefits) increases the inadequacy. Learned helplessness (Maier & Seligman, 1976) can be interpreted in terms of a coping trap since it only occurs for fairly difficult behaviors under the agentic control (Andringa, van den Bosch, &

Vlaskamp, 2013). When agents have accepted that their behaviors are pointless in addressing their needs, they have locked themselves in a coping trap.

In this paper we refer to “wisdom” as “the ability to produce broadly beneficial desired results while taking the full consequences of behavior on the habitat into account” (Andringa et al., 2015). Wisdom allows agents to contribute to the environment in ways that allow the habitat to recover and grow, despite the agent also taking from it to satisfy its needs. This is a definition of wisdom that is not anthropocentric and, in fact, allows individuals of any species to act wisely. A positive sum total of the subtractions from and contributions to the habitat allows the habitat to grow and flourish. Hence it is ever easier for the agent to satisfy its needs without having them become pressing and thus activating the coping mode. Wise agents manifest a deep “understanding” through their ability to work with the tendencies in their habitat to promote its flourishing. While the inadequate agent proves its lack of understanding through the inability to foresee the consequences of its own activities, the wise agent is able to enact its behaviors by avoiding (unnecessary) harm and promoting habitat growth. Wise agents therefore rarely end up in the coping mode through their own doing: they are adequate agents.

Development of Wisdom

In a paper called “Learning autonomy in two or three steps: linking open-ended development, authority, and agency to motivation” (Andringa et al., 2013) we separated three growth phases. In Phase 1 the agent learns to bring its body under control as a suitable vessel for sense-making and purposeful interaction with the environment. In Phase 2 it learns to become an adequate thinker, actor, and problem-solver by learning from whatever its environment (for humans, society) offers. Preconditioned on the success of Phase 2 and hence on becoming sufficiently adequate, the agent progresses to learn to effectively co-create a rich and flourishing habitat (for humans, its natural and societal environment).

The transition from Phase 2 to Phase 3 corresponds to what Ardelt (2000) describes as a difference between the use of “intellectual knowledge” and “wisdom-related knowledge”. The goals of the intellectual knowledge strategies are associated with the accumulation of (culturally shared) knowledge and information, and the discovery of new truths. It is focused on the mastery of the outside world through learning how to do the correct things efficiently and without error. It should result in making the world more certain, regular and predictable so that one's future self is better able to deal with the expected. Overall, it improves mastery.

In contrast, wisdom-related strategies are associated with the development of a deeper understanding of salient phenomena and events, and the (re)discovery of significant old truths. It is focused on interpretative knowledge and the question whether or not to influence things. Wisdom results in a mastery of the inner world from self-imposed limitations and the acceptance of uncertainty, irregularity, unpredictability, and the impermanence of the world (both cultural and natural) as a resource. A wise person learn from dealing with the unexpected and still unknown. Overall, wisdom improves one's ability to work with the tendencies of the world as opposed to frantically controlling and curtailing it. In short, it is co-creation (Andringa et al., 2013).

The skill to co-create is also known as the Daoist term “Wu wei” that means something like “act naturally”, “effortless action”, or “nonwillful action” (Littlejohn, 2003). Additionally, Maslow (1954) refers to co-creation as being-cognition (B-cognition), which he considered to be essentially associated with selfactualization. Our subjects were selected on the expectation that they had developed a deeper understanding of their relationship to nature, and hence we expected them to be rather wise and self-actualizing.

Pervasive Optimization and Connectedness

We have referred to co-creation as “pervasive optimization” (Andringa et al., 2013). Pervasive optimization is what keeps friendships viable. It does not involve scripted interactions or control. Quite the contrary: it relies on multiple small contributions to each other's viability. For example, being interested in each other, showing at random moments that you care, and providing help and support when appropriate, while leaving each other free. Maintaining healthy friendships is “Wu wei” in action. More generally, pervasive optimization allows agents to thrive in a habitat that is continually maintained and enriched by countless and nearly effortless pervasive optimizations by the living agents that constitute it.

Co-creation (pervasive optimization, Wu wei, or self-actualization) allows the (adequate) agent to form a mutualistic (mutually beneficial) relationship with its habitat. The inadequate agent is preoccupied with its own pressing needs and sees the habitat more as a resource for need satisfaction and self-enhancement than as an environment to be cared for as a basis for long-term need satisfaction. Adequate agents satisfy their needs without letting them develop into pressing - copingmode activating - needs. They do so by continually investing in habitat quality for (shared) long-term viability. Compared to inadequate individuals, they have developed a richer, more “lived”, more personal/idiosyncratic, and more tested understanding of their habitat and their natural and cultural environment. Our subjects experience this as a sense of connectedness, which most of them formulate in unique and deeply personal terms.

Role of Beauty

When we studied the interviews, we noticed a fair number of references to an initially vague concept that we referred to as “beauty”. In the beginning this puzzled us. Why were our participants interested in beauty and why did they connect beauty to value? More generally, why would an agent's interest be attracted to beauty and how could it indicate value in an enactive cognition framework? The beauty of a flower, a natural scene, and even a work of art is typically associated with combinations of concepts like fragility, perfection, complexity, interdependence, fleetingness, impermanence, health, and harmony. These concepts refer as much to the beautiful object as they refer to the quality of the environment that allowed the beauty -- as fragile perfection -- to emerge.

Hence, the beauty of an environment is suggestive of the environment's qualities to produce fragility, perfection, complexity, interdependence, and harmony. Since the beautiful is generally fragile and fleeting, it requires constant re-emergence to be abundantly visible. Hence prominent beauty is a sign of an environment that promotes highly “optimized” states of existence, which includes high viability states. In retrospect, we could have expected a role for a concept like beauty in our theoretical framework. In this paper we investigate how our informants refer to our new conception of beauty.

Expectations

Figure 1 provides an overview of our theoretical framework. Agents need to satisfy short- and long-term needs. Short-term needs are associated with keeping the individual agent alive. The inadequate agent, mainly through its own inability, struggles with continually unsatisfied pressing needs and is preoccupied with knowledge and strategies that give it more control over its situation, which, for humans, Ardelt (2000) refers to as intellectual knowledge use and Maslow as “deficiency cognition”. Adequate agents have learned how to satisfy pressing needs. They are interested to develop and improve pervasive optimization skills that promote the quality of their environment/habitat. This way, needs can be met while enhancing habitat quality. Ardelt refers to this as the use of wisdom related knowledge and Maslow as “being cognition”. Note that this process of habitat co-creation has allowed the biosphere to develop from an initially small and fragile state to its current robustness and scope.

We expect that only adequate agents -- in our case relatively wise, young adults -- feel and act on the inclination to develop high quality pervasive optimization (co-creation) strategies. Inadequate agents are preoccupied with pressing need satisfaction and are, by and large, unaware of these strategies and even of the need for them.

Figure 1 provides an overview of the theory and the resulting key terms. Note that these have been derived from arguments that pertain to living agents in general. In the last theory subsection we show how these key terms pertain to humans.

Wisdom in Humans

In the derivation of the key components of the (generalized) wisdom concept we separated agent adequacy, connectedness, and beauty. Is it possible to connect these concepts to an existing conceptualization of wisdom? We think we can. Ardelt has developed a Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (Ardelt, 2003) that separates wisdom in cognitive, affective, and reflective components. However, some of these components can also be interpreted in terms of adequacy, connectedness, and beauty. Below we use quoted phrases from Ardelt (2003) to show this.

Note. In our analysis we focus on formulations suggestive of agent adequacy, connectedness to the habitat, and perceiving beauty in relation to environmental value. Together these three concepts span important features of the concept of agent wisdom.

Adequacy refers to the ability to resolve pressing problems and to avoid coping traps. Hence “an inability to make important decision despite life's unpredictability and uncertainties” is contraindicative. Likewise, the observation “Things often go wrong for me by no fault of my own” or “I either get very angry or depressed if things go wrong” are indicative of prominent coping and perhaps a coping-trap. On the other hand, “A perception of phenomena and events from multiple perspectives” and frequent “self-examination, self-awareness, and self-insight” are suggestive of agents that try to make the most of a complex and unpredictable situation.

Figure 1Overview of Theoretical Key Terms

Connectedness refers to a personal bond with other agents or nature as a whole that is experienced as mutual. Contraindications of connectedness are remarks like “It's not really my problem if others are in trouble and need help” and “a tendency to see the world as either black or white” or us versus them. But “the presence of positive, caring, and nurturant emotions and behavior toward others” and “the absence of indifferent or negative emotions and behaviors toward others” are indicative of connectedness.

Beauty refers not so much to beautiful objects or scenes as such, but to the value we attribute to the environment that spawned the beauty and to our intrinsic motivation to care and connect. Remarks like “In this complicated world of ours, the only way we can know what's going on is to rely on leaders or experts who can be trusted” is a contraindication because it indicates an external locus of control. Similarly, agreeing with the statement “Life is basically the same most of the time” suggests an inability to see value in everyday situations. Overall an unawareness of ambiguity and uncertainty in life makes it difficult to appreciate the fleeting, uniquely harmonious, and fragile perfection of beauty. In contrast, appreciating beauty drives “the ability and willingness to understand a situation or phenomenon thoroughly”.

We will use these three conceptions of adequacy, connectedness, and beauty as our guideline to analyze our participant's formulation of their relationship to nature.

Methods

At the basis of this paper is a qualitative, phenomenological study we conducted in Groningen in the spring of 2018. This study was part of a bachelor thesis titled “The phenomenology of connectedness: An inquiry into the human experience of the natural world” (Angyal, 2018). It investigated the richness of people's experience of nature. Although the qualitative study was conducted for a purpose other than the present article, we found the material ideal to combine with our theoretical work on wisdom. The study consists of twelve in-depth interviews with selected individuals living in Groningen, that are reanalyzed using our formulations of adequacy, connectedness, and beauty. For a more detailed description of the methodology refer to (Ibid.).

Participants

We made a non-representative sample of the general population, consisting of individuals from our circle of friends and acquaintances. In the phenomenological tradition, it is homogeneity (as opposed to heterogeneity) among the participants that is encouraged for a better understanding of the general “lived experience” we seek to study (Alase, 2017). We wanted them to possess: 1) introspection and the ability to critically reflect on themselves; 2) awareness about matters concerning the environment and human-nature relations; and 3) affinity for an in-depth conversation on a philosophical topic. We aimed to select people who had meaningful stories to tell about their personal experience of nature. The fact that we had previous contact with most of the participants helped them feel comfortable enough to share their feelings and deep insights into such experiences. This helped to reach considerable depth in an interview of less than 60 minutes. Among our participants, nine were university students and three worked as artists. All had or were working towards a bachelor degree. We contacted each participant personally with a short description of the research project and their proposed role in it. We settled on twelve participants (six males and six females) between the ages of 20 and 50 (mean age was 26 year).

Procedure

The interviews took place at different (primarily outdoor) locations chosen by the participants. We recorded nearly hour-long conversations and transcribed them in full for analysis. The main method we applied during the interviews and the subsequent analysis was a phenomenological approach, following the instructions of Hycner (1985), Moustakas (1994), and Lester (1999). In Moustakas' (Moustakas, 1994) definition, the “empirical phenomenological approach” is an attempt to “return to experience in order to obtain comprehensive descriptions that provide the basis for reflective structural analysis that portrays the essences of the experience”. We focused on depth rather than structure during the interviews, aiming to bring out the richness of our participants” experience of nature.

The first part of the interview aimed to help their reflection process and to connect participants to their senses, their physical-emotional states, and the current place. The second part of the interviews took a less sense-based and more philosophical turn, following the Hegelian interpretation of phenomenology, which maintains that a phenomenon is “knowledge as it appears to consciousness” (Ibid.). Therefore, question 7 was intended to stimulate participants' intuition. All questions, and the structure of the interview are presented in Table 1.

These questions investigated participants” insights on human-nature relationships and reveal their thoughts about and attitudes towards the natural world. The interviews also had a third, final part, which consisted of a text analysis of nature- based spiritualities. However, for our current purpose, we are only concerned with the data and results from the first two parts of the interviews.

Results

The re-analysis of the interview transcripts (using our current conceptualization of adequacy, connectedness, and beauty) confirmed our participants' deep

Table 1

Interview Structure and Associated Questions

Part 1 -- Connecting participants to their senses and their physical-emotional states

1) How are you feeling at the moment?

2) (How) does this place influence how you feel right now?

3) Why did you choose this particular place?

4) How does it make you feel?

5) Is there anything about this place in particular that you enjoy?

6) Do you come here often?

Part 2 -- Less sense-based and more philosophical questions 7) ^{When you think of nature, what comes to your mind first?}

8) Besides this particular place, do you have general affinity for nature?

9) Do you think human life is qualitatively different from the lives of non-human beings? If yes, how so? If no, why not?

10) Do you feel part of a cycle of life? Do you perceive cycles in life? ^{Do you attribute any intelligence or wisdom to non-human beings? How would you define their concepts?}

12) Are you concerned about the state of the environment? Does, for instance, biodiversity decline, species extinction, or ocean pollution affects you emotionally?

13) Do you consider yourself an environmentally conscious person?

14) If yes, how so? Do you sometimes reflect on how your `being in the world' affects the rest of the world?understanding of life as wise and self-actualizing agents including the associated peak experiences (Maslow, 1962a, 1962b). We scored wisdom in terms of adequacy, connectedness, and beauty and summarized the results in Table 2.

Each interview was analyzed in terms of: 1) traits of adequacy, 2) experiences of connectedness, and 3) conceptions of beauty. Adequacy was scored in terms of selfreflection [SR], compliance with reality [CR], peak experience [PE], and pervasive optimization [PO]. Connectedness in terms of descriptions of the type of bond mentioned (quiet bonds experienced in everyday nature, peak experiences in wild nature, or a more philosophical/cerebral approach). Beauty is scored in a variety of formulations. All score categories are explained in more detail below. Based on our theoretical framework, those participants who showed indications of adequacy, connectedness, and beauty were identified as wise (agents).

Types of Adequacy as Outlined in the Subsection Adequacy

Table 2