The Brain Basis of Wisdom Evolution, Past and Future George Mobus University of Washington Tacoma

Outline Wisdom/sapience as a psychological construct Functional constructs of sapience Brain structures underlying these functions Origins and early evolution of sapience Genetic considerations Is Homo sapiens sapient enough? Possible future development/expansion of sapience

Intelligence Affect Creativity Wisdom Memory, association, decision taking, problem solving Emotions, feelings, limbic primitive functions Novelty detection & generation, temporary associations Judgment, moral evaluation, systemic integration, strategic management

Judgment (practical and reflective) Capacity to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty Problem types Complex social (wicked) Future-oriented (anticipated scenarios and consequences) Extended scope in time and space Strong moral sentiments Rich tacit knowledge (expertise in life’s problems)

Judgment Strategic thinking Systems thinking Moral assessment Decision guidance from tacit knowledge Future and goal oriented Organizing, classifying, model building Right, wrong, good, bad, cooperation Functional Constructs of Sapience

Expansion of the frontal lobes relative to the whole brain Expansion of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) Expansion of the frontopolar region of the DLPFC – Brodmann area 10 Increase in relative size Changes in cytoarchitectonic features Increased size and complexity of pyramidal neurons Rich connections via Von Economo (spindle) neurons with fronto-insular and anterior cingulate cortices Reentrant connections with all other PFC areas

Prefrontal cortex Brodmann area 10 frontopolar view

Social animals, altruism, cooperation within groups Early hominin family organization – long-term mating Of grandmothers and grand parenting – group selection for wisdom Long-term tacit knowledge, judgment for strategic planning for the tribe Transcending strategic planning for the self alone – consciousness of being conscious First-order consciousness – aware of self and surroundings Second-order consciousness – aware of being conscious

The relative newness suggests immaturity of development Low level of impact when compared with other psychological constructs – We are too clever and too ‘passionate’ for our own good! Human behavior suggests greater average focus on short-term, logistical and tactical thinking in most individuals Steep discounting of the future Problem-solving and engineering Greedy approaches Unintended consequences prevail

Sapience is a relatively new faculty integrating earlier, established faculties (e.g. systemic thinking and social networking) Most likely the result of mutations arising within the epigenetic control network as opposed to protein coding genes A very small set of such mutations could lead to very large changes in morphology and behavior (explain the explosive emergence) – EvoDevo model Hence there is not likely to be a “gene for sapience”

Level of sapience – a sapience quotient? Measure of strategic thinking competence Measure of systems integration competence Measures of judgment competence in complex issues Distribution of sapience strength - hypothetical

Methods for mapping non-coding control regions of genome are being developed Brain imaging studies with higher spatial resolution may allow more detailed mapping of BA10 and other associated regions; post-mortem examinations Psychological testing of components of wisdom/sapience may provide capacity probes (similar to intelligence testing) Hypothesis: We will find that there is a wide distribution of sapience capacity indicated by the correlation of the above factors, but the distribution is not normal.

Perhaps Homo sapiens is sufficiently clever What we need isn’t more/greater intelligence or physical prowess What we need is a population of wiser individuals Some developmental possibilities – nurture might help, promoting wisdom as the goal of education Otherwise achievement of a more normal distribution of adequate sapience (and resulting wise behavior) may require genetic intervention

The global challenges before us are actually well understood; in some cases the fixes are known We’ve had thousands of years of written history to use; why do we keep making the same mistakes of judgment? Why are our leaders (both democratically and otherwise ensconced) so suspect when it comes to wisdom? Is it the case that human cleverness has created a world too complex and dynamic for human judgment to manage?

Is it feasible that the brain can continue to evolve in the area of sapience? Could people in the future act more wisely because their sapience capacity is much greater than today? How could we get there? Scale of the problem (population size), vs. Rate of climate change and energy and other resource depletion, vs. Temporal dimensions of natural selection Conjecture: The future survival of the genus Homo depends on evolving eusapience.