They say ageing degenerates the brain which is responsible for thought processing and cognition. Then how come a ninety year old has more philosophical knowledge and mental maturity than younger age groups for whom the brain functioing is several times higher?
Aging has a psychological impact but follows social culture and faith in God
About your question I understandd that: Knowledge is corelated with gaining experiences. "Being wiser" or "having more(?) philosophical knowledge" mean spending more time with philosophy and thinking (knowing more? Or seeing things in a wider perspective?). But as J. Y. Zhong said many older people are very conservative and not open to new concepts. Many of them cannot catch the new thoughts and new approaches to old concepts/texts. I feel that you try to compare new and old generations and try to find which one is better. There is a very common discussion: We can use technology better but we cannot make many things that people in 400BC could do. Are we more intelligent or are they more?
I find some optimistic neuroscientific idea about this in Goldberg Elkhonon, The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older. My semantic and empiric observation is: 'can grow' doesn't mean 'grows'.
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