CHAT GPT: FIRST MUSINGS

Howard Gardner © 2023

How will ChatGPT—and other Large Language Instruments—affect our educational system—and our broader society? How should they?

I’m frequently asked questions like these—and they are much on my mind.

Something akin to ChatGPT—human or super-human levels of performance—has long been portrayed in science fiction: I’m familiar with the American, British, French, and Russian varieties. But few observers expected such excellent performance so fast, so impressively, so threatening (or enabling)—depending on your stance.

As suggested by historian Yuval Harari, we may be approaching the end of the Anthropocene era.

We can anticipate that large language instruments—like Open AI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E—will continually improve.

They will be able to do anything that can be described, captured in some kind of notation. Already they are able to conduct psychotherapy with patients, write credible college application essays, and create works of visual art or pieces of music in the style of well-known human creators as well as in newly invented styles. Soon one of their creations may be considered for the Nobel Prize in physics or literature, the Pulitzer Prize for musical composition or journalism.

Of course, superior AI performance does not—and need not—prevent human beings from engaging in such activities. We humans can still paint, compose music, sculpt, compete in chess, conduct psychotherapy sessions—even if AI systems turn out to outperform us in some or most ways.

Open AI introduced ChatGPT 3 in 2020 and DALL-E in 2021

We can also work in conjunction with AI programs. A painter may ask DALL-E to create something, after which the painter may alter what the program has furnished. A researcher may present ChatGPT with a hypothesis and ask the system to come up with ways to test that hypothesis—after which the researcher can carry out one or more of these approaches herself. Such activities can alternate, going back and forth between the human provision and the computational program.

We fear what could go wrong—and rightly so. AI systems like ChatGPT have not undergone a million-plus years of evolutionary history (including near extinction or sudden vaults in skill); such recently devised systems do not inhabit our planet in the same way that the hominid species has. They are not necessarily—and certainly not existentially—afraid of cataclysmic climate change, or nuclear war, or viruses that prove fatal to homo sapiens. Indeed, such systems could spread misinformation rapidly and thereby contribute to destructive climate change and the probability of nuclear war (recall “The Doomsday Machine” featured in the dystopic movie Dr. Strangelove). These destructive outcomes are certainly possible, although (admittedly) such calamities might happen even had there been no digital revolution.

And what about the effects of Large Language Instruments on our schools, our broader educational system?

Many fear that systems like ChatGPT will make it unnecessary for students to learn anything, since ChatGPT can tell them everything they might want or need to know—almost instantaneously and almost always accurately (or at least as accurately as an 20th century encyclopedia or today’s “edition” of Wikipedia!). I think that AI will have a huge impact on education, but not in that way.

Now that machines are rivalling or even surpassing us in so many ways, I have an ambitious and perhaps radical recommendation. What education of members of our species should do—increasingly and thoughtfully—is to focus on the human condition: what it means to be human, what our strengths and frailties are, what we have accomplished (for good or evil) over many centuries of biological and cultural evolution, what opportunities are afforded by our stature and our status, what we should avoid, what we should pursue, in what ways, and with what indices of success...or of concern.

But to forestall an immediate and appropriate reservation: I don’t intend to be homo sapiens centric. Rather, I want us to focus on our species as part of the wider world, indeed the wider universe. That universe includes the biological and geological worlds that are known to us.

Psychologist-turned-educator (and my teacher) Jerome Bruner inspired me. His curriculum for middle school children, developed nearly sixty years ago, centered on three questions:

Bruner in the Chanticleer 1936, Duke University (Source: Wikipedia)

• What makes human beings human?

• How did they get to be that way?

• How can they be made more so?

To approach these framing topics intelligently, we need disciplinary knowledge, rigor, and tools. We may not need to completely scuttle earlier curricular frameworks (e.g., those posed in the United States in the 1890s by the “Committee of Ten” or the more recent “Common Core”); but we need to rethink how they can be taught, modelled, and activated to address such over-arching questions.

We need to understand our human nature—biologically, psychologically, culturally, historically, and pre-historically. That’s the way to preserve the planet, all of us on it. It’s also the optimal way to launch joint human-computational ventures—ranging from robots that construct or re-construct environments to programs dedicated (as examples) to economic planning, political positioning, military strategies and decisions.

To emphasize: this approach is not intended to glorify; homo sapiens has done much that is regrettable, and lamentable. Rather, it is to explain and to understand —so that, as a species, we can do better as we move forward in a human-computer era.

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Against this background, how have I re-considered or re-conceptualized the three issues that, as a scholar, I’ve long pondered?

1. Synthesizing is the most straightforward. Anything that can be laid out and formulated—by humans or machines—will be synthesized well by ChatGPT and its ilk. It’s hard to imagine that a human being—or even a large team of well-educated human beings—will do better synthesis than ChatGPT4, 5, or n.

   We could imagine a “Howard Gardner ChatGPT”—one that synthesizes the way that I do, only better—it would be like an ever-improving chess program in that way. Whether ChatGPT-HG is a dream or a nightmare I leave to your (human) judgment.

2. Good work and good citizenship pose different challenges. Our aspirational conceptions of work and of membership in a community have emerged in the course of human history over the last several thousand years—within and across hundreds of cultures. Looking ahead, these aspirations indicate what we are likely to have to do if we want to survive as a planet and as a species.

   All cultures have views, conceptions, of these “goods,” but of course—and understandably, these views are not the same. What is good—and what is bad, or evil, or neutral—in 2023 is not the same as in 1723. What is valued today in China is not necessarily what is admired in Scandinavia or Brazil. And there are different versions of “the good” in the US—just think of the deep south compared to the East and West coasts.

   ChatGPT could synthesize different senses of “good,” in the realms of both “work” and “citizenship.” But there’s little reason to think that human beings will necessarily abide by such syntheses—the League of Nations, the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva convention were certainly created with good will by human beings—but they have been honored as much in the breach as in the observance.

A Personal Perspective

We won’t survive as a planet unless we institute and subscribe to some kind of world belief system. It needs the prevalence of Christianity in the Occident a millennium ago, or of Confucianism or Buddhism over the centuries in Asia, and it should incorporate tactics like “peaceful disobedience” in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela. This form of faith needs to be constructed so as to enable the survival and thriving of the planet, and the entities on it, including plants, non-human animals, and the range of chemical elements and compounds.

Personally, I do not have reservations about terming this a “world religion”—so long as it does not posit a specific view of an Almighty Figure—and require allegiance to that entity. But a better analogy might be a “world language”—one that could be like Esperanto or a string of bits 00010101111….

And if such a school of thought is akin to a religion, it can’t be one that favors one culture over others—it needs to be catholic, rather than Catholic, judicious rather than Jewish. Such a belief-and-action system needs to center on the recognition and the resolution of challenges—in the spirit of controlling climate change, or conquering illness, or combatting a comet directed at earth from outer space, or a variety of ChatGPT that threatens to “do us in” from within….Of the philosophical or epistemological choices known to me, I resonate most to humanism—as described well by Sarah Bakewell in her recent book Humanly Possible.

Multiple Intelligences (MI)

And, finally, I turn to MI. Without question, any work by any intelligence, or combination of intelligences, that can be specified with clarity will soon be mastered by Large Language Instruments—indeed, such performances by now constitute a trivial achievement with respect to linguistic, logical, musical, spatial intelligences—at least as we know them, via their human instantiations.

How—or even whether —such computational instruments can display bodily intelligences or the personal intelligences is a different matter. The answer depends on how broad a formulation one is willing to accept.

To be specific:

Taylor Swift at 2019 American Music Awards (Source: Wikipedia)

• Does a robotic version of ChatGPT need to be able to perform ballet à la Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn? And must it also show how these performers might dance in 2023 rather than in 1963?

• Does it need to inspire people, the way Joan of Arc or Martin Luther King did?

• Should it be able to conduct successful psychotherapy in the manner of Erik Erikson or Carl Rogers ?

• Or are non-human attempts to instantiate these intelligences seen as category errors— the way that we would likely dismiss a chimpanzee that purported to create poetry on a keyboard?

The answers, in turn, are determined by what we mean by a human intelligence—is it certain behavioral outputs alone (the proverbial monkey that types out Shakespeare, or the songbird that can emulate Maria Callas or Luciano Pavarotti, Mick Jagger or Taylor Swift)? Or is it what a human or group of humans can express through that intelligence to other human beings—the meanings that can be created. conveyed, comprehended among members of the species.

I’m reminded of Thomas Nagel’s question: “What is it like to be a bat?” ChatGPT can certainly simulate human beings. But perhaps only human beings can realize—feel, experience, dream—what it’s like to be a human being. And perhaps only human beings can and will care—existentially—about that question. And this is what I believe education in our post-ChatGPT world should focus on.

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For comments on earlier versions of this far-ranging blog, I am grateful to Shinri Furuzawa, Jay Gardner, Annie Stachura, and Ellen Winner.

REFERENCES:

Bakewell, S. (2024). Humanly possible: Seven hundred years of humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope. Vintage Canada.

Nagel, T. (1974). what is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674594623.c15

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, August 21). Man: A course of study. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man:_A_Course_of_Study

The Costs of Meritocracy: Two Destructive Forms of Being “Smart”

by Howard Gardner (with comment by Michael Sandel)

Michael Sandel, highly esteemed political philosopher at Harvard, has written The Tyranny of Meritocracy—a powerful indictment of contemporary society—especially the versions in the United States and England. In this provocative book , Sandel reflects at length about the importance nowadays of being ‘smart’.  As one who has spent four decades critiquing the use of the word “intelligent” I paid careful attention to Sandel’s words and his case.

Coined in the middle 1950s by British social analyst Michael Young, “meritocracy” denotes a state of affairs: a once aristocratic, inherited society is taken over by individuals presumed to be more talented and more appropriate leaders  for the various sectors of the sector. At first blush, this transfer of power and authority sounds good and right—we should be led and inspired by people of ability (think: House of Commons), rather than by people who inherit their  wealth, title, and position (think: House of Lords). Even though Young wrote in an ironic spirit—do we really want the students with the highest grades in school to be entrusted with decision about war, peace, trade, health, and the like—the concept of meritocracy has come to be used positively. Indeed, both Presidents Clinton and Obama spoke explicitly and continuously about the importance of a society in which merit is awarded… and awarded again.

Very important for these and other contemporary leaders is “being smart.” In these days of Google counts, we no longer have to wave our hands about such an assertion. President Obama talked explicitly about “smart” over and over again—in his own words, smart policy,  smart foreign policy, smart regulations, smart growth, smart spending cuts, smart grids, smart technologies. Overall, he used the adjective “smart” in connection with politics and programs more than 900 times! So, too, did his meritocratically- disposed predecessor Bill Clinton. 

In fact, even Donald Trump, in so many ways different from these Democrats, insists over and over again that he is smart, “very smart”; his cabinet has the highest possible IQ: his uncle was a professor at MIT; he brags about his family’s matriculation at the Wharton School; Joe Biden is “slow”; indeed, in the debate on September 29 of this year, he pounced on Biden’s use of the word “smart” and denigrated his opponent’s intellect and school grades.  

The exuberance about intellect transcends party lines and epochs—indeed, Sandel might claim, there is not even a counter-story. No one explicitly calls for the return of a hereditary aristocracy or even of inherited wealth and positions…. though Trump does profess to love “the poorly educated.”

Sandel takes his critique very far.  As his title suggests, a celebration of—or even a reluctant surrender to—meritocracy has proved to be disastrous for the contemporary world. On his account: individuals who do well in school and on standardized tests get to attend elite, selective colleges; secure well-paying jobs with concomitant “perks”;  and pass on these social benefits to their children. The statistics are overwhelming, irrefutable, chilling. And even those meritocrats who acknowledge that they may not be wholly responsible for their own success cannot help looking down on those who have not done as well in the Darwinian struggle for worldly success.  

More seriously and more destructively—on Sandel’s account—those who have not attended or failed to graduate from college, and may not even have a steady “respectable” job, feel frowned upon, ignored, or deemed to be “deplorables” mired in “fly-over country.” Ultimately, this state of affairs leads to a society at war with itself, and, quite possibly, the end to democracy and the American (or another national) dream. 

Sandel proposes two kinds of solution: 1) technological—for example,  changing radically the way that one selects among applicants for admission to elite colleges; 2) communal and even spiritual—considering all citizens as equally worthy of respect and conveying that respect in every possible way.

Sandel’s impressive  (but also depressing) account stimulates two lines of thought—both connected to my own decades-long reflection on intelligence. As most readers of this blog will know, I took the lead in challenging the notion of a single intelligence, as measured by an IQ or SAT test, and in calling instead for a recognition of different kinds of intelligence, and perhaps as well, an honoring of these different kinds of minds. While notions like “social” or “emotional” intelligence have entered into public discourse, they do not emerge in Sandel’s analysis.

That’s OK by me. But to nuance Sandel’s analysis, I’d suggest that the kinds of intelligence or intelligences honored in 2020 are quite different from those that were valued in earlier epochs. As just one example: 150 years ago, admission to selective colleges required mastery of ancient languages—so-called linguistic intelligence. Nowadays, no one cares about languages (let alone classical ones), but coding and computing intelligences (logical-mathematical intelligence) is at a premium. And as machines get “smarter”, we may well be selecting for yet different kinds of intelligence—ones that are not relevant to machines—such as musical, bodily, or personal intelligences. The  word “smart” may not change—but the knowledge and skills to which it refers can and does change radically. And indeed, some of our most successful entrepreneurs—see Bill Gates and Steve Jobs—never even completed college because their temperament and ambitions were misaligned to the agenda of college. Ultimately, of course, they received their share of honorary degrees. Even Donald Trump, who apparently had someone else take his SATs and refuses to reveal his college grades, clearly has “media” intelligence.

So much for smartness—where, as I say, Sandel’s argument poses no problem for me. But I have considerable unease with his overall recommendation—that meritocracy should be replaced by conferring dignity on all human beings.  As I read Sandel, all human beings are worthy of dignity or respect (I prefer the latter term), independent of who they are, how they behave, how they think about the world.  This may sound reasonable at first blush, but it’s not the way that I conceive the issue.

My view: As  they grow—indeed, as we grow—individuals should be expected to behave with respect towards others, both those known to them and  those who are strangers. And when faced with challenging issues or ideas, all human beings should attempt to deal with them as sensitively and sensibly as possible.  Millionaires or even billionaires should not be treated with respect because of the money that they have inherited or amassed; rather, they need to earn that status by how they behave, and to be deprived of that status when they misbehave. By the same token, the plumber or electrician or waiter—three examples frequently used by Sandel and other philosophically oriented analysts—are entitled to as much respect and dignity as the rich person, but not just by dint of their vocation….but rather in light of how they behave toward others, normally, day in and day out.

Of course, how we behave toward others is not something that we are born with. Rather it’s what we garner from family, neighbors, friends, lessons in school and in religious settings, from what we read and view in schools, in movie houses, and nowadays, especially, online.  And here is where my intuitions may differ from  those of Michael Sandel. I don’t think that good, moral, respectful behavior is any more or any less likely from those who win the meritocratic laurels than from those who for whatever reason do not seek or display those laurels.  

In neither case is one’s deportment toward others a function of intelligence—however it’s defined and/or measured. As I have often argued, an intelligence can be used positively or destructively. Both Goethe and Goebbels had high linguistic intelligence in German; Goethe wrote estimable poetry, Goebbels fomented hatred. Both Mandela and Milosevic had plenty of interpersonal; intelligence—Mandela brought together long hostile parts of the South African population, Milosevic fomented ethnic cleansing.

Whether smart or not smart in one or another way (whatever one’s array of intelligences), whether a winner or a loser in a particular meritocratic sweepstakes (whether a CEO or a blue collar worker) is independent of whether one is worthy of respect or dignity.  One develops those assets in the course of life—it’s never too early but it may never be too late either.  And a society in which individuals respect one another for how they relate to others is the one in which I would like to live.

© Howard Gardner 2020

Comment by Michael Sandel:

Howard, I think there is some confusion here. I do believe that all human beings are worthy of dignity or respect, independent of who they are and how they behave. This is the basic Kantian idea underlying respect for human rights.  It has nothing to do with intelligence, whether of one kind or many kinds.  Even a war criminal such as Milosevic, for example, is worthy of respect in this Kantian sense.  Though he deserves moral condemnation and punishment for his crimes, it would be wrong to torture him.  I doubt we disagree about this. (You’ll tell me if I’m wrong.)

But Kantian respect for persons as persons, or human dignity as such, is not my alternative to meritocracy.  By emphasizing the dignity of work, I am proposing that we broaden our understanding of what counts as contributing to the common good beyond the value the labor market assigns to our contributions.  This is why I emphasize “contributive justice,” by which I mean conferring appropriate social recognition and esteem on valuable contributions that the market may not properly recognize (such as care work, for example, or the work now being performed “essential workers” during the pandemic).

You rightly draw our attention to yet a third basis of social regard or esteem, having to do with how people behave, whether they treat others with respect, and so on.  So we might distinguish three different grounds of respect:

 (1) Kantian respect for human dignity, which requires that we respect everyone’s human rights, regardless of what work they do or how well they behave;

(2) Respect for the dignity of work, which requires that we accord social recognition to those who make valuable contributions to the common good (typically but not only through work; unpaid community service should certainly count).

(3) Respect or admiration for those who behave morally, which includes treating others with respect but also includes other praise-worthy behavior.

In the book, my primary alternative to meritocracy is #2. But this is not inconsistent with affirming #1 and #3.  I certainly do not think “that good, moral, respectful behavior” is more likely “from those who win the meritocratic laurels than from those who for whatever reason do not seek or display those laurels.” So this is not a point of disagreement between us. 

Response by Howard:

Thanks, Michael, for this very thoughtful and helpful clarification.  I think we are broadly in agreement. I’m not confident that we can simply instruct or encourage individuals to honor all work equally—though it’s been a goal of social reformers for centuries. I have slightly more confidence that we can instruct or encourage individuals to distinguish between highly-paid work, on the one hand, and ‘good work’—work that is excellent, engaging, and ethical, on the other. But I’d be pleased to encourage both approaches.

A Resurgence of interest in Existential Intelligence: Why now?

By Howard Gardner

Recently, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon: an uptick in the number of inquiries I receive about “existential intelligence” (which I’ve abbreviated as Ex I). I have become intrigued by the reason for this phenomenon and how to respond to it.

Let me explain.

A dozen years after I introduced the theory of multiple intelligences (1983), I speculated about the possibility of a 9th or “existential intelligence.” As I described it at the time, “existential intelligence” is the cognitive capacity to raise and ponder “big questions”—queries about love, about evil, about life and death— indeed, about the nature and quality of existence. I quipped that these are the questions that nearly every child raises—but most young people are more engaged in asking the question than in pondering the possible answers. “Existential questions” are the particular purview of philosophers and religious leaders, but most of us ponder them from time to time, and they are raised regularly in works of art and literature.

At the time I hesitated to anoint this candidate as a “full-fledged intelligence.” I was uncertain about some kind of brain or neurological basis for this capacity (one of the criteria I had proposed for an independent intelligence); whether it was a universal capacity or one that only emerged in a post-Socratic society; and, most fundamentally, whether it might genuinely be considered a separate intelligence, or just an amalgam of several already identified intelligences—perhaps linguistic, logical- mathematical, and the personal intelligences. Also, I insisted that existential intelligence was not in and of itself a religious or spiritual or sacred capacity; as I quipped, “If I announced a spiritual intelligence, it might please some of my friends, but it would also delight my enemies.”

In the intervening period, though much of my correspondence still concerns “MI” theory, I have gone on to other pursuits (see the thegoodproject.org). In particular, I am no longer in the business of announcing or denouncing candidate intelligences. Of course, individuals have always been free to describe other intelligences—and, on the basis of some intriguing evidence from developmental psychology, I myself sometimes speculate about a “pedagogical” or “teaching intelligence.”

Back to the correspondence: some writers want to know whether “Ex I” has passed the test and is now officially an intelligence. (Answer: “Sorry, no, It’s still in limbo.) Some writers want a test for “Ex I,” or claim that they have already created a test. (Answer: “No test from me, but if you send me your sample test, I’ll give you some feedback.”) And whether explicitly or implicitly, some writers assume that existential intelligence has been established—it is a genuine phenomenon—and that it is the same as “spiritual” or “religious” intelligence. (Answer: “the candidate intelligence features the raising and pondering of big questions; these can certainly include spiritual or religious issues thought they need not—pondering the universe or a grain of sand qualify as well. And please do not assume that I am promoting any specific religion, or religion in general—though it’s fine if you do so in your own name.”)

Of course, the raising of questions about existential intelligence might just be a fluke or a coincidence—perhaps next year, it will be bodily intelligence or musical intelligence or computer intelligence (a favorite some years ago). But I suspect that there is another phenomenon at work in others and in myself.

Almost no one in the world was prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, immediate and long-term plans have had to be scuttled; daily routines have been substantially altered for months, with no end in sight; we need to protect ourselves and others every waking hour; and, alas, many have lost their livelihoods and their security and some have lost their lives. Except for those on the front lines (to whom we will always be indebted) many of us have additional time available. And while we can and of course do while away the time in many ways, some of that time may well be devoted to the pondering of Big Questions—the kinds of questions that many of us pondered as children, or at times of change or crisis—but are now confronting most of the conscious world. I suspect that some of my correspondents may well be devoting significant amounts of time to pondering such life-and-death issues and wondering about the ontological status of this capacity—more concretely, whether it draws on existential intelligence.

As I reflect on my own preoccupations, I find evidence for this trend. In my case, it began in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump and my worries about the threats to democracy, decency, and to other values that I hold dear. I began to read books (e.g. 1984, The Plot Against America, It Can’t happen Here) and watch movies (A Face in the Crowd, All the King’s Men, Casablanca) that deal with the delicate state of democratic institutions and values at a time of nationalism, xenophobia, the rise of fascism, loss of status, and the like.

The advent of COVID-19 constituted an additional whammy. I should say, at the start, that my wife and my immediate family are fortunate—far more fortunate than most—in that we have been safe and secure to this point. And I have been able to continue much of my work in my home and in daily—sometimes hourly—online conversations with colleagues. But of course, much of the world is not in that protected situation. Moreover, I’ve been personally shocked by the number of individuals, particularly in the United States, who do not take the pandemic seriously and openly defy advice and even mandates to protect themselves and—more importantly—to protect others.

The combination of threats, on the one hand, and time to think, on the other, has also affected the timing of my thinking and what I think and read about. Each morning, at the crack of dawn, I walk around the neighborhood for the better part of an hour—and each evening before I go to sleep—I recline in bed for a comparable length of time—and simply think about things—including the themes of this blog post. I had never engaged in either of these activities before. And much of the unstructured time is spent pondering big questions—including ones that deserve to be called existential. Of course, some of this cognitive wandering may simply reflect my age and point in the life cycle—I am 77 years old and have had significant health challenges. As my mentor the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson put it, this last stage of life is a time to weigh feelings of integrity versus feelings of despair. But some of this mental meandering seems to be tied more closely to the events in the world. I’ve been reading “big books” about Western and Eastern philosophy and watching many American and British movies from the 1930s and 1940s, a time similar to ours in some ways.

Most directly related to the topic of this blog, recently my wife and I have been re-reading Albert Camus’ famous novel La Peste (usually translated as The Plague). Camus describes the sudden eruption of a plague in a North African city and the way in which this epidemic disrupts all the lives of the city’s inhabitants and causes many deaths. The novel can be read simply as the account of a terrible disease and its expected as well as its surprising sequelae.

But in my view The Plague is fundamentally an essay on the essential meaninglessness of life and the need, accordingly, for all of us to seek to make meaning. The plague itself has no meaning. This message comes out most dramatically in the vignette of the Jesuit priest, Paneloux, who castigates his congregation for not behaving well enough and having been accordingly punished by God with the deadly disease. But before he himself succumbs to the plague, as he watches the cruel suffering of a young boy, the priest comes to realize that there is no hidden message of reward or revenge in the plague—as we might say today, “it is what it is.” Camus’ message: plagues never go away. They erupt, then hide, and can fester and reappear at any time in our lives. Hence, our only choice is to make meaning out of the brief time we have on earth. Perhaps the most important meaning is decency towards our fellow humans.

There is a name for this perspective—existential philosophy. Though one can find roots of existentialism in the Greeks, particularly the Stoics, it is generally attributed to the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, and to the 20th century French writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. And while many other writers (and other artists and even, occasionally, political leaders) across the world and across topics now reflect an existential perspective, I find it best captured in Camus’ brief novel.

And so even if I had not noticed an uptick in my mailbox, I would still have been engaged in using (and pondering the nature of) my existential intelligence. I thank my correspondents for bringing this latent motive into my consciousness—and I am pleased to have the opportunity to share it with you.

© Howard Gardner 2020

The Two Facets of Joel Kupperman (1936-2020)

by Howard Gardner

We were having breakfast at the kitchen table and my wife Ellen said “This obituary in the New York Times will interest you.” Indeed, it did!

Ellen had not heard of Joel Kupperman (age 83, died on April 8, 2020, in an assisted living facility in Brooklyn, probably of COVID19).  But I immediately recognized his name and remembered some biographical facts.

When I was young, a much discussed show—first on radio, then on television—was “The Quiz Kids.” Every week, a panel of children heard a series of short answer questions and the kids competed to answer first and answer correctly.  Joel was one of the indisputable stars—his hands shot up quickly, his answers most often correct.  And so—at least for those of us who thought of ourselves as ‘brains’—-this was a mark of distinction: one that easily competed with the accolades for baseball players like Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays, or with matinee idols like John Wayne or Doris Day.

As related in various books and articles (and in a famous movie Quiz Show), life after this form of youthful celebrity was not easy.  For response-whiz Joel Kupperman, it was particularly challenging and painful—so much so that if the “Quiz Kids” program was even mentioned in conversation, he would leave the room. And he forbade discussion of his own childhood with his children and even, apparently, blocked out many of its details.

Post his “minutes of fame,” Kupperman went to the University of Chicago at age 16, where he was apparently bullied.  He subsequently received  a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Cambridge and taught philosophy for fifty years at the University of Connecticut.  In 1964 he married an historian Karen Ordahl (Kupperman), who teaches at New York University.  His wife and two children (son Michael and daughter Charlie) survive him.

But what piqued Ellen and my interest were two portions of the obituary—both of which happen to connect to my own preoccupations and my own research over the decades.     One was Kupperman’s views of intellect:  “There’s this weird notion that intelligence is a single thing, but people can be smart in some ways and stupid in others.”  I have no idea whether Kupperman knew about work on different kinds of intelligence—including the “theory of multiple intelligences”—but he certainly grasped the concept.

The second strand was Kupperman’s area of philosophical inquiry—ethics.  Two individuals interviewed for the obituary convey Kupperman’s personal perspective:

Duke university philosopher David Wong:  “Joel’s work assists us in our individual and collective endeavors to live a good life by articulation of much good advice and well-taken cautions.”

Daughter Charlie: “He started out writing about pure ethics, but as his career went on, he was trying to understand character, and why it’s so hard for people to be good… he talked a lot about the meaning of life and how to be a good person and what happens after you die. I remember him telling me that when you die, it like unplugging a radio. There’s a glow that remains.”

Though we did not know each other, and our lives took quite different courses, it fascinates me that Joel’s life encompassed  two issues that have come to dominate my own thinking for decades:  the multiplicity of intelligences and the search for a good life.  Recently, I have sought to tie these lines of work together in this blog post.

Intertwining "Multiple Intelligences" and "Good Work"

By Howard Gardner

Close to forty years after I first began to write about the concept “Multiple Intelligences,” the topic still dominates my mailbox, with questions arising each day, often from scholars, researchers, or educators in remote corners of the world. And while nearly every question has been posed before, I try when possible to provide a succinct and useful response.

But I am also frustrated. Rarely if ever does a questioner talk about the uses to which the several intelligences are to be put. The assumption: It’s desirable in and of itself to discover what intelligences a person has and/or what intelligences can be cultivated; and that their uses (presumably benign) will take care of themselves.

Alas, that’s not the case. For decades, I have sought to make the point that intelligences are morally and ethically neutral. One can use the same intelligence for benign or malignant ends. The examples are familiar. Both Nelson Mandela and Slobodan Milosevic had plenty of interpersonal intelligence. Mandela used his interpersonal intelligence to inspire his fellow citizens as well as human beings around the world; Milosevic used his interpersonal intelligence to foster ethnic hatred and ultimately genocidal endeavors. 

By the same token, both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Joseph Goebbels had considerable linguistic intelligence (in German). Goethe used this talent to write great prose and poetry; Goebbels used his linguistic intelligence to create the vilest forms of propaganda. And one could make the same point about each of the remaining intelligences—musical, spatial, bodily, naturalist, logical—though it’s quite difficult to delineate a malignant use of intrapersonal intelligence—perhaps masochism.

I propose a new set of “rules of the road.” From now on, when I am asked about “MI,” I will respond, “To what uses do you propose to put the intelligence or intelligences in which you are interested?” By this “move,” I hope to nudge people towards considering the values that they are seeking to promote (and, at least by implication, those values that they would spurn or work hard to abolish). And perhaps, once they reveal what they would like to achieve with a battery of intelligences—or, for that matter, through activation of a specific intelligence—then we can consider how best to achieve that goal. Or, if the goal seems pointless or destructive, we should engage the correspondent in a discussion of ends and means.

Of course, once one begins to discuss what is good, and what is not, we enter the domains of values—an area which scientists (as well as many non-scientists) are wary of. It’s okay to minimize the issue of values when one is discussing atoms or genes—but that neutrality can be pushed too far. After all, atoms can be split to produce energy—and that energy can be used for benign or malignant purposes. So too, we can now create and manipulate genes—again, for positive or questionable purposes.

And so, as we touch upon these issues, we enter a domain that my colleagues and I have been working on almost as long as the study of intelligences: what it means to be good, and what it means to do good. This is the province of what we now call The Good Project. We have sought to identify the three components (the three Es, represented as a “triple helix”) of good work: good work is technically Excellent; it is personally Engaging; and it is carried out in an Ethical manner.

By the same token, we have identified the three components of good citizenship.  Once again, the good citizen is excellent—he or she knows the laws; is engaged—cares about what happens in the society; and, again tries to carry out duties in an ethical way.

What of the spheres in which “goodness” is manifest? For thousands of  years,. individuals have pondered how to deal with others in their immediate circle—what we have termed “neighborly morality.” The key tenets of neighborly morality are captured in the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments and other fundamental sayings, proverbs, tales and, in recent millennia, texts that arise and circulate within an identified community.

But over this period, societies have become more complex, Human relations have become increasingly transactional and are carried out over long distances. In this changed and increasingly global environment, it’s important to delineate a new set of roles—which we call the role of worker/professional and the role of citizen. It becomes important to define the rights, but also the obligations, of those who spend a fair amount of their lives in a community of workers or a community of citizens. To encompass this terrain, and to complement neighborly morality, we have coined the phrase “the ethics of roles.”

Even carrying out neighborly morality can be difficult. And once one contemplates the newer roles of worker and citizen, a determination of what is ethical, and what is not, constitutes a considerable challenge. There is no formula for ascertaining the ethical—in fact, an issue becomes an ethical one precisely because it does not permit of an easy, formulaic solution.  

To make progress on tackling this terrain, on tackling specific ethical issues, we find it useful to delineate—in rough order of activation and application—several Ds:

• Dilemma (recognized as such initially or pointed out by a knowledgeable individual)

• Discussion or debate about the dilemma, how best to articulate and approach is resolution

• Decision (and resulting action or inaction)

• Debriefing, about what happened, and whether the dilemma could have been handled more effectively, and how to handle a similar one when it arises in the future.

It is easiest to think of the deliberative process as involving language. But one can also contemplate ethical dilemmas as they are portrayed in works of art—for example, dramas or documentaries or even scrolls or paintings. And of course, these are matters of the heart, as well as of the head.

Deciding what is good, and then pursuing the good, have never been easy. And in the time of the Internet, digital media, social networks, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and the like, it is harder than ever. Misinformation is more rampant  than ever before, and it is often more widely circulated and more easily accepted than is well-researched, reliable information.

But unless we want to toss a coin, or disregard “the good” altogether, we have no choice but to marshal our strongest resources, seek to delineate and defend what we believe to be good, and then achieve it.

And perhaps—and this is my fondest hope—we can mobilize our several intelligences to determine both what is good and how best to realize it.

© 2020 Howard Gardner