Lindeman's Intelligent and Good Individual

*What follows is a write up that I did for one of my grad classes concerning a number of claims that Eduard C. Lindeman makes in his book "The Meaning of Adult Education". I don't claim for it to be authority, or exactly what Lindeman means by his claims, but I do believe that what I have written is a good explanation of some of the implications for the claims that he makes and doesn't defend.*

While reading “The Meaning of Adult Education” I ran into a number of major claims made by the author that I believe needed to be clarified and expounded upon. In the first paragraph on page 17 Lindeman makes a number claims that need to be unpacked. These claims will go on to have a profound effect on the rest of the book. Although a few pages before Lindeman tell us what intelligence ‘is’, we don’t find out what makes an intelligent person until pages 16 and 17. It is to these points that I’d like to address.

First, “The person who knows what he wants to do and why is intelligent” (page 17). This is not in itself and controversial claim. It seems that if we are to live a fulfilling life with goals that are aimed at the good we must know ‘what’ and ‘why’ we want the things we want. Critical evaluation of wants can often lead to deeper realization of the roots of our wants but also a deeper understanding of ourselves. Is my want of that new shinny phone really leading to toward the ‘good’, hmmm... maybe not. So in this it seems pretty strait forward.

Second, in the next line, “But he cannot learn the how and the why of conduct by rules and precepts and other persons’ experiences; he must experiment on his own behalf” (page 17). Here’s where we get into some pretty think grass. Lindeman is making the claim that we cannot ‘know’ something, or really anything, without first experiencing it for ourselves. But more then that; we can’t even say that we ‘know’ something if someone else has told us about it. While not being a new idea, it is still a pretty radical epistemological claim. And here is why:

-Epistemology says that the conditions for knowledge, at the most basic level, are that we have a ‘justified true belief’ (JTB). The the last part, the B, seems pretty straight forward. It seems clear that to know something we at least must believe it; we must have some notion in our brain. The second to last, the T, is a little iffy but not to bad. Clearly we’d like to think that whatever we are trying to say we ‘know’, is true. If it weren’t that would be pretty bad. No one wants false beliefs rolling around in their head. (there is the issue of Gettier problems but we will leave that to the side). So not really a problem there; what we want to be knowledge must be something we believe, and its true. The sticky part comes in the first part, that J. What does it mean for that thing in my head that is ‘true’ and that which I ‘believe’, to be justified? It is here that we meet back up with Lindeman’s claim.-

What Lindeman is claiming is that to be justified about the knowledge of ‘what’ and ‘why’ we want, or want to do, we ‘must’ have experiences directly. We cannot be justified about our ‘whats’ and ‘whys’ because of what people tell us, our what we read, or even (it would seem) societal norms. This is a very strict condition for justification and  goes a long way to explain his claims later in the book about liberation of ‘thought-action’ (pages, 44-45).

Third, in the next two lines he makes claims about goodness. We will first look at the first line of this. “Intelligence is goodness in the sense that one cannot purposefully or positively experience the good unless conscious experimentation in the realm of values accompanies activity” (page 17). What he is saying here, unsurprisingly, is that to know goodness you must experiences goodness directly, and even practice at goodness directly. There does seem to be a dilemma here. Even if we accept his condition for justification we clearly have a problem with this ‘realm of values’. We must ask, how can I know about the right, or good, realm of values without having experienced it? To experiment, and experience, in the realm of values it seems like I must know what the right or good realm is to experiment in. Otherwise I might end up working in a realm in which that which is ‘right’ is ‘wrong’, and that which is ‘good’ is really ‘evil’. Or if not, then as I experiment in some realm there must be someone, or something, that is informing me that such and such action is good. But I can’t be justified in that because I have a condition for knowledge that prohibits that. To make the problem clearer, I can act (experiment) in any number of realms of value that I want, but it seems that unless I already have a notion of ‘right’ or ‘goodness’ how can I ‘know’ that what I am doing is ‘right’ or ‘good’? Do I just ‘have’ and intuitive sense of right? Is it part of who we are and only through experience does it come out, a la Socrates? If that is the case Lindeman is making a really interesting claim about knowledge of ethical action.

Fourth, and lastly, Lindeman claims that “Habitual goodness lacks dynamic qualities--is in fact not goodness in any real or living sense” (page 17). Coupled with the previous claim Lindeman seems to be claiming that goodness, and good acts, are only good if they are done intentionally. Simply doing the right, or good, thing out of habit is itself not good. One must consciously do the good thing. Goodness that comes from habit, as he says, isn’t really goodness, it is mere existence (page 17). So that is what he says, but what he says has a lot behind it. For example:

-When people do the right, or good, thing we like to think that they should be praised for that action. So the passer by on the street that helps the drowning child is praiseworthy for doing so. Likewise the person who makes donations, or volunteers at the homeless shelter, is praised for doing a good act. Those that do not save the drowning child, or go out of their way not to make donations or volunteer we may claim are blameworthy for their actions. This is sometimes called the moral praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of action. Now lets us look again at Lindemans claim.-

It would seem that what Lindeman is saying is that the only praiseworthy acts are the ones that were intentionally good; those done in full consciousness of experiment or experience. Doing good things, or even living the good life, merely out of habit is in no way praiseworthy. In fact Lindeman says these habitual acts aren’t good acts at all. But does that then mean that habitually good person is blameworthy for his or her actions? It doesn’t seem that they could be. The person has still done a good thing, or at the very least given Lindeman’s claim, morally neutral. So a habitually good person isn’t blameworthy, yet that same person under Lindeman’s understanding can’t be praiseworthy either. What it seems like we are left saying is that the habitually good person is standing in some kind of moral limbo between praiseworthiness and blameworthiness while the intelligent person stands happily being praised for good acts.

What Lindeman gives us in the end is a picture of what an intelligent good person is. An intelligent person knows the ‘what’ and ‘why’ behind wants. And the intelligent person is one that pursues goodness intentionally. Both of these states are known only through a strict notion of the requirements for knowledge, and the requirements for ethical action. While many of these claims can be challenged, Lindeman is careful throughout the book of staying consistent within the framework that he has set up in these few lines. He doesn’t spend any time defending, or explaining, his stances due to the fact that they are aspects of his over all formulation. He has then taken for granted these claims and the rest of the book must be understood this way. This doesn’t mean that we are required to take these claims for granted for ourselves. While I have done my best to lay out an explanation for his claims I believe you can see that there is also room within this explanations for one to make a broad, or narrow, challenge against aspects of his conclusions

Reference:

Lindeman, E. C. (1989). The Meaning of Adult Education. Norman, OK: Oklahoma Research Center of Continuing  Professional and Higher Education  (Original work published 1926).