Topics Philosophy

Question I am close to someone with Asperger's syndrome. Do you think Philosophy would be a good field for someone with asperger's to look into? Do you think there's a higher prevalence of it among the philosophy community than other disciplines? In reading through responses, it does seem like there are a lot of superficially logical replies that would feel, to an outsider looking in, on the range from emotionally insensitive to passive-aggressive. It seems that the field encourages ruling out replies based on emotion, being purely logical, which would suit an aspie perfectly. Thanks for your thoughts!

Accepted:
June 5, 2014

Comments

You ask an interesting question. If Philosophy was nothing more than deductive logic, then someone with skills in deductive logic but developmental issues elsewhere would probably excel in philosophy. But most people think that Philosophy involves more than deductive logic--it involves the exercise of "good judgment" which in fact we do not understand very well. Good judgment may or may not be absent of emotion: the philosopher David Hume puts emotion front and center in his ethical theories.

We have a very poor understanding of autism spectrum disorders (indeed the diagnostic category of Asperger's has recently been removed from the DSM). It used to be thought that people with autism lacked emotion; that is generally speaking not true (although the emotions may be different from those of neurotypicals).

On rereading your question, perhaps you see a correspondence between some philosophers' apparent detachment and some autistic behavior. There may be an overlap here but I doubt that it goes very deep (that is, I doubt that a shortcut to doing philosophy is to have your autistic friend do it).