Genius: genuine intelligence or erratic in the attic?

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
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Guests on a radio show last week included a philosopher (holding a Chair for the Public Understanding of Philosophy at a UK university) and a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome.

During the programme the philosopher remarked that people with Asperger’s Syndrome frequently took to philosophy and, moreover, were often successful. In other words, the philosopher was saying that having a damaged/dysfunctional mind is no barrier to success in philosophy. Had she but realized it, she was also shooting herself, or her subject, philosophy, in the foot. Implicit is the idea that philosophy is a subject that requires high-level thinking abilities so that though a person may be damaged in one respect, by proving they can be successful philosophers they are proving that they have the requisite high-level thinking abilities.

Actually, the common sense thinking on the subject says the following: if a person with Asperger’s Syndrome can be a successful philosopher then philosophy is a low-grade subject, a subject which can be practiced even by people with damaged minds.

This kind of fancy footwork is frequently used to elevate or otherwise many activities and practices. It is counter-intuitive and goes against common sense. It is wrong. Common sense and intuition are right. Why has this kind of distorted thinking become so prevalent? Answer: it serves the interests of those in power.

So, that something can be done by someone with a damaged mind means that it is easy. If something can be done by a child (e.g. writing a symphony) then it is easy, it is child’s play. If something can be done by someone with a sick mind, then it is easy.

The obvious question is that if such an activity, say philosophy, is easy, why do so few people excel at it? The answer is simple: to excel at any activity which requires high levels of skill takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of practice full stop. Practice is all it takes. So whether high-level philosophy, virtuoso instrument playing, high-level mathematics, chess, composing music etc, etc, you become good in proportion to the amount of time you spend practicing. A normal, healthy child has much to learn. In order to learn all that it needs to learn to become a healthy adult, it simply cannot afford to devote itself single-mindedly to one activity. So the reason that so few people excel at these pursuits is because they are too healthy to have devoted their time so exclusively to one activity.

There is a commonplace that genius is associated with madness. From the foregoing it should now be apparent why: people excel at activities which are normally associated with what is called genius BECAUSE they are sick.

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  1. There is a distinction you are very much failing to make. Having autism doesn’t mean you have a damaged brain, it just means you have a different brain.

  2. People with autism can also think at a very high level. Think of virtuoso pianists with autism.

  3. You keep equating autism with “madness” and a “sick mind”. These are both derogatory terms that have nothing to do with the reality of the situation. Someone with autism isn’t necessarily mad or sick minded, they just have radically different world-views.

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However, there is a difference between playing notes and playing music. Technical ability, although a requirement, is not an end in itself, and a perfect execution of technical ability (like logic, or playing notes) should not be mistaken for the thing itself. Flawless mimicry is still…mimicry. It’s like calling fool’s gold (FeS2/mineral) real gold (Au/element) because they appear alike.

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You’re using the term “thing in-itself” incorrectly. Thing in-itself is a technical term that comes from the Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant. It refers to what the reality of the object is, which is juxtaposed against what the appearance of the object (which is all we have access to).

Moreover, autistic people that are musicians don’t just play notes, they play music. For example, youtube.com/watch?v=u8rjXkL_hxU . This album was written and performed by an autistic person named Craig Nicholls.

The mimicry argument is also kind of silly. Under your definition of mimicry tons of non-autistic people are also mimics (e.g., session musicians).

In the end, I think you people need to step into the millenium and realize that people with disabilities are still people too.

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Who said I was talking about Kant, or his idea of what a thing in itself is? I was talking about qualitative difference between authenticity vs. mimicry. And you proceed to open a book and point to what Kant said. I don’t really care what Kant said. Why do you? You think knowing what KANT said and being able to name drop makes you a philosopher, or makes your point more valid?

Did I target autistic people specifically? Yes, many other non-autistic people are also mimics.

So? Psychopaths are people, too - doesn’t mean they have the same qualities as non-psychopaths- just because they are ‘people’. Is having a label of ‘people’ enough to make one philosopher? Nobody was even purposefully attacking autistic people here - and you’re already screaming murder.

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  1. When you use the term “thing in-itself” you are using a technical term from Kantian philosophy (in your case you’re using innappropriately). If you want to use this term on a philosophy forum, where presumably people are familiar with philosophy, then you ought to use it appropriately. If not, then that is your decision and you must live with the consequence of people pointing out that you’re using that term wrong.

  2. I apologize but when people talk about autistic people as if they are damaged in some way I make the immediate inference that they are thinking about them as less than people. My mistake. In the future I’ll just consider it to be clumbsy use of language and poor manners.

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You say, “in other words having a damaged mind”…I don’t think you really understand asperger’s.

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So, philosophy has become an institutionalized religion and books its relics where all who enter the Church of Philosophy must pay homage to its relics. Because big words used by some famous people, like gold-adorned and jewel-studded icons are a sure way to bring people closer to their god. And nobody cares why people built churches in the first place. What’s important is that god dwells there and all the answers must be there also, and that’s enough. Church desecration is a sin, of course (and is written so in some book).
Can you think outside of Kant? Are you a scholar?

Why? Do you think, in some deep recesses of your mind, that autistic people are less than people? That any variation or damage, automatically disqualifies one from ‘person-hood’? (which wasn’t even the question here) You brought this assertion up.

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The idea that people who are disabled in either mind or body are “just different” is nonsense, allbeit a currently very popular nonsense. At what point does the disability become damage or sickness or disability? At some point disability crosses over from not so severe that the person cannot live a more or less normal, independnet life to someplace where it is so severe that the person is unable to live a normal life and needs care. I’m not sure whether Asberger’s ever need care but autisatic people very frequently do. How can somebody who is incapable of living unaided be called “just different”?

It is such a dreadfully simplistic attitude, one that fails to look at consequences. Moreover, if you class someone as “just different” you are classing them as people who do not need any sort of help, any therapy or whatever. You are denying help to those who need it.

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The problem is that we do not live in the world of perfectly cut-clean-logical ideas, where A=A. Many ideas/ideals are tainted with underlying emotions/feelings and camouflage themselves as something else, and logic alone may not detect it (especially if it cannot recognize it). Autistic people and aspies may be very logical, but are lacking in E.Q., and this limitation may prevent them from detecting nuances/alternate motivations/deceptions. They are more likely to take things at face value/superficially, or as is presented to them. It may not be such a big issue in an enclosed/specialized environment, such as academia, but in the real world, (with real people, most of whom are driven by feelings, and prey or are preyed upon) this could be an essential survival skill.

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So it’s “just nonsensne”, and they not, “just different”. That’s your argument?

And what is it that you’re arguing for again?

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Literal thinking: youtube.com/watch?v=aiT7jnee6D4

Implied/oblique questions: youtube.com/watch?v=hw2bHP4ZB4s

Saw this on the news yesterday (it appears ‘how are you’ - an implied social question, is one of the pet peeves of literal thinkers):
cbc.ca/player/News/TV%20Show … 428935184/

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Not an argument but a statement. But I did give a couple of reasons why I said so. But I use the word “nonsense” quite deliberately as one does when children are making nuisances of themselves. They’re just wanting to start an argument, are being contrary, are pestering and they need to be dismissed, NOT engaged with. That’s where you stand, Mr Resident Contrarian. The reason one dismisses such stuff, apart from it just being simply worthless and pointless and only trying to annoy because they know it teases, is that children need to be taught better. Let them get away with this kind of behaviour and you do them a terrible disservice for it damages their minds. How much of yours is remaini9ng, Mr Resident Contrarian??!!!

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It’s so refreshing and rare to encounter someone on these forums someone who talks so much sense!

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Bit of a nasty one this. I can see why autistic people have a great deal of appeal as employees. Sit them down in front of a computer and they’ll be there until the cows come home. They are obsessive. They will sit and work at mind-bogglingly boring jobs without complaint. They will become highly skilled like a machine in a way that no healthy person would tolerate. I’m sure they must be so much easier to control. They don’t have the social skills that would have them “wasting time” talking to other people or the awareness of conditions such as would have them complaining.

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Doing well in philosophy is mainly about comprehending, memorizing and regurgitating or teaching. Very few practitioners have new things to add or offer innovations that require genius or madness. Therefore, a person w/aspergers could do well, simply by having the focus to care and learn the vast prosaic body of information. I don’t know that an innovator like Kant or Wittgenstein could have it, but I don’t see why not. It’s mainly an exercise in OCD, motivation, reading and IQ.

Anyway, philosophy is dead. What we have now is like a museum and curators and visitors, nothing more. I could totally see a curator having aspergers. So in this sense you’re not really talking about doing philosophy as much as redoing it or renewing it or whatever. It’s all physics now.

One time when I was 13 I beat off 8 times in one day. Not related, just saying.

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If brandon is autistic, it would put a different spin on this, and my own lashing would be unjustified because there would be no target to hit. But I am opposed intellectual snobs to who use other people’s knowledge in order to elevate themselves before others, and who use the label of ‘philosophy’ as means to gain some kind of status.

This is scholarship. This is what meant when I said there is difference between playing music and playing notes.

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  1. Your argument from analogy is weak. Like any discipline, you generally need to have some groundwork before you actually do the big work. This means that you need to read philosophers such as Kant, Leibniz, Descartes, Aristotle, Searle, Husserl, etc… So that you become familiar with what is actually going on in philosophy. Do you think Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason without reading anybody first?

  2. Your second argument is a straw-person and is especially weak. I never said, thought, or implied any of those things. fallacyfiles.org/ Check this page out! It teaches you neat things about how you aren’t supposed to misrepresent another person’s position in a debate because it’s logically irrelevant!

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Rumors of my disciplines demise have been greatly exaggerated.

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If brandon is autistic, it would put a different spin on this, and my own lashing would be unjustified because there would be no target to hit. But I am opposed intellectual snobs to who use other people’s knowledge in order to elevate themselves before others, and who use the label of ‘philosophy’ as means to gain some kind of status.

If I were a snob I wouldn’t be here. Also, you need to work on the ad-hominem attacks. They are pretty silly.