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Why are there not child prodigies in philosophy?

erichgrunewald.com

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Re: Why are there not child prodigies in philosophy?

#2

Post by PaulHoule »

The same reason why there aren’t in theoretical physics.

A child can certainly talk about “philosophy” (it pains me to think about the hippie school that is always asking children in groups to come up with profound ideas, the kids are clueless and feel stressed out by this, when one of them blurts something out the adults all clap mindlessly) but to contribute usefully at the professional level you are going to have to know what’s come before and that takes years.

Re: Why are there not child prodigies in philosophy?

#4

Post by version_five »

Are there any "prodigies" in philosophy?

Music and chess (the examples the author gives) along with math, are special cases where there is obviously some shortcut most of us don't possess that makes some people naturally really good. And critically, they're all completely objective.

Pretty much everything else, especially philosophy is wildly subjective anyway, so it's not like a kid could just step up and drop a philosophy bomb the way a piano prodigy could demonstrate their skill. And it's got all sorts of complex dependencies, like reading a lot of stuff. There are also no biblical scholar prodigies.

Re: Why are there not child prodigies in philosophy?

#5

Post by detaro »

version_five wrote: post #4

Are there any "prodigies" in philosophy? Music and chess (the examples the author gives) along with math, are special cases where there is obviously some shortcut most of us don't possess that makes some people naturally really good. And critically, they're all completely objective. Pretty much everything else, especially philosophy is wildly subjective anyway, so it's not like a kid could just step up and drop a phi…

> And it's got all sorts of complex dependencies, like reading a lot of stuff. There are also no biblical scholar prodigies.

There are cases of people who among other things can read and almost perfectly remember comparatively massive amounts of text at a young age. Someone like that could qualify if they picked such a direction to focus on?

Re: Why are there not child prodigies in philosophy?

#7

Post by [deleted] »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

The same reason why there aren’t in theoretical physics. A child can certainly talk about “philosophy” (it pains me to think about the hippie school that is always asking children in groups to come up with profound ideas, the kids are clueless and feel stressed out by this, when one of them blurts something out the adults all clap mindlessly) but to contribute usefully at the professional level you are going to have…

[deleted]

Re: Why are there not child prodigies in philosophy?

#9

Post by [deleted] »

detaro wrote: post #5
version_five wrote: post #4

Are there any "prodigies" in philosophy? Music and chess (the examples the author gives) along with math, are special cases where there is obviously some shortcut most of us don't possess that makes some people naturally really good. And critically, they're all completely objective. Pretty much everything else, especially philosophy is wildly subjective anyway, so it's not like a kid could just step up and drop a phi…

> And it's got all sorts of complex dependencies, like reading a lot of stuff. There are also no biblical scholar prodigies. There are cases of people who among other things can read and almost perfectly remember comparatively massive amounts of text at a young age. Someone like that could qualify if they picked such a direction to focus on?

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