Does Aspergers influence applicable philosophies?

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Finding a practical philosophy to live by has been a little hobby of mine for some time. I've little academic interest it in though so my focus has been very narrow.

I was only recently diagnosed with Aspergers and it has got me wondering all sorts of things about the philosophical path I had been on up until that point.

I was heavily into Alan Watts (almost exclusively) and felt that I had a very good intellectual hold on his views (and still do). For those unfamiliar with Alan Watts - think along the lines of philosophical Taosim. What has generally avoided me however is "feeling" that philosophy at a deep level.

Now I'm wondering if maybe, given my Aspergers, I've been chasing an impossible dream. If spontaneity is unnatural for an aspie then should I really be attempting to live a philosophy that aims for the spontaneous? Calmness of mind etc hardly applies either.

So I've been thinking back to an essay I read some years back that seemed to resonate with me at the time. It was 'Egoism' by John Beverley Robinson written in the early 1900s. I disregarded it at the time because it didn't seem as close to the mark as the philosophy of Alan Watts. Of course in many ways it was the total opposite - Watts viewing the ego as an illusion and the other basing it's philosophy on that very illusion.

A link to the Robinson essay is here: (actually because I'm new I can't post links yet, Googling John Beverly Robinson Egosim will find his essay)

So my question is - Given that an Aspergers mind is 'wired' differently from NTs does that mean that some philosophies are simply going to be incompatible on a practical level regardless of how 'correct' they may appear at an intellectual level?

In my case I'm wondering if the type of Egoism spoken about in the above essay has more of a practical fit for me, despite my intellectual belief that a Taoist-type world view is a closer to reality.

I'm really keen to hear your opinions on this as I'm mightily confused myself

Thanks,
FeralAspie ]

Well, if all you care about is pragmatics, then why focus upon a philosophy that is impractical?

Honestly, I would say that a good philosophy for an aspie allows him to categorize the world effectively without rapid shifts in categories.

Yes, what is practical for an aspie is different than it is for an NT. Frankly, I won't advise you to Watts or Robinson necessarily, but rather advise you to create metrics and measure.

I would say that my Asperger does influence my philosophical view point, but in an different direction. I found myself much more in the line of the sceptical reasoning of Socrates or the rational argumentations of Epicurus. Also my lecture of Marcus Aurelius helped my very much to fight meltdowns. For questions like the nature of the world I am still stuck with Spinoza, Kant and Hume (both have very good questions and some reasonable answers, but must be interpreted under the enlightened of modern science).

Other philosopher provided my with methods, like Hegel and the application of the dialectic method for almost any question.

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More generally: I found myself more in the rational thinkers, which do not appeal to any feelings, but try to argue their case by applying strict rational methods.

I am not well read in philosophy but have a sketchy idea of some of the basics. Nevertheless my general impression is that many if not most philosophers view the world through language and, as someone probably Aspergic, my strongest integration of my understanding comes from basic sense impressions, vision, taste, sound, touch and my imaginative capabilities augment this. I am a sculptor, graphic artist, cook as well as a poet so my life is more or less deeply sensual. In this I am more like an animal with little linguistic involvement and my relationships with all kinds of animals has a depth beyond my human relationships. This is not to say I have poor language ability but I find language a poor and clumsy and inadequate way to analyze the world and what I have read of philosophers seems to indicate they have a very poor comprehension as to how strongly language and linguistic structure distorts and limits and traps their thinking.

Language does impose its limitations; but vision knows no barriers.

There was a symbiosis in my mental state through the first five decades - that adrenaline rush of the now kicked in against the idea of the immanent god and everything was unreasonably well in my world.

The complexity barriers fell, eventually, and left me unprotected in an unsympathetic world. I began, again, trying to adapt. Much, I suspec, as a salted slug struggles to adapt.

Stoicism

My belief is that philosophy is what many people on the spectrum do, that very few NTs feel the need to understand life/the world to this extent. So in a way all, or most, philosophies are actually already from an AS viewpoint. Different AS viewpoints!

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Probably, as it might distort one's perception and reaction to reality. That much seems possible.

Kant is bogus. There is no such thing as an apodictic synthetic a priori judgment. If a judgment is synthetic at all, it is a posteriori and cannot be apodictic. The only apodictic judgments are analytic a priori judgments. David Hume drove I. Kant mad and mad is what he stayed.

The existence of logically consistent non-Euclidean geometry blows the nonsense that Kant stated in -The Critique of Pure Reason- out of the water.

ruveyn

You are talking about the Preface, especially chapter I and V, and and I. Transzendentale Elementarlehre, Erster Abschnitt, § 2.

I reread this:

1) Kant talk about the space we use to describe the world surrounding as necessary.
2) Kant say that this knowledge of a space is not deduced empirical, but exists prior empirical observation (otherwise such an observation would not be possible)
3) Kant there does not deny the existence of other forms of space which are logical consistent. In his "Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können" he discusses this question again and shows in §11 that "pure mathematics" is based on pure ideas; so if you alter those an other kind of mathematical system will appear.

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Kant is here in an other respect interesting: He pointed unknowingly to the weak points of Newton's physic; the unproven assumption of a constant space and time. If you really want to criticize Kant here, than you may point that Kant did not took the boldness to declare Newton's physics as based on unprovable assumptions.

I agree aspies are natural philosophers nts just do we observe the absurdity.Dont bother with intellectual philosophy it just a peverse game of chess check out the four noble truths and the ninefold path yes folks buddism i reccommend the dharmapada.

Try this:

I'll eat when I'm hungry,
I'll drink when I'm dry
I will live day by day
till the day that I die.

ruveyn

I quickly googled that and the closest thing i could find that matches what Ruveyn said comes from an irish song..

What this sounds like - and I don't mean it in a nasty way, just being blunt - "I want a philosophy/system of belief to tell me what/how to think."

Or do you mean that you're exploring systems of philosophies to match what/how you already think and can help you further expand on that?

If the former, this I find amazing that anyone would *wish* for someone else to do their thinking for them, yet it would appear to be common. It is what I dislike about most religions/gurus. "Don't go looking for the truth elsewhere. I have the truth. Just do as I say."

If the latter, I've found that I can learn from most any system of philosophy even if I disagree with it. I find many philosophers can be just as bad as religious fundamentalists. "So-and-So's school of thought is my favorite, therefore the rest suck."

As to the Aspie influence, I think it does influence, but we're all individuals. So how it influences you may be different from how it influences me. The one common thread; I find more Aspies are logical/scientific/objective thinkers versus emotional thinkers. E.g.; more likely to vote/worship/not-worship based on their own attempts at objective observation versus simply doing what their upbringing conditioned them to do without question.

Not all, but more so than NTs.

Just my $0.02.

- Jo

Thanks for your input Jo. I can see that how I wrote that was pretty ambiguous. What I was trying to say was the I'm not so much interested in spending years learning the ins and outs of every philosopher out there so that I can the discuss the pros and cons of each philosophy like I know what I'm talking about. In other words I'm not interested in philosophy for it's own sake, but how it applies practically.

I'm certainly not interested in being told what to think, my life is far from that of a conformist.

So I guess you're close to the mark with the later option. And the question simply came from wondering if generally there were philosophies that fall directly into the aspie camp. To use a poor analogy I wouldn't so much be interested in the philosophy that a goat might live by (of course I'm not suggesting goats are silly enough to need philosophy) simply because a goat's brain will function differently from mine. So I was thinking that the same sort of logic might apply as far as aspies and NTs goes. No good trying to run mac software on a pc etc.

However, thanks to all the great replies, I now realise that the question is not really valid. I was just reassessing things in light of my diagnosis and thought it best to see if other aspies were of the opinion that a Taoist (Alan Watts) type perspective on things was totally incompatible with being aspergers (back to the mac / pc thing).

Of course even if this thread had of sent me off in a different direction, it wouldn't change the fact that I would still believe that a Taoist view is closer to reality. It more would have been along the lines of accepting that I've got a PC and need to make the most of it rather than continually trying to run mac software on it simply because I know it is better (and yet never going to work).

Hopefully I haven't confused things further with this ramble (that's one thing I excel at - confusion)

Anyways - thanks very much to everyone for your great responses.

My philosophy is to remain in the present moment and honor my intuition. Also to sort through piles and piles of rubbish to find a few gems of truth.