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Why is it that even a three-year-old child knows the answer to some major philosophical questions while philosophers sometimes spend their whole lives searching for an answer?

February 8, 2007

Response from Nicholas D. Smith on February 8, 2007
I would certainly like to know these questions...and the three-year-old child who has such wisdom! Surely this question is a joke...?
Response from Andrew N. Carpenter on February 8, 2007

Perhaps this is the answer: Young children and philosophers can both discuss the world in unconventional ways, children because they have not yet learned to think conventionally and philosophers because they have unlearned this. Sometimes children will discuss the world in ways that also interest philosophers; philosophers, however, will address these issues in much more sophisticated ways, and the added complexity of their perspectives makes them much less likely to match a young child's confident assertiveness about the way the world is.

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