PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON AUTISM book

Bioethics, 2015

One of the central claims of the neurodiversity movement is that society should accommodate the needs of autistics, rather than try to treat autism. People have variously tried to reject this accommodation thesis as applicable to all autistics. One instance is Pier Jaarsma and Stellan Welin, who argue that the thesis should apply to some but not all autistics. They do so via separating autistics into high- and low-functioning, on the basis of IQ and social effectiveness or functionings. I reject their grounds for separating autistics. IQ is an irrelevant basis for separating autistics. Charitably rendering it as referring to more general capacities still leaves us mistaken about the roles they play in supporting the accommodation thesis. The appeal to social effectiveness or functionings relies on standards that are inapplicable to autistics, and which risks being deaf to the point of their claims. I then consider if their remaining argument concerning autistic culture may succeed independently of the line they draw. I argue that construing autistics' claims as beginning from culture mistakes their status, and may even detract from their aims. Via my discussion of Jaarsma and Welin, I hope to point to why the more general strategy of separating autistics, in response to the accommodation thesis, does not fully succeed. Finally, I sketch some directions for future discussions, arguing that we should instead shift our attention to consider another set of questions concerning the costs and extent of change required to accommodate all autistics.

Ethos, 2010

Abstract This special issue of Ethos brings together the work of scholars from multiple disciplines including anthropology, occupational science, and education. The authors share two main goals. First, this interdisciplinary collection of articles highlights the importance of rethinking research on autism. Each article encourages movement away from dominant biomedical discourses that focus largely on symptoms to a more phenomenological and ethnographic stance that addresses experiences of living with autism. The second goal is to rethink possibilities for social interaction and participation for people with autism. In this introduction, we briefly review current biomedical accounts of autism as a disorder that affects social cognition and explore the importance of rethinking these assumptions. We suggest that this discussion is particularly well suited for psychological anthropology's concerns with the psychological and the social in an individual's experience and place in society. [autism, ethnographic research, intersubjectivity, neurodiversity, sociality]

Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior, 2018

HANDBOOK 94-167 (2d ed. R. Bigelow 1969) [hereinafter cited as COMPUTERS AND THE LAW]; R. BIGELOW, COMPUTER LAW SERVICE (1972).

Autistic people are empirically and scientifi cally generalized as living in a fragmented, alternate reality, without a coherent continuous self. In Part I , this book presents recent neuropsychological research and its implications for existing theories of autism, selfhood, and identity, challenging common assumptions about the formation and structure of the autistic self and autism's relationship to neurotypicality. Through several case studies in Part II , the book explores the ways in which artists diagnosed with autism have constructed their identities through participation within art communities and cultures, and how the concept of self as 'story' can be utilized to better understand the neurological differences between autism and typical cognition. This book will be of particular interest to researchers and scholars within the fi elds of Disability Studies, Art Education, and Art Therapy.

American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A, 2005

Autonomy the Critical Journal of Interdisciplinary Autism Studies, 2013

Mismeasure of Man about the use of science to justify a subordinate role for women, poor people, and black people based on an unfounded thesis that itwas natural. Twenty years ago, in her article entitled The Mismeasure of Woman, the feminist writer Carol Tavris wrote of the domination of women by men. In the light of these works concerning the apparent mismeasure of certain people, I consider the position of autistic people in the context of their relationship with the predominant (typically developing) neurotype and, more specifically, the treatment of autism as adisorder. I review current orthodox autism theory -executive functioning, the extreme male brain theory, theory of mind, and weak central coherence -as well as various newer, and arguably neglected, theories including the enactive mindhypothesis, interaction theory, and the narrative practice hypothesis. I conclude that autism has been mismeasured by a predominant neurotype medical communityand propose a synthesis of autism theory that, in my view, provides a better explanation of autism than any synthesis of orthodox theory as well as providing support for my view that autism is natural human difference.

Ethos, 2010

Abstract In psychology and allied disciplines, autism has been erroneously conceived as a disease that precludes meaningful social behavior. Anthropologists are beginning to address this problem by rejecting the narrow confines of what constitutes human social functioning, and by showing the complex ways in which autistic children and adults participate in and contribute to their societies. At the same time, anthropologists have begun to contextualize public debates about autism prevalence and etiology in historical and cultural processes. This commentary identifies two major disjunctions in contemporary public debates about autism: the first between a depersonalized form of knowledge constructed by science and a narcissistic claim for knowledge that privileges anecdotal, personal experience; the second between a “mainstream” discourse on science and a new discourse on science that explains autism in terms of environmental insults. These new environmental perspectives, especially those that concern vaccine damage, can be situated in late modernity. They mediate between a nostalgic memory of ontological certainty, trust, and authenticity and a postmodern world characterized by a loss of faith in scientific institutions. [autism, sociality, vaccines, advocacy]

Canadian journal of autism equity, 2021

As an Autistic student in a master's degree, I focused on the way expertise is understood. I was specifically interested in how policy decisions in education were made without Autistic involvement. I looked at the literature that was used to make these decisions and interviewed Autistic people as to their thoughts on who should be considered experts when it comes to autism. I found that policy was driven by experts who had little to no direct experience with autism or Autistics and who had no personal connections to the approaches they recommended. I argue that Autistic people must be involved in research design, execution, implementation, dissemination, and policy decisions. Résumé En tant qu'étudiant autiste en train d'effectuer une maîtrise, je me suis concentré sur notre compréhension de la notion d'expertise. Je m'intéressais plus particulièrement à la manière dont les décisions politiques en matière d'éducation étaient prises sans la participation des personnes autistes. J'ai étudié les ouvrages utilisés pour prendre ces décisions et j'ai interrogé des personnes autistes pour savoir qui, selon elles, devait être considéré comme un(e) expert(e) en matière d'autisme. J'ai découvert que les politiques étaient façonnées par des experts qui avaient peu ou pas d'expérience directe avec l'autisme et les personnes autistes, et qui n'avaient pas souvent des liens personnels avec les approches qu'ils recommandaient. Je soutiens que les personnes autistes doivent être impliquées dans la conception, l'exécution, la mise en oeuvre et la diffusion de la recherche, ainsi que dans les décisions politiques.

Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology Volume 29, Number 3, September 2022, 2022

Is autism a condition internal to the person that causes problems in social interaction? Or should we conceive of autism primarily at the level of interaction, as a “two-way” phenomenon (Krueger & Maiese, 2018) that develops in the relation between the person with autism and her social-material environment? Over the last decade or so, this issue has increasingly gained interest, not only in academia, but also in the field of mental health care and in the wider public domain.

Healthy Minds in the Twentieth Century, 2019

Clinically, autism spectrum disorder (henceforth, autism) has been described as a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition characterised by impairments in social interaction, communication, and rigidity in thinking. Additionally, autistic individuals are typically characterised as having executive functioning difficulties (i.e. self-regulation skills), sensory processing problems (i.e. the brain processing information from the senses), difficulties with sleep and food, limited theory of mind (i.e. the ability to see things from the point of view of others), and the possibility of various co-morbid mental health conditions. 1 Despite such descriptions,