“Misfitting” and Friendship in the Virtuous Life: Neurodiversity and Moral Formation

Abstract

The self-reported experiences of autistic individuals invite ways of thinking about moral character and moral formation that challenge Christians to rethink a number of traditional claims regarding the virtues. This paper argues that attention to autism requires rethinking accounts of growth in virtue that depend on normative views of social interactions such as friendship. Drawing on scholarship in disability studies and testimony from autistic participants in an IRB-supported research study, I contend that the phenomenon of “misfitting” put forth in the work of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (2011) plays a constructive and essential role in shaping virtuous character.

Keywords:

• virtue
• ethics
• autism
• neurodiversity

Acknowledgments

The research and writing of this essay were supported by Collaborations in Christian Theological Anthropology, a project affiliated with Villanova University and the John Templeton Foundation, and New Visions in Theological Anthropology, a project affiliated with St. Andrew’s University and the John Templeton Foundation. I am grateful to colleagues from both projects who read and provided feedback on versions of these arguments, and particularly to John Bowlin and Elizabeth Fein.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Premack and Woodruff (1978) first used this term to describe a cognitive ability to infer the perspective of others. Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan Leslie, and Uta Frith (1985) assessed theory of mind in autistic children on the basis of a false-belief task in a laboratory setting, and concluded that the capacity for theory of mind in autistic children is diminished. This study had a significant influence on subsequent research. Baron-Cohen’s subsequent work turned explicitly to empathy, demonstrating a presumption that empathy builds on and requires a capacity to interpret other people’s mental states. He developed a psychological questionnaire called the Empathy Quotient (EQ), designed to measure empathy in adults with IQs in the normal range. In an early publication communicating results of a study that made use of this questionnaire, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright (2004) argued that autism is associated not simply with a diminished theory of mind, but more explicitly with a deficit in empathy.

2 See, for example, Barnbaum, 2008, Shoemaker, 2015.

3 See, for example, Dempsey et al., 2020.

4 John Swinton (2012) contends that autistic voices have historically been excluded from Christian accounts of love in particular.

5 This research study, “Friendship, Spirituality, and Autistic Well-Being,” is conducted at Duquesne University and was initially approved by Duquesne University’s Institutional Review Board on May 1, 2021. The IRB number is 2021/02/7.

6 Barnes (2016), drawing on the work of Miranda Fricker, explains that “testimonial injustice,” dismissing the testimony and experience of disabled persons, is a form of epistemic injustice. In giving narrative testimony pride of place, my study attempts to counter this injustice.

7 A philosophical debate about the “moral luck” offers tools for thinking further about the role these situational and contextual factors play in moral formation, and the degree to which it is fair to hold moral agents responsible for factors outside our control. See, for example, Williams & Nagel 1976, Zimmerman 2015.

8 For more on this history, see Pripas-Kapit 2020.

9 Walker speaks positively of McLaren’s work in a 2015 interview included in Norm Kunc’s Conversations That Matter series. Video of this interview can be found on https://neuroqueer.com/autism-empathy-and-theory-of-mind/ (accessed December 10, 2021).

Additional information

Funding

John Templeton Foundation