More on the ontological status of autism and double empathy

Abstract

This response to Milton’s recent article on the ontological status of autism and double empathy also explores, through the lens of ‘double empathy’ and ‘theory of mind’, the issues of relationality and interaction that researchers in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and psychology hardly acknowledge. I go on to consider Wittgenstein’s criteriological view of mind, propose a synthesis of theory to describe autism, and suggest that public criteria of a non-autistic ontology enable many autistic people to eventually develop the understanding of other (non-autistic) minds that, in turn, enables them to survive, and even thrive.

Keywords:

• autism
• double empathy
• theory of mind
• Wittgenstein

Introduction

Arguably the most influential theory seeking to explain autism, or aspects of autism, is theory of mind (ToM), which posits that autistic people¹ are disabled in being less able than their non-autistic peers in understanding others (or, in the more extreme cases, being unable to appreciate that others have different feelings and thoughts to themselves). Furthermore, there appears to be an assumption made by most authors who write about ToM in autism that it is an autistic person’s ToM difficulties which precede the social difficulties they face.

However, it has been noted that non-autistic individuals generally have just as much difficulty in understanding the autistic mind as vice versa and that it seems entirely wrong to classify autistic difficulty in ‘reading the mind’ of the person without autism as a disability when the difficulty experienced by the person without autism is not so regarded (L. Beardon, personal communication, 2012; Hacking 2009; Milton 2012; Sinclair 1993). This conundrum is known either as the double empathy problem (Milton 2012) or as a facet of the cross-neurological² ToM thesis that Beardon expounds in his National Autistic Society/Sheffield Hallam University Post Graduate Certificate in Autism and Asperger Syndrome course lectures (Chown 2013). Milton goes further than simply suggesting the problem is just as much one for the non-autistic person as for the person with autism when he writes that ‘One could say that many autistic people have indeed gained a greater level of insight into (non-autistic) society, and more than vice versa, perhaps due to the need to survive and potentially thrive in a (non-autistic) culture’ (Milton 2012, 886; original emphasis). Although I think the implication here that there is an autistic society is an error (probably unintentional) on his part, I fully agree with Milton’s apparent point that many autistic people achieve more insight into society than most non-autistic people gain into autism. Beardon argues that autistic people have a similar empathy with other autistic minds as non-autistic minds have with their peers. The double empathy/cross-neurological hypotheses of Milton and Beardon can be summarised as follows:

1. non-autistic people appear to have as much difficulty in understanding autistic minds as vice versa;

2. autistic people often develop a greater understanding of society than non-autistic people develop of autism; and

3. autistic people have a similar ability to empathise with other autistic people as non-autistic people have with their peers.

Milton does not suggest that non-autistic people are less capable of developing an understanding of autism than vice versa; as he points out, it is simply that autistic people have no choice but to try to develop an understanding of society if they are to ‘survive and potentially thrive’ whereas no such imperative applies in the opposite direction (Milton 2012). If one accepts that autistic people appear to understand other autistic minds as well as non-autistic people understand each other, this would be a significant achievement given that, in general, persons with autism spend far less time with their peers than non-autistic people spend with theirs. I think it is unlikely that autistic people do understand other autistic minds as well as those without autism understand each other but I do agree with Beardon that autistic people have an affinity with other autistic people which non-autistic people do not have. I believe this implies that, given the same level of interaction with their peers as non-autistic people generally have with theirs, persons with autism could develop autistic ToM similar to non-autistic ToM. On this basis it appears that the ontological status of autism is partly dependent upon the simple fact that only about 1% of any population is autistic (Brugha et al. 2009) so that, of necessity, our society, which is almost totally a social construction by members of the majority non-autistic neurotype, is a fundamentally non-autistic society.

It is of interest to muse on an exactly opposite world where 99% of the people are autistic.³ In such a society the very few non-autistic people would be highly unlikely to develop their full capability to understand other non-autistic minds because they would be interacting for the most part with autistic people. Would a non-autistic person in this autistic society develop a level of understanding of autistic people at least similar to the knowledge of non-autistic people which persons with autism often develop in our non-autistic society in order to survive and even thrive? I think the answer to this question has to be in the affirmative because they would ‘hack out’ an understanding in this world just as autistic people can often hack out an understanding in the real world (Happé 1994). But I think a more important question to ask is whether a non-autistic person in an autistic society would develop a better understanding of the minds of the other neurotype – because non-autistic ToM is supposedly better than ToM in autism – than autistic people are able to develop in our world? I suppose if you believe there is a ToM module in the brain that does not work properly in autism, or that non-autistic people are either better able to develop pseudo-theories about other minds than autistic people or have the advantage over autism in their ability to simulate other minds, you might be inclined to think that a non-autistic person would be better off in an autistic world than vice versa. But this seems to assume that ToM precedes the social, and hence that difficulties with ToM precede difficulties with social interaction; that is, a non-autistic person in an autistic society will have developed the level of ToM we associate with such people in our society and thus will be better able to figure out the autistic mind using their apparently superior ToM skills than vice versa in our society. However, for me, the $1000 question is not whether in an autistic society a non-autistic person would develop a superior ability to read the minds of a different neurotype than an autistic person in a non-autistic society (although this would be a reasonable test of whether a non-autistic person inherently has, or has the ability to develop, superior ToM skills than a person with autism), but whether a non-autistic person in an autistic society would develop a better understanding of their own neurotype’s minds than is the case with autistic people in the real world? This is the better test of the two because the lack of interaction with their peers in the hypothetical world places the onus on any inherent ToM skills, or on the ability to develop them through theorising or simulation, whereas with the other test it would be far more difficult to extricate the effects of inherent ToM abilities from the hacking out effects enabled by constant interaction with the 99% majority population. What a pity that this is a hypothetical example, as I suspect that non-autistic people would be no better at understanding the minds of their peers when in the same tiny minority as persons with autism are in the world as we know it. But I also believe that it is far too simplistic to assume that ToM skills precede social skills. Is it not possible that the situation is reversed or even bi-directional? I cannot prove my hypothesis but then proponents of modular theory, theory theory, or simulation theory have no proof either.

Wittgenstein’s criteriological understanding of the mind

Montgomery reminds us that modular theory, theory theory, and simulation theory are not the only possible explanations for how children gain an understanding of other minds. He writes that ‘Curiously, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind has largely been absent from theoretical discussions of children’s thinking about the mind’ (Montgomery 1997, 295) even though ‘Wittgenstein’s private language argument⁴ bears directly on many important issues regarding children’s thinking about the mind’ (1997, 292). For Wittgenstein, what appears to be a symptom of a mental state (such as the behaviour usually associated with pain) is actually a criterion,⁵ not a symptom; the key consideration being that the mental state cannot be separated from the behaviour, but rather they are two sides of the same coin (and not behaviourism, because Wittgenstein objects to the construal of mental state terms in physical state language) (Wittgenstein 1958). Instead of a child’s understanding of other minds being based on a process of introspection (which would be required with a simulation theory in which the child has to infer the same mental state as seen in another person) or by relating one mental state to another on the basis of a network of mental state terms (as would be necessary in the case of a theory theory explanation), Wittgenstein proposes a set of public criteria as ‘public signs providing justification for imputing the mental state they signify’ (Montgomery 1997, 299). This is the criteriological view of the development of an understanding in the child of other minds summarised by Montgomery as follows:

Wittgenstein’s argument (is) that the presence of criteria is necessary for teaching the meanings of various mental state terms to children and, also, for then gauging children’s correct use of these terms. Children use the criteria to conceptualize the mental state and to infer its presence or absence. (1997, 305)

It is a shame that Wittgenstein’s alternative perspective on the problem of other minds has been neglected, although not altogether surprising given that his writings are unconventional and seen by many as ‘difficult’. I believe that his proposed criteriological understanding of mind should be resurrected and investigated, especially in relation to autism. Taking a synthesis of the criteriological view of the mind, interaction theory (which suggests that social interaction enables the development of ToM), and the enactive mind hypothesis (which says that the social is less salient in autism) makes me wonder whether a lower salience of the social in autism may lead to qualitatively and quantitatively reduced social interaction, which in turn results in a reduced ability to understand public criteria of the mind (Gallagher 2004; Gallagher and Hutto 2008; Klin et al. 2003; Wittgenstein 1958; Wootton 1997, 1999, 2002). I argue that in my hypothetical autistic world the greater salience of the social in non-autistic people would probably not enable them to gain a better understanding of autistic minds than vice versa, because in my version of the enactive mind hypothesis there is an assumption that minds are attuned to the dominant sociality in a society. And the relative lack of social interaction with their peers in the other world (being in such a small minority) would cause non-autistic people the same sort of problems that the small autistic minority have in the real world. In other words, non-autistic people would be no better off in the hypothetical world than autistic people are in the actual world. This could mean that the ontological status of both the autistic and non-autistic neurotypes is partly dependent upon the nature of the society. We might want to say that the ontological status is socially constructed to this extent. The non-autistic neurotype biology suits our society because the non-autistic population is in the vast majority, not because the former is inherently the better of the two cognitively.

Conclusion

Perhaps hypothesis (2) can be explained on the basis that, in the world we live in, the public criteria available to members of society for the purposes of imputing mental states are, by definition, public criteria of a fundamentally non-autistic ontological state. There are no public criteria of an autistic ontological state to assist the non-autistic to understand the autistic. Arguably, it is those public criteria of a non-autistic state that enable many autistic people to eventually develop the understanding of other (non-autistic) minds that, in turn, enables them to survive, and even thrive, in a hostile world. This occurs where they can use their intellectual prowess to hack out an understanding of other minds that develops naturally for those persons for whom non-autistic sociality is salient and who therefore have an affinity with the public criteria of the mind arising from non-autistic social interaction.

Notes

1. Whilst person-first language is generally favoured by the editors of peer-reviewed journals publishing on the subject of autism, members of the autism community often prefer to put their autism first. I use both options to demonstrate an open-mindedness on the matter.

2. The cross-neurological thesis is that interactional difficulties only arise when persons from different neurotypes interact; for example, when an autistic person interacts with a non-autistic person.

3. My hypothetical example was inspired by Vic Finkelstein’s society of wheelchair users (Finkelstein 1975).

4. Because there can be no difference between applying a sign correctly and believing that one has applied it correctly, Wittgenstein rejects the possibility of a private language (Wittgenstein 1958).

5. In Wittgenstein’s criteriological view of understanding other minds, a criterion may be defined as ‘something by which one may be justified in saying that the thing is so and by whose absence one may be justified in saying that the thing is not so’ (Albritton in Pitcher 1968, 244).