Neurodiversity and the Neuro-Neutral State

Abstract

Over the past decade, many philosophers have argued that to respect the moral equality of their citizens, states should be neutral toward certain forms of diversity among their populations. Areas in which the state neutrality has been advocated include, but are not limited to, citizens’ different religions; languages; and sexual orientations. However, there remains an important area where its normative (ir)relevance has not been discussed: That of neurodiversity. After identifying several ways in which contemporary states disfavor the interests of neurodivergent groups relative to the neurotypical majority, including those of autistic people; dyslectic people; and people with ADHD, the most promising would be-justifications for such unequal treatment are considered. They maintain respectively that states only have to be neutral toward differences that feature in people’s conceptions of the good life; that addressing the discussed neuro-inequalities is too costly, whether financially or otherwise; that doing so raises intolerable risks of a public backlash; and that a commitment to neuro-neutrality leads to overinclusion. None are found to be convincing across the board, which leads me to conclude that states should become significantly more neuro-neutral than they are today.

Keywords:

• ADHD
• autism
• dyslexia
• hypersensitivity
• neurodiversity
• state neutrality

INTRODUCTION

For many people, the example that leaps to mind when asked to think of a “neutral state” is that of Switzerland. In this context, the term “neutrality” refers to the fact that Switzerland is impartial in most wars and is not a member of transnational organizations such as the EU or NATO. However, philosophers have defended another type of state neutrality over the past decade that is not internationally- but domestically-oriented (e.g. Balint 2015; Patten 2012; Pierik and Van der Burg 2014) and that forms the subject of this article. Roughly speaking, a state is neutral in this second sense if and only if ensures that the benefits and costs of state institutions/laws/policies are distributed on an equal or equitable basis among certain groups of citizens, which may be differentiated based on a range of different characteristics. For example, some have argued that to respect citizens’ moral equality, states should be neutral among their citizens’ different religions (e.g. by having either no state religion or several state religions; de Vries 2020), languages (e.g. by offering public services in both majority and minority languages (Patten 2014; Schutter 2017), and sexual orientation (e.g. by recognizing same-sex marriages alongside heterosexual ones (Reitan 2016; Walker 2015). Yet, there remains an important area in which the (ir)relevance of state neutrality as a normative principle has not been discussed: that of neurodiversity.

The aim of this article is to fill this lacuna. It starts by identifying various ways in which contemporary states disfavor the interests of neurodivergent groups vis-à-vis the neurotypical majority, including those of autistic people; dyslectic people; and people with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (section “NEURO-INEQUALITIES”). Departing from the assumption that states should not play favorites among their citizens unless they have good reasons for doing so, it then considers (what I take to be) the most promising would-be justifications for such non-neutral treatment (section “WAYS FOR STATES TO BECOME (MORE) NEURO-NEUTRAL”), none of which are found to be compelling across the board. They maintain respectively that states only have to be neutral toward differences that are part of people’s conception of the good life; that rectifying the discussed neuro-inequalities is too costly, whether financially or otherwise; that becoming more neuro-neutral poses intolerable risks of a public backlash; and that a commitment to such neutrality leads to overinclusion. The article concludes by identifying avenues for future research on neuro-neutrality (section “THE CASE FOR NEURO-NEUTRALITY”).

NEURO-INEQUALITIES

Let us begin, then, by looking at some common and consequential disadvantages faced by neurodivergent individuals that their neurotypical counterparts do not face, or simply not to the same degree, all of which the next section will show could be addressed by states.¹

Design of Workplaces

While not every autistic person is hypersensitive to sensory input, which may involve overdeveloped capacities for e.g. hearing, seeing, smelling, and/or feeling, a large portion of them is (Attwood 2007, 129; Barkley 2022; Sarris 2016), with some estimates suggesting that 50–70% has a decreased tolerance for sound alone at some stage of their lives (Sarris 2016). Since many offices are ill-adapted to atypical sensory profiles, this often create problems for autistic employees (Baldwin, Costley, and Warren 2014; Beardon and Edmonds 2007; Hayward, McVilly, and Stokes 2018; Lorenz et al. 2016). For example, in one study among 237 UK-nationals with Asperger Syndrome, over a third reported struggling with sensory issues at work (Beardon and Edmonds 2007). Consider some of the testimonies:

• “Hate noise, but endured 10 years in an open plan staffroom, to my acute daily discomfort.”

• “I cannot cope with excessive/odd noise—both from colleagues warbling (sorry, I don’t mean to be rude) or from high-pitched electronic and similar machinery.”

• “Fluorescent lights make me ill.”

• “Sensitive to noise, light, smells etc etc. I need to work in a quiet environment, preferably on my own with as little artificial lighting as possible” (Beardon and Edmonds 2007).

But it is not only autistic people whose senses who are prone to being overstimulated within modern office environments. The same is true of people with ADHD, who also have elevated levels of hypersensitivity—for instance, even when controlling for autism, 43% of female participants and 22% of male participants reported hypo- and/or hypersensitivity in a study among 116 adults with ADHD by Bijlenga et al. (2017)—² and been found to similarly suffer disadvantages on the job as a result (Cootey 2020; Mohezar, Jaafar, and Akbar 2021; Sarkis 2015).

Design of Public Spaces

Besides work environments, the needs of neurodivergent individuals often go unmet within public spaces as well. For example, many schools, universities, museums and libraries are overstimulating for those with hypersensitivity (e.g. Kenna 2023; Toronyi 2021). Another example can be found in deficient signage at train stations or along roads. Such deficiencies may involve an inadequate quantity of signs, which has a disproportionately negative impact on autistic people whose spatial navigation skills tend to be worse than those of neurotypicals (Lind et al. 2013; Ring et al. 2018). However, they may also involve a reliance on wholly text-based signs as opposed to ones utilizing color schemes, symbols, icons, and/or pictures, the latter being much more user-friendly for dyslectic people among other groups (Lamont 2008).

Communication

Still other ways in which the interests of neurodivergent groups are being disfavored are to do with communication. They include the widespread use of serif fonts such as Times New Roman and Georgia, which has been shown to impede text comprehension and to increase reading times among dyslectic individuals (British Dyslexia Association 2023; Rello and Baeza-Yates 2013). Other examples include the use of figurative or metaphorical speech, which many autistic people find challenging (Kalandadze et al. 2018), and the subsidizing of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which is a form of therapy seeking to make those on the spectrum behave more like their neurotypical counterparts (Cooper, Heron, and Heward 2020; Graber and Graber 2023), for instance by conditioning them to make eye contact and to eschew behaviors such as stimming (Milton 2018; NOS Nieuws 2023).

WAYS FOR STATES TO BECOME (MORE) NEURO-NEUTRAL

What is apposite for us is that all the neuro-inequalities just mentioned are ones that could be addressed by states, which set them apart from forms of non-neutrality that are often thought to be inescapable—for example, since the number of languages in which schools and public administrations can operate is practically highly limited, most states with multilingual populations cannot be entirely linguistically neutral (cf. Patten 2014, Chapter 8). They could, for instance, take one or more of the following measures:

• Ensure that governmental buildings are low in sensory stimuli, for example by painting walls in low arousal colors such as cream and pastel shades and having carpet flooring and LED-lighting rather than laminated flooring and fluorescent lighting respectively.

• Provide enough signposts at train stations among other public spaces;

• Make signposts dyslexia-friendly by using color schemes, symbols, icons, and/or pictures.

• Abolish subsidies for ABA therapy in those cases where such therapy aims to change behaviors to which neurotypical individuals can be reasonably expected to adapt, such as stimming.

• Require governmental documents to be written in a sans serif font, such as Helvetica or Arial.

• Encourage civil servants to use literal speech as opposed to figurative or metaphorical speech when communicating with members of the public.

Besides making their own institutions more neuro-neutral through measures like the ones listed above, it bears mentioning that states might go one step further by incentivizing private organizations such as companies and civil society organizations to become more neuro-neutral as well, which might be understood to indirectly increase a state’s level of neuro-neutrality. For example, they could use social media campaigns and tax incentives to encourage companies to provide calm work environments and to engage in neurodivergent-friendly forms of communication, as well as introduce laws requiring them to make reasonable accommodations for neurodivergent groups as countries such as the US and UK have done for a subset of disabilities and condition (see the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the UK’s Equality Act of 2010). However, since all else being equal, such measures are more controversial than for states to try to reduce the neuro-favoritism of their own institutions, especially when coercive interference is involved, and since for them to become internally more neuro-neutral along the lines proposed here would already amount to a momentous change, the remainder of this article focuses on such intra-mural or in-house reform. (Of course, the distinction between intra-mural and extra-mural reform is somewhat muddied by the fact that there are public-private entanglements in many countries whereby private organizations receiving governmental funding to perform socially valuable services—think of religious organizations running soup kitchens or providing foster care services (cf. Monsma and Carlson-Thies 2015)—and are subjected to some but usually not all the regulations governing wholly public institutions, such as government bureaucracies; police forces; public universities; et cetera. I will not try to settle here exactly whether the boundary between private and public organizations needs to be drawn for the purpose of applying principles of state neutrality; suffice it to say that the more socially important the services are that are outsourced to private organizations, the stronger the case for extending these principles.)

THE CASE FOR NEURO-NEUTRALITY

“If we consider virtually any law,” the late philosopher Brian Barry wrote,

we shall find that it is much more burdensome to some people than to others. Speed limits inhibit only those who like to drive fast. Laws prohibiting drunk driving have no impact on teetotallers. Only smokers are stopped by prohibitions on smoking in public places. Only those who want to own a handgun are affected by a ban on them, and so on ad infinitum (Barry 2002, 34).

What Barry’s remarks remind us of is that from the sheer fact that a given state law, policy, or institution is more (dis)advantageous to some groups of citizens than others, we cannot infer that there must be an objectionable inequality. What needs to be established in addition is that the inequality in question is unfair or unjust (cf. Patten 2014; Scanlon 2017, Chapter 2). On this view, even if citizens are moral equals and to be treated as such—which as Will Kymlicka notes is a widely accepted principle within modern-day philosophy, writing that “moral equality constitutes the “egalitarian plateau” for all contemporary political theories” (Kymlicka 1990, 5)—treating people as equals does not always entail treating them in an identical manner (Dworkin 2002, 11). (Indeed, in some cases unequal treatment may even be necessary for respecting people’s moral equality, as when those who commit horrific crimes are sent to prison but not the victims of their crimes.)

The remainder of this article proceeds on the assumption that this is correct, meaning it cannot simply be presupposed that states should respond to neuro-inequalities in various cases by implementing neuro-neutrality-enhancing measures. Instead, this normative thesis will need to be defended, which I will do by showing that the (what I consider to be) most promising would-be justifications for consistently refusing to rectify such inequalities all seem to fail.³

Conceptions of the good life

One of these candidate-justifications is predicated on the notion that states should only be neutral when their laws, policies, or institutions differentially affect citizens’ ability to live in accordance with their conceptions of the good life i.e. their understanding of what makes their life worth living. The reason for wanting to restrict the scope of neutrality thus is to avoid over-inflation. Since it was noted that virtually every state law, policy, or institution has unequal benefits for citizens, failing to impose such restrictions means that states would need to compensate millions of individuals for virtually every action they take, which is practically impossible. However, if this is correct, then we should want states to be neutral only when it matters most, which some might say is when, and only when, people’s ability to pursue fundamental life goals are differentially affected, such as ones pertaining to their “religion and conscience, culture, family, sexuality, and artistic endeavour” (Patten 2014, 136). Those who accept this view might then argue that because conditions such as autism, ADHD, and dyslexia are disabilities rather than aspects of people’s conceptions of the good life, states need not be neutral toward neurological differences.⁴

There are two problems with this line of reasoning. One is that as the rise of the neurodiversity movement illustrates (Jaarsma and Welin 2012), certain forms of neurodivergence do feature in people’s conceptions of the good life (cf. Barnes 2014; Hahn and Belt 2004). Consider autism; already back in the late nineties, sociologist Judith Singer wrote that “with our own communication medium [the internet], autistics are beginning to see ourselves not as blighted individuals, but as a diferent ethnicity” (Singer 1999, 67), whereas anthropologist Dawn Prince-Hughes observed in 2004 “that by telling and sharing stories, ‘[m]uch like the deaf community, we autistics are building an emergent culture (Prince-Hughes 2005, 7). Fast-forward two decades and we find that many scholars believe that such a culture has materialized as exemplified by e.g. the recent founding of Ought, a self-described “journal of autistic culture” whose aim it is “to document autistic culture by publishing scholarly and creative works that examine and explore it” (Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture n.d.; cf. de Vries 2021b, 209–214). What this development, as well as related endorsements of neurodivergence such as the annual “Neurodiversity Pride Day” (Neurodiversity Foundation 2022), suggest is that even if some individuals regret being neurodivergent, there are many for whom it is a valued part of who they are and how they wish to live even if it simultaneously comes with certain challenges (cf. Shakespeare 2006). (In passing, notice that the fact that certain forms of neurodivergence play this role in some people’s self-understanding and their conception of the good life means that even if a commitment to disability-accommodation will often lead to the same inclusive policy recommendations as a commitment to neuro-neutrality, there remain grounds for (additionally) defending the policies in question by invoking the latter commitment. Not only might this reduce the stigmatization of various atypical neurological traits, it can also help to avoid gratuitously offending neurodivergent individuals for whom those traits are (primarily) a form of neurological difference as opposed to a disability.)

The other problem is that whether people’s neurological identities and dispositions are part of their conceptions of the good life does not appear necessary for states to have strong reasons to be neutral toward their neurological differences. To bring this out, an analogy might be drawn with accommodations for paraplegics. Although there are paraplegics who do not consider their disability part of what makes their life worthwhile and who might prefer not to have it, this is not a good ground for refusing to build wheelchair ramps at the entrances of public buildings, or so it seems; in fact, even if none of these individuals valued their disability, such refusals would still look problematically non-neutral. Yet, if this is true, then from the simple fact that a certain portion of people do not value their atypical neurological traits, we cannot infer that it must acceptable to, say, refuse to print governmental documents in sans serif fonts (which it was noted would accommodate dyslectic individuals) or refuse to instal non-fluorescent lighting in governmental buildings (which it was noted would accommodate hypersensitive individuals). What needs to be additionally shown is that such neuro-neutrality-enhancing measures do not play a key role in helping neurodivergent individuals achieve the same basic functionings as neurotypical individuals, whereby “basic functionings” are defined as those activities and ways of being that are necessary to live minimally decent lives and participate in society as free and equal (cf. Crocker 1995; Robeyns and Byskov 2023), as the paraplegia-case suggests that policies, laws, and institutions that allow some citizens to achieve such functionings but not others are problematically non-neutral. Once we adopt this broader view of the conditions under which state neutrality is due, it appears that many if not all the abovementioned accommodations for neurodivergent groups fall within its scope by enabling their members to do essential things such as function at work; make use of public facilities such as libraries and train stations; and understand messages from government agencies and officials.

Financial costs

Another argument against extending state neutrality to the domain of neurodiversity maintains that the costs of doing so are too great. To assess this objection, which is premised on the (I assume here) plausible notion that the good of state neutrality must be balanced against potential rival goods as there are no grounds for believing that such neutrality is the only thing that matters or that it always constitutes the highest good (Balint 2015), let us start by considering the possible financial costs involved. A glance at the neutrality-enhancing measures that were discussed suggests that many of these measures cannot be too expensive financially. For starters, several of them do not cost more than introducing or maintaining some neuro-biased state of affairs. For example, since office spaces must have some wall color and type of lightening, requiring the colors of new public office buildings to be pastel rather than bright and their lights to be LED rather than fluorescent does not impose any additional costs (de Vries 2021a, 283). Likewise, no extra expenses are incurred by requiring governmental documents to use San Serif fonts as opposed to Serif ones, given that some font needs to be used.

But that is not all. Other measures that we looked at allow states to save money. In some cases, these savings will be immediate, as when subsidies for ABA-therapy are repealed. In other cases, they will accrue over longer periods. Consider public investments in the soundproofing of government offices; since calm work environments have been found to increase the productivity of hypersensitive and non-hyper-sensitive people alike (cf. (Al Horr et al. 2016; Kamarulzaman et al. 2011)), such investments have the potential to pay themselves back over time. Similarly, while there are certain costs involved in making signposts at train stations more dyslexia-friendly by adding icons or symbols to their design (as well as friendlier for those unable to read or simply unable to read the local language), these expenditures might be offset in due course if and when they reduce the need for helpdesk personnel.

To avoid confusion, in emphasizing that many ways of enhancing neuro-neutrality seem to be cost-neutral, if not on the short-term then at least on the long-term, I am not suggesting that neuro-neutrality-enhancing measures can only ever be justified if they do not impose net costs on the wider society. The claim being made here, namely that contemporary states should become significantly more neutral toward neurological differences than they are at present, does not require me to take a stance on this, given that showing that the various cost-neutral measures discussed in this subsection can be vindicated is enough to establish this conclusion. Suffice it to say that if we think there is inherent value in equalizing the benefits and burdens of state policies equally among citizens, as egalitarians do even if they accept that the reasons supporting such equalizations are not always decisive (Temkin 2003), then a certain amount of net public expenditure on neuro-neutrality enhancing measures is likely to be tolerable.

Non-financial Costs

Having focused on financial costs thus far, for states to take neuro-neutrality enhancing measures might also impose non-financial costs that stand in need of justification. For now, I want to look at possible non-financial costs for third parties, by which I mean parties other than the state and the beneficiaries of the relevant measures (in the next subsection, we will shift our attention to said beneficiaries). Such parties might include:

• Neurotypical minorities. For instance, while removing rainbow crossings can be beneficial for persons with visual hypersensitivity who may find the bright colors of such crossing overwhelming (Martin 2021), it will be detrimental to the LGBTQ+ community to the extent that such crossings positively influence public attitudes toward sexual minorities.⁵

• Neurotypical majorities. For example, although the orange shirts of the Dutch football-team are sensorily more triggering for hypersensitive audiences than e.g. the white shirts of the German-team, many neurotypical Dutch football-fans (as well as neurodivergent ones without hypersensitivity) may prefer to keep this outfit rather than replace it with a white or black one on grounds of tradition and any emotional attachments they might feel toward it.

• Other neurodivergent groups. For example, whereas allowing background music in government offices might accommodate civil servants with hypo-hearing who easily feel auditorily under-stimulated, it can be highly unpleasant for those with hypersensitive hearing who require quiet workspaces (cf. the testimonies in the penultimate section).

What is relevant for us is that since solving these sorts of conflicts invariably seems to demand a certain amount of judgment and consideration of context-dependent factors, there does not appear to be a simple algorithm that can be used. Nonetheless, a few general observations can be made.

First, when conflicts of interests exist between neurodivergent minorities and neurotypical groups, neither side’s interests are likely to always prevail. Suppose that a local LGTBQ + community wants to have a rainbow crossing near an engineering faculty where it would be visible to many visually hypersensitive students and staff. Insofar as this location carries a lot of symbolic significance for this community, perhaps because a hate crime was committed there against one of its members, there might well be decisive reasons for having the crossing in said location. By contrast, to the extent that it lacks such significance, the interests of the visually hypersensitive students and staff in having it somewhere else may well win out.

Second, numbers appear to matter at least up to a point. For example, even if some Dutch football fans are sensorily overwhelmed by watching their national team play in orange, the fact that many more of their compatriots—most probably millions more—would regret having its colors changed and that watching football is not essential for everyday functioning is likely to justify the status quo on utilitarian grounds. By contrast, given the importance of being able to understand government documents, it is plausible that even the interests of a small number of dyslectic individuals in sans serif-fonts being used for said documents will outweigh the stylistic preferences of potentially vastly more non-dyslectic individuals for a serif-font.⁶ (Notice that even if these cases are clearcut, it will sometimes be unclear as to whether the relatively large personal costs for some neurodivergent people trump the individually smaller but collectively greater costs for a particular neurotypical group and vice versa; accordingly, one important task for future research will be to identify and attempt to solve such cases.)

Third, for some of the conflicts under consideration, the appropriate solution will be to reach a compromise. Returning to the Dutch football-shirt case, it may thus be fitting to settle on a relatively soft orange as opposed to, say, the bright fluorescent orange worn during the 2002 World Cup. Likewise, some public museums in the UK have quiet openings for autistic visitors during which sounds are turned down, which strikes a compromise between having them reduced permanently and having them never reduced respectively.

Whereas a lot more could be said about these kinds of conflicts (which space constraints prevent me from doing), what matters is that although they constrain the extent to which states should aim to be neuro-neutral, there are many neuro-neutrality enhancing measures that do not seem to give rise to them, which is all I need for my argumentative purposes. For example, it looks like for government documents to avoid figurative speech will generally be a Pareto improvement. The same is true, mutatis mutandis, of fitting public libraries with LED lighting rather than fluorescent lighting and of having signposts at train stations that combine text and icons as opposed ones that are wholly text-based. Furthermore, even when such conflicts exist, there are various cases where the gains for specific neurodivergent groups appear to override the costs for others. I noted already that insofar as some neurotypical people prefer the use of serif-fonts for government documents, the value of satisfying these preferences is likely to be trumped by the disvalue of using such fonts for dyslectic individuals. Similarly, even when a portion of neurotypical people prefer laminate flooring over carpet, it is hard to believe that the value of satisfying said preferences will generally trump the interests of hypersensitive individuals in carpet, given the importance of quiet for the latter’s ability to work (cf. the testimonials in the ante-penultimate-section)⁷ and the fact that the former’s interests in laminate flooring are not nearly as strong.

Backlashes

A fourth objection to states becoming more neuro-neutral than they are presently maintains that this will help to fuel animosity against the neurodivergent groups that are accommodated. For example, some people on the spectrum fear that replacing clapping with doing “jazz-hands” to accommodate individuals with auditory hypersensitivity, as the Student Union at Manchester University recently voted to do,⁸ will “breed resentment” toward their group (McCallum 2018) and has been referred to by Bryna Siegel, author of the Politics of Autism (2018b), as “political correctness run aground” (Siegel 2018b).

While the risk of such backlashes must be taken seriously, there is a large share of neuro-neutrality enhancing measures for which it looks small if it exists at all. Indeed, some that were discussed may actually receive a lot of popular support. For example, since open offices—which tend to be noisier than closed office spaces—are widely disliked by hypersensitive and non-hypersensitive people alike (Kim and de Dear 2013; Musser 2023), one can imagine that their abolishment will be embraced by large swathes of society. More generally, there is reason to suspect that measures aimed at making offices calmer will prove popular, given that most workers report to prefer them over high-stimuli work environments (Al Horr et al. 2016; Kamarulzaman et al. 2011).

But even when neuro-neutrality-enhancing measures are not positively desired by members of the neurotypical majority, many remain unlikely to face widespread opposition. The reason for this is that, unlike policies aimed at the inclusion of non-cis gender identities or sexual minorities such as the introduction of gender-neutral bathrooms and the recognition of same-sex marriage (Bovens and Marcoci 2023; Hines 2019), these measures do not appear to be politically divisive. For example, it is difficult to see how for governments to utilize a sans serif-font; erect additional signposts in public spaces; make the design of these signposts more dyslexia-friendly; or abolish ABA subsidies will spark such opposition, given that few neurotypicals seem to care intensely about these things (there currently are no, and probably never will be, serif-font advocacy groups). Admittedly, for states to incentivize, if not force, private organizations such as companies and civil society organizations to become more neuro-neutral can be expected to rub certain individuals the wrong way (think, for instance, of those favoring small government), as such measures may be perceived as a form of governmental overreach that some will find objectionable largely if not wholly independently of the goals being pursued. What is pertinent for us is that conceding this does not impugn the thesis of this article, which, to reiterate, is that contemporary states should internally become more neuro-neutral.

Overinclusion

A final objection to this article’s defence of neuro-neutrality asserts that upholding this type of neutrality leads to instances of over-inclusion and should therefore be avoided entirely. While I have focused on autism, ADHD, and dyslexia thus far, there are certain other forms of neurodivergence toward which, the current objection maintains, states should not be neutral, as to do so would have undesirable consequences. For example, since psychopaths are overrepresented among prison populations (Poythress, Edens, and Lilienfeld 1998), it might be thought that a commitment to neuro-neutrality demands that we never impose long prison-sentences and perhaps even that we abandon the practice of incarcerating people altogether, which some will deem a reductio. Similarly, such neutrality might be interpreted as requiring that we abstain from restricting firearm-ownership among individuals with schizophrenia (as currently happens in certain places over safety concerns), which may be considered an unwelcome implication as well.

One possible reply to this argument posits that the most defensible version of neuro-neutrality requires states to bring about neutral outcomes only when this serves the overall interests of those who are being disfavored by some existing law, policy or institution. Since awarding (long) prison sentences for serious crimes helps to protect not just psychologically healthy people from such crimes and the societal damage they tend to cause but also psychopaths, those who accept this postulate might question whether a commitment to neuro-neutrality necessarily demands the abolishment of said sentences. Likewise, since a comparative large portion of individuals with schizophrenia risks imperiling their own lives and those of others when they have access to guns (cf. Fazel et al. 2009; Swanson et al. 2015), some may regard restricting firearm-ownership among those diagnosed with this condition as compatible with more plausible versions of neuro-neutrality.

Although I believe there is something to this reply, let’s suppose arguendo that a willingness to impose (long) prison sentences on serious offenders and one to restrict firearm-ownership among those with specific mental conditions such as schizophrenia do render states less neuro-neutral than they could be. All this seems to suggest is that the degree to which states aim to be neuro-neutral should be limited (assuming with Peter Balint (2015, 495) that neutrality is a “political ideal that is not absolute” but instead one that must be balanced against other political ideals), not that they ought to jettison their neuro-neutral ambitions completely. Such a wholesale abandonment would throw out the baby with the bathwater and is not something we expect with respect to other important values. For example, the fact that there are limits to how far states can or should promote security and economic prosperity is not usually taken as a reason for them to refrain from investing in these values altogether, leaving it unclear as to why the value of neuro-neutrality would need to be treated differently. Accordingly, even if being neuro-neutral toward groups such as psychopaths imposes heavy costs on the wider society, what this seems to support at most is placing these groups outside the scope of the neuro-neutrality-principle in the same way Balint (2015, 499) has argued that neutrality in the area of comprehensive doctrines should not extend toward groups with anti-liberal or anti-democratic doctrines, such as Neo-Nazis.

FUTURE RESEARCH ON NEURO-NEUTRALITY

Let us take stock. I began this article by showing that contemporary societies have various laws, policies and institutions that disfavor the interests of certain neurodivergent groups vis-à-vis the neurotypical majority. Next, I assessed what I consider to be the most promising would-be justifications for such non-neutral treatment. Whereas one says that states only have to be neutral toward differences that feature in people’s conception of the good life, the others maintain that rectifying neuro-inequalities is too costly, whether financially or otherwise; that such rectification comes with unacceptable risks of a public backlash; and that a commitment to neuro-neutrality overgenerates. Since none of these would-be justifications were found to be compelling across the board, it appears we are left with the conclusion that states should become significantly more neutral toward people’s neurological differences than they are today (while it is true that absence of evidence does not entail evidence of absence, meaning there could be decisive arguments against neuro-neutrality that have been overlooked, I find it hard to see what those might be). For example, based on our discussion, they might well be duty-bound to make government offices and civic centers more hypersensitivity-friendly; abolish subsidies funding for ABA therapy that expect autistic people to adhere to neurotypical norms of social interaction; and ensure that governmental documents be written in a sans serif font to make them easier to read for individuals with dyslexia.

I want to end this article by highlighting several important tasks for future research on neuro-neutrality. They include, but are not necessarily limited to:

• Identifying more neuro-biases of state laws, policies and institutions. In so doing, researchers should not only look for biases disfavoring people with autism, dyslexia, and ADHD (which are the neurodivergent groups on which I have concentrated), but also for ones disfavoring other neuro-divergent groups, such as individuals with dyscalculia, dyspraxia, and Tourette’s syndrome.

• Investigating whether states should encourage or incentivise private organizations to become more neuro-neutral and, if so, what means they should use to do so (e.g. social media campaigns, tax benefits, coercive legislation).

• Developing scales that enable us to gauge how neuro-neutral different states are. This will not only make it easier for them to set targets for increasing their neuro-neutrality and to monitor their progress, but might also give rise to a healthy competition where they try to outdo other countries in this area.

• Probing how, if at all, organizations above the state, such as the EU and the UN, ought to become more neuro-neutral.

My hope is that this contribution will motivate scholars to address these outstanding tasks.

Additional information

Funding

My research is supported by an ERC Starting Grant (101040374).

Notes

1 The ensuing list of disadvantages is not meant to be exhaustive.

2 Indeed, some scholars have gone as far as to argue that ADHD might constitute a form of hypersensitivity (Pelsser, Buitelaar, and Savelkoul 2009).

3 Some of these objections are inspired by arguments that have been raised against other forms of state neutrality, while others have been raised to me by fellow scholars.

4 Which would imply, among other things, that unlike attempts to change the sexual orientation of homosexual people as gay conversation-therapy seeks to do (Gonsiorek 2004), there is nothing problematically non-neutral about seeking to “cure” people from autism, ADHD, or dyslexia.

5 Which is not to suggest that these are mutually exclusive categories. They can, and to a certain degree do, overlap (Hillier et al. 2020).

6 For a defense of such limits on aggregation, see e.g. Scanlon (2000).

7 While hyposensitive individuals might have strong interests in auditory stimulating work environments, it was noted that their sensory needs could be accommodated by providing them with headphones or by having them work in separate offices.

8 As one 26-year-old autistic woman describes the experience of hearing other people clap, ‘sometimes I literally just freeze up and I’ll just sit there and get more overwhelmed until I end up crying, have a meltdown or run away’ (McCallum 2018).