A Theory of Mind? Or A Theory of War....

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I can understand SBC's shock, as a child, to learn about the shocking history dehumanisation the holocaust acted out. He and I share at least a number of factors: we both have Jewish ancestry (mine is on my father's side). We both learned of the history at any early age (I was 7). He learned from his father, I learned from some books that a neighbour dropped off, and being hyperlexic, the account of what happened to children the same age as me, in the same decade that I was born, was something I felt very deeply. I had empathy for them in spades; I also realised suddenly and with great shock what an unsafe world I had been born into and was living in. Even though the war was over, I realised that such people existed, and the armistice did not wipe out the fact that people who could dehumanise others in that way still existed, and would probably always exist. Perhaps too, this led both of us to experimental psychology.

Dehumanisation is the impetus theme of this thread, specifically the dehumanisation of autistic people. This shocks me too, the more so after these years during which I have been on WP, and the many ways it plays out has been manifested in countless ways and examples by members. I think dehumanisation is an evil, and while SBC is not the only contributor to dehumanising myths about autistic people, he has functioned as a very vocal promoter of constructs (that are not conclusively proven) which reinforce that dehumanisation. His professed innocence in this - the I'm just a scientist defence - doesn't persuade me when you look at the big picture. He doesn't look at the big picture though - sometimes he seems fairly aspie himself in the extreme focus on detail and refusal to look at or respond to the way his claims have reinforced segregation and oppression.

Whether his work has the many kinds of scientific validity is more important at the end of the day than whether he later said this, or unsaid it later, or said something else and on and on and on. That discourse obscures important factors and tends to become a smokescreen that disguises the shortcomings of the research, the claims he has made for it (gross overclaims IMO), the obsession he seems to have with disseminating the deficit model of autism, his determination to popularise his reputation and ideas. We are all affected by that as members of a group. Obviously we have different responses to that. Does dehumanisation of autistic people matter to autistic people? Should it matter to others, including social scientists? I would say yes to both. Clinical practice is influenced by unproven constructs - in psychology we see that again and again (the decades of the behaviourist fashions and influence show that). Psychologists who pointed out the starkly reductionist claims of the behaviourists were treated very rudely in the 1970s and 1980s, a time when behaviourists tried to impose their beliefs and constructs in a hegemonic way. That bid ultimately failed. Yet those constructs did enormous damage to people - the "aversiveness training" that was forced on gay men on the the grounds of behaviourist theory as "fact" was one example of dehumanising clinical practice arising from a construct that ignored the humanity of the subjects.

Now we look back and shudder at this. Perhaps one day the same will occur regarding the TOM construct, applications and disseminated influence - scientists, clinicians, critical theorists, the public, the media, will collectively shudder. Autistic people of that day will shudder the most though, in a not dissimilar way perhaps to the way Simon and I shuddered as children.

SBC likes to reference the "It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential." quote from Asperger. That quote is a statement that could serve as a part of a useful bridge between the neurotypical world and the world of autistics. The challenge consists in arriving at a shared understanding of what it means to be human. From the perspective of the majority of any specific social group within neurotypical society, any common denominator of humanness that is significantly smaller than what is deemed normal and acceptable within the specific group, will be considered as aberrant and abnormal.

The process of reaching a shared understanding within a group in neurotypical society is focused on reaching agreement/consensus on the union of all the core values and beliefs of everyone in the group. The smaller the group, the higher the expectation that everyone shares the same beliefs and behaves accordingly. Over time, via cultural transmission (imitation), beliefs and behaviour within the group converge, and this leads to a sense of group identity. Imitation either happens subconsciously, or by being persuaded by a peer that "everyone else believes/does x". Any new members to the group are expected to adapt their behaviour accordingly, otherwise they will be considered abnormal and potentially non-human.

The process of reaching a shared understanding within a group of autistics is focused on reaching agreement/consensus on identifying the intersection of the core values and beliefs of everyone in the group. The focus is on sharing details of core values and beliefs, and much less on persuading others to change their beliefs. The default expectation is that everyone has different beliefs and behaves accordingly to these individual beliefs. Over time, as the commonalities and differences in beliefs, interests, and behaviour become clear, idiosyncratic protocols of communication emerge between different pairs of individuals, and these interactions define overall group behaviour. Cultural transmission is limited to changes in beliefs based on sharing mental models (hypotheses) and related examples from personal experience (an informal variant of the scientific method).

The distinction postulated above, based on what I have observed, would be worthwhile to explore experimentally. It should be straight forward to confirm neurotypical group behaviour, and I think there is plenty of experimental evidence on this topic already. Exploration of autistic group behaviour is much harder, because it is not often that groups of more than two or three autistic individuals get together, and depending on the experiences people have had with groups from neurotypical settings, it may take a while for autistic group behaviour to emerge.

A core autistic strength seems to be the ability to collaborate with others on a basis of very few shared values and beliefs. But this strength rarely has a chance to see the light of day, and it is something that is invisible through a neurotypical cognitive lens. The only people who can assess whether two or more autistics are collaborating successfully are the active participants in the collaboration, because only their values and beliefs matter in the context at hand.

The notion that autistic "extreme focus on detail" precludes understanding the bigger picture is a dangerous myth. It is based on the neurotypical assumption that the bigger picture is always the "immediate social group context" – in particular any significantly larger contexts are discounted, as are any non-social bigger pictures. In some domains more than a dash of systemising is required to be a good scientist or domain expert. Ironically, one of these domains is interdisciplinary research and collaboration.


At the time people from other disciplines saw the limitations from the outside, and for that reason stayed away from psychology. It seems a self-reinforcing feedback loop led the discipline into a dead end.


We'll have to wait for a time when cultures have learned that to understand themselves and their weaknesses, they need to listen to minorities and outsiders. Progress will be made when minorities and outsiders are seen as the catalyst for progress and collaboration across cultural boundaries.

Great post. I would only add that the fact that people on the outside who saw what the behaviorist paradigm as dehumanising and philosophically unsound, and articulated it, still witness its harms being perpetrated by some residual behaviourists, though now autistic people are more or less their target population whereas before it was more the general population. And mainly this is being done to the age group of autistics who have no power to not consent. Aversion therapy using electric shock is still tolerated and inflicted on autistic children and young people in the USA, though currently the FDA is leading the push to outlaw it. I would have to say amen to that..

Yes, there is still a long road ahead. The language used by autism professionals in the diagnostic process today is shocking. Caveat: My knowledge of the process is limited to what I read in books, what I see on WP, and what I have experienced when visiting an autism professional for an assessment of my son.

I would ignore the establishment entirely, but obtaining a professional assessment allowed me to have appropriate conversations with the school about specific accommodations. I was hoping that going directly to a professional with many years of expertise in assessing adolescents and adults would lead to a simple and non-negative experience of the assessment process for my son. Instead we were confronted with the pathologising language as found in the DSM and medical literature. This treatment went down with an all-Aspie family as you can expect. We made it very clear what we consider to be perfectly acceptable and appropriate in our household.

I don't want to imagine how vulnerable autistic adolescents with neurotypical parents (and related expectations) emerge from such an assessment process, not even to mention the "treatment" scenarios that might follow an assessment.

Maybe a useful step would be to campaign for an older autistic adult to be present in all diagnostic assessments. Initially this could be a voluntary measure for consideration by adequately progressive and open minded diagnosticians. At some point neurotypical peer pressure might kick in to change the state of the practice.

I feel that NT and AS people are likely blind as to eachother's way of thinking.

I believe that NT thinking tends to be more liminal, as in a verb or action.

I believe that AS thinking tends to be more abstract, as in a noun, label, or pattern.

I don't understand what makes the neighbor's autistic kid run into the street or what makes nominally-autistic people commit a mass shooting. I sincerely wondered what a person would have to do, physically, to get committed. It wasn't a rhetorical question. Maybe we should know that, here.

But, I suspect that any kind of chaotic, disorderly, hyperstimulation is something entirely different from autism.

At least, I can't reconcile things like those with my way of thinking.

I have caused disturbances, as a child, by stacking things very high and by word associations. I saw one kid fascinated by a (probably-rhythmic) ceiling fan.

The sirens, tranqs, and restraints don't make obvious sense, in terms of a pattern.

I've had this thread bookmarked for a couple weeks and just got around to reading through it. It's been incredibly informative and interesting...will have more to say when I've had time to process. The link in the OP was an incredible read, and brought up a lot of stuff for me that I need to sort through. Anyway, thank you for this thread.

Thank you for that positive feedback W.

I am supposing that the writer's academic speciality as a rhetorician (and her occasional reliance on word like paralipsis to provide context) will have been a bit baffling to some. (Paralipsis basically means to focus on only some or a few aspects of something while ignoring many other aspects). Her over-arching point is that this is what has happened in the rhetoric of TOM, and I'm grateful for the input into the thread from people who got that and expanded on it.

This excerpt from the article most captures for me in a few words the paralipsis she is concerned with:

My purpose here is specific to theories about ToM—theories that conveniently ignore decades of feminist theory, embodiment theory, performance theory, disability theory; theories that imagine an autistic life-world of mindless skin-bags; theories that abstract living, breathing, human beings from their physical, mental, theoretical, sociocultural, and spatial locations. Theories about ToM thrive on immateriality. Theories about ToM are theories about power and denying power.

All theories of AS and AS people are subject to theories of power, ain't that a fact......

Interesting that you say this, as this is the exact opposite of a lack of theory of mind.

^
Yes.......it looks very progressive to me. The Frith / Cohen view is that NTs have a theory of mind but we don't. My way of looking at it is: we can submit to it ("fine, I'll try to reconstruct myself in your image"), or wage war ("my theory of mind is better than your theory of mind"), or we can come to terms ("our theories of mind are different") and talk to each other with mutual respect and try to work out a peaceful solution. I think it takes quite a lot of maturity on both sides to commit to that third way.

Why bad ideas continue:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... refuse-die

Yes, being comfortable cooperating on the basis of the intersection of the core values and beliefs of everyone in a group takes a certain level of insight / maturity.

A few observations:

From childhood and onwards Aspies /autistics make the experience that the vast majority of others behave (and by implication must think) very differently from them. This leads to a theory of difference. Cooperating on the basis of the intersection of the core values and beliefs, as far as these can be made explicit and validated, is a logical or obvious conclusion. The autistic experience makes it easy to arrive at this conclusion.

A theory of difference is not the same as a theory of mind. The former involves observing differences in behaviour and postulating differences in thought – without speculating what these thoughts might be. The latter involves speculation about what someone else might be thinking, and especially what someone else might be thinking about other people and the thoughts of other people.

In contrast to the Aspie experience, the typical experience is that the vast majority of others behave (and by implication must think) quite alike. There are differences, but these are minimised through subconscious imitation, often facilitated by non-verbal cues. In the typical experience, others are alike in terms of patterns of interactions and non verbal cues, and this underscores a perception of shared [unspoken] values and beliefs.

As I outline in the earlier post:



Spotting, analysing, and validating commonalities and variabilities in systems of all kinds is the common thread through all my interests – you could say that theory of difference is my ultimate special interest.

Within a comprehensive theory of difference there is also a place for developing a theory of mind of others, but from an anthropological perspective, and not from the perspective of participating in social games. I have yet to come across research that examines the potential for different motivations that lead to a theory of mind. For some the motivation may be rather Machiavellian, for others it is not.

JBW, I've never heard it put that way: theory of difference versus theory of mind. Someone should study that to learn when, how, and why children develop these. Both concepts are more complex than the Cohen model.

Perhaps someone more trusting than I would have to answer this: do you trust people whose interaction style and nonverbal cues are closer to your own? I've been told that the answer is yes for a lot of people. I don't entirely understand how or why this seems to make such a big difference. Shared communication style doesn't always mean shared values. Sometimes I find myself really surprised by the differences in values later on, but I'm usually less trusting and more skeptical of my first impressions.

The main irony of the article is that Betamax is actually the technically superior format, the reason it died is because for most people the advantage it had didn't matter, and VCR was cheaper.

Also, the idea of ecology in psychology shows that despite what some people claim, anecdotes are actually extremely valuable for researchers. Obviously they can't be taken as statistical proof, but they are important for providing direction to field research.

The SBC model of theory of mind claims that autistic children are delayed in learning to distinguish between their knowledge/thoughts and the knowledge/thoughts of others. On this basis further claims are made, such that adult Aspies and autistics have trouble understanding what other are thinking, at least more so than typical individuals. The ultimate conclusion of this line of simplistic reasoning is that autistics don't have empathy. This ultimate conclusion is clearly false.

The other claims need to be examined in detail in terms of their scope of applicability, and in terms of underlying causal relationships.

For as far as I can remember, I have known that I am different from others. My earliest memories of interactions with other children involve events where I was treated as an outsider, either not allowed to participate in the way that I wanted, or not allowed to participate at all. I don't think I spent any time speculating about what the other children might have been thinking, but I did notice that I was treated differently.

It is plausible that I was blind to non verbal cues, and this difference in perception and communication alone may explain my experiences. Additionally I noticed fairly early on that people did not always mean what they said. At the same time I had no idea that in many circumstances lying was acceptable. On what basis then should I have spent time speculating what others may have been thinking or feeling?

What if, in addition to, or as a result of being [partially] unable to decode non verbal cues in real time, autistics have a stronger than average need for certainly and a corresponding need to resolve ambiguities? This would explain the autistic tendency to rely heavily on literal language, and to repeatedly ask questions until an adequate answer is being given. It would lead to an autistic theory of other minds, which concludes that other minds are often not reliable or trustworthy, and seem to be driven by motivations that are inaccessible to an autistic mind.

I don't rely on speculative interpretation of non verbal cues. This also extends to people very close to me, autistic and non-autistic. I have learned the hard way only to extend trust incrementally, and I value very highly the few people who have earned my trust. I am very careful about extending trust to extroverts and those who speak before they think.

People can talk about values in a very casual way, claiming to value all kinds of nice characteristics and behaviours. The only values that count for me are those that people consistently demonstrate in their behaviour, and these inform the level of trust I extend.

For example there are people who I know are 100% trustworthy and timely in terms of paying invoices, but they may not be as reliable or trustworthy in terms of other commitments – for example doing specific tasks or delivering work to a specific standard of quality. There are others who are 100% trustworthy across a broad range of mutual agreements, but trustworthiness need not imply a large set of shared values.

When it comes to shared values, quality and consistency are what counts, and quantity is not to be trusted – words are cheap.

I wish for not only NT's to understand us better but also for the neuro diverse people to try to understand the NT's perspective but what I read a lot on Tumblr for example amounts to hatred of NT's. This really is not going to get us anywhere as far as making things better for us ND people. In fact it may actually worsen things as it widens the division & makes communication all that much more difficult with the people who we need to communicate with in order for them to understand us better & end the abuses that are part of what they call "treatment" for autism.

This is true even of some of the most intelligent autism advocates who can truly explane what we go through in a way that an NT could understand if they so desired & I believe that many would though certainly not all.

I'm not very familiar with Tumbler though from what I have read, would not base judgments of any kind on what gets written there. It sounds like a "lowest common demoninator" online venue to me. There is a recent thread that is discussing attitudes to NTs, your comments on this issue are way off-topic in this thread though.

Putting the onus on ND people to accommodate NTs and their lack of understanding, without contextualising the imbalance of power and how NT power structures operate to maintain that imbalance, is an interesting topic though again not well synched to this one. If you think that AS tolerance of NT ignorance and AS improved communication about ND ignorance is going to end the abuses and that it is as simple as that, I can only say that my analysis of the cultural, historical and political dynamics is totally different.

You have proposed that 'even the most intelligent autism advocates' are making things worse for AS people. I could hardly disagree with you more. People like Steve Silberman are contributing powerfully to reframing the history and dialogue of AS conditions which challenges the dominant narrative in a very ethical and comprehensive way. This has to happen before structural changes can be achieved that are more inclusive and power-sharing.

Now, back to topic...