..It's a word. It means what people use it to mean. Let me demonstrate with a word that I know a lot about, but should have less emotion attached to it for most people here. That word is "heavy metal".
So first, let's look at the dictionary defination:
"a type of highly amplified harsh-sounding rock music with a strong beat, characteristically using violent or fantastic imagery."
The initial obvious problem is that "harsh-sounding" is subjective and metalheads wouldn't call it as such, but anyone whose into rock music would know that a "strong beat, characteristically using violent or fantastic imagery" is not enough to clarify the distinctive type of rock music which is metal. Old geezers would say heavy metal differs from hard rock in that the latter has keyboards, but many modern metal bands use keyboards. Ask a kid off the street nowdays what heavy metal is and they'd probably say it's the music with screaming. Go to MetalArchives, and you'll something about some vaguely defined "metal riff". Ask a musicologist, and they might go into a bunch of stuff about modes and rhythm figures and blah.
Yes, metal is hard to precisely defined, but part of the point is that the different definitions aren't necessarily wrong: what exactly metal means depends on the person using the word. Yes, the kid's definition of metal as just being music with screaming is ignorant, but that doesn't mean that a definition from someone who isn't ignorant becomes the standard. Because the definition of metal is imprecise, there are many bands which almost everyone agrees are metal, but also many lie in a grey area for what is or is not metal. It's ultimately just personal judgement for whether such a band is metal or not. Also, metal is constantly evolving, with more bands making styles of music that push the edge of what metal is. Some take metal and mix it with other genres, like hardcore punk (thrash metal and many other later subgenres) or progressive rock (progressive metal), than others just expand an older sound to invent a nu one, like death metal or djent. As a result, the definition of metal evolves as well. So not only is the definition relative, but it's ever fluid.
Autism's definition is also ever fluid, though rather than changing as autism itself evolves, it changes as the understanding of autism does. So in addition to all these changes in the various diagnostic books, each specialist really has their own idea of what autism is that doesn't quite match up with everyone else. So to some degree, whether or not you are autistic depends on where you live. Then we get to the theories about autism, which to some degree serve as an explanation for autism, and to some degree serve as a DEFINITION for autism. But regardless of the theory, not everyone who is diagnosed with autism would fit that definition (well aside from the theory that autism is just a diagnosis and nothing more), and with some theories, very few.
Among all the definitions of autism, they can really be broken down into two classes: the clinical perspective, which is what's most important for diagnosis and the neurodiverse perspective, which is most important for identity. Definitions in the two overlap, but they are NOT THE SAME. One is concerned with a disorder and how to treat it, the other is concerned with an individual's place in broader society and relating with others. Another ontological division on the nature of autism is not only if it's better viewed as a disorder or something else, but whether it's best defined as a pattern of behaviors (more useful from a clinical perspective until you get to medical treatments), or as a specific neurology (generally seen as more important from a neurodiverse standpoint).
Regardless, the current medical consensus is that there isn't just autism, but autisms, all under the umbrella disorder of autism spectrum disorder. IMO, it goes beyond just ASD. Often disorders are said to be similar to autism, but are different for so and so reasons. Instead of looking at why various things are different from autism, we should look at why they are similar to autism, only then can we really understand all the different autisms. Autism is not a single condition, but rather a synergy of traits which may have numerous different causes. Ultimately autism is just an arbitrary degree of categorization on some level, and it's the people that matter.
24 May 2016, 3:17 am
