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First-person perspectives and scientific inquiry of autism: towards an integrative approach

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Abstract

What role should the expertise of the autistic communities play in shaping the category of autism compared to the role played by science? This question led to a debate about the quantitative importance of science compared to first-person perspectives for the understanding of autism. I see this debate as lying on a false dichotomy between science and activism, according to which only scientific inquiry would reveal the empirical nature of autism, while the discourse of autistic communities would construct a socio-cultural conception of autism. I consider the problems associated with such a dichotomy and show that first-person perspectives should be considered a necessary step in the scientific investigation of autism.

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Notes

  1. See notably Friesen (2017), Friesen et al. (2021), Zerbe et al. (2020).

  2. The term designates the discourse of people who are not the people that the discourse is about. See Alcoff (1991).

  3. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for their remark on this point. This simultaneous appeal and criticism raise intricate philosophical issues on the goals of activist movements and their subscription to ideas of anti-psychiatry that I cannot consider here.

  4. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

  5. On this, see the volume edited by Davidson and Orsini (2013).

  6. I give more details on this change in the next section.

  7. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising this objection.

  8. The double empathy problem primarily addresses the fact that non-autistics have also not understood autistics’ empathy; it has not provided a new theory or explanation of empathetic processes in autism or shown that empathy is not reduced. But it has added depth to our understanding of empathy in autism.

  9. However, Haslam emphasizes more on distinctions between different categories or constructs.

  10. See (Rajendran & Mitchell, 2007) for a review of these conceptions.

  11. While I only mention misdiagnoses from the perspective of overlooked or masked autistic traits, one must also consider the opposite, people can be inaccurately diagnosed with autism.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Jackie Sullivan for her useful input and instructive comments on the paper. I also thank Amandine Catala, who commented on its preliminary steps and directed me towards relevant literature on epistemic injustice, a few years ago. I also thank John Greenwood, who introduced me to that paper from Hacking when I was attending his seminar at the Grad Center. The reviewers have greatly contributed to the elaboration of this paper as well. I am grateful for their help.

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Religion, Clemson University, Clemson, USA

    Sarah Arnaud

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Arnaud, S. First-person perspectives and scientific inquiry of autism: towards an integrative approach. Synthese 202, 147 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04384-z

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