Abstract
Autism research is increasingly moving to a view centred around sensorimotor atypicalities instead of traditional, ethically problematical, views predicated on social-cognitive deficits. We explore how an enactivist approach to autism illuminates how social differences, stereotypically associated with autism, arise from such sensorimotor atypicalities. Indeed, in a state space description, this can be taken as a skewing of sensorimotor variables that influences social interaction and so also enculturation and habituation. We argue that this construal leads to autism being treated on a par with other sensorimotor atypicalities such as blindness or atypical height. This leads to our conclusion that, insofar there is an ethical call to inclusion in our public sphere regardless of contingent bodily difference, an enactivist take on autism naturally leads to extending such inclusion to autism. Moreover, our analysis suggests a concrete way forward to achieve inclusion of autistics: by being more attentive to autistic sensorimotor specifics.
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Notes
In line with autistic preferences, cfr. Kenny et al. (2016), we use ‘identity-first terms’ throughout this paper along related terms like ‘autism’ and ‘autistic’ that avoid one-to-one connection with terms like disorder or condition.
The DSM-5 also mentions hypo-responsivity but according to sensorimotor theories this can be seen as connected to, and derivative of, hypersensitivity on sensorimotor accounts, see for instance Van de Cruys et al. (2019).
Our treatment below relies on the HIPPEA account yet is not limited to this specific account. Its key premises are limited to sensorimotor atypicality on the one hand and the enactivist framework on the other. This also means (see Sect. 4) that our argument is as such not limited to autism but extends to any sensorimotor difference.
In other words: we specify how this mistake stems from a “double empathy problem” (Milton 2017).
Two anonymous reviewers pointed out there might be specific social interactions inaccessible to some people and we agree. Our ethical point is limited to the fact that what is considered essential to social wellbeing can be made to become accessible regardless of sensorimotor atypicalities by assuming sufficient effort by all parties involved. In fact, in line with our enactive treatment, we believe all individuals are to some extent particular from sensorimotor point of view such that any successful social interaction presupposes overcoming such difference (see Sect. 3).
An anonymous reviewer pointed out that there may be different ethical implications of viewing autism as a sensorimotor atypicality or as a deficit in cognitive function. As mentioned above we restrict ourselves in this paper to the positive point related to ethical inclusion when seeing autism in an enactive way as sensorimotor atypicality and do not pursue a negative point of seeing cognitive deficit as incompatible with ethical inclusion. Relatedly, they pointed out that HIPPEA might be seen as a deficit in perceptual processing. Although we cannot pursue this in the present paper, we call attention to the fact that, in predictive coding approaches, precision is a general feature of all perception and that, therefore, differences in precision can only be seen as gradual differences in line with the main argument in this paper (where HIPPEA is just used as an illustration). The inflexibility that arises is, as we argue in Sect. 4, related to contingent social norms of switching between contexts, and it can, therefore, not be interpreted as a contextless deficit within an individual. The upshot of this is that there can indeed be no a priori bounds on inclusion based on such a gradual sensorimotor difference if social norms can never—in line with what we argue below—be enforced rigidly. This does not mean that there will not be practical difficulties or difficulties with respect to specific ways of social interaction. It just means, see Sect. 4, that such tensions can be overcome in allowing substantive social exchange.
There is a bit of complexity here. DSM-5 (APA 2013) also specifies restricted and repetitive behaviors. This implies that autistic often display an insistence on sameness holding on to specific habits or repetitive patterns of behavior. This might at first glance seem at odds with our reading of HIPPEA which is focused on the immediate tangibility of the environment. However, in our view this can be seen as a developed coping strategy of autistics in making their environment more predictable so as to be less overburdened by spurious changes. We cannot develop this point further in the scope of this paper but see it as a crucial aspect of an enactivist reading of HIPPEA in which such behaviors can be explained without reference to inflexibility of internal representations. We thank Sander Van de Cruys for pointing this out to us. Whilst an important outstanding issue in autism research, we do not believe its resolution is critical for the argument made in this paper. We also refer to footnote 3 on hyper- and hyposensitivity for a similar connection between two apparently contradictory phenomena.
That such a (dis)valuation of autistic difference as deficiency is compatible with enactive theorizing has been shown by Janna van Grunsven (2020). The view from ‘typical bodies’ can be compatible with the enactive views as developed by Gallagher (2004) and Hutto (2003) on autistic differences. An alternative enactive view based on autonomous sustainability of interaction patterns is left open by the ‘participatory sense-making’ approach by Di Paolo, Cuffari and De Jaegher (2018). In the next section we critically build on the latter approach in order to capitalize on its strengths, at the same time avoiding this weakness.
Di Paolo et al. (2018) and Di Paolo et al. (2017) take this a step further by taking a system’s precarious autonomy to imply a normativity relative to each level of organization. More than sensitivity, this normativity is intended to account for a supposed ‘judging,’ or ‘evaluating’ capacity. Each system’s biological autonomy thus implies an ‘inherent normativity’ which offers a standard of evaluation by which to judge the possibilities of interaction in the environment as either harmful, positive, or neutral. There is a debate in the enactivist literature with regards to whether this individualistic account of normativity betrays a hidden representationalist commitment (Hutto and Myin 2013, 2017). Our present argument does not hinge upon this debate. We can speak of interactional sensitivities obtained on an individual level, and introduce normativity on a social, intersubjective level, not perfectly in line with, but amenable to both takes in enactivism (Di Paolo et al. 2018; Di Paolo et al. 2017; Hutto and Myin 2013, 2017).
There is a slight disparity here between the discussed levels of organization and their respective sensitivities. According to Di Paolo et al. (2018), biological and sensorimotor autonomy are both individual, yet social autonomy is inherently intersubjective. Following the in-text logic, this implies that the autonomy of the interaction, instead of the participating individuals, becomes biased towards certain interactional patterns. There may be something to this, as Di Paolo et al. (2018) show. Consider recurring fights with a friend that neither of you actually wants to have. It may be, indeed, helpful to think of this in terms of a bias of the social encounter itself, instead of one of the individual participants. However, in this paper, we shall also be concerned with the individual interactional sensitivities pertaining to social encounters.
What exactly it means for a variable to be ‘associated’ with a system is an interest-dependent matter. If we are to model a person’s kinetic dynamics when going down a slide on a playground, variables pertaining to their cycling habits are not considered ‘associated’ with the system for current purposes. However, when we are interested in modeling this person’s risks for cardiovascular diseases, we may want to consider those. In this sense, a state space description of a real-life system need not be complete to be scientifically valuable.
Whether the inclination is visible in particular variables or dynamics depends of course on which variables were chosen to figure in the state space description. A system that accelerates strongly either skews to high values in the ‘acceleration’ variable or quickly rising dynamics in the ‘movement speed’ variable. It depends on how we set up the formalism.
The ‘reactive attitudes’ are attitudes of blame, resentment, forgiveness, gratitude etc. which we discern in the other and the other in us. They allow us to build practices in which we can hold each other responsible. There are two remarks to be made about our using this framework as an illustration of our argument. First, there is a lot of controversy on whether such an account does not risk excluding others based on the ability to recognize and show the reactive attitudes. It has been used as a way to rationalize either (partial) exclusion of autistics (Shoemaker 2015) or to positively argue for a ‘normalization’ of autistics to recognize conventional social cues (Richman and Bidshahri 2018). However, we use this theory for illustration precisely because of its ability to abstract away from sensorimotor (a) typicalities and its consequent bringing into focus of a communicative interaction as such. Second, we use this theory, just like we used HIPPEA above, as a concrete illustration of our argument without it being a necessary premise in what we contend. Any ethical framework that can develop a need for inclusivity over and above individual differences will do to support our conclusion.
This does not imply that a cognitivist construal cannot arrive at inclusion in a different way.
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Acknowledgements
We want to acknowledge the invaluable comments of Kristien Hens, Inês Hipólito, Sander Van de Cruys and Damian Milton for helping formulate our argument as presented in this paper.
Funding
This work is partly funded (JB) by the NeuroEpigenEthics project that received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement 804881), and (TvE) by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), Grant Number 1124818 N.
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van Es, T., Bervoets, J. Autism as Gradual Sensorimotor Difference: From Enactivism to Ethical Inclusion. Topoi 41, 395–407 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09779-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09779-6