Syllabus Showcase: Philosophy on the Spectrum: The Philosophy of Autism and Autistic Philosophy, Travis LaCroix

Some have recommended that the “very concept of an autistic particular person is a philosophical one” (Murray 2011, 9) and that the “topic of autism is wealthy with philosophical prospects” (Anderson and Cushing 2013, 3). On the identical time, nevertheless, “the philosophy of autism is just not (or not but) a subfield of philosophy” (Bölte and Richman 2019, 4).

As a part of a burgeoning philosophical analysis program in autism, I taught an undergraduate/graduate-level seminar on The Philosophy of Autism and Autistic Philosophy at Dalhousie College (Fall 2022).

The Course Construction

There’s a large amount of stigma and misinformation surrounding the subject of autism. To curtail doubtlessly deceptive assumptions about autism for college kids coming into this course, the primary a part of the seminar started with a sequence of brief lectures on the Historical past of Autism. The historical past of autism is genuinely unbelievable—within the sense of “unattainable to imagine”—and a few consciousness of this historical past is beneficial to contextualize the extra credible-sounding misinformation that individuals unfold about autism as we speak. Though that is an incomplete (and falsely linear) historic narrative, these lectures had been supposed to offer some socio-historical overview of autism:

1. Autism As we speak (DSM 5)
2. Analysis and “Discovery” (1910-1940, DSM I)
3. Fridge Moms (1940-1970, DSM II)
4. The Moms Strike Again! (1960-1990, DSM III)
5. Remedy and Training (1960-1990, DSM III-R)
6. Consciousness, the “Spectrum”, & the “Autism Wars” (1980-2010, DSM IV)
7. Epidemics and Vaccines (1990-2010, DSM IV-TR)
8. Self-advocacy, Autistic Voices, and Neurodiversity (1990-Current, DSM 5)

We examined how the definition of autism (as a analysis) has modified from its “discovery” within the early 20^th century as a “uncommon type” of childhood schizophrenia to the rise and fall of Asperger’s syndrome to the present-day autism spectrum. Every lecture started with a vignette of an autistic particular person in historical past. The required readings for these first few weeks weren’t philosophical texts however writing, weblog posts, movies, poems, and so on., created by autistic authors. Between the lectures, we had in-class actions—together with analyzing autism screening questionnaires (just like the autism quotient) and watching fictional representations of autism in common media to debate whether or not they had been good representations.

The rest of the semester started with a (extremely essential) dialogue of the theory-of-mind-deficit rationalization of autism. This was vital to handle early on as a result of a lot philosophical work that engages with autism takes as a right the (false) assumption that autistics lack a concept of thoughts; this work then attracts out the (often normative) logical implications of this assumption. Because of this, philosophically-focused analysis on autism can perpetuate dangerous misinformation about autism and autistics. In some instances, as we mentioned within the seminar, philosophy has overtly superior novel views about autism which have led to the additional dehumanization of autistics—for instance, that autistics lack self-knowledge, autistics are not moral persons or members of the moral community, that “living an autistic life is not as good a human life as one that is non-autistic”, or that autistics are incapable of being members of a community (of autistics).

Reasonably than educating methods to do philosophy nicely by exhibiting college students the perfect philosophical papers after which having them attempt to replicate that (no matter “that” is), I additionally prefer to assign demonstrably dangerous readings to allow them to learn to keep away from doing philosophy badly.

The rest of the course was break up into two components: the philosophy of autism and autistic philosophy. The previous examines philosophical approaches towards autism, whereas the latter seeks to carry neurodiverse and autistic views to bear on philosophical theories. For instance, suppose a philosophical view of “the nice life” provides some set of crucial and adequate circumstances for a life’s being good. A philosophy of autism method would possibly discover that autistics fail to fulfill these circumstances, thus concluding that autistics can’t reside life. The autistic philosophy method, as an alternative, assumes (primarily based on empirical proof) that autistics can reside life, thus concluding the set of crucial and adequate circumstances given by the philosophical concept is dangerous.

I initially supposed to select three philosophically-interesting matters to debate for every part. Nevertheless, whereas researching, I got here up with roughly 20 doable matters, all of which had been attention-grabbing (for my part). So, as an alternative of selecting the matters myself, the category voted on which matters they wished to debate. Finally, the “philosophy of autism” element of the course consisted of the next matters (see syllabus for dialogue questions and related readings beneath every matter):

1. Empathy and Ethical Feelings
2. The Philosophy of Language
3. Intercourse, Gender, and Misogyny

Within the “autistic philosophy” element, the scholars selected the next matters:

1. (Neuro-)Queerness and Social Norms
2. Communication and Which means
3. Looping Results and Autistic Varieties

Following Lewis (1969), I take it that (a part of) the occupation of philosophers is “to problem platitudes that others settle for with out considering twice” (1). The overarching theme of the semester was to critically look at and problem philosophical (and philosophy-adjacent) analysis on autism whereas gaining a deeper data of autism from an autistic perspective.

The Assignments

Though it was not graded, college students accomplished a pre-assessment survey in the course of the first assembly to measure their present background data about autism. A number of of the factual questions within the survey had been taken from a UK study conducted with 250 medical students. On the finish of the course, the scholars accomplished a “post-assessment survey”, which included a written-response alternative to replicate on how or whether or not their conception of autism modified over the semester. Responses included how pupil beliefs reworked about stimming, social conduct, and the way autistics work together with their setting. College students expressed shock about how the detrimental remedy of autistics in society has developed (not modified) over time—one thing explicitly knowledgeable by the historic context provided in Half 1.

For graded assignments, I contemplate what helpful expertise college students can apply. For instance, the ultimate paper graduate college students submit for the category is successfully constructed round submission to an expert convention, just like the Canadian or American Philosophical Associations. As well as, graduate college students may select three totally different “professionalization” assignments, together with training writing and presenting a convention commentary on an assigned paper, writing a referee report, writing an op-ed piece or weblog publish, or giving a conference-style presentation on their last analysis paper. Graduate college students may additionally counsel an alternate project to apply expertise they assume can be related.

Undergraduate college students had been launched to the analysis course of by discovering and submitting a paper they believed can be match for a future providing of this identical course. They needed to current a abstract of this paper to their colleagues at school and submit a report back to me arguing for its inclusion in a future syllabus. Each pupil contributed one thing that might be nicely price together with in a future course and would add to the variety of the syllabus readings.

Guiding Ideas for a Course on Autism

In her ebook Neuroqueer Heresies, Nick Walker describes a set of “guiding ideas for a course on autism” to make sure that the course stays grounded within the neurodiversity paradigm—which asserts that neurodiversity (like biodiversity) is effective for human flourishing—and the social model of disability. These ideas additionally assist keep away from inadvertently reinforcing the attitudes of the medical model of disability and the “pathology paradigm”—which asserts that there’s one “regular” approach for human brains to perform, and divergence from this means pathology.

1. To hell with “steadiness”.
2. The trainer should be autistic.
3. The trainer should take part in autistic tradition, neighborhood, and resistance.
4. Autistic voices should be central.
5. Fact is the place it’s.
6. The trainer should mannequin the lodging of neurodivergence.
7. The trainer should mannequin and invite the embodied expression of neurodivergence.

I used to be not conscious of those ideas once I designed the syllabus, however I typically agree with them. Sooner or later, I might try to make the syllabus extra autistic.

World Autism Consciousness Acceptance Day

Given the timing of the publication of this showcase, it’s price noting that April 2 is World Autism Acceptance Day, which is noticed by United Nations member states. Reasonably than the UN purpose of accelerating “consciousness” of autism, some autistic self-advocates desire the time period “Autistic Acceptance Day” to advertise overcoming anti-autism prejudice. I shouldn’t have any suggestions as to how finest to do that. Nonetheless, within the context of the philosophy of autism, a begin contains studying the work of autistic students—many wonderful such works are listed within the syllabus.

Acknowledgments

Due to Emma McClure for simulating a traditional viewers and to Arianna Falbo for useful feedback.

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