| Description |
This dissertation examines autism through the conceptual lenses of disorder, disability, and diversity, while also considering these concepts through the lens of autism. Disorders, we tend to think, are harmful and best addressed through medical intervention, whereas diversity is something to be respected and celebrated. Disability, on the other hand, resists easy characterization, since it involves both impairment (making it like disorder) and a complex social identity (making it like diversity). Autism has been described alternatively as all three, which makes it a perfect test case for our thinking about what these things are (a matter of conceptual analysis and ontology) and how they relate to what we think ought to be done (a matter of ethics and politics). The structure of the dissertation is as follows: Chapter 2 provides some background for the project by distinguishing between biological, cognitive, and behavioral levels of analysis for autism, in addition to introducing the medical model of psychiatry and outlining several prominent views in medical ontology. Chapter 3 proposes a dilemma for "Autism Spectrum Disorder" as a diagnostic category: If understood behaviorally, then our diagnostic manuals identify autism only trivially, revealing nothing interesting about the world. If understood biologically, then heterogeneity threatens the category's clinical utility (usefulness in developing medical interventions) and projectability (usefulness in making inferences). In Chapter 4, I discuss the social model of disability, first noting that facts about the cause or valence of disability entail nothing about the proper response to it. I then consider several iv arguments that might be given to close this is-ought gap. In Chapter 5, I present the neurodiversity view, challenging the arguments given in support of its claim that autism is a mere-difference, while defending its political aims of respect, inclusion, and accommodation. Finally, in Chapter 6, I continue my critique of neurodiversity by providing a limited defense of the practice of selecting against autism, since it may be said to express something about the nonideal social world rather something negative or false about autism or autistic people. |
