Disability & Society

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More on the ontological status of autism and

double empathy

Nicholas Chown

To cite this article: Nicholas Chown (2014) More on the ontological status of autism and double
empathy, Disability & Society, 29:10, 1672-1676, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2014.949625

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Disability & Society, 2014
Vol. 29, No. 10, 1672–1676, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2014.949625

CURRENT ISSUES
More on the ontological status of autism and double empathy
Nicholas Paul Chown*

Independent scholar, Barcelona, Spain

(Received 28 February 2014; final version received 4 July 2014)

This response to Milton’s recent article on the ontological status of autism and
double empathy also explores, through the lens of ‘double empathy’ and ‘theory
of mind’, the issues of relationality and interaction that researchers in the fields
of cognitive neuroscience and psychology hardly acknowledge. I go on to con-
sider Wittgenstein’s criteriological view of mind, propose a synthesis of theory
to describe autism, and suggest that public criteria of a non-autistic ontology
enable many autistic people to eventually develop the understanding of other
(non-autistic) minds that, in turn, enables them to survive, and even thrive.
Keywords: autism; double empathy; theory of mind; Wittgenstein

Introduction
Arguably the most influential theory seeking to explain autism, or aspects of autism,
is theory of mind (ToM), which posits that autistic people1 are disabled in being less
able than their non-autistic peers in understanding others (or, in the more extreme
cases, being unable to appreciate that others have different feelings and thoughts to
themselves). Furthermore, there appears to be an assumption made by most authors
who write about ToM in autism that it is an autistic person’s ToM difficulties which
precede the social difficulties they face.
However, it has been noted that non-autistic individuals generally have just as
much difficulty in understanding the autistic mind as vice versa and that it seems
entirely wrong to classify autistic difficulty in ‘reading the mind’ of the person with-
out autism as a disability when the difficulty experienced by the person without aut-
ism is not so regarded (L. Beardon, personal communication, 2012; Hacking 2009;
Milton 2012; Sinclair 1993). This conundrum is known either as the double empathy
problem (Milton 2012) or as a facet of the cross-neurological2 ToM thesis that Bear-
don expounds in his National Autistic Society/Sheffield Hallam University Post
Graduate Certificate in Autism and Asperger Syndrome course lectures (Chown
2013). Milton goes further than simply suggesting the problem is just as much one
for the non-autistic person as for the person with autism when he writes that ‘One
could say that many autistic people have indeed gained a greater level of insight into
(non-autistic) society, and more than vice versa, perhaps due to the need to survive
and potentially thrive in a (non-autistic) culture’ (Milton 2012, 886; original empha-
sis). Although I think the implication here that there is an autistic society is an error
(probably unintentional) on his part, I fully agree with Milton’s apparent point that

*Email: npchown@gmail.com

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

 Disability & Society 1673

many autistic people achieve more insight into society than most non-autistic people
gain into autism. Beardon argues that autistic people have a similar empathy with
other autistic minds as non-autistic minds have with their peers. The double empa-
thy/cross-neurological hypotheses of Milton and Beardon can be summarised as
follows:

(1) non-autistic people appear to have as much difficulty in understanding autistic

minds as vice versa;
(2) autistic people often develop a greater understanding of society than
non-autistic people develop of autism; and
(3) autistic people have a similar ability to empathise with other autistic people as
non-autistic people have with their peers.

Milton does not suggest that non-autistic people are less capable of developing
an understanding of autism than vice versa; as he points out, it is simply that autistic
people have no choice but to try to develop an understanding of society if they are
to ‘survive and potentially thrive’ whereas no such imperative applies in the oppo-
site direction (Milton 2012). If one accepts that autistic people appear to understand
other autistic minds as well as non-autistic people understand each other, this would
be a significant achievement given that, in general, persons with autism spend far
less time with their peers than non-autistic people spend with theirs. I think it is
unlikely that autistic people do understand other autistic minds as well as those with-
out autism understand each other but I do agree with Beardon that autistic people
have an affinity with other autistic people which non-autistic people do not have. I
believe this implies that, given the same level of interaction with their peers as non-
autistic people generally have with theirs, persons with autism could develop autistic
ToM similar to non-autistic ToM. On this basis it appears that the ontological status
of autism is partly dependent upon the simple fact that only about 1% of any popu-
lation is autistic (Brugha et al. 2009) so that, of necessity, our society, which is
almost totally a social construction by members of the majority non-autistic neuro-
type, is a fundamentally non-autistic society.
It is of interest to muse on an exactly opposite world where 99% of the people
are autistic.3 In such a society the very few non-autistic people would be highly
unlikely to develop their full capability to understand other non-autistic minds
because they would be interacting for the most part with autistic people. Would a
non-autistic person in this autistic society develop a level of understanding of autis-
tic people at least similar to the knowledge of non-autistic people which persons
with autism often develop in our non-autistic society in order to survive and even
thrive? I think the answer to this question has to be in the affirmative because they
would ‘hack out’ an understanding in this world just as autistic people can often
hack out an understanding in the real world (Happé 1994). But I think a more
important question to ask is whether a non-autistic person in an autistic society
would develop a better understanding of the minds of the other neurotype – because
non-autistic ToM is supposedly better than ToM in autism – than autistic people are
able to develop in our world? I suppose if you believe there is a ToM module in the
brain that does not work properly in autism, or that non-autistic people are either
better able to develop pseudo-theories about other minds than autistic people or have
the advantage over autism in their ability to simulate other minds, you might be
inclined to think that a non-autistic person would be better off in an autistic world
1674 N.P. Chown

than vice versa. But this seems to assume that ToM precedes the social, and hence
that difficulties with ToM precede difficulties with social interaction; that is, a
non-autistic person in an autistic society will have developed the level of ToM we
associate with such people in our society and thus will be better able to figure out
the autistic mind using their apparently superior ToM skills than vice versa in our
society. However, for me, the $1000 question is not whether in an autistic society a
non-autistic person would develop a superior ability to read the minds of a different
neurotype than an autistic person in a non-autistic society (although this would be a
reasonable test of whether a non-autistic person inherently has, or has the ability to
develop, superior ToM skills than a person with autism), but whether a non-autistic
person in an autistic society would develop a better understanding of their own
neurotype’s minds than is the case with autistic people in the real world? This is the
better test of the two because the lack of interaction with their peers in the hypothet-
ical world places the onus on any inherent ToM skills, or on the ability to develop
them through theorising or simulation, whereas with the other test it would be far
more difficult to extricate the effects of inherent ToM abilities from the hacking out
effects enabled by constant interaction with the 99% majority population. What a
pity that this is a hypothetical example, as I suspect that non-autistic people would
be no better at understanding the minds of their peers when in the same tiny minor-
ity as persons with autism are in the world as we know it. But I also believe that it
is far too simplistic to assume that ToM skills precede social skills. Is it not possible
that the situation is reversed or even bi-directional? I cannot prove my hypothesis
but then proponents of modular theory, theory theory, or simulation theory have no
proof either.

Wittgenstein’s criteriological understanding of the mind

Montgomery reminds us that modular theory, theory theory, and simulation theory
are not the only possible explanations for how children gain an understanding of
other minds. He writes that ‘Curiously, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind has lar-
gely been absent from theoretical discussions of children’s thinking about the mind’
(Montgomery 1997, 295) even though ‘Wittgenstein’s private language argument4
bears directly on many important issues regarding children’s thinking about the
mind’ (1997, 292). For Wittgenstein, what appears to be a symptom of a mental
state (such as the behaviour usually associated with pain) is actually a criterion,5 not
a symptom; the key consideration being that the mental state cannot be separated
from the behaviour, but rather they are two sides of the same coin (and not
behaviourism, because Wittgenstein objects to the construal of mental state terms in
physical state language) (Wittgenstein 1958). Instead of a child’s understanding of
other minds being based on a process of introspection (which would be required
with a simulation theory in which the child has to infer the same mental state as
seen in another person) or by relating one mental state to another on the basis of a
network of mental state terms (as would be necessary in the case of a theory theory
explanation), Wittgenstein proposes a set of public criteria as ‘public signs providing
justification for imputing the mental state they signify’ (Montgomery 1997, 299).
This is the criteriological view of the development of an understanding in the child
of other minds summarised by Montgomery as follows:
Wittgenstein’s argument (is) that the presence of criteria is necessary for teaching the
meanings of various mental state terms to children and, also, for then gauging
 Disability & Society 1675

children’s correct use of these terms. Children use the criteria to conceptualize the
mental state and to infer its presence or absence. (1997, 305)
It is a shame that Wittgenstein’s alternative perspective on the problem of other
minds has been neglected, although not altogether surprising given that his writings
are unconventional and seen by many as ‘difficult’. I believe that his proposed crite-
riological understanding of mind should be resurrected and investigated, especially
in relation to autism. Taking a synthesis of the criteriological view of the mind,
interaction theory (which suggests that social interaction enables the development of
ToM), and the enactive mind hypothesis (which says that the social is less salient in
autism) makes me wonder whether a lower salience of the social in autism may lead
to qualitatively and quantitatively reduced social interaction, which in turn results in
a reduced ability to understand public criteria of the mind (Gallagher 2004;
Gallagher and Hutto 2008; Klin et al. 2003; Wittgenstein 1958; Wootton 1997,
1999, 2002). I argue that in my hypothetical autistic world the greater salience of
the social in non-autistic people would probably not enable them to gain a better
understanding of autistic minds than vice versa, because in my version of the enac-
tive mind hypothesis there is an assumption that minds are attuned to the dominant
sociality in a society. And the relative lack of social interaction with their peers in
the other world (being in such a small minority) would cause non-autistic people
the same sort of problems that the small autistic minority have in the real world.
In other words, non-autistic people would be no better off in the hypothetical world
than autistic people are in the actual world. This could mean that the ontological
status of both the autistic and non-autistic neurotypes is partly dependent upon the
nature of the society. We might want to say that the ontological status is socially
constructed to this extent. The non-autistic neurotype biology suits our society
because the non-autistic population is in the vast majority, not because the former is
inherently the better of the two cognitively.

Conclusion
Perhaps hypothesis (2) can be explained on the basis that, in the world we live in,
the public criteria available to members of society for the purposes of imputing
mental states are, by definition, public criteria of a fundamentally non-autistic
ontological state. There are no public criteria of an autistic ontological state to assist
the non-autistic to understand the autistic. Arguably, it is those public criteria of a
non-autistic state that enable many autistic people to eventually develop the under-
standing of other (non-autistic) minds that, in turn, enables them to survive, and
even thrive, in a hostile world. This occurs where they can use their intellectual
prowess to hack out an understanding of other minds that develops naturally for
those persons for whom non-autistic sociality is salient and who therefore have an
affinity with the public criteria of the mind arising from non-autistic social interac-
tion.

Notes
1. Whilst person-first language is generally favoured by the editors of peer-reviewed jour-
nals publishing on the subject of autism, members of the autism community often prefer
to put their autism first. I use both options to demonstrate an open-mindedness on the
matter.
1676 N.P. Chown

2. The cross-neurological thesis is that interactional difficulties only arise when persons
from different neurotypes interact; for example, when an autistic person interacts with a
non-autistic person.
3. My hypothetical example was inspired by Vic Finkelstein’s society of wheelchair users
(Finkelstein 1975).
4. Because there can be no difference between applying a sign correctly and believing that
one has applied it correctly, Wittgenstein rejects the possibility of a private language
(Wittgenstein 1958).
5. In Wittgenstein’s criteriological view of understanding other minds, a criterion may be
defined as ‘something by which one may be justified in saying that the thing is so and
by whose absence one may be justified in saying that the thing is not so’ (Albritton in
Pitcher 1968, 244).

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