What Autism Is Not

In What Autism Is, I characterized autism as exclusion from the existential empathy on which meaningful human experience relies.

Autistic people are irretrievably remote from the conditions for meaning. Whatever they learn is learnt as a simulation and from outside of human connection.

Further clarity about autism comes from considering what autism is not. An opportunity has arisen in this regard, with a discussion between psychologists Jordan Peterson and Simon Baron-Cohen.

The discussion is titled What Do We Actually Know About Autism? It concludes that autism is a talent for understanding, not thoughts and feelings but structures, not intentions but arrangements. Some of us tend to be good with people. Autistics tend to be good with things. Some of us tend to ‘empathize.’ Autistics tend to ‘systemize.’

But autism is not a talent for understanding things. Autism is not an attunement to structures and arrangements. Autism is not a propensity for systemizing.

Why not?

Because appreciation of structures and arrangements requires precisely the same baseline aptitude that is required by appreciation of thoughts and feelings – and it is this baseline aptitude that autistic people lack.

It may be true that most of us are more or less good with people or good with things. It is certainly true that those with autism are good with neither.

The idea that those with autism are good with things is often heard, admittedly – Peterson and Baron-Cohen do little more than frame the idea in professional speak.

Those with autism are not attuned to people. It is natural for us to assume that they are attuned to something. We conclude that they’re attuned to things.

We are thereby prepared for the hypothesis that those with autism are on a spectrum with those talented at the workings of things – engineers, mechanics, technicians.

And so we take autism to be merely a different style of attention to the world – less adept with people, more adept with things; less empathetic, more systematic.

It is a common mistake.

But it is not only a mistake. It is a category mistake. It posits as a form of meaningful human experience what is categorically impossible as meaningful human experience.

Nothing – not people, not things – means anything without a baseline empathy. The distinction between ‘systemizers’ and ‘empathizers,’ between engineers and nurses, is of little significance. All in the end is empathy.

Autism, as the lack of capacity for empathy, is not an attunement to the meaning of things. It is a wholesale exclusion from the meaning of anything. To describe it as a style of meaningful experience is to commit a categorical error, albeit a common one.

What is uncommon about the discussion between Peterson and Baron-Cohen is that it does not simply commit this categorical error – it unfolds it quite explicitly.

In their opening exchange, Peterson and Baron-Cohen introduce in order immediately to dismiss the baseline empathy on which meaning relies. In doing so, they make it clear what must be suppressed so as to normalize autism in our midst: the very achievement that makes our experiences human.

What do we actually know about autism? That autism is not an attunement to the meaning of things. That autism is rather an assault on meaning itself – hiding in the plain sight even of men of science.

*

At the outset of his discussion with Baron-Cohen, Peterson introduces Martin Heidegger’s insight that the fundamental human attitude is one of ‘care.’

It is a promising beginning. There are few better philosophical resources for coming to know about autism than the work of Heidegger with its central concept of ‘care.’

And Peterson does not only introduce Heidegger’s concept of ‘care,’ he explains it as implying that human beings inhabit ‘a shared structure of value that…foregrounds certain perceptions and hides others.’

Peterson’s explanation is good. In describing the baseline human attitude as one of care, Heidegger points to the essentially purposeful character of even the simplest human experience – perception itself is not the unmediated, neutral achievement that it feels to us to be but the living transmission of a culture, of a shared structure of value.

Whatever is salient to us is also significant to us; whatever we see and hear, let alone what we know and believe, is seen and heard and known and believed in the context of projects that we share with the people among whom we live.

For example, the meaning of the colour red is implicitly instilled in us by the trajectories of care of those around us, who rush to press a button flashing red and warm their hands near embers glowing red and gently stem the flow of red blood and gaily put on their red Christmas jumper.

By our native receptivity to the projects of people we are swept into channels of significance, so that our merest perceptions of red are already thickened by associations with danger, with warmth, with lifeforce, with festivity.

Objective understanding of red, acquired by the classroom mode of matching the names of colours to a line of coloured squares or learning ‘I Can Sing A Rainbow,’ is a decidedly secondary achievement. The meaning of red is already in us by the irresistible involvements with red of those around us.

By the time we set about learning what ‘red’ means, red is already part of our shared structure of value.

With his concept of ‘care,’ then, what Heidegger intends is that meaningful human experience occurs within trajectories that arise and are transmitted through our inescapable being-with-ness – our defining openness to the purposes of the people in whose presence we abide.

Whatever is meaningful to us relies ultimately on the take on the world that we acquire through an existential empathy that runs so deep it goes unseen.

It is this insight, into the essentially empathetic character of meaningful human experience, that Peterson opens onto with the concept of ‘care.’ He could hardly have opened onto an insight more vital to a discussion of what we know about autism.

If the most fundamental human attitude is a constitutive empathy, on which relies the possibility of meaning itself, what of those among us whose most manifest attribute is an apparent lack of empathy? Are they incapable of the most fundamental human attitude, and therefore of meaning itself?

A discussion of what we know about autism must at least consider this troubling possibility.

But Baron-Cohen does not consider it – does not allow that there may be a condition abroad of such inhuman exclusion that it is defined by an incapacity for the existential empathy from which meaning derives.

Baron-Cohen refuses to acknowledge Heidegger’s concept of ‘care’ as introduced by Peterson. More than this, he disarms the concept so that it ceases to denote an existential condition and describes a merely contingent personality trait.

‘You’ve just introduced an extra element,’ Baron-Cohen objects to Peterson. ‘– do we care about another person…You could think about other people’s thoughts without really caring about them.’

Peterson makes no counter-objection and the discussion proceeds.

But Baron-Cohen has obliterated Heidegger’s concept of ‘care,’ substituting for Peterson’s tentative suggestion that meaningful experience is empathetic experience the merely sideshow fact that some of us are kind to others.

Heidegger’s concept of ‘care’ has nothing to do with being kind to others. It refers to the being-with others that makes us capable of human experience. It is the condition of possibility for people and things being meaningful to us. It is the condition of possibility even for our sense of the distinction between people and things.

That there is an essential difference between my mother and my soft toy is something that we learn by our basic human receptiveness to the purposes of those around us and to the shared structure of value from which those purposes derive and which they perpetuate.

How much we take for granted that is given to us by care!

Only if you live with one who suffers from autism do you cease this taking for granted. Only if you are responsible for one who suffers from autism do you cease to rely on the most vital meanings – the difference, say, between my mother and my soft toy – meanings which are never taught to us explicitly because we cannot help but acquire them, meanings of the greatest human import made in empathy with those around.

The care that defines human being in the world is not an extra element that some kind people possess. It is the fundamental attitude in which meaning arises.

And autism is the condition of not having it.

Autism is not caring.

*

Imagine finding yourself in a room filled with people going here and there and with complex electronic boards, criss-crossing wires, thousands of flashing buttons and levers at every turn. Imagine that you are only ever told, again and again though in a language you have never heard, the names for each person and each wire and each button and each lever. Imagine that you have no idea what any one of them is for. Or indeed what the whole enterprise is for. That noone ever tells you in a way you can understand, and that it never becomes apparent of its own accord.

But you must imagine more than that. After all, you still understand that people are speaking to you, even if what they are saying does not make sense. You prioritize the noises that people are making over the noises emitted by things. And you suspect that there is an enterprise of some kind afoot, which the complex configurations of people and things are in the service of in some way.

There are baseline meanings that you still have access to.

You must imagine harder. That the noises of people are not more salient than the noises of things. That the fact that people’s noises are intended for you is not apparent. That the likelihood that the movements of people and arrangements of things are purposeful is not something you understand. That the idea of enterprise itself has never occurred to you.

Imagine the utter, ineradicable bewilderment of that, as you are expected not only to stand in the middle of this room but somehow, unfathomably, to operate within it.

That is what it is like not to care: nothing to do with the extra element of caring about other people; everything to do with exclusion from the most fundamental, the most consoling, feel for the world – for its projects and purposes, for its thoughts and actions, for its people and things.

*

In their discussion of what we know about autism, Peterson and Baron-Cohen conspire to discard nothing less than the attitude that makes us human.

It is a fatal mistake, yielding an account of autism so deeply flawed that it can know neither autistic experience of things nor autistic experience of people.

According to Baron-Cohen, those with autism look at a table, for example, and are absorbed by the rules that govern its system, by the principles of its levelness and stability.

As a rendition of autistic experience of things, this is fantastical.

Certainly, there are people who look at a table absorbed by the rules of its system. But their mode of attention to the table is as firmly founded on existential empathy as the mode of attention of those conversing with the people gathered round.

Meanwhile, for those who suffer from autism, the table means as little as the people seated at it.

Those who suffer from autism may be staring at the table. The table may be salient to them. But salience is for them as salience never is for us: without significance.

Significance relies on meanings that we have acquired, mostly without knowing it, by the attitude of care which binds us to those around in a shared structure of value.

Those who suffer from autism may be staring at the table. But they do only not know what the table is for; they do not know what for-ness is for. They do not only not know what ‘level’ means; they do not know what ‘means’ means. They do not only not know what stability is about; they do not know what aboutness is about.

Those who suffer from autism may be staring at the table. But they have no understanding of the table because they have no understanding of the world. And they have no understanding of the world because they’re not in the world with others.

Recently I made a roadtrip with my eleven-year-old son, Joseph. We spent over fourteen hours together, mostly in the car. It was a lesson like no other, in autistic experience of things.

A few months before, I had taken from Joseph what we used to call his ‘washing machine’ – a plastic barrel with a lid, into which he would put a selection of metal toy cars and tiny plastic bears and fridge-magnet numbers so as to spin it round and round in his hands.

Every day. For five years.

Because autistic experience is comprised of salience without significance, Joseph’s washing machine activity never broadened outwards, never thickened into meaning. Not once. Not in five years.

I had succeeded in making salient to Joseph the different brands of washing machine. And the different washing machine cycles. He can name the brand of washing machine of most of the people we know. And he can anticipate what washing cycle I will choose for laundering sheets.

But these themed add-ons opened out no further, sparked no curiosity or concern, coalesced into nothing systematic. Joseph had his few washing machine bits and pieces, fused without fecundity.

I took Joseph’s washing machine from him so as to relieve him of yet another preoccupying dead-end, at once over-salient and under-significant.

A few days later, looking at a group of men from the city council replacing the bulbs in the lights on our street and repainting the lampposts, Joseph entered into a replacement salience. I could almost see the new theme as it imprinted, with a suddenness and totalness truly stunning.

Men. Lights. Men. Lights.

Over the next weeks, I affected great surprise and disappointment that the lights were now white. Over and over again, I performed a preference for the old yellow lights. This too took hold.

Men. Lights. New lights white. Old lights yellow.

I praised the men repeatedly for having made the dirty lamposts nice and clean.

Men. Lights. New lights white. New lights clean. Old lights yellow. Old lights dirty.

I taught Joseph the Makaton sign for ‘light.’ Hold up a clenched fist, then unclench it.

Men. Lights. New lights white. New lights clean. Old lights yellow. Old lights dirty. Fists clenched and unclenched.

I pointed out, again and again, that streetlights were turned off. And then that streetlights were turned on. Off when bright. On when dark.

Men. Lights. New lights white. New lights clean. Old lights yellow. Old lights dirty. Lights off because bright. Lights on because dark. Fists clenched and unclenched without cease.

Salience-saturation comes quickly. We added nothing more to Joseph’s experience of streetlights. No other aspect imprinted itself.
And then, the fourteen hours in the car. Daily routines suspended. Nothing to impinge on the relentless rigidity of autistic experience of things. Just Joseph and me and lights.

Without interruption, without once varying his theme, without ever falling quiet, without broadening his attention, without wondering, without speculating, without question, Joseph gave expression to his experience of lights. For fourteen hours straight.

‘What’s Joseph thinking about?’ Lights.
‘Why white lights?’ Men.
‘Why light is broken?’ Yellow.
‘Why light is clean?’ Men.
‘Why that [clenched and unclenched fist]?’ Lights.
‘What’s Joseph thinking about?’ Lights.

Salience run riot. Unsoftened by significance. Without context. Without beginning or end. Without relief.

The strain of it was something else. For Joseph, I mean. Dusk fell as we circled Dublin, Joseph’s entire being bent on the motorway lights, his fists clenching and unclenching like a spasm.

‘What’s Joseph thinking about?’ Lights.

At last the motorway lights switched on. Joseph began to cry. The intensity of input, unalloyed by meaning, just too much to bear.

‘Why Joseph upset?’ Lights.

The subtitle of Baron-Cohen’s recent book is How Autism Drives Invention. What an idea. What a delusion.

Those who suffer from autism may be stimulated by some things. But the few aspects of some things that are present to them are not drawn together under the rules of their arrangement or the feel of their association. At best, they are cobbled together into habits of experience, hard-won, unyielding, mostly debilitating.

Far from significant. Far from systematic. Far far from inventive.

*

But however misguided Peterson’s and Baron-Cohen’s account of autistic experience of things, their account of autistic experience of people is still further from the mark.

Not surprising, perhaps. Greater or lesser attunement to things is a relatively neutral matter. Little of human import attaches to it. Greater or lesser attunement to people is far more fraught with implications.

Lack of attunement to people is chilling. In designating those with autism as more ‘systemizing’ than ‘empathizing,’ Baron-Cohen is in danger of consigning them to a kind of monstrosity.

So Baron-Cohen adds another layer to human experience, revealing his account of autism to be less a scientific project than an enterprise in wilful normalization.

Baron-Cohen divides empathy into two distinct kinds. One kind, what he calls ‘cognitive empathy,’ is not so available to those with autism. The other kind, what he calls ‘affective empathy,’ is as available to those with autism as it is to the rest of us.

When, for example, a small child is crying alone in our midst, we are, according to Baron-Cohen’s account, affected by the child’s situation in a manner more basic, more instinctual, than a cognitive appreciation of the child’s trouble.

We are moved by the plight of the child – in our heart, in our gut. Our stomach lurches. Goosebumps appear. Hairs stand on end. We do not have a theory of her experience so much as a feel for her experience. Our bodies connect even if our minds do not.

And, according to Baron-Cohen’s account, autistic bodies connect too – autistic stomachs lurch, autistic goosebumps appear, autistic hairs stand on end.

And so it turns out that Baron Cohen’s concession that those with autism are unlikely to be good ‘empathizers’ concedes much less than it may have seemed to.

Baron-Cohen’s ‘empathizers’ are empathizers only of the head, not of the heart. Very like his ‘systemizers,’ really – interested in the arrangement and interaction of kinds of thought, kinds of personality, kinds of motivation in the same dispassionate way as his ‘systemizers’ are interested in the arrangement and interaction of kinds of material, kinds of angle, kinds of function.

Not being a Baron-Cohen ‘empathizer’ does not mean that you have no feel for people. For, Baron-Cohen ‘empathizing’ is a purely cognitive affair – it involves only thinking about people; it has nothing to do with feeling for people.

Those with autism are not very good at thinking about people, that is all. They are as good as the rest of us at feeling for people – equipped with an undiminished capacity for ‘affective empathy.’

Baron-Cohen does not, after all, plot human experience between the poles of empathizing and systemizing. He plots human experience between three points: systemizing of things (‘systemizing)’; systemizing of people (‘cognitive empathizing’); and empathizing with people (‘affective empathizing’).

We may be more or less systemizers of things or systemizers of people. But, aside from actual pyschopaths, we are all empathizers with people – saved by our empathetic bodies from unimaginable exclusion from the human world.

No autistic monsters here, then.

Except that Baron-Cohen’s account of affective empathy does not tally with exposure to one with autism.

Autistic stomachs do not lurch at the sound of a crying child. Autistic goosbumps do not appear. Autistic hairs do not stand on end.

The crying of a small child is not salient to those with autism. Or, if it happens to be salient, it is not significant – not to their minds, not to their bodies either.

Why not?

Because affective empathy, empathy of the body, is as rooted in shared structures of value as is cognitive empathy – what we feel is as subject to being-with as what we know.

Affective or cognitive, attunement to people relies on care.

If you do not care – and those with autism do not care – neither your mind nor your body can see the plight of those around.

Three years ago, Joseph’s grandmother broke her ankle. We made our summer visit for a couple of weeks, during which she moved about on crutches with great difficulty and was prevented from performing her usual tasks.

The situation imprinted on Joseph.

Granny has a sore leg.

Joseph gloried in this new piece of salience, so present to him in so many ways. He jumped excitedly when Granny moved about. He gritted his teeth at her plaster cast. He walked with a limp and laughed with joy.

Granny has a sore leg.

Ever since, Joseph notices everyone we meet who walks with a stick. Everyone who leans on someone for support. Everyone with a walking frame or wheelchair.

Sore leg! Joseph shouts excitedly.

Legs don’t work! Joseph laughs.

In the past few months, our nextdoor neighbour has entered the final stages of cancer treatment. She is helped from the house sometimes and into a wheelchair, so that she can be brought to the hospital. Joseph looks through the window, enjoying it all.

Jenny has a sore leg.

Jenny’s legs don’t work.

Recently we arrived home as Jenny was being assisted to leave. I diverted Joseph to another neighbour’s house to prevent his meeting her.

‘Of course,’ said this other neighbour. ‘It is distressing to Joseph.’

‘Not so,’ I answered. ‘It is delightful to him.’

How comfortable it is for Baron-Cohen simply to assert that those with autism are ‘very good at affective empathy.’ How tempting it is to believe that he is right.

But he is not right. Those with autism are not very good at affective empathy. Because those with autism do not have the attitude of care, the attitude which instills in the rest of us – in our minds and in our bodies – the meaning of human experience.
Jenny’s last days of life are no more affecting to Joseph than is the broken leg of a table. If either is salient to him, it is salient without the significance that would let him know, and feel, what is at stake.

*

Those who suffer from autism are not monsters, though sadly they may appear so in the world. After all, they neither know nor feel what they do.

Yet they are monsters in one sense. In the sense contained in the root of that word. Monstrum – to remind, to show, to warn, to demonstrate.

Those who suffer from autism remind us of what is forgotten even by celebrated psychologists.

Those who suffer from autism show us how constitutive and consoling is our being in the world with others.

Those who suffer from autism warn us not to normalize their condition but to cherish the achievement that makes our experiences human.

Those who suffer from autism demonstrate how much the rest of us care.

They do this indirectly, of course. By not knowing what they do. By not feeling what they do. By what autism is not.

Sinéad Murphy is author of Effective History (2010), The Art Kettle (2012), and Zombie University (2017), and co-editor of Pandemic Response and the Cost of Lockdowns (2022).

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