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Minds Between Us: Autism,mindblindness and the uncertainty

of communication _537 162..177

Anne E. McGuire & R od Michalko

Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Department of Sociology, University of Toronto

Abstract

This paper problematizes contemporary cultural understandings of autism.We make use of the

developmental psychology concepts of ‘Theory of Mind’ and ‘mindblindness’ to uncover the

meaning of autism as expressed in these concepts. Our concern is that autism is depicted as a

puzzle and that this depiction governs not only the wayWestern culture treats autism but also the

way in which it governs everyday interactions with autistic people. Moreover, we show how the

concepts of Theory of Mind and mindblindness require autism to be a puzzle in the first place.

Rather than treat autism as a puzzle that must be solved, we treat autism as a teacher and thus

as having something valuable to contribute toward an understanding of the inherent partiality

and uncertainty of human communication and collective life.

Keywords: autism, Theory of Mind, mindblindness, intentionality, communi-

cation, disability studies, puzzle, mentalism

Introduction: The ‘Mystery of Autism’

Autism has an enduring association with mystery. In recent times, autism has generateda great deal of intrigue in Western society. This intrigue is grounded in our ongoing

fascination with the mind, a fascination that is itself rooted in our culture. We are

constantly, for example, intrigued with how people think, what they think, especially of

us; we wrestle with questions in relation to what children should know, how they should

be taught, and how they can fulfil their potential.We are also intrigued with those minds

we interpret as ‘not working well’ or as having ‘something wrong’ with them and we

struggle with how to remedy these situations. We understand the mind as a mystery—a

mystery that holds secrets to how it works and to what is going on in it when it does not

work, particularly in ways that are not expected.

Autism represents one such ‘mystery of the mind’. Indeed, current mainstream con-

ceptions characterize it as the quintessential puzzle. In the same way that the pink ribbon

has symbolically come to represent breast cancer awareness, the puzzle piece has become

the icon of autism awareness. For example, the British organization National Autistic

Educational Philosophy and Theory,Vol. 43, No. 2, 2011

doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00537.x

© 2009 The Authors

Educational Philosophy and Theory © 2009 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA



Society (2008) characterizes the history of the puzzle as symbolic of autism in the

following way:

The puzzle piece is so effective because it tells us something about autism: our

children are handicapped by a puzzling condition; this isolates them from

normal human contact and therefore they do not ‘fit in’.

Or again, on an Autism Speaks (2008) discussion board, one parent of an autistic child

states:

The autism disorder is puzzling; we have bits and pieces of information that

help us help our kids, but some crucial pieces are missing and therefore we

must keep searching and researching autism.

What is puzzling about autism is that it is a mysterious condition. ‘Our children are

handicapped’, they are ‘isolated’ and do not ‘fit in’ to the round of everyday ‘human’

contact. And all of this is puzzling; how does autism do this?

Still, the parent in our second example above suggests some hope for autistic children.

Like the first example, the second makes use of the ‘puzzle’ to generate this hope. After all,

puzzles are typically conceived of as pieces of a whole. The ‘whole’, however, is merely

assumed, it is not present.The pieces of the puzzle need to be fitted together to make this

presumed whole. And, with autism, the parent tells us that the puzzle is that pieces of it

are missing. All the pieces of the puzzle of autism are not before us, so it is impossible to

understand the ‘whole’ of autism without all of the pieces. The reasonable thing to do, asthe parent reminds us, is to find the missing pieces, to embark on a search and to research.

Autism, then, is framed as a puzzle that is solvable and, thus, as a condition that is

knowable. Knowledge, as Michel Foucault (1988) has demonstrated, is power. Knowing

autism is gaining power over it. Solving the puzzle of autism removes it from the realm

of mystery and intrigue and places it squarely into the region of something known.

Ironically, solving the puzzle of autism is simultaneously the provision of a solution to the

puzzling ‘problem’ of autism. Gathering together all of the pieces of the puzzle that is

autism and putting them together does not, interestingly enough, give us the whole of

autism. Instead, it gives us the way to eliminate autism, to prevent it, to cure it, and failingthis, to treat it so that its negative effects are minimized, if not completely erased. Hence,

the expression ‘recovered child’ which is so ubiquitous in the autism community.1

Therefore, ‘searching and re-searching’ in order to find the pieces to the puzzle of autism

have nothing to do with desiring to have the mystery of autism in our collective life;

instead, the only interest in these pieces is to remove autism, mysterious or not, from

collective and individual life.

As is often the case in the contemporary West, the work of unravelling the puzzle of

autism has been taken up by biomedicine and its ‘like-minded’ derivatives, rehabilitation

and special education. Biomedicine conceives of autism as a ‘thing’, as a condition found

in some individuals. Autism, as a thing, is understood by biomedicine as an empirical

object and thus as knowable through the scientific enterprise of gathering data and

evidence, i.e. the pieces of the puzzle. Essentially, biomedicine treats autism as a condi-

tion found in some individuals and as a condition that generates negative effects. Autism

Minds Between Us 163

© 2009 The Authors




becomes an individual, medical problem to which there must be a collective, medical

solution. There is nothing social about this conception of autism except positing its

negative effects on an individual’s social life.

In this paper, we present a contrasting view. Rather than conceiving of autism as anindividual medical problem, we understand autism as a complex interactional process.

We treat autism as belonging squarely in the realm of the social and not in the realm of

the individual. Thus, autism is invariably tied to our situation as relational and social

beings. Autism cannot simply be located in the individual—in their bodies, their minds.

Rather, it comes into being in the social spaces between people. Autism derives its

meaning in and through the relationships that connect us, in and through the lines of

relation that bind you and I together as a ‘we’.

Autism can teach us something about some of the ways we find ourselves bound and

tied up with one another in a spoken and unspoken language.We (you and I) are tied to

each other by way of our communication, a mode of relation that is, also and always,

coming undone, incomplete, partial, due to a fundamental excess inherent in every

moment of contact. Moreover, we imagine some of the ways that we are charged with the

task of moving between being made up of these ties and being undone by them. In this

way, our togetherness, our relations, are always made on uncertain ground.Therefore, we

are always caught between possibilities, always moving in the mysterious shadows of

uncertainty.

Instead of understanding autism simply as a puzzle, we treat it as an example of the

fundamental human features of uncertainty, of the incompleteness and partiality of

communication, of the constant risk presented by the potential undoing of the tie thatmakes you and I a ‘we’. We treat autism, too, not simply as a problem requiring a

solution, but as a reminder that we live in the risk of incompleteness.The fear of the risk

is what allows for thinking of autism as the quintessentially negative consequence of

ignoring such a risk.

The following narrative illustrates this risk and this consequence:

On the first day of class, Gregory stood out as different, even bizarre.While he

contributed eagerly to class discussion, his comments were off topic and they

often focused narrowly on his own concerns [...] There was something so

unpredictable and unfamiliar in the ways he used and understood language

that our communication always seemed off balance. (Jurecic, 2006, p. 1)

These are the words of a teacher; these words describe a particular student in her

classroom; these words are also a depiction of our conventional understanding of autism.

Stories just like this one appear everywhere from special education literature to pop-

psychology books and pop-culture magazines. Such stories portray autism as self-evident

and obvious, presented as a series of taken-for-granted signs that point to a particular

individual. Autism (see Gregory above) is perceived as ‘bizarre’, as ‘off topic’, as a set of

non-normative behaviours, as an inability to ‘read’ the social situation, and act ‘appro-

priately,’ as ‘unpredictable’ and as a failure to effectively communicate.

It is autism and Gregory who have communication ‘problems’ and who cause us to be,

as described in the story above, ‘off balance’.That communication and our life in relation

to and with others are potentially always off-balance does not occur to a biomedical

164 Anne E. McGuire & Rod Michalko

© 2009 The Authors




understanding of the world. This depiction of autism not only treats autism as self-

evident but treats balanced and predictable communication as self-evident, as well. That

is, the biomedical ‘natural-order-of-things’ is firmly set; there is the self-evident character

of ‘normalcy’ and its self-evident ‘evil double’ of abnormalcy. As a way to explicate theteacher’s story of autism and of other conventional understandings of it, we now turn to

an examination of the work of one of the leading authorities in autism research today.

Our intention is to examine the mysterious invocation of ‘mindblindness’, insofar as it is

posited as a way to both characterize and resolve the puzzle of autism.

Mindblindness and Autism

One way autism has come to be known and characterized is as an individual condition

that results in an impairment of mindreading or ‘Theory of Mind’. Theory of Mind is a

concept that psychology uses to signal the ability to ‘attribute mental states (such as

beliefs, desires, intentions, etc.) to [oneself] and other people, as a way of making sense

of and predicting behaviour’ (Tager-Flusberg, Baron-Cohen & Cohen, 1993, p. 3).

Theory of Mind imputes an understanding that the ability to ‘attribute mental states’ is

the ability of a ‘normal’ person. Developmental psychologists hypothesize that ‘children

and adults with the biological condition of autism suffer, to varying degrees, from

“mindblindness” [...] they fail to develop the capacity to mindread in the normal way’

(Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 5).

Theory of Mind, then, is a description of the ‘normal’ state of affairs. In contrast,

mindblindness refers to something wrong with this state. Moreover, mindblindness isconceived of as a condition that some ‘suffer’.With reference to autism,Theory of Mind

may be understood as that missing piece of the autism puzzle and mindblindness

becomes the explanation for why this piece is missing. In other words, like conventional

blindness, mindblindness references that which is missing. The characteristics of mind-

blindness demonstrate such a reference. Let us illustrate these characteristics:

Mindblindness is:

• an inability to ‘see’ the minds of others

• an inability to ‘see’ the intention and motives that exist in minds

• an inability to make sense of how human action is oriented

• an inability to take another’s point of view, a lack of imagination, a lack of empathy

• a condition often suffered by autistic people (Baron-Cohen, 1995).

The concept of mindblindness allows for a straightforward understanding of human

action; we either have a condition that prevents ‘normal’ action, or we do not; we are

either abnormal or normal.This abnormal/normal dichotomy clears away any blurriness

that may exist between the two and renders them as straightforwardly distinct from one

another and there is nothing mysterious in this.

According to Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, the capacity to mindread, to ‘see’ the mental

states of others, to perceive or read the faces and/or intentions of others is ‘nothing

mysterious’ (Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 2). In fact, he suggests, people mindread ‘all the

time, effortlessly, automatically, and mostly unconsciously’ (Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 3).

This constant, unconscious and effortless activity holds no mystery for Baron-Cohen. If


© 2009 The Authors




we have Theory of Mind, we presumably ‘get it right’—we can read the minds of others.

But, given that our action sometimes bears ‘unintended consequences’, this Theory of

Mind sometimes results in misreading, whether we are autistic or not. People hurt one

another, insult one another, and do such things unintentionally. We often find it myste-rious that our attempts to flatter actually may insult, that our good intentions may result

in damage. But this is not the case for Baron-Cohen.There is nothing mysterious or even

intriguing about Theory of Mind—it is merely a self-evident feature of the normal state

of affairs.

Baron-Cohen attempts to illustrate the faculty of mindreading (and, by extension the

deficit of mindblindness) by providing the following hypothetical example of a banal, yet

ambiguous event:

‘John walked into the bedroom, walked around, and walked out.’ (Baron-

Cohen, 1995, p. 1).

We are confronted with this unknown actor (John) engaging in an activity. His intention,

though, is not clear. Baron-Cohen suggests that since John’s intentions are ambiguous,

we have a need, and a social one at that, to quickly make sense of John’s actions.

The question: ‘Why did John behave in this way?’ must be asked and must be answered.

Quickly. Baron-Cohen’sTheory of Mind demands that we ask after John’s intentions.Why

did he do what he did? Why did he walk into the room, turn around and leave? Observing

John’s actions is not good enough; we need to make sense of them. So far, we agree with

Baron-Cohen—we will make sense of John’s action and of anyone’s actions for that matter.

But, here is where we disagree. He says that intentions are observable ‘things’ in the mindand that we have Theory of Mind that can enable us to ‘see’ these things. This is how

Baron-Cohen makes sense of how we make sense of human action. In contrast, we do

not conceive of intention as an observable thing; instead, we understand it as itself a

sense-making device. Rather than ‘seeing’ intention, we presuppose that all action,

whether our own or that of others, is intentional and, as a way to make sense of action, we

endow it with intentionality.That is, we are responsible for intentionality; it does not exist

empirically in our minds, there to be read by those who are literate in such reading.

Returning to Baron-Cohen’s version of how human action works, he suggests that the

hypothetical example of John demonstrates how those with Theory of Mind can quickly

imagine (see) John’s intention. In this way, John’s actions are found to be sensible and

reasonable. Here are some of the ways Baron-Cohen himself makes sense of his own

hypothetical example:

‘Maybe John was looking for something he wanted to find, and he thought it

was in the bedroom’

or

‘Maybe John heard something in the bedroom, and wanted to know what had

made the noise’

or

‘Maybe John forgot where he was going; maybe he really intended to go

downstairs’. (Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 1)


© 2009 The Authors




Even though he provides us with only three ways of making sense of John’s action, the

number of ways is virtually infinite. But for Baron-Cohen, the explanation that John

walked into the room and then walked out does not count as a sensible explanation even

though this is exactly what John did.More interesting still, he does not include autism as a way to make sense of John’s action.

Could John be autistic? Could John have Alzheimer’s? Could John be a mystery? He

certainly is hypothetical. Baron-Cohen’s lack of mentioning these latter instances as ways

of making sense of John is grounded in his version of what sort of explanation makes sense

in the first place.We would have to provide some context for autism or for Alzheimer’s as

the reason for John doing what he did. But, Baron-Cohen would not be satisfied with this,

since nothing in his hypothetical example suggests either autism or Alzheimer’s.Yet, his

explanations depend upon a context, but on a context of conventionality, tacitly invoked

by him as a way to make sense of not only John but of why he included this hypothetical

character in his work.We might ask—why did Baron-Cohen include John in his work?We

can also imagine some explanations and we leave it to the reader to imagine some as well.

Our point is that Baron-Cohen tacitly relies upon the sense-making activities of members

of society to explicitly raise it as a topic (Garfinkel, 1967). He confuses the two and needs

sense making as an implicit resource to speak about it in terms of Theory of Mind.

Mindreading, according to Baron-Cohen, is most valuable and most useful when it

comes to us easily, when it is used fluently, that is to say, when we are not even aware that

we are doing it. He writes: ‘in the heat of a situation, it pays to be able to come up with a

sensible interpretation of the causes of actions quickly if one is to survive to socialize

another day’ (Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 4). ‘Social survival’ is contingent upon one’sproficiency at coming to know the minds of others.Yet, ‘to socialize another day’, requires

more than the quick invocation of a cause for some action. It requires, first of all, the

capacity to recognize a ‘cause’ when we ‘see it’. After all, not just anything would count as

a cause for Baron-Cohen—he would likely not accept the explanation that John did what

he did because he is a poorly programmed robot. The invocation of such a cause would

merely be treated as a ‘symptom’ by Baron-Cohen—a symptom that signals some sort of

problem, perhaps autism.Thus, to invoke a cause requires a prior understanding of what

will count as a cause; this is a question of interpretation and not of ‘Theory of Mind’.

The story of mindblindness tells us that this ‘making sense of’ another’s verbal ornonverbal actions occurs by being able to ‘see’ or ‘read’ certain ‘observable cues’ that are

always present in social interaction and various forms of communication. For example,

‘a cold stare’, a ‘blank look’, a sarcastic tone, a cock of the eyebrow are all such cues.

Theory of Mind suggests that people then link these ‘cues’ to ‘unobservable mental

states’ (such as desires, emotions etc.). Or, in Baron-Cohen’s terms, social relationships

depend on one’s ability to ‘[fill] in the gaps in communication and [hold] the dialogue

together’ (Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 28).The gaps in dialogue represent, for Baron-Cohen,

something missing in interaction; there is no glue to hold the dialogue together; there are

merely gaps that need to be filled in with glue. This glue is, of course, Theory of Mind.

For Baron-Cohen, the glue is the ‘natural’ capacity to ‘see’ motives, desires, intention-

ality, in short, to ‘see’ the cause of action. Baron-Cohen can be read as, himself, filling in

gaps, namely, filling in the gap that holds the taken-for-granted world together as just

that, the taken-for-granted.The problem is, of course, that Baron-Cohen relies implicitly


© 2009 The Authors




on the taken-for-granted in order to hold it together.We can hear Baron-Cohen as using

scientific language to tell us the story of our everyday lives. In order to read this story,

however, we need to imagine and know this every-day in order to give it an explanation

and a context. We need, in other words, Theory of Mind to understand Baron-Cohen’sscientific explanation of Theory of Mind. Next, we turn to an explication of a concrete

example, albeit as hypothetical as the John story, of the workings of Theory of Mind and

its binary opposite ‘mindblindness’.

Where is Sally’s Marble?

The process of coming to know the minds of others—‘seeing’ the other’s emotions,

intentions, interpreting and predicting the other’s behaviours—is not treated as a ques-

tion by Baron-Cohen. This sort of question is put to one side in order to proceed withdemonstrating Theory of Mind. Questioning its assumptions and presuppositions would

merely get in the way of such a demonstration. Thus, asking what Theory of Mind

intends is implicitly dismissed in favour of raising the question of what Theory of Mind

can do. Developmental psychology, for example, has developed a barrage of tests called

‘false-belief ’ tests that are drawn upon to measure, monitor and diagnose an individual’s

‘Theory of Mind’. The most prominent of these tests is the ‘Sally-Ann test’. In this test,

the test administrator (a psychologist or educator, for example) tells the test subject (the

child) a ‘hypothetical’ story about two girls, Sally and Ann. The story is followed by

several questions. Uta Frith (2008), describes the script from the Sally-Ann test as

follows:

... here is Sally and here is Ann

And Sally has a basket and she has a marble. She puts the marble in her basket

and covers it with a cloth.

Ann has a box.

Now Sally wants to play outside and she goes out for a walk ...

Now while Sally is out, she takes the marble from Sally’s basket and she puts

it into her own box, naughty Ann ...

Okay, it’s time for Sally to come back from her walk ...

Where will Sally look for her marble? (Frith, 2008)

Where indeed would Sally ‘look’ for her marble or where does she ‘think’ it is? Psycholo-

gists, in fact, ask children these questions—where will Sally look for the marble? Where

does Sally think the marble is? Regardless of how they put the question, the resulting

answers are the same. Before addressing these results, however, let us take a closer ‘look’

at this test.

Where would we, any of us, look for something, especially if we put that something

somewhere in particular? For example, we put our coat on a chair. We then leave the

room for a few seconds. We return to retrieve our coat. Where would we ‘look’ for it?

More pointedly, would we look? It is highly unlikely that we would unless ... unless, we


© 2009 The Authors




forgot where we put the coat or, for some other reason, the coat was not where we left

it. After all, we would only look for something if we weren’t sure where it was.We would

not even say that we thought our coat was on the chair.We would say, instead, it is on the

chair.That is, after all, where we put it and, until further notice, that is where the coat is.Sally knows where her marble is; she left it in her basket covered with a cloth. Sally

does not need to look for her marble, she knows where it is. Nor does she merely ‘think’

her marble is under the cloth in her basket since that is where she put it. Now, does Sally

have any reason to look for her marble? Is something telling her that her marble may not

be in her basket? Contrary to those administering the test who think there is nothing that

would tell Sally, or anyone else for that matter, that her marble is not in the basket, Ann

is in the room. She represents the possibility that the marble has been put somewhere

else. In fact, those taking the test are shown that Ann did, in fact, take the marble from

Sally’s basket and put it in her box.

Despite this possibility of the marble being somewhere else, developmental psychology

ignores it by, interestingly enough, ignoring its own conception of Theory of Mind. A

child sees in the test that Ann has moved the marble. But, the psychologists do not

assume that this child may be ‘reading’ Ann’s intention. Indeed, the test needs to assume

this, thus suspending Theory of Mind in order to demonstrate it. A child being tested

may assume Ann’s intention and may assume that Sally assumes the same thing; after all,

Sally and Ann are presented as friends who are playing. Perhaps Sally is familiar with

‘naughty Ann’. Perhaps Sally suspects that Ann may have moved her marble. It is,

therefore, ‘reasonable’ that when asked ‘where does Sally look for her marble?’, a child

might reply ‘in Ann’s box’.Yet, this demonstration of Theory of Mind does not count fordevelopmental psychology.

Children taking the test must also use Theory of Mind in relation to those adminis-

tering the test; they must be attributing intention to them. But this, too, is ignored. This

is not to criticize developmental psychology; instead, it is to demonstrate what all of us

need to ignore or need ‘not to look at’ in order to ‘see’ what we need to.Theory of Mind

permits ‘limited vision’ (partial mindblindness); it allows us to ‘see’ only part of what

there is to see. Our criticism is that the concept of Theory of Mind mistakes the part for

the whole.

What does this test and those administering it, make of the answers children givethem? Here is one version:

On the test question ‘where will Sally look for her marble?’ the vast majority

of normal children and children with Down’s syndrome passed the test,

indicating the original location. But, only a small minority of the children with

autism did so. Instead, most of them indicated where the marble really was.

(Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 71)

We need to keep in mind that Sally and Ann are hypothetical and that this is a test

and, as such, the test can be passed or failed. Both possibilities, of course, require a

right answer. According to developmental psychology, the right answer to the question

of where Sally will look for her marble is indicated by the marble’s original location.

‘Normal’ children, at least the vast majority of them, pass the test. Except for a small


© 2009 The Authors




minority, autistic children fail the test by indicating that the marble is where it is rather

than where it was.

What do developmental psychologists make of these results? First, ‘in autism the

mental state of belief is poorly understood’ (Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 71). Autistic childrendo not understand the mental state of belief very well. They could not believe that Sally

believed her marble was still in her basket. Second, ‘the robustness of this finding

suggests that in autism there is a genuine inability to understand other people’s different

beliefs’ (Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 71). Again, we see the centrality of ‘belief’ in the test

results and in the test itself.

For the concept of Theory of Mind, ‘seeing is believing’. Autistic children ‘see’ where

the marble is and believe it to be there. ‘Normal’ children presumably do the same. But,

the latter do not believe that Sally believes the marble is in Ann’s box since Sally did not

‘see’ Ann put it there.The former, however, cannot believe that Sally believes the marble

is still in her basket even if she did not ‘see’ Ann put it in her box. Not seeing Ann moving

the marble is not a sufficient condition for autistic children to believe that Sally believes

that her marble is where she left it. Autistic or not, there is a hint that Sally might believe

that Ann might take her marble. She does, after all, cover it with a cloth before she leaves

the room and she does look for the marble immediately upon her return. Does not taking

this into account indicate a version of ‘mindblindness’ to developmental psychologists?

Do Theory of Mind, and its corollary ‘mindblindness’, represent the ‘finding’ of

another piece to the puzzle that is autism? Do they represent a missing piece? Do they

represent the ‘glue’ that could potentially ‘fill the gap’ of communication to which

Baron-Cohen refers? Does treating Theory of Mind and mindblindness as ‘actual’ and‘real’ phenomena existing ‘in the brain’ allow us to ‘hold the dialogue together’ between

autism and ‘normalcy’? Are we more ‘balanced’ in our dialogue with autism, now that

we ‘know’ that we are interacting with someone who ‘suffers’ from ‘mindblindness’?

Presumably, forms of such questions must have occurred to Baron-Cohen and to

subsequent researchers of Theory of Mind. Without such questions, they surely would

not have administered the test to autistic children.

Minimally, these researchers must conceive of mindblindness as at least one of the

missing pieces to the puzzle of autism. Mindblindness is, after all, understood by

developmental psychology as an actual condition and one that is ‘suffered’ much in thesame way as ophthalmology conceives of Retinitis Pigmentosa as an eye condition

(blindness), a condition that is also ‘suffered’. The implicit claim of these researchers is

that they have at least found a puzzle piece that represents ‘what’s wrong’ with autistic

people in terms of ‘what’s missing’, namely, Theory of Mind. It is now necessary for us

to explore the idea of nature, which is embedded in the Theory of Mind narrative.

‘Nature’s Choice ...’

There is a lot riding on how we interpret the relatively banal story of Sally and Ann. If

we interpret this story as a demonstration of mindblindness conceived of as a pheno-

menon that we can know, identify, measure and test for, then there is a lot at stake.

What is at stake is our sense of ourselves as deeply connected to nature and, of course,

what is more at stake, is how we will hold our dialogue together with autism.


© 2009 The Authors




Baron-Cohen’s work proposes that Theory of Mind is an intrinsic human character-

istic, a characteristic moreover, which is ‘nature’s choice’ (Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 21). In

fact, he suggests that ‘natural selection’ has latched onto mindreading as ‘an adaptive

solution to the problem of predicting behavior and sharing information’ (Baron-Cohen,1995, p. 30). Any version of ‘natural selection’ formulates human life, both individually

and collectively, as animated by adaptation. We need to ‘survive’ our environment and

nature will select those characteristics that are best suited for this task and will jettison

those that are not.

This ‘natural’ adaptation process is conceived of by Baron-Cohen as applicable not

only to the physical environment but to the social one as well. If we are to ‘survive to

socialize another day’, as he suggests, we must at least develop the ability to ‘predict

behavior and share information’. Since Theory of Mind places such predictability and

information-sharing squarely in the realm of the ‘natural’, nature is understood to

unleash its selective prowess and weed out those whose prediction and information-

sharing capacity is at a low level. Those without this capacity will surely not ‘survive to

socialize another day’.

Regarding interaction as closely connected to nature, however, does not take into

account that nature itself is a social phenomenon. Nature is ‘human made’ insofar as we

develop interpretations of it (Michalko, 1999). Nature is not merely a unified object ‘out

there’ for ‘anyone to see’: it is also an object of our making. As Macnaghten & Urry

(1995) suggest, there is not one nature, rather there are many natures. This is so, they

stipulate, since we have developed many interpretations under the social category of

‘nature’. Baron-Cohen relies on a sense of the human mind as more of a physical senseof brain rather than a sense of interpretation. Thus, for him, Theory of Mind is a ‘thing’

that we either ‘naturally’ have or ‘unnaturally’ do not. Autism, then, is understood as

nothing more or less than lack—the lack of that ‘thing’ so necessary to the ‘normal’ realm

of human life.There is at least a hint in Theory of Mind research that autistic people are

not human, or at least, not quite.

In an article published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2005), evolutionary anthro-

pologist Michael Tomasello et al. (drawing on Baron-Cohen’s research) move beyond

identifying mindreading as the preferred way of being human. Going beyond mere

preference and choice, Tomasello et al. suggest that the ability to share intentionality isthe marker of what is human. Mindreading (shared intentionality) is not a preference in

relation to being human, it is being human.

From this sense of what it is to be human, Tomasello et al. write: ‘We propose that

human beings, and only human beings, are biologically adapted for participating in

collaborative activities involving shared goals and socially coordinated action plans (joint

intentions)’ (Tomasello et al., 2005, p. 676). Clearly, Tomasello et al. assume the taken-

for-granted conception that collaboration and the development of ‘socially coordinated

action plans’ is a ‘good’ shared by all humans. They do not, for example, problematize

this good but merely tacitly invoke it as the unexamined presupposition that marks the

basis of their work. Beginning from this presupposition, they stipulate that such collabo-

ration is a human biological adaptation, and only a human one.

This may be read as Tomasello et al.’s attempt to enter the conversation that is

interested in establishing the empirical grounds for the distinction between human and


© 2009 The Authors




animal, or, more generally between nature and society.Thus, it is not language or tool use

that marks this distinction. Instead, it is the ability to develop shared goals that marks

such a distinction.Yet, Tomasello et al. cannot avoid invoking nature as an essential part

of their claim.They suggest that humans are distinct since they have developed a capacityfor shared goals as a biological (natural) adaptation. While humans have naturally

evolved into collaborators and socially coordinated planners, non-human entities have

just as naturally not evolved in this way. This gives us what Tomasello et al. presuppose

all along, namely, an advantage. Our advantage lies in our human capacity for collabo-

ration and as a consequence, any entity that is not biologically adapted in this way is

disadvantaged.

In an effort to lay the groundwork for what is considered human, the article linguis-

tically and functionally marks the separation between the human and the non-human.

What is interesting is that Tomasello et al. categorize some human beings as closer to

nature than they are to humanity and who thus share the same disadvantage of non-

human entities. They write:

... we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with

autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not

participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared inten-

tionality). Human children’s skills of shared intentionality develop gradually

during the first 14 months of life ... . (Tomasello et al., 2005, p. 675)

‘Shared intentionality’ is what distinguishes the great ape from the human, according

to Tomasello et al. The great ape does understand the basics of intentional action.Presumably this animal ‘knows’ that action is intended. But, sharing such intentionality

is beyond the capacity of the great ape. Tomasello et al. extend the claim that ‘some

children with autism’ share the great ape’s capacity and subsequent incapacity. Some

autistic children, like the great ape, have the capacity to understand the basis of inten-

tional action.They know that action is intended. But, like the great ape, autistic children

lack the capacity for ‘shared intentionality’. Interestingly enough, from Tomasello et al.’s

perspective, autistic children’s non-autistic counterparts do have the capacity of ‘shared

intentionality’ and, in this sense, they have an advantage over both autistic children and

the great ape.What is most crucial is that the advantage non-autistic children have is notmerely a capacity for ‘shared intentionality’—what Tomasello et al.’s work implies is that

the advantage they have is that they are nothing other than human. They do say that

‘human children’s skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14

months of life ...’ (our emphasis). This is what autistic children and the great ape do not

have and, thus, do not share with their non-autistic and non-ape counterparts. Since

these researchers claim that autistic children do not possess the capacity of ‘shared

intentionality’, we can assume that they conceive of autistic children as not falling within

the range of what it means to be human and that they do share more in common with

the great ape.

Our intention (note the irony) is not to disprove the work of Tomasello et al. or

Baron-Cohen. We are not engaging in scientific research that would demonstrate that

autistic children do have shared intentionality and are, therefore, human. We began this

work with the assumption that autistic children are human and we do not intend to be


© 2009 The Authors




influenced by scientific work that begins with the goal of finding the missing piece to the

puzzle of autism. Thus, we do not share the ‘findings’ of the scientific work we have

explicated in this paper that autistic children are missing the capacity for shared inten-

tionality. Nor do we treat Theory of Mind as a ‘thing-in-the-brain’. Instead, we under-stand intentionality, shared and otherwise, as a method whereby people, all people,

attribute motives to one another as a way to make sense of human action.We now turn

to an explication of our approach to the understanding of autism. It is our intention to

lay the ground for a way to understand autism, not merely as a problem in need of

solution, but as a way of being-in-the-world—a way that can teach about intersubjectivity

and our relations with others.

Knowing the Other

Drawing on the work of Judith Butler (2004) and Emmanuel Levinas (1998), we beginto problematize the empirical way of knowing the other. We suggest that ‘knowing the

other’ cannot be described or depicted within one version of knowing. Instead, there are

a variety of ways of knowing the other and we now want to point to the limits of the

Theory of Mind version of knowing.

Butler suggests that insofar as our bodies are always and already exposed to the

other—to her gaze, to his touch, to violence or respect—every-body has ‘its invariable

public dimension’ (Butler, 2004, p. 26). Indeed, the body is constituted by the sociality

of the self-other relation. Butler writes: ‘given over from the start [my body] bears the

imprint, is formed within the crucible of social life’ (Butler, 2004, p. 26). She argues thatthe relational ties linking the I with the Other compose us, constitute our ontology. We

are not simply in our individual bodies—I in mine and you in yours—and when you

appear to me, when I am touched by you, difference is negotiated and organized. Rather,

we come into our bodies in relation to one another—differentiation happens by way of

and through our relation.The other, therefore, perforates or punctures the boundedness

of the I. We are in unavoidable proximity with others and, in that proximity, the I is

pressed into question: If I am partially constituted by you, where do I end and you begin?

We are caught up in one another, but still the boundaries are impossibly uncertain. Our

relation to one another is always partial. As we are so close, so proximal to be (re)formed

in and through this relation, something remains distant, inaccessible, beyond the

heteronymous I.

Emmanuel Levinas reminds us that to relate through factual knowledge of the other

is an act of totalitarian domination, collapsing the other’s absolute difference to the

structures of the same.The other is entirely unassumable from the position of the I. ‘This

unassumability’ he writes:

... does not result from the excessive intensity of sensation, from just some

quantitative ‘too much’ surpassing the measure of our sensibility and our

means of grasping and holding; but an excess, an unwelcome superfluidity... . (Levinas, 1998, p. 91)

We encounter the other as an excess; the other’s prior history (or, using the language of

psychology, the other’s ‘mental state’) is neither made simply absent nor simply present


© 2009 The Authors




through our proximity. This excess requires us to think through (again and again) the

ways in which we are given over beyond the self, and where this excess of the other, and

the other’s relation to us, exceeds our ability to know it.

In Precarious Life (2004) Judith Butler unpacks the divisive nature of living and relatingin common in terms of such an excess. She writes:

I cannot muster the ‘we’ except by finding the ways in which I am tied to ‘you’,

by trying to translate but finding that my own language must break up and

yield if I am to know you.You are what I gain through this disorientation and

loss. This is how the human comes into being, again and again, as that which

we have yet to know. (Butler, 2004, p. 49)

Thus, the sociality of embodied life is contingent upon that which is beyond empirical

knowledge, ‘an unknowingness’ (Butler, 2004). ‘We’ are bound by a paradoxical tie that

both binds us in an intimate proximity and keeps us at infinite distance. The other

approaches the I as an excess that is an unwelcome superfluidity—an unforeseen sur-

prise, always beyond us, always ‘yet to know’ (Butler, 2004, p. 49).

The Yet-to-Know

How might we respond to the other as excess—to know the other as the ‘yet-to- know’?

Autism, understood as a puzzle with pieces missing, may be framed within the sense of

the other as ‘yet to know’. When the unknown is conceived of as a puzzle, as is autism,

then its wholeness can only be known through the putting together of its pieceswhich, paradoxically presupposes knowing the whole. We need merely to ‘see’ the

putting together as the yet-to-know. This, of course, is contingent upon having all the

pieces.

Autism is understood by developmental psychology as a puzzle, but one with at least

one piece missing. ‘Mindblindness’ represents for developmental psychology a missing

piece of autism. Mindblindness references what is ‘actually missing’—Theory of Mind.

At the same time, Theory of Mind references the condition of mindblindness. Each

references the other.

Still, autism is more than this. It always exceeds, always confounds, always remainsa puzzle—it always remains the yet-to-know. This excess, this mystery, is interpreted by

developmental psychology as a call to develop better, more accurate tests, to continue

to ‘search and research’ for a solution. Rather than relating to the story of mindblind-

ness as an answer, a solution to the puzzle of ‘what autism is’, rather than treating

mindblindness as a way to know and recognize autism once and for all, rather than

mapping the story of mindblindness onto individual autistic bodies as a way of

knowing these bodies, we read the story of mindblindness as a story of the interac-

tional spaces between all bodies.

Moreover, we treat this story as an opportunity to theorize the ways ‘we’ relate to one

another. After all, ‘blindness is a disruption to the taken-for-granted ideas and practices

of seeing. It [disrupts] sight’s intimate and familiar, almost familial, relation to the world’

(Michalko, 1998, p. 92). Insofar as the story of mindblindness disrupts the way we ‘make

sense of communication’ and ‘our everyday way of understanding people’ (Baron-


© 2009 The Authors




Cohen, 1995, p. 25–26), this story might present an opportunity to re-imagine these

ordinary ways of relating as complex interactional processes, to re-imagine communica-

tion on the basis of a mysterious excess. This way of proceeding to the disruption of

mindblindness is in contrast to Baron-Cohen’s way of proceeding by positivistically‘finding’ mindblindness as the absence of Theory of Mind.

Contrary to what Baron-Cohen says, we find mindreading to be a mysterious occur-

rence. Putting oneself in someone else’s place is no simple endeavour. In attempting to

know the other by ‘seeing’ their thoughts and feelings, their desires and intentions, we are

confronted by a fundamental excess, in Butler’s words, an ‘unknowingness’. ‘Seeing’ the

other is never accomplished with certainty. Butler argues that there is, therefore, no such

thing as a certain narrator of relations. She writes: ‘the very ‘I’ is called into question by

its relation to the Other, a relation that does not precisely reduce me to speechlessness,

but does, nevertheless, clutter my speech with signs of its undoing’ (Butler, 2004, p. 23).

As we communicate—as I ‘read’ you, as I observe your actions and gain in-sight into your

perspective (as I do, and I must), I am already bearing witness to an excess. Butler

continues:

One speaks, and one speaks for another, to another, and yet there is no way to

collapse the distinction between the other and oneself.When we say we, we do

nothing more than designate this very problematic. We do not solve it. And

perhaps it is, and ought to be, insoluble. (Butler, 2004, p. 25)

This is a marking of the very impossibility of imagining the certain you from the position

of the certain I.

If to communicate is one way to render the relationship between the self and the other

knowable, then to communicate is necessarily ‘to falter’ (Butler, 2004, p. 23), to be

reminded of an ever-present ‘unknowability’. Thus, it is vital to orient to this story of

autism as mindblindness not as an individual story about the solution to an inherently

puzzling disorder, but, as a social story that, itself, exists as a puzzling space of questions,

a mystery to which there is no solution.This interpretive act opens up a space for autism,

not as some-body that can be identified, known, solved, but rather as a disruptive, puzzling

space of questions, and, as such, a space to theorize, a space of teaching and a space that

must continually be returned to, over and over again.What of this teacher we call autism?

Autism as a Way to Learn about Communication

As we go about our day-to-day lives, gaps in communication arise. We fail to commu-

nicate; we communicate poorly; we misunderstand each other’s intentions; we misread

other’s behaviour, and so on.Yet, these failures rely on the known. For example, we can

discover and know that we have misread someone or that someone has miscommuni-

cated his or her intention. There are also gaps in communication as illustrated by

Baron-Cohen in his hypothetical example of John entering and leaving the room. John’s

intention is not known. A gap obscures his intention.

Baron-Cohen’s characterization of the utility of ‘mindreading’ suggests that the only

[successful] way to relate to the gaps—to the inevitable disjunctures in the ways with

which we communicate—is through the generation of reasonable solutions or answers


© 2009 The Authors




that fill in what is missing, what fails to get across. The gap between you and I is

recognized as that which must be closed. Ironically, what is not considered by Baron-

Cohen is that by relating to gaps in communication as requiring closure, we are already

relating, already engaging in an act of interpretation—in the negotiation and organizationof our relations as communicators.

The story of mindblindness provides an opportunity to struggle with communicative

acts of interpretation and translation, and to work through our interactions with each

other and within a language that is no doubt between us, and still not quite shared.

Rather than interpreting the story of mindblindness as an explanatory story, a definitive

and certain story about how we know autism, we would like to take pause, and ask the

question: ‘what does this story (of mindblindness) have to teach us about the uncertainty

of communication’? We would like to linger with this story where understandings are

assumed to be shared—labour through them, live with them.

To be bound to another in language is to always be unsettled by the non-reciprocal

nature of this bond; to be disturbed by the intimate proximity of the ‘unpredictable’ and

the ‘unfamiliar’, to be put ‘off balance’ by absolute and irremediable difference. As Sara

Ahmed (2000) reminds us: ‘The overwhelming of the border [between myself and the

other] involves secrecy. It involves a failure to communicate, where what passes between

it is not disclosed, is not available to understanding or knowledge’ (Ahmed, 2000,

p. 154). There is always an absence, an excess, a place of unknowing—something

ineffable—that interrupts certainty and commands attention.

The story of mindblindness might allow us to, following Ahmed, ‘challenge the very

assumption that communication is [...] about the transparency of meaning, or pureexchange’ (Ahmed, 2000, p. 155). We attempt to communicate with one another. We

attempt to ‘read’ the signs of our spoken and unspoken language, negotiate a shift of

gaze, an inflection of the voice, a double meaning. We are so close—brought into

relation with one another, tied up with this other in a language that seems to be shared.

Still, language ‘breaks and yields’ as we come to know the other. We are always kept at

a distance. We are always on the way to knowing the other, yet never fully arriving,

never gaining access to the mind of another. Ahmed reminds us that: ‘an ethical

communication is about a certain way of holding proximity and distance together: one

gets close enough to others to be touched by that which cannot be simply got across’(Ahmed, 2000, p. 157). Communication is revealed as an act of negotiation between

distance and proximity, a movement between these two possibilities. Our paper invites

everyone to ask how and in what ways we are touched by autism, for we are. Rather

than removing this touch and replacing it with a touch of disadvantage and of lack, we

recommend that we stay in touch with autism and open ourselves to learning once

again that touching and staying in touch represent the value of the yet-to-know and of

human mystery.

Note

1. The ‘Autism community’ generally refers to non-autistic parents of autistics and non-autistic

doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, educators and other professionals involved in the diag-

nosis and ‘treatment’ of individuals with autism. The ‘Autistic community’, by contrast, is

composed of autistic people.


© 2009 The Authors




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