Ian Hacking
Humans, aliens & autism
Contraries illumine what they are not. Oliver Sacks used a remark by Temple Aliens, typically from outer space, are Grandin as the title of an essay about almost by de½nition not human. Cur- autism, which became the title of his rent portrayals of aliens may show more book An Anthropologist on Mars. Grandin, about who we, the humans, are than an extraordinarily able autist, had said they do about our extragalactic contrar- to Sacks, “Much of the time I feel like ies. In portrayal by opposites there is an anthropologist on Mars.”1 She felt often a large dose of fear: for example, that interactions with other people were that we may be all too like the aliens we often as dif½cult as interviewing Mar- imagine. That leads to a paradox about tians. We move on from Mars to the ex- autism and aliens. A persistent trope in tragalactic planet Aspergia, whose den- some autism communities is that autis- izens have, unfortunately, been exiled tic people are aliens, or, symmetrically, to Earth. They ½nd that the inhabitants that non-autistic people seem like aliens of Earth are aliens with whom they are to autists. Some autists are attracted to forced to share a planet, while earthlings the metaphor of the alien to describe in turn regard them as an alien species. their own condition, or to say that they A nasty variant was used in a disturb- ½nd other people alien. Conversely, peo- ing autism awareness sound bite given ple who are not autistic may in despera- wide distribution a couple of years ago tion describe a severely autistic family by the advocacy organization can: Cure member as alien. Autism Now. After a bit of ominous mu- I wonder less what this phenome- sic, an intensely concerned young father non shows about autism than what it intones, “Imagine that aliens were steal- reveals about what it is to be human. It ing one in every two hundred children. is to be expected that what contraries . . . That is what is happening in America teach may not be something hidden, today. It is called autism.” This is the an- but something that has always been on cient myth of the changeling, the troll the surface, almost too banal for us to child substituted in the dead of night for notice. The revelation of the obvious an infant sleeping in his cot at home. is not to be despised, for often the ob- I spoke of some autism communities vious is blinding. toying with the metaphor of aliens. Au- tism is a highly contested ½eld, and there © 2009 by Ian Hacking are many collectives with quite distinct
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 agendas. I have to make clear from the long time.2 Seventeenth-century Europe Humans, aliens & start that, far from regarding people is especially rich in extraterrestrial uto- autism with autism as aliens, I believe it to be pias, satires, scienti½c speculation, and a very substantial human achievement moral reflection. Their inhabitants, be that room is being created for autistic they evil or models of virtue, served as people to live more comfortably among foils for human beings. In that respect those who are not autistic. More and they are like the extragalactic creatures more resources are available to serve of our day. They also served as a screen such ends, and the social history of this question–a question that, like Freud’s ongoing progress is a promising tale of screen memories, hides what is really hard work, a ray of light. being asked, namely, whether the indige- This essay uses autism as a foil. What nous people of the Americas had souls.3 is it about autistic people that prompts Aliens in modern space adventures the trope of the alien? How are autists may talk and walk like us, but by de½ni- different from other human beings, in tion they are not human. Hence human such a way that a gifted autist can feel and alien are a tightly bonded pair. Aliens that living among humans is like living can be better than us, as in moral fables with Martians? How can a gross but ef- such as et. Most of the time they seem fective sound bite create the sense that to be bent on destroying us. Monsters aliens are snatching our children to are terrifying, but when push comes to make them theirs? I am of the school shove, they are closer to humans than that thinks you can learn about X by aliens. At least they are on our side in reflecting on what makes something Monsters vs. Aliens. In that recent movie, not-X. What does the metaphor of the DreamWorks studios’ ½rst animated 3D alien, insofar as it’s connected to au- release, a bride is hit by a meteor on her tism, show about humanity? wedding day, and, like Alice, grows to ½fty feet tall, less an inch. The U.S. Air Alien invasion is the lowest form Force kidnaps her to a secret concentra- of intergalactic ½ction, but the word tion camp for monsters, populated by alien dates back to earliest English, and Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (humanoid body, has always had an association with oth- cockroach head), a 350-foot-long grub, erness or foreignness. In America, the and their ilk. Earth is invaded by an term “resident alien” is used for non- alien robot that sets about destroying citizens allowed to live and work in the the United States, and the president re- United States–a term so demeaning sponds by enlisting the monsters, who that, colloquially, Americans tend to re- save America. Message: prefer terrestri- fer to immigrants as having a green card, al monsters to extragalactic aliens. A rather than as being resident aliens. Al- metaphor for an immigration policy? though “resident alien” isn’t incorrect Friend or foe, aliens are de½nitely not in its denotation, I shall use alien with us. However, we seem to hold up aliens its recent connotations, which seem to as mirrors to teach what is best or worst have entered common usage in post– in us or in the human condition. Let us World War II science ½ction. Aliens now move past this doublet to a trian- come from outer space–or, at least gle in which autism occupies the third from somewhere other than Earth. point, and where the very word alien is Humans and the “other-worldly” a second-order metaphor. At zero order, have been available as a duet for a very an alien is a foreigner. At ½rst order, an
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 Ian alien is a rational and sentient being Second, the Diagnostic and Statistical Hacking from outer space. At second order, Manual of Mental Disorders (dsm) clas- on being human the word is used as a metaphor for si½es autism as a mental disorder, a per- the strangeness of autistic people. vasive developmental disorder, in fact. But it is not a kind of madness, or a men- Hardly anyone had heard of autism tal disorder like bipolar disorder. In the before Rain Man in 1988, some twenty highly contested world of autism, some years ago. There is an astounding story argue that it is not a disorder at all, only behind the word autism–from its intro- a difference from other people. Hence, duction around 1910 as the name of like black pride or gay pride, there is self-absorbed schizophrenic behavior, something akin to autism pride, which through the name of a diagnosis for at present may be settling into a “neu- children in 1943, and up to its radical rodiversity movement.” expansion in recent years–yet until Members of this loosely de½ned fac- fairly recently, the word was unfamiliar. tion agree that autism is a neurological Today every reader knows about autism, condition, but so, after all, is the state if only because it is blazoned on every- of what they call neurotypicals. Most peo- thing from billboards to bus stop shel- ple who will read this essay are, despite ters. Many know someone diagnosed our oddities, neurotypicals. It is also on the autistic spectrum, which includes true that many people who will read it Asperger’s syndrome. Since everyone can, like its author, notice autistic traits has some common knowledge about in themselves. For millennia we neuro- the condition, my ½rst task is to record typicals have refused to acknowledge ten reservations, quali½cations, and neurodiversity and so (it is said) do not cautions, in order to guard against this understand even ourselves. or that misapprehension. People with autism are part of this di- First and foremost, all of those chil- versity, celebrated in an era and a culture dren and adults with autism are very dif- such as ours, where difference is under- ferent from each other. There are books stood as a good thing. The movement is titled or subtitled “The Autistic Child,” a fascinating development in the odyssey but there is no such entity, the autistic of autism. But beware: I have noticed child, as if it were a subspecies of hu- that when I say “neurotypical” in mixed man beings. One current slogan, “If you or neurotypical company, many neuro- know about one autistic person, you typicals say “neuro-normal” back to me. know about one autistic person,” cannot That’s exactly to miss the point. The neu- be emphasized too much. In what fol- rodiversity movement rejects the idea lows I shall pay special attention to one that there is neuro-normality. trait of autism in its more severe forms, Third quali½cation: autism is ½led but I do not mean to imply that anyone as a pervasive developmental disorder, diagnosed with autism exempli½es this one that can be noticed very early in life. trait to a strong degree. I use an abstrac- What we now call autism began as infan- tion based on a stereotype of this trait tile autism, but never forget that autism to think about all humanity; it does not is for life. There is neither a known cause reflect in any way on the details of a life nor a known cure. Matters stand differ- lived by any individual. I am using au- ently, however, from the ways they stood tism as a vehicle, and am not discus- a few decades ago. We now know how to sing the condition in its own right. work with very young autistic children,
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 in order to help them compensate for speak of being severely autistic–which, Humans, their differences and adapt to the world if anything, covers an even wider range aliens & autism of neurotypicals. Many labor-intensive of individuals. Spectrum is a metaphor programs are available, although autistic from optics; if we are to use a meta- communities say there are not yet nearly phor from the sciences, I would prefer enough. to speak of an autistic manifold. But We are also doing a fair job of helping the terminology of spectra is too estab- neurotypicals to be less uncomfortable lished to root out. in the company of autistic people. This Sixth, it is common to distinguish is not a ground for complacency, but the three groups of dif½culties experienced lives of many families with one or more by autistic children, namely, social and severely autistic children are a great deal linguistic dif½culties and ½xedness; better than they could have been even these persist in various degrees through twenty years ago. life. This triad, as it is called, may be A fourth reservation is that there more of a mnemonic than a de½nition, are a great many approaches to autism, although it is canonized in diagnostic none of which is de½nitive. There are protocols. It focuses on three dif½cul- also many advocacy groups with differ- ties deemed to be central, but there are ent targets, which is why I spoke of au- many other aspects of autism, some tistic communities in the plural. Some more physical than mental. of the differences arise from the nature Many people with autism have of the autistic individuals involved; oth- (a) various kinds of disadvantage in ers arise from very different conceptions social interactions with neurotypicals. of autism and even of disability. Some Most important for the purposes of autistic communities reject the very this essay are their problems under- idea of a cure, which Cure Autism Now standing what other people are doing, (can) espouses. Another organization, thinking, and feeling. Many cannot Defeat Autism Now! (dan!) emphasizes read your state of mind from your body diet and supplements, among other language in the way that most children things. The Autism National Committee can. I do not refer here to the theory (autcom) urges that autistic people are that autists lack a “Theory of Mind”; the real experts on autism. At present it I mean something prior to theory, not argues for the importance of facilitated something theoretical about a theory communication, a technique that oth- and its absence in autists. I try to stay ers hold to be a sham. closer to phenomena, best put by say- Fifth, it is now standard to speak of ing that many autistic people do not the autistic spectrum and of autistic immediately know what another per- spectrum disorders, “asds.” A spec- son is doing and have to work it out trum is intended to emphasize the previ- from clues. This is one part, but an es- ous point about variety, but the image is sential one, of a larger canvas of dif½- problematic: spectra are linear and au- culties in human relationships, includ- tism isn’t. The metaphor suggests that ing those within the family. This aspect you can arrange autistic people on a line, of autism–which, to repeat, shows up from more to less. It does make sense to in innumerable ways and in many de- speak of high-functioning people with grees–is my focus below. Not surpris- autism, but that covers an extraordinary ingly, we shall ½nd that it is a primary range of people. It also makes sense to ground for the metaphor of aliens.
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 Ian In addition, many autistic children An eighth observation is that no one Hacking have (b) dif½culties acquiring spoken knows whether these several problems on being human language, to the point that some are arise from a single neurological anomaly, mute for life, and many (c) are upset or have distinct causes. Likewise, no one by change. They take what is said liter- knows what is going to help. Even when ally. They do not understand pretending, we have two autistic brothers, and hence and they do not play, even alone, in the a presumed shared genetic basis for their ways in which most children do. I call autism, a regime that helps one may be this ½xedness, but many other terms useless to his brother. For example, in are in use. A diagnosis on the autistic Charlotte Moore’s biography of her two spectrum demands that at least two of autistic sons, George and Sam, one boy these three de½cits, or differences, are is much helped by a gluten-and-casein- apparent. free diet, but it is useless for his broth- Many autistic children ½nd their dif- er.4 Yet the brother is much helped by a ferences from most people to be both program intended to help autistic chil- deeply frustrating and frightening. The dren “integrate” sensory experiences communal and family worlds in which that overpower them; this does not help they are expected to live are hospitable the ½rst boy at all. (Moore is one parent to most neurotypical children, but are who emphasizes the physical aspects of constantly threatening for many autis- autism that are so often underplayed in tic ones. Some of them succumb to vio- textbooks and manuals.) lent temper tantrums. Others just want A ninth reservation, of a different to get away to a safe place, curling up, type, is that I shall use the word autism for example, in a closet or on a stairwell. to talk about anything said to be on the Seventh, there are many aspects of au- autistic spectrum. Take Asperger’s syn- tism beyond the triad. Many autistic drome, introduced about 1980 by Lorna children are subject to seizures. Many Wing, a British psychiatrist, in the name are hypersensitive to loud sounds, bright of a Viennese doctor who long before colors, and itchy surfaces, even the tex- had diagnosed a small group of children ture of a drink. A quite different group with autistic dif½culties but who did of problems, sometimes gathered un- not have notable problems acquiring der the label dyspraxia, is quite com- language. The name Asperger’s is now mon. It primarily involves motor skills: often used synonymously with “high- bad balance, a tendency to bump into functioning,” but there are also debates things, poor hand-eye coordination, as to whether it is something different dif½culties in initiating or stopping altogether. movements, and even a poor hand- Lorna Wing, who also characterized grasp, which makes it hard to use a key the triad of dif½culties mentioned above, or a pencil. Many dyspraxic children is no longer content with the classi½- begin to crawl, stand, and jump much cation she created. It is said that some later than their peers. Thus, although members of the developmental disor- autism is usually thought of as a clus- ders task force for the future dsm-v ter of mental and emotional disabili- want to eliminate Asperger’s as a diag- ties, there may also be many physical nosis. I take no position, except that disabilities–or, to speak with the neu- despite the current popularity of the rodiversity movement, many physical label “Asperger’s,” I shall avoid it. I differences. use autism for the entire manifold of
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 associated dif½culties. This does not im- take rubella very seriously, and consid- Humans, ply any criticism of the very large num- er it horrible that parents, relying on aliens & autism ber of people who cheerfully call them- ill-founded rumors about vaccines no selves Aspies. Likewise, I shall not say longer in use, have stopped vaccinating “on the autistic spectrum.” Once we their children. have agreed that autism is polymorphic in its manifestations, it is better to speak Autism picked up the trope of the simply of autism. alien about twenty years ago. It has A tenth remark concerns some all-too- been flourishing in some autistic quar- frequently-asked questions. I shall an- ters, and is reviled in others. For starters, swer two of them without argument, not there are books with titles like Through to take a stand, but to evade the ques- the Eyes of Aliens, whose author is herself tions while showing where I do stand. autistic,6 or, Women from Another Planet? One question is about incidence: are whose author is afflicted by, among oth- there really more autistic children born er things, Asperger’s syndrome and has every year than ever before in history? organized a women’s collective to tell Are the amazing increases in reported stories of their lives with Asperger’s.7 prevalence due to an epidemic of au- A chapter in the latter book is called tism? My answer is no. The increases are “How I came to understand the neuro- thanks to expanding criteria of diagno- typical world.”8 You can hear two types sis, much greater alertness on the part of of voice behind the titles of these books: primary-care physicians and teachers to yes, we are aliens, and it is great to be the possibility of autism, and to the fact different, quirks and all; no, we are not that a diagnosis of autism gets a troubled aliens, we are women here on Earth, child much better care for special needs out to reorganize social norms. than any other diagnosis. Thus a decent There is also a new genre of ½ction, gp with the option of diagnosing autism featuring novels in which an autistic will almost always do so, because it is character plays an essential part in good for the child and the family. the plot. A signi½cant proportion of A second question is about the mercu- these works are written by parents or ry in the old-fashioned mmr, which in- relatives of autistic children, including cludes the measles vaccine. Does it pre- Marti Leimbach’s Daniel Isn’t Talking, dispose toward, or cause, autism? No.5 a book that resonates with many par- But let me add a caveat. A child’s brain, ents of autists. In that novel, we are set from conception to the age of two years, up from the start: shopping with her grows at a prodigious rate. It is an unbe- mother, the twenty-two-year-old future lievably sensitive instrument, putting mother of Daniel says, “I could only itself together over the course of thirty- give birth to an alien.” Her mother re- three months. We should be very wary plies, “You will have the most beautiful of subclinical toxic substances in the en- babies.” Later on in the book, after her vironment. My two youngest grandchil- son is diagnosed with autism, Daniel’s dren are under two. When their respec- mother feels “as though I started the tive mothers were pregnant, I strongly journey this morning with my beloved urged both mothers to go organic, and little boy and am returning with a slight- to avoid the armory of toxic cleansers ly alien, uneducable time bomb.”9 found in most modern homes. I take Another novel, Cammie McGovern’s toxicity very seriously indeed. I also thriller Eye Contact, features a ten-year-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 Ian old severely autistic boy who (perhaps) mother’s amazing teaching practices. Hacking witnesses the murder of a slightly older In a review of Iversen’s book on Ama- on being human girl. A special-needs aide says, “I used zon’s U.S. site, Mukhopadhyay writes: to think: Here are a bunch of kids so “The book Strange Son felt like a ‘slap’ on brilliant, so truly ahead of us intellectu- my face. . . . My actions have been men- ally, they came out of the womb, took tioned as ‘beastly,’ ‘alien being,’ ‘pos- one look around this screwed-up world sessed by a demon.’” He hates many of and said to themselves, Good-bye. I’ll Iversen’s statements, such as, “When I go on living, but not here. Not on this left their apartment that day I felt as if planet.”10 I’d glimpsed into the mind of an alien The trope is found in science ½ction, being.”14 Some people ½nd the trope as well as in tales for children. Of Mice of the alien a powerful way to state the and Aliens combines both genres. Zeke, obvious, while others ½nd it odious. an alien, crash-lands in the backyard of Ben, a boy who has recently been In 2005, Bob and Suzanne Wright declared to have Asperger’s syndrome. founded Autism Speaks. It has become Together they set out to explore Ben’s the engine of charities for autism re- suburban Australian world and its in- search in the United States, and it is now habitants. “With Ben learning to cope assuming that role in the United King- with his newly diagnosed Asperger’s dom. Mr. Wright is ceo of nbc Univer- syndrome, and Zeke trying to cope with sal, and a powerhouse in the corporate life on Earth, things are not always as world. Why did he and his wife found they seem.”11 Here it is not autists as Autism Speaks? He is often quoted as aliens, but aliens and autists in cahoots. saying, “I want my grandson back!” The All permutations seem to be played metaphor of abduction feels overpower- out. Pamela Victor’s character Baj, on ing to some families; a baby that was a the planet Aulnar, has not only a flying lovely human being has disappeared. bicycle, but a magical communication Jim Sinclair, in a talk titled “Don’t kit (the Word Launcher) and an invis- Mourn for Us,”15 countered this atti- ible Calming Cape. There is also the tude. He urged parents not to go around equivalent of a magical ear trumpet, pining for a child they wanted but nev- which enables Baj to spot the point er had. To Sinclair, there never was the of what someone is saying to him.12 grandson that the Wrights thought they Back in the real world, contrast such had. If they need to mourn, they should enthusiasm for aliens with Tito Rajar- go to a grief counselor who helps par- shi Mukhopadhyay’s reaction to Por- ents of children who died in infancy. tia Iversen’s Strange Son.13 Mukhopad- Sinclair was speaking for yet an- hyay, seriously handicapped except other advocacy organization, grasp: when he is at a computer keyboard, The Global and Regional Asperger Syn- is a gifted autistic author. Strange Son is drome Partnership. For the autistic about Iversen’s own son, and his and child, he said, it is the parents and the her encounters with Mukhopadhyay and neurotypicals who are alien: his mother. Iversen is a founder of Cure Autism Now, whose alien abduction Each of us [autistic people] who does ad was mentioned earlier. She brought learn to talk to you, each of us who both mother and son from India to manages to function at all in your so- America so she could disseminate the ciety, each of us who manages to reach
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 out and make a connection with you, is already knows. Thus in the dialogue De Humans, Oratore, Cicero has Crassus say, “the face aliens & operating in alien territory, making con- autism tact with alien beings. We spend our en- is an image of the soul, while the eyes re- tire lives doing this. And then you tell us flect it.”18 Cicero is not idly repeating that we can’t relate. some piece of general knowledge. His protagonist is discussing the delivery of The trope of the alien, then, is symmet- a speech, and seems to be counseling the ric: autistic people are aliens; or neuro- orator to use his eyes as if he means what typicals are aliens for autistic people. he says: even if you do not feel such-and- I have already mentioned an entertain- such an emotion, use your eyes to simu- ing version that combines both angles, late the emotion. Here Cicero exploits namely Aspergia.16 “Each human cul- an already well-understood conceit. ture has a mythology to account for its It is much the same with St. Jerome, existence and whence it came. Now we who of course knew his Cicero. Writing have one too!” Aspergia is today’s At- to a widow, telling her how to preserve lantis, a planet from which the Asper- her modesty and chastity, Jerome be- gians came to Earth. (One blogger calls gins a paragraph, “Avoid the company Aspergia her utopia). Aspergians have of young men.” He goes on to warn, found that Earth is inhabited by some “The face is the mirror of the mind and alien form of life called humans. a woman’s eyes without a word betray Why does the metaphor of the alien crop the secrets of her heart.”19 up so often in fact and ½ction? Let us take Dante’s Convivio, composed after the Temple Grandin’s comment–“Much death of Beatrice as a poet’s version of of the time I feel like an anthropologist The Consolations of Philosophy, is a strange on Mars”–seriously for a moment. work, parts of which are written in the Wittgenstein thought, “If a lion could form of poems followed by commentary talk, we could not understand him.”17 on the poems. The soul, writes Dante, If a Martian spoke, would we under- “reveals herself in the eyes so clearly that stand it? Only if we shared or came to the emotion present in her may be rec- share some “forms of life,” some ways ognized by anyone who gazes at them of living together. That is precisely the intently.”20 This is part of a commen- problem for a person with severe autism. tary on the lines: Autistic people have a great deal of dif½- culty sharing any form of life with the In her countenance appear such things neurotypical community. But the evoca- As manifest a part of the joy of Paradise. tive phrase, “form of life,” is never more I mean in her eyes and in her sweet smile, than a pointer; we need to be more spe- For here Love draws them, as to himself. ci½c about what’s missing. The “her” of the commentary is con- strued as Dame Philosophy herself, he eyes are the mirror of the soul,” “T and the entire work is an incredibly or window to the soul. At least since Ro- overworked conceit. My point is only man times, some version of this maxim that Dante was playing with a saying he has been in circulation, evident in such could assume to be familiar to anyone. places as the Latin proverb, Oculus animi To judge by printed dictionaries of index. The well-known literary ½gures proverbs, the maxim appears as a prov- who use this saying play with it as a erb in all modern European languages. standing reference point that everyone A list of English printed versions of the
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 Ian saying, from 1545 to the present decade, of another are not a window to the soul of Hacking is readily found in the Oxford Dictionary that other person. Emotions, says Dante, on being human of Proverbs, with the last entry taken can be recognized in the eyes by anyone from a South Florida thriller: “All that “who gazes at them intently”; but that is windows-of-the-soul bullshit.” The exactly what most seriously autistic peo- speaker, usually dismissive of eyes as ple cannot do: gaze at the eyes intently, windows, recants on looking at an old or perceive emotions therein. school photo of the villain. He had been Conversely, the eyes of the autist are viewing the fbi’s state-of-the-art digital not a clear mirror of the soul within, as processing of photos on a screen. “It was neurotypicals would expect. Many au- excellent work, but like every computer tistic children seem positively cherubic enhancement he’d seen, something when they are at peace. (Yes, cherubs was lost from the original photograph. are from another world.) Yet one can- Some spark in the eyes.” In the small not see what is going on in their heads. class photo there is “a brooding de½- Some neurotypicals are frightened by ance,” such as one might see in torture the blankness, for they feel that maybe victims whose whole sense of fear has there is no soul there. mutated, but “also a glint of bitter hu- But there is the face, too. Analogous mor. This was some smug little alien sayings, evidenced by Cicero himself, bastard.”21 Not from outer space, Hal refer to the face as mirror or image of is just a very nasty piece of work, a the soul. Dante’s stanza begins, “In her “psychopath” employed as an assas- countenance appear such things,” for it sin by a drug cartel. was the eyes and the mouth that struck The faded photograph, with those the poet. That is precisely why smiley eyes, is something of a window on faces and their variants are such good Hal’s soul. “On the television screen, icons. They are now used, in some teach- however, his eyes were flat and empty. ing regimens, to train autistic children Drained of any hint of humanity by how to recognize the emotions of oth- the digital rendering.” This is a shrewd ers. observation. The farther you are from Cicero discussed the face and eyes the material body, the less you can see in the larger context of the body and in the eyes. Notice that the hero saw a its gestures. So let us turn to the whole brooding de½ance; he inferred from such body, its movements, and its stance. A cues that this was some smug bastard. point easily missed is that, whether it is the eyes, the face, or the body, the tra- The eyes, as mirror of the soul, or dition that is packed into the proverbs as window on the soul, have served always conveys the idea of seeing direct- as a standard metaphor in the West for ly, and not of inferring. There is no ap- millennia. Autism connects with this parent reasoning going on: one just metaphor by way of autists’ notorious looks into, or through, the eyes to see dif½culty with eye contact. For what- the soul. More generally, as Wittgen- ever reason, autistic people, when they stein has it, “The human body is the look at someone’s face at all, tend to best picture of the human soul.”22 focus on the lower part of the face (the mouth and chin) and not the eyes. This Wittgenstein was hardly being orig- phenomenon has an immediate conse- inal when he penned that aphorism, quence. For a person with autism, the eyes speaking from a tradition at least as old
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 as Cicero. His remark is one of many in I, though, believe Köhler is absolutely Humans, Part II of the Philosophical Investigations correct in describing the phenomena; aliens & autism that seem to encapsulate ideas found there is nothing worth the name of in- in the middle part of Wolfgang Köh- ference here. The friend just sees; he ler’s Gestalt Psychology, ½rst published has a “direct picture.” Of course, in in 1929.23 (Wittgenstein devoted some every one of Köhler’s examples there of his classes to the ½rst edition of that will be cases which call for inference. book.) Köhler thinks many aspects of The point is not that one never infers, the body provide “pictures” of the in- but that often one just “sees.” A neu- ner thoughts and feelings. For Köhler, rocognitivist may insist that there must it is not only stance, but also body-lan- always be a “computation” that passes guage, as we now say: “[N]ot only the from the sensory input to an under- so-called expressive movements but standing of the mental state of another also the practical behavior of human person. Köhler would say that, if so, beings is a good picture of their inner it must be different in kind from the life, in a great many cases.”24 “computation” involved in inference. Both men give numerous examples Köhler knew he was only describing, of such phenomena of seeing in the and he hoped that later generations of eyes and in the movements of the body, workers would be able to explain and as well as through agitation, what a per- understand the phenomenon. He wrote son feels, thinks, or intends; seeing that that his account “gives us neither an a person is in a bad mood; noticing that altogether new nor an altogether per- a child both wants to touch a dog and fect key to another person’s inner life; is frightened of doing so. Köhler is now it tries only to describe so far as it can mostly remembered for his work with that kind of understanding which is the apes, and for his theory of visual orga- common property and practice of mankind.” nization, part of the Gestalt theory of He hoped for future work “when the perception. But the middle of his book simpler facts described in this chapter is dense in close observations of ordi- will have found more general acknowl- nary behavior, some of which were re- edgement.”27 cast into elegant phrases by Wittgen- I do not think we have fully come to stein.25 Here is a more complex case: terms with the “simpler facts” Köhler presents. They certainly bear on autism, If my attention is attracted by a strange for that kind of immediate understand- object, a snake for instance, I feel direct- ing that Köhler described is not the com- ed toward it and at the same time a feeling mon property and practice of that part of hu- of tension is experienced. A friend, even if mankind that is autistic. he has not recognized the snake, will see me and especially my face and eyes direct- e should pay attention to Köhler’s ed toward it; in the tension of my face he W and Wittgenstein’s contrast between, on will have a visual picture of my inner ten- the one hand, what one sees in the eyes, sion, as in its direction he has a direct pic- face, body, and the movements and ges- ture of the direction which I experience.26 tures of another, and, on the other hand, Some readers will see in this vignette the what is inferred. The existence of such friend inferring from Köhler’s behavior immediate understanding does not im- that he is unnerved, and inferring where ply that what one sees is merely the exer- to look for the source of Köhler’s feeling. cise of an innate faculty, for it is to some
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 Ian extent learned or acquired in the com- tive theory. We do not infer other minds Hacking munity of others. For example, one does by analogy; instead, we come equipped on being human not so readily see what foreigners are with a Theory of Mind module, a facul- doing, let alone see into their souls, as ty for attributing mental states to other is the case with one’s compatriots. people. This has become a canonical Köhler’s phenomena should make part of psychology, much preferred to us rethink an idea widely shared by ana- models of analogy or inference. The idea lytical philosophers: the idea that one was inaugurated by David Premack and knows the mind of another–or indeed Guy Woodruff studying chimpanzees. that others have minds at all–“by anal- Quickly it led in 1983 to the false-belief ogy with one’s own case.” We would be tests devised by Heinz Wimmer and Jo- better to heed Lev Vygostky’s proposals, sef Perner. Autistic children fare poorly that concepts of the mental life come on these tests, which require thinking later than an understanding of commu- about what other people believe, given nal life, and are “internalized” not as the evidence that they possess. Thanks an entry ticket to society, but only in the to Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan Leslie, and course of growing up and living among Uta Frith, among others, the tests have groups of people, starting with the ex- joined the arsenal for diagnosing autism. tended family. Many people hardly waste the time to Underlying the “Other Minds” pic- write out “Theory of Mind” any more, ture is a fundamental misconception, they just write “ToM.”29 I do not follow namely that I get the idea of mind and this practice, because the very fact that soul from knowledge of my own mind. we use an abbreviation makes us take it The reasoning seems straightforward. for granted, as some sort of proven fact. I know what I think and feel and hope One great virtue of the Theory of for; I know whom I love and whom Mind approach is that the ability to I despise; I know my left foot is sore. know what other people feel and think How do I know? By looking inside my- is no longer supposed to be a matter of self, how else? analogical inference, as the old Anglo That picture prompts what is called philosophers thought. Rather, it is an the Problem of Other Minds. It is not innate capacity, one that kicks in at an a universal or timeless problem of phi- early stage as the child matures, and losophy. It was brought to the fore only which may be associated with a Theory in the early twentieth century by men of Mind mental module. As a corollary, such as William James and Bertrand it does not kick in as early, or as well, for Russell.28 How do I know what you are most autistic children. thinking since I cannot look into your Further speculation is fuelled by the mind? By analogy to my own case, an- idea of mirror neurons. Brain scans in- swered Russell and James. Later in the dicate that when Jones sees that Smith century, analytic philosophers said that is sad or angry, blood flows to those it is not analogy, but explanation that is same neurons it flows to when Jones used. I explain your behavior by postu- himself is sad or angry. In general, when lating that you have a mind like mine. Jones observes Smith doing something, This is called “an inference to the best or feeling an emotion, the very parts of explanation.” Jones’s brain that are activated when he The next step in this sequence of ideas is so acting or feeling are activated by his is part of the overall repertoire of cogni- observing Smith. This phenomenon, it
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 may be conjectured, underlies the phe- More disturbing is an inability even Humans, nomena described by Köhler and apho- to see what autistic children are doing. aliens & autism rized by Wittgenstein. Their actions make little sense, their in- Hence there is promising research that tentions are opaque. With the severely suggests that the mirror neurons of au- autistic, it may seem as if they do not tistic people are not in working order; even have many intentions. Hence they either they are absent, or they function are taken to be emotionally “thin” chil- differently. I emphasize that these fasci- dren, who grow up to be “thin” men nating investigations are still open, how- and women, lacking a “thick” emotion- ever. A cynic may propose that the story al life. Or so it has seemed to most peo- is being told backward: Jones’s relevant ple, including many parents and many neurons are active on seeing Smith sad clinicians. simply because he sees Smith sad–not, At best, the feelings and emotions of he sees Smith sad because his sadness the severely autistic must be inferred. neurons have been triggered. We are not even con½dent of our infer- ences, not because we lack enough evi- Having acknowledged some of the dence, but because we may doubt that truly exciting theories and conjectures the concepts that have evolved over mil- about the mind now in circulation, let us lennia for the description of neurotypi- return to the phenomena described by cals are apt for the autistic life. Here it is Köhler. They are familiar to most people, necessary to repeat my ½rst caution. I am but are precisely what are not familiar, using an abstraction from one of many automatic, immediate, or instinctive for autistic traits in order to think about the most autistic people. As we have said, human condition, and am not speaking they are not “the common property and directly to questions about the nature of practice” of that part of mankind that is autism or the experience of autistic indi- autistic. Expert observers report that au- viduals. tistic children do not see that someone Language matters. I would guess that is in a bad humor; they do not follow as long as there has been human com- the direction of a startled person’s gaze; munication, there have been ways to they do not readily understand what an- describe emotions and intentions. Per- other person is doing–that is, they do haps that is a mistake. Perhaps there is not easily recognize intentions. a long prehistory of human self-realiza- Conversely, ordinary people cannot tion. That is, the Vygotskyan project of see what an autistic boy is doing when, crafting a language for the emotions of to take a banal example, he is furious- others and ourselves may have taken ly flapping his hands. What on earth is many, many generations of our remote hand-flapping? The parent or other out- ancestors to complete. And only late in sider knows vaguely that there must be prehistory, on this scenario, would this some kind of agitation, yet the child language have been internalized. What seems so tranquil when hand-flapping. is now called ½rst-person authority over Articulate autists tell us how calming it awareness of our own emotional states is. So we are now able to infer a bit of would, then, have come into being slow- what’s going on; but instinctive neuro- ly. If so, individuals with autism would typical ways of interacting with other not have stood out in the same way that people do not enable us to look and see they do now. (I am here speaking of pre- what the child is feeling. history, not of the quite different fact
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 Ian that compulsory universal elementary Neurotypicals and severely autistic Hacking education was a prerequisite for noticing people do not initially share a form on being human various kinds of cognitive dif½culty in a of life because the bedrock is lacking, systematic way.) and so an arti½cial platform must be Whatever evolutionary psychohisto- constructed. That is one way to de- ry we choose to imagine, it is a fact that scribe what is going on right now. In there has been a language for the inten- retrospect, we shall almost certainly tions, desires, and emotions of other see today’s Internet as making possi- people for all of historical time. It was, ble a form of life in which autistic peo- however, crafted by and for neurotypi- ple can thrive. It is precisely the medi- cals. We are only just beginning to adapt um for human communication that that language to the autistic life. In this does not depend on body language or we are much helped by autobiographies, eye contact–in short, it does not need novels, and the immensely rich world Köhler’s phenomena. of autism lived on the Internet. It is very What distinguishes us from aliens (as common to say that autobiographies de- we depict our contraries) is notoriously scribe autism “from the inside.”30 I sug- not rationality, but our emotional lives. gest there is little ready-made language We are fellow humans in that we grasp to describe this inside, and that the auto- each other’s intentions, feelings, wants. biographies and the blogs are creating it Köhler’s phenomena enable such under- right now. standing to be taken for granted in our common ways of life. They are the bedrock We asked, “Why does the metaphor of our humanity. of the alien crop up so often in fact and This conclusion is “obvious”; yet be- ½ction?” We can now state an answer: cause the phenomena are so familiar, because of the absence of Köhler’s phe- it takes an acute observer of human nomena in relations between neurotypi- and animal behavior to point it out to cals and autistic people. These phenom- us. It takes a great philosopher to see ena are the “bedrock” for a “shared form what the observer has noticed, and to of life,” to use two of Wittgenstein’s cast that into an aphorism. The insights compelling phrases. Not only does Tem- of Köhler and Wittgenstein have been ple Grandin feel like an anthropologist virtually forgotten, even when the lat- on Mars, but neurotypicals feel they ter’s aphorisms are cited in thought- are confronted by unintelligible Mar- less awe. An inquiry into the trope of tians when they ½rst confront the real- autists and aliens may have been useful ity of autism. It is important that she not only to notice something about au- says Mars, and not Papua New Guinea. tism, but also to remind us of a funda- Innumerable languages are spoken in mental fact about human beings. that part of the world, and the customs Köhler made an interesting observa- ½rst encountered by Europeans are pass- tion on the score of what is obvious. “It ing strange. But in no time at all, visitors is not our fault that, to a deplorable de- and inhabitants were talking, generat- gree, the obvious has disappeared from ing creoles, taking advantage of each learned psychology, so that we have to other. They did not share a common rediscover it.”31 There is a great af½ni- civilization, but they shared something ty between Wittgenstein and Köhler on far more fundamental, captured by this attitude to what we do not notice, Wittgenstein’s metaphor of bedrock. both because it is always before our eyes,
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 and also because we theorize instead of now common practice to try to teach Humans, looking. them how to infer the feelings and in- aliens & autism tentions of other children and adults It is well to conclude with a quite gen- from behavior, gestures, and tone of erous remark about human nature. We voice. There are even posters showing tend to be exclusive. Anthropology and what many people look like when they sociology teach that human groups hang are happy or sad. These may include together partly because of who they in- devices as simple as smiley faces and clude and partly because of who they ex- their kin. There are far more elaborate clude. Our instinct has always been to programs to teach how to tell, for ex- exclude aliens, ½rst the terrestrial ones ample, when the person you are talk- and then the extraterrestrial. There are ing to is getting bored, so that you will a few fans of the seti project, the Search not go on enthusing about the topic for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, who on which your passions are ½xed, be see themselves as welcoming intelligent it brontosauruses or electric coffee- beings from outer space. But in general, makers. the rule is “keep the others out.” There is immense controversy about Neurotypical society has certainly what helps what person. Sometimes bit- excluded severely autistic people, con- ter words are exchanged as one school signing them, at best, to the role of vil- of thought and action confronts another. lage idiots or feral children, and, at Desperate parents of the severely autis- worst, consigning them to institutions tic try everything. It is becoming pretty that, in retrospect, seem absolutely hor- clear that no speci½c agenda is good for ri½c. Whether or not the metaphor has every autistic person. But there is good been used, the practice has been to ex- reason to hope that, as I said at the start, clude the severely autistic as if they the social history of this ongoing prog- were aliens. But now there are remark- ress is a promising tale of hard work. It able endeavors afoot that aim at inte- is a ray of light in the rather gloomy his- grating autistic individuals into a larg- tory of humans of the past few decades. er social world. Precisely because autistic children do not share in Köhler’s phenomena, it is
ENDNOTES 1 Oliver Sacks, “An Anthropologist on Mars,” The New Yorker, December 27, 1993; reprinted in Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales (New York: Knopf, 1995), 295. 2 Starting, perhaps, with Lucian of Samosata (ca. 125–ca. 182), A True Story, trans. A. M. Harmon, Loeb Classical Library 14 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), 247–357. 3 A short but wise passage in Leibniz captures many of the uses of aliens; New Essays Con- cerning the Human Understanding, trans. Jonathan Bennett and Peter Remnant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), III, vi, section 22, as well as the notes. (This is mostly omitted from the abridged edition of 1982.) 4 Charlotte Moore, George and Sam: Two Boys, One Family, and Autism (London: Viking, 2004).
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 Ian 5 Leave aside the statistical analyses of the Centers for Disease Control and other authorities Hacking (which, as it turns out, detect no effect) to consider that Japan cut mercury out of vaccines on being at the ½rst whiff of trouble, and the rapid increase in autism diagnoses continued much as human in the United States and the United Kingdom. 6 Jasmine Lee O’Neill, Through the Eyes of Aliens: A Book about Autistic People (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998). 7 Jean Kearns Miller, Women from Another Planet? Our Lives in the Universe of Autism (1st Books Library, 2003). Miller says she has been diagnosed with attention de½cit disorder with Asperger’s syndrome traits, as well as major depression. 8 Ibid., 141. 9 Marti Leimbach, Daniel Isn’t Talking (London: Fourth Estate, 2006), 4, 91. 10 Cammie McGovern, Eye Contact (New York: Viking, 2006), 60. 11 The quotation is from the back cover blurb. Kathy Hoopmann, Of Mice and Aliens (Lon- don: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001). This book is a sequel in the Asperger Adventures series to Hoopmann’s Blue Bottle Mystery (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001), in which Ben ½rst ½nds out what ails him. 12 Pamela Victor, Baj and the Word Launcher: Space Age Asperger Adventures in Communication (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006). 13 Portia Iversen, Strange Son: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006). 14 Ibid., 129. 15 A talk given at the International Conference on Autism, Toronto, 1993, and published in Our Voice, the newsletter of Autism Network International; available at http://www.grasp .org/media/mourn.pdf. One self-described “deconstruction” of Sinclair’s may be found on a website whose name repudiates the trope of the alien: Whose planet is it anyway? The site features a blog, “Don’t Mourn, Get Attitude” (August 9, 2006), whose title, the author explains, “is intended to make one thing clear: We are not, and never were, extraterrestri- als flying around in ufos, freakish mutants wandering the galaxy, or aliens lost in space, and we have just as much right to be on Planet Earth as anyone else.” The blog refers to the umbrella organization Autism Speaks as a “hate group”; http://autisticbfh.blogspot .com/2006/08/dont-mourn-get-attitude.html. 16 I am quoting from http://www.aspergia.com/, accessible through 2006, but no longer active. 17 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, rev. 3rd trans. (1953; Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 190e. 18 Cicero, De Oratore, 3.221: “Ut imago est animi voltus sic indices oculi,” from Cicero on the Ideal Orator, trans. James M. May and Jakob Wisse (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 294. 19 St. Jerome, Letters, Letter 54, To Furia. I have used the old translation from The Principal Works of St. Jerome, trans. W. H. Fremantle (Oxford: Parker & Company, 1893). The Loeb version, Select Letters of St. Jerome, trans. F. A. Wright (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1933), has the accurate translation, “The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart,” but the older version better conveys the intent of the letter. 20 Dante, Convivio, Trattato III, chap. 8, between line markers 9 and 10: “Dimostrasi ne li occhi tanto manifesta, che conoscer si può la sua presente passione, chi bene là mira,” from Dante’s Il Convivio (The Banquet), trans. R. H. Lansing (New York: Garland, 1990), 111. 21 James W. Hall, Rough Draft (New York: Macmillan, 2001), 23. I do not know whether the author intended it or not, but he gives Hal traits common among autistic people, including
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.44 by guest on 02 October 2021 echolalia, the practice of repeating back what a speaker has just said. He cannot be said to Humans, experience most human emotions, but he has learned to work out what other people are aliens & feeling and how it will affect their behavior. autism 22 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 152e. 23 Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt Psychology (New York: Horace Liveright, 1929). 24 Ibid., 250. 25 I provide exact citations in “Autistic Autobiography,” Philosophical Transactions of the Roy- al Society B (Biological Sciences) 364 (1522) (2009): 1467–1473. I owe my ½rst reflections on Köhler and Wittgenstein to Janette Dinishak, “Wittgenstein and Koehler on Seeing and Seeing Aspects” (doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 2008). She has helped me a good deal with this and other writings on autism. 26 Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, 250–251. 27 Ibid., 266–267; emphasis added. 28 An early discussion of the Problem of Other Minds is in John Stuart Mill, An Exami- nation of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy and of the Principal Philosophical Questions dis- cussed in his Writings (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1865), Chapter XII. The Problem seems to be insular, peculiar to the English language. There are major entries for Other Minds in standard English-language philosophical encyclo- pedias (Edwards, Routledge, Stanford Online), but not in those of other languages. We ½nd, for example, in French a “problème des autres esprits” only where the author refers to Anglo writers. In their books Problems of Philosophy, which mark the onset of the idea that philosophy consists of problems, such as the Problem of Other Minds, both James and Russell present the problem, and the solution, by analogy. 29 David Premack and Guy Woodruff, “Does the Chimpanzee Have a Theory of Mind?” Behavioral and Brain Science 1 (1978): 515–526; Uta Frith and Francesca Happé, “Theory of Mind and Self-Consciousness: What is it Like to be Autistic?” Mind & Language 14 (1999): 1–22. 30 See Hacking, “Autistic Autobiography” for examples of this practice. 31 Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, 350.
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