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Scientific Realism and Phenomenology Through the Case Study of Autism

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Scientific Realism and Phenomenology Through the Case Study of Autism Scientific Realism and Phenomenology Through the Case Study of Autism Themistoklis Pantazakos UCL Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2019 1 Declaration I, Themistoklis Pantazakos, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Acknowledgements Acknowledgements is the graceful place within a philosophy doctorate where one does not have to provide sustained argument for absolutely anything. I will then take it for granted that we live in a culture celebrating individual achievement while displaying profound illiteracy on the topic of relating collectively. Ironically, it is also true that no achievement has one owner, especially so in the case of intellectual achievement. If anything of value is to be found in the following dissertation, it should be attributed to many authors. First, to pretty much everyone within the STS department at UCL for creating such a collaborative and accommodating atmosphere to work in. Especially so to Julia Sánchez- Dorado, who kept showing me the ropes from my first day until her graduation, and who repeatedly provided company in times of inevitable academic awkwardness. Moreover, to my intellectual centre in Athens, the pop culture and critical studies magazine SKRA- punk, for providing both a stimulating and cosy space to work in, the invaluable companionship of its members, and a sense of belonging in times when the fear of being constantly left out of an elusive ‘we’ is at its social highest. This dissertation should also be attributed to my friends, double so to those doubling as commenters and editors. To those in the UK: Foivos Dousos, Jordan Osserman, and Foteini Dimirouli. To those in Athens: Maria Vardaki, Mirto Kirli, and Nikos Dalamagas. To the new ones: Christos Triantafyllou, Seta Astreou-Karydi, and Maria Antoniadou. To those of old: Doukas Rasidakis and Eva Pliakou. To those closest to my heart: Areti Theofilopoulou and Fotis Stamatopoulos. Last, to Danai Avgeri, who showed me how profoundly a loving relationship can change a person. To be loved this deeply is itself the highest form of privilege; to be as fortunate as to having been loved by you is beyond my describing capacities. I am not an easy person. Nobody is, but I am a little extra. My primary supervisor Chiara Ambrosio is most of the reason I did not quit a project that I often thought would never come to fruition. Her unending support and way to make me feel sheltered in a foreign and often alienating environment need to be recognised as necessary conditions for the completion of this doctoral dissertation. Thank you for connecting me with people, guiding me in career choices, pointing me to absolutely crucial literature for this project, offering valuable and critical feedback on all fronts. I wish every student taking up such 3 an endeavour to fall upon hands so soft, especially so in an academic environment which is a constant threat to the mental health of those who partake of it – and which is responsible for maintaining a culture of celebrating exhaustion, fierce antagonism, ruthlessness. Of course this is a structural, societal problem at large, but until it is fixed, such contributions are arguably the most important. My secondary supervisor, Phyllis Illari, put in tirelessly work of the highest calibre towards the betterment of this dissertation’s content. Without her the quality of this work would have been half what it is now. Seeing someone agitating over the quality of your own work is perhaps the sincerest and most tender form of concern. Naturally, the responsibility for any mistakes found herein falls upon me and me alone. Not any less than the above, this dissertation should also be attributed to my parents, Thanasis Pantazakos and Sofia Papageorgiou, both for bestowing upon me the gift of neurotically hunting for intellect even when it hides at the bottom of a deep dark well, and also for never ceasing to support and fund this hunt. For similar reasons, I have to thank my in loco parentis and the subject supposed to know, Theodosios Christodoulakis. You helped me discover who I am, why I am who I am, and why I do what I do. In so doing, you made it possible for me to be someone else, and to do different things. This debt I certainly will never be able to repay. Last, I am grateful to mooing Efterpi and grumpy Jacob for their unconditional love and support. Their hoof-and-paw-signed eternal love pact has kept me stable and safe during bad times and good. Emphatically, it is no exaggeration to say that everyone mentioned above is my co- author. If one subtracts the contributions of these people from the present dissertation, then no dissertation remains to be read. This dissertation was funded by the Onassis Foundation (Athens, Greece) with a scholarship of 48 months (doctoral studies). 4 Abstract In this thesis, I propose a radical reframing of the analytic scientific realism debate via the phenomenological concept of the life-world. I provide motivation for examining science’s situatedness by interrogating the observable aspects of the world. In so doing, I propose to drop any notions of ecumenical truth and reality in the frame of the debate. The case study of autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) is explored to demonstrate what this suggested reframing implies for scientific practice. I offer that the best construal of the observables is the concept of the life-world (Edmund Husserl’s lebenswelt) from continental phenomenology. I perform a series of analytic tweaks on the concept and define it, for the frame of this dissertation, to be the world of immediate – yet theory-laden and prism-mediated – experience as cashed out by a subject’s perceiving capacities. The main improvement of the life-world to traditional analytic construals of the observables is that it captures extra-linguistic elements, allowing us to interrogate these crucial facets of science that are not language- and theory-based strictu sensu. Following I highlight the life-world’s pluralistic dimensions. Theoretically, I do this by defending conceptual scheme pluralism against certain tendencies in the analytic philosophy of language, and then apply this defence to life-worlds. Turning to extant cases of life-world difference, I investigate the case study of autism spectrum conditions. I argue that what this case brings to the fore is first our being compelled to recognise the autistic life-world as ‘real and true’ in the way we take the neurologically typical life-world to be and, second, that autism spectrum conditions treatment should be oriented towards this life-world, in the sense of attempting to maximize happiness and well-being in its own terms. Unfortunately, this is found to be in stark contrast with the extant ASC-related treatment situation. Finally, I claim that we should philosophically be haunted less by any claims of ecumenical Truth and Reality and related, somewhat stale metaphysical issues typically associated with the debate. Rather, it is both more philosophically interesting and humanitarianly urgent to interrogate how what a science takes to be true shapes the practice itself and how it affects human lives associated with it. Theoretically, my philosophical position abides first and foremost by life-world incorrigibility and pluralism and is thus appropriately named pluralistic incorrigible 5 realism (PIR). ‘True’ is here taken to cash out what is incorrigible for a perceiving subject, but whatever notion of truth may arise herein is only in the form of a (subjective or intersubjective) admittance within the confines of a life-world. 6 Impact Statement In this dissertation, I propose a reframing of the analytic scientific realism debate. I argue that the debate, as it currently stands, focuses too much on whether unobservable entities postulated by scientific theories really exist, and insists on somewhat stale metaphysical questions such as whether science captures the ecumenical truth and a picture of reality ‘as it is’. I argue for a practical orientation of the philosophical examination of science’s truth and reality claim, and I explore the case of autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) to demonstrate how this may come about. Towards the above I employ the phenomenological concept of the life-world, through which I demonstrate that science’s truth and reality claim is always conditioned upon a subject or group of subjects. The contribution of this dissertation to the analytic literature of the philosophy of science revolves around two main philosophical points: the construal of the observable level of the sciences through the life world, which incorporates all those elements of an ‘inner core’ of the empirical that science crucially relies on, and the conceptualisation of differences between subjects through the life-world, rather than on the basis of unduly constraining language differences, as per the traditional analytic philosophy of language view. By focusing on autism spectrum conditions to bolster this theoretical framework, my thesis invites its own applicability. The argument that people with ASCs diagnoses should be construed as operators of different life-worlds stands in stark contrast to the contemporary, almost purely behavioural approach of the sovereign method of treatment, Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA). I conduct a life-world analysis of the heated ethico- political debate of ABA versus neurodiversity activists and show that we may reach a resolution by filtering ABA to the autistic life-world and by pursuing phenomenologically oriented treatments, which are currently unfortunately understudied. Through the ASCs case and by thinking philosophically about the orientation of treatment of people with neurological differences, I suggest that we should indeed pay more attention to the fact that what we take to be true within scientific practice shapes human lives.
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