This dissertation explores philosophical issues in autism and defends a new version of the enactive approach to autism and social cognition. The discussion in this dissertation centres around the question “why do autistics encounter social interaction problems?”, addressing this question in ways that raise broader philosophical issues. Within the philosophy of mind, these include the problem of other minds, the nature of emotions, and narratives and their role in understanding the self. Beyond cognition, such issues are intertwined with questions in (...) metaphysics, philosophy of science, sociopolitical and moral philosophy, and disability studies. In responding to the question “why do autistics encounter social interaction problems?”, I argue that autistic social interaction problems result from the sensorimotor differences between autistics and non-autistics. This contrasts with the response to this question given by widely-endorsed views that emphasize instead the cognitive deficits that autistic people have. Such cognitivist views, such as the theory theory and simulation theory, are the focus of my first two critical chapters. I go on to offer a critique of two approaches that go beyond the focus on mindreading in appealing to sensorimotor problems as lying at the heart of the problem. These views, interaction theory and the original enactive approach, are the focus of the next two chapters. I then turn to defend a novel form of the enactive approach in the last part of the dissertation by emphasizing the role of emotions as the capacity for us to make sense of the world and to construct the sense of self from narratives. My new approach shifts the explanatory focus from perception and motion to emotion. This maintains the advantage of the original enactive approach, while avoiding its behaviouristically limited descriptions. My account thus expands the theory’s capacity to describe and explain internal states important to self-understanding and self-expression. This allows one to approach autistic social difficulties by attending to the first-person perspective, cohering with my reliance on first-person autistic narratives as a major source of evidence that supplements traditional scientific research on autism. (shrink)

We argue that the notion of "mental institutions"-discussed in recent debates about extended cognition-can help better understand the origin and character of social impairments in autism, and also help illuminate the extent to which some mechanisms of autistic dysfunction extend across both internal and external factors (i.e., they do not just reside within an individual's head). After providing some conceptual background, we discuss the connection between mental institutions and embodied habits of mind. We then discuss the significance of our view (...) for understanding autistic habits of mind and consider why these embodied habits are sometimes a poor fit with neurotypical mental institutions. We conclude by considering how these insights highlight the two-way, extended nature of social impairments in autism, and how this extended picture might assist in constructing more inclusive mental institutions and intervention strategies. (shrink)