In this blog post I consider whether the neurodiversity movement should be extended to animals. Neurodiversity is defined in many different ways but as a general characterisation I shall use this definition which is drawn from interviews with autistic adults. It “encompass[es] both human biological differences in cognition, brains, and genes while also serving as an activist tool for change toward acceptance and inclusion of autistic and other neurodivergent people” (Kapp 2020, p.viii, Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement). So the question is whether this general notion should be restricted to humans or extended to some or all non-human animals.
A neurodiversity movement advocate could argue that all diversity is good. This seems to then entail that, given that they also have diverse brains, animals are also part of neurodiversity. We would have to extend our ethics to them. It seems this admittedly basic notion of neurodiversity seems to incorporate animals. I now consider if more developed notions of neurodiversity would exclude animals.
A neurodiversity movement advocate could argue that only forms of human diversity matter, therefore neurodiversity does not cover animals. There are two problems with this. Firstly, it seems arbitrary. What motivates that position compared to, say, neurodiversity should cover all humans except autistic people, or except schizophrenic people? What specifically makes humans important rather than any other grouping? Secondly, it is not clear that all human diversity is good. For example, it is unclear that sexual desires towards children has any positives. This approach to neurodiversity would exclude animals but it looks like a flawed approach.
A neurodiversity movement advocate might argue that only good forms of diversity matter and that only humans have good forms of diversity. Perhaps we might consider intelligence or ability to communicate as good types of diversity which animals lack. However, arguably some animals have higher intelligence and higher ability to communicate compared to some humans, so on this position we should extend the good type of diversity to those animals and not to some humans. So this also seems to not exclude animals from neurodiversity.
Some neurodiversity activists argue that diversity is a good thing in itself because it produces alternative ways of living, alternative characteristics and alternative views. Neurodiversity is consequently socially useful. Now, humans can generally get involved in society whereas it is not clear that animals are capable of getting involved in our society in any sort of analogous way. We can form a sort of friendship with animals but they cannot tell us about their unique opinion which we as non-human animals are unlikely to form. However, it is not clear that diversity is always a good thing given that some ways humans exist involve vast levels of harm (such as climate change and supporting economic systems which treat foreign labourers terribly). Also, it seems that we can learn from animals. Arguably, the most pressing issue we face today is climate change. It seems to me that we could learn from how animals interact with the environment and support sustainable ecosystems.
Perhaps there is a good reason to exclude animals from neurodiversity but this initial overview does not give any obvious reason to do so. As such, I think it should be a live option. I think that a neurodiversity advocate needs either give reason to restrict neurodiveristy to humans or should extend it to animals.
Extending neurodiversity to animals would mean we need radically rethink our relationship with animals. This means paying immense amounts of attention to the conditions animals live in when used for animal produce or meat. Put the words factory farm uk into youtube and you will see animals being treated in ways that seem to me as being incompatible with extending neurodiversity to them. Admittedly, I think there are immensely good ethical reasons to go vegan which have nothing to do with neurodiversity, namely animals being in pain in factory farms and the impact upon climate change caused from meat production, so I will hold these views reguardless of what follows from neurodiversity.
Category Archives: Neurodiversity
Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018), autism and neurodiversity
It was announced today that Ursula Le Guin died on the 22nd of January 2018. She was my favourite author in my late teens and early 20s whilst I put her in my top three today. I first read my favourite Le Guin novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, aged 18 and it probably had quite an influence on my thinking and views. To my knowledge, Le Guin never wrote about autism or neurodiversity but many of the themes in The Left Hand of Darkness seem very relevant.
The basic idea is a man from a western philosophy culture visits a world where the inhabitants are meant to be symbolic of eastern philosophy. The visitor sees things in contrastingly binary terms, such as light vs dark, society vs nature and male vs female. The world he visits has an eastern philosophy approach where different elements are in balance with one another, they do not form a sharp contrast. The strongest example is gender, since the inhabitants of this planet are genderless, so there is no binary contrast between male and female. However, the visitor, with his western philosophy, cannot help but put the inhabitants into binary terms of male and female, he struggles to shed his inbuilt preconceptions and see the inhabitants of the planet for how they truly are. The visitor constantly fails to read the motives of the inhabitants of the planet and often does not realise this is happening. However, during a political crisis which he also misreads he is eventually forced to cooperate with one of the inhabitants and, through a long and difficult process, eventually gain some insight into the inhabitants.
I read the novel as an exploration of the challenge of understanding others, be it people you have known all your life or people from cultures you are unfamilar with. I take Le Guin as thinking we often interpret people, especially people from other cultures, in unhelpful, simplistic, binary terms. She was influenced by her interest in anthropology and, writing in the late 1960s, the feminist movement which she made a major contribution to. These notions seems very important lessons for today given the existence of Donald Trump who characterises Mexican migrants as ‘rapists’ and African nations as ‘shitholes’ whilst ex-Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins describes migrants as ‘cockroaches’.
I think Le Guin’s general approach is also applicable to some of my interests in psychiatry. The problem of how to accurately understand someone who is different is quite central to philosophy of psychiatry. There has been a long history of negative connotations being associated with psychiatric patients and those in mental distress. As this articles shows, disability has often been associated with deviance and immorality. Whilst hopefully this situation is improved today, with more people talking about mental health, Le Guin’s insights are also important in a world which tries to be tolerant of those who are different. In relation to autism, modern science suggests autistic individuals often have unusual ways of thinking, unusual ways of perceiving the world and unusual ways of understanding others. Thus it is very easy for a non-autistic person to apply their non-autistic expectations to an autistic individual, think they have understood them but fail to. On the other hand, autistic people are not simply defined by the symptoms of autism, each one is a unique person with many unique traits and views. So there is an equal danger that a non-autistic person interprets an autistic person solely in terms them being autistic and thus again fail to understand who they are.
Additionally, all this is applicable from my perspective as an autistic person. Autistic people often struggle to pick up on social nuances or see the perspective of others, and these are certainly true of me. Additionally, my default position for many years was to assume people think and feel as I do but, in my experience, this just leads to typically failing to understand others without realising it. Of course, some autistic people go to considerable efforts to try see things from the non-autistic perspective but, in my experience at least, this is really difficult to do. Non-autistic people also have many diverse traits and views so this approach can easily lead to painting those around me with a big, rather inaccurate, brush.
Le Guin’s concerns over binary categories and importance of balance seems important here. She shows how, in relation to gender, we can find a helpful middle ground, a balance with more harmony if (primarily though not exclusively) men can make more effort to not hold unhelpful gender stereotypes and if both genders see that gender roles are a product of wider socio-cultural forces rather than how men and women truly are. Similarly, both autistic people and non-autistic people can try and find a helpful middle ground, that more harmonious balance. Even if most the problems are caused by the larger of two groups (the non-autistic) and even if many of those problems are caused by wider socio-cultural factors (such as misleading narratives from the media, expectations about what constitutes acceptable socialising or expectations that useful work must follow specific uniform procedures), I believe the best way to find that harmony is for both autistic people and non-autistic people to challenge the ways they perceive the other and where required make changes. This image of what neurodiversity should aim for is different to some notions of neurodiversity I have encountered which desire that only non-autistic people make changes. A mutual change towards more harmonious understanding feels to me more in line with the lessons of The Left Hand of Darkness, my favourite novel of the recently departed Ursula Le Guin.