Well, I'm back, after finally getting my computer to let me into here. Not sure why or how it exactly locked me out of my own blog, but I know that it did and was annoying.
Anyway, I've been doing some general thinking/research on the identity. Basically, outside having at one time qualified for a rather strange set of guidelines that attempted to represent an underlying condition (actually, a disease), what is it that makes me autistic? What, really, is that underlying condition?
Well, if you were hoping for a clear answer right now, it's not coming. Give me a little to work on that. But I thought that maybe someone might find something interesting in what I had kind of angled for right now, anyway.
The first thing, I think, is that it wasn't truly defined within skill sets. I have had a very similar mentality, at some level, pre and post verbalization. In fact, while I am not as clearly frustrated as I was without words for many reasons, that wasn't a clear statement when I was, say, seven, where, when put out of my length, I would act the same as if I wasn't. Indeed, all language did, despite the certain opinions of others, was put another frame with which to address the world, and in terms of transformations of views, it's actually not at the top of my list (maybe number three).
So with that out, I looked at something more regarding personality. Yet, I can think of ways in which that isn't unifying of autistics, in various ways. We still, just like everyone else, have different temperaments, different values, different priorities. So, just to try to label out something that specific seemed incorrect, as well.
And, of course, it'd be hard to say there was a specific difference in perception that would suggest such a thing, though, again, there is frequently some difference in perception. That's hardly a surprise; such things can be trained and developed, and if you read autistic autobiography there will be once again similarities but nothing totally unifying.
And, for good measure, it's not a leaky gut. Not all autistics are similar that way. And, again, it's nothing specific biomedically, at least within what I've seen. I doubt, really, that there's anything uniting physically.
So I've been tossing variables left and right. But, what, really, did unify autistics? Of course, what's frustrating is when the language is a little... missing. So this is left a little vague more because I'm at a loss for language, rather than confused myself.
But at some level I noted that, at some level, autistics have a specific social remove, and upon thinking about that even a more general remove. It wasn't that they couldn't have certain skills, or that all were similarly disposed for all the same things, though there are general tendencies I'd say that were suggestive of that remove. But it was that remove existed, that there was a level of social separation of larger understood qualities, a step away from some of the more general thought processes to a more individual and self-sustained and enclosed line of thinking, with benefits and conflicts all the same. It should be contrasted from being different socially (that's eccentricity), but a remove more specifically of the thought processes into a system less generally shaped in regard to social forces. Eccentricities are still shaped by certain forces like that which would be considered "normal" (or perhaps in reaction to them), but the autistic mind is less so.
A few important implications here of philosophy. One is that this means as much that autistics are both more similar and more prone to be different, because the assumptions are different. If two autistics latch onto the specific exterior effect that is polar opposite (which, because there are less stimuli, have a more potent effect. That would be my explanation for the autistic tendency for intense focus), they might be considered more different to each other than to the "normal". But, also, some conditions seem to happen with that remove that would be expected (fewer innate social skills), simply for the nature of the remove. Again, no absolutes.
The second is that it then becomes important to separate autism from the entailed conditions that can be par for the course. For example, while a speech delay is possible (and likely) because of that remove, it should not be equated to that move. I think that sometimes this is why language that allows the condition to modify the person ("I am autistic" versus "I am a person with autism") is upsetting to some, because they take it to equate the person with the negligent skill or condition ("I am a speech delay"). But this is not really the case so much, despite the DSM-IV's opinion, and it is important to recognize it to be so.
I'm under no illusions that I'm talking about different conditions at some level. But note I am not really trying to equate autism to something that is specific personality wise or the like, but to a broader universal into which some particulars can be placed coming from different reasons. Really, those things are much more for geneticists and biochemists than for a philosophy student of sorts.
This should not be the last time I will go back to autism identity like this; it's an issue I've been looking at for some time, and I really didn't put much here at all. But I think that they're interesting questions, and even if I bore you to tears after sometime (if you aren't already), I'll be having fun doing it.
Eh, hope it doesn't come to that, though.
Monday, February 18, 2008
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4 comments:
Thank you for your informative post, I enjoyed reading it.
I am coming to my final conclusions on this subject.
What we call autism is the observable correlatives of an emergent property of heterogeneous genetic differences which code for a number of axes of cognition and perception, which self assemble autism from there confluence.
Beyond that the identification of autism and the category itself is socio-political phenomenon that arose out of historical necessity from trends in education, science and medicine.
Indeed, laurentius rex, what you say makes sense, and may well be correct on the casual level. The only thing, though, admittedly, is that I don't know and wouldn't claim to have any specific knowledge of autism genetics to make that claim. In fact, I wouldn't try and make the claim at all. Specifically, I was distancing myself from a casual factor. In that way, it would be more like being concerned about "what is that which we call happiness?" rather than "what is, in terms of the physical conditions, happiness?"
That's not to say I don't think that autism has a genetic root, quite the opposite actually. But, from here, that's only reasoned speculation, and admittedly not my area of expertise.
Indeed, though, regarding the socio-political aspect, the condition does seem to have arisen, interestingly, out of something else that was originally thought to be more specific into a broader condition that is truly of a means. Interesting that such a thing does come up from such routes. Perhaps we only have recognized the necessity now. But it is also something that the condition we talk about is a little removed from the expectations of the label, which this addresses here a little bit (as it traditionally identifies skill sets as the primary factor, where I would say it wasn't).
(Of course, labels are by definition socio-political, so there's that, but it also points to the reasoning for identifying in terms of skills, for the politicizing of skills is something that's common enough in history.)
We may not be able to fully explicate the genetics, but that doesn't obviate its existential value. In other words, the genetics, whatever they may be, will define the existential state of autism. The issue you identify - whether the things we identify as autistic traits comprise a peronality or a disorder - is secondary.
ps love your blog!
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