The Philosophy of Autism
As Anderson and Cushing note in their introduction, ‘Despite anecdotal evidence of a link between an interest in philosophy and autism, the amount of philosophical writing directly about autism is scanty indeed’. This terrific volume does much to fill this gap. It includes insightful discussions by philosophers--many with grounding in the neurosciences and some with personal connections to people on the autism ‘spectrum’—of what, exactly, autism is, what are its likely causes, how it is recognized, how it affects those who have it and the people around them, how it can be remediated—and indeed, whether it should be regarded as a ‘disorder’ to be remediated at all. I recommend this volume not only to anyone who is interested in making intellectual (or personal) sense of autism, but also to anyone interested in the broader questions of what it is to be an autonomous agent, the relation of empathy to moral evaluation, and how it is that we acquire knowledge of other minds.(Janet Levin, University of Southern California)