The diagnosis of autism is typically based on three common criteria: “difficulties in social development, and in the development of communication, alongside unusually strong, narrow interests and repetitive behavior.”[1] This makes for a very broad category, but it can be subdivided according to the “autism spectrum,” which lists four distinct sub-groups. In order of decreasing severity, they are classic autism, Asperger Syndrome, atypical autism, and PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified).[2] This quadripartite division was developed from earlier efforts that included only classic autism and Asperger Syndrome. There are two main factors that determine one’s place on the spectrum: language development and IQ. Simon Baron-Cohen employs these criteria to point out six varieties of autism, which is achieved by distinguishing high, medium, and low-functioning cases of classic autism. According to Baron-Cohen, low-functioning autistics have an IQ below 70 and may or may not have language delay. Medium-functioning autistics have an IQ between 71 and 84 and may or may not have language delay. High-functioning autistics have an IQ above 85 and language delay. Asperger Syndrome requires an IQ of at least 85 and no language delay. Atypical autism has two forms: late onset or lacking a basic diagnostic criterion (Baron-Cohen would say either social development and communication or narrow interests and repetitive behavior). Someone with PDD-NOS has many, mild autistic traits.[3] Because autism is such a broad category, it is fruitless to attempt to consider it as a whole. Rather, an appropriate subset of autistics must be defined for the purposes of our enquiry. Following Jeanette Kennett’s “Autism, Empathy and Moral Agency,” I shall restrict my interest to those with high-functioning autism[4] and those with Asperger Syndrome. I do this because, as we have seen, these cases are reasonably well-defined (as opposed to the likes of PDD-NOS) and because they are sufficiently severe so as to impact everyday life, including, it would seem, moral life (a facet of which this paper seeks to explore).
What sort of moral life can this subset of autistic persons lead? Jeanette Kennett, commenting on the lack of empathy[5] common with autism, says that autistic persons “in some cases seem capable of compensating for this deficit and becoming conscientious, though often clumsy, moral agents.”[6] By way of warning, however, Victoria McGeer suggests that “a good part of the behavior we identify as manifesting moral sensibility among individuals with autism may stem from a need to abide by whatever rules they have been taught without sharing our understanding of the ends those rules are meant to serve.”[7] This should not be taken to mean that no autistics can be taken to manifest moral sensibility; what this does mean is that not everything that looks like moral sensibility among autistics should necessarily be counted as such. Thus it is important to note that McGeer herself does not take this suggestion to extend to all apparently moral expressions by autistics; on the contrary, she goes on to explicitly agree with Kennett, saying, “many high-functioning individuals do become autonomous moral agents; i.e., they become able and willing to govern their own behavior and to judge the behavior of others by reference to a deeper, more reflective consideration of the ends such behavior might be thought to serve.”[8]
The latter point is well supported by contrasting two cases, one that gives an idiosyncratic appearance of moral concern, and another that exhibits what I contend is a kind of moral agency. On the one hand, there is the case of a certain young man, Jack, who once advocated a constitutional amendment mandating that all households possess a well-tuned piano;[9] on the other hand, there are people like Temple Grandin, who go to great lengths to systematize the moral rules that they perceive should be followed.[10] One thing is clear: Jack and Grandin are not approaching their rules in the same way. Minimally, they differ in that Jack (at least at the time in question) does not distinguish between what ordinary agents see as idiosyncratic rules and what ordinary agents would think of as genuine obligations, where Grandin’s rules are systematized, even including a place for rules whose ends she does not understand but follows anyway. It is this category of forbidden deeds, “sins of the system” as she calls them, which are particularly interesting for our argument. McGeer is also struck by this category. She offers two parts of a “mixed” explanation as to why Grandin thinks they should be followed. First, it is “a rationally driven response to her persisting need to simplify, to order, to maintain clarity and control, even at the cost—if it is a cost—of avoiding what others consider to be morally loaded terrain.”[11] Second, “it is this passion for order that both motivates their rule-oriented behavior and encourages [autistic persons] to such virtuoso displays of reason in trying to enlarge their understanding of the kind of order that exists in the social world so that they might participate in it.”[12] So, autistic persons may follow such rules to avoid overwhelming difficulty or to assimilate into society as best they can or for some yet unnamed reason.
McGeer leaves much room to speculate further about the motivation behind adherence to such rules as these, and so I will suggest that following rules regarding such prohibitions as those against “sins of the system” stems from a general motivation to do the right thing—to be good. Kennett suggests as much of Jim Sinclair, who recounts a situation wherein he identified that it would be good for him to do something to comfort a grief-stricken person, but had a good deal of trouble figuring out what he could possibly do. Kennett explains, “He has, it seems, a generalized moral concern, what we might call a sense of duty, or a conscience.”[13] Autistic persons want to do good, but they often have trouble determining how to do that exactly. McGeer offers a similar insight, saying of autistic persons that “their apparent need to figure out the ‘right’ thing to do based on taking the concerns and interests of others into account leads them to make extraordinary efforts to understand those concerns and interests.”[14] It seems, therefore, that some among the high-functioning set have not only first-order moral concerns for those rules that make straightforward sense, such as prohibitions against murder and theft, but also a second-order (generalized) moral concern to do what is right, which motivates them to follow rules and do deeds that they know in some sense advance that end, without understanding exactly why. This, then, is the sense in which we shall consider autistic persons to be moral agents. Our enquiry is concerned with those autistic persons motivated by a general desire to do what is right and who draw distinctions among rules in an effort to bring that end (perhaps among other ends, such as those McGeer mentions) to fruition. It may be that some autistic persons who do not meet these criteria can still properly be called moral agents, but this is not a problem. Our goal is not to define all autistic moral agents, but to consider some philosophical implications that some of them pose, including those meeting the above criteria.
We have picked out a subset of autistic persons in order to consider them in relation to the concepts of the moral saint and the moral hero. These terms have been employed quite differently by different philosophers. Our interest is in moral saints and moral heroes, which are taken to be a class of persons of whom there are legitimate examples, who need not be in any sense morally perfect[15] and who need not be affiliated with a religious tradition,[16] or anything of the sort. In his classic paper “Saints and Heroes,” J. O. Urmson offers three definitions of moral sainthood and moral heroism that are quite useful to that end. Saint (1) “does his duty regularly in contexts in which inclination, desire, or self-interest would lead most people not to do it, and he does so as a result of exercising abnormal self-control,” and the parallel hero (1) “does his duty in contexts in which terror, fear, or a drive to self-preservation would lead most men not to do it, and does so by exercising abnormal self-control.”[17] Saint (2) differs from saint (1) in that saint (2) does his duty “without effort” rather than by abnormal self-control. Hero (2) is parallel.[18] Saint and hero (1) share with saint and hero (2) the feature that they have merely done their duty, which we shall see they do not share with saint (3) or hero (3). A Saint (3) “does actions that are far beyond the limits of his duty, whether by control of contrary inclination and interest or without effort,” and hero (3) is parallel.[19] This definition, however, begs to be split into saint (3a), who goes beyond the call of duty by abnormal self control, and (3b), who goes beyond the call of duty without effort, with parallel definitions of hero (3a) and hero (3b).
In defining this third category that we see a description of the supererogatory, a word that Urmson deploys once, later in his paper,[20] as a moral category. A supererogatory act is one that goes beyond the call of duty; in Alasdair MacIntyre’s words, “A work of supererogation is by definition one that is not numbered among the normal duties of life.”[21] The concept of duty at work here is that of absolute duty, not just duties that the agent considers him or herself to be obligated to fulfill. Urmson says, “I have no desire to present the act of heroism as one that is naturally regarded as optional by the hero, as something he might or might not do; I concede that he might regard himself as being obliged to act as he does.”[22] The agent can consider him or herself to have duties that he or she in fact does not have. This is important to the case of autism because it allows us to dodge the prickly problem of whether or not an autistic person’s commitment to an apparently moral principle, such as truth-telling, is considered obligatory by the autistic person. Whatever the agent thinks about his or her obligation to do such-and-such, heroism (3) and sainthood (3) are only concerned with obligations whose fulfillment can be demanded by other agents. Urmson cites J. S. Mill as saying that absolute duties can be “exacted from persons as a debt,”[23] and it is these sorts of duties that are relevant to sainthood and heroism (1) and (2). For an act to be supererogatory its fulfillment cannot be demanded by another; in this sense it is not obligatory.
Now considering the first sense of sainthood and heroism, autistic persons are in a peculiar position. There are some obligations, no doubt, that both ordinary and autistic agents (in the above sense) can fulfill so as to be labeled a saint or hero (1); however there seem to be other obligations that an ordinary agent can fulfill effortlessly that an autistic agent can fulfill only with considerable effort, such as offering comfort when another is distressed. This resembles sainthood (1) in every way except that it is not an obligation that most would fail to fulfill. Now, if an ordinary agent were to be in the position of fulfilling such obligations with difficulty, we would likely conclude that such an agent has certain weaknesses in his or her character; for instance, one who does not even try to offer comfort to a distressed person likely has callous character. This does not seem appropriate for an autistic person, however, because the difficulty is a result of his or her autistic condition, which we do not equate to moral character. Consider an individual like Jim Sinclair mentioned above, who recounts an encounter with a distressed person and his sense that he should do something and his dumbfoundedness as to what that something might be. With difficulty, he concluded that “touching might be appropriate.”[24] What we can say, minimally, is that Sinclair did the right thing (or a right thing), which would ordinarily be considered obligatory, with difficulty as a result of his autism, not his moral character. Thus there are two apparent reasons to conclude that Sinclair’s actions do not convey upon him saintliness (1). First, his deed is not one at which most would fail, and second, it is not clear what his obligation really is in such a situation. The first problem, I think, can be dissipated by distinguishing between an autistic condition and a weak character, so as to include in the “context” of the condition of autism.[25] A stronger problem, then, (sticking with the example of Sinclair) is with his obligations. If he has merely fulfilled his obligation in doing this difficult deed, then he is on the same level as someone with a callous character who denies that disposition. If he has not just fulfilled his obligations, however, another conclusion might present itself, as we shall see further below.
A problem arises for sainthood and heroism (2) with Kennett’s observation that “the meaner human dispositions, for example, jealousy, lying, cheating, vengefulness and Schaenfreude, are not part of the autistic personality.”[26] In the event of a situation in which most agents would be inclined to lie, take revenge, or some such, an autistic person would fulfill the purported obligation without effort. Worse still, the autistic person, if he or she is a moral agent in the sense we have described, can legitimately be said to be obligated to do the deed that would seem to win him or her sainthood or heroism. This is because the autistic agent so defined has drawn distinctions among various rules to the end of generally doing what is right in such a way that he or she can be said to understand a category of moral obligation (or perhaps “moral” obligation—the point is the category, not necessarily how deeply its importance is understood). So, it is quite conceivable that an autistic person could fulfill an obligation quite effortlessly where most agents would fail to fulfill it. There is, however, a problem in that the autistic person’s apparent moral success comes as a result of his or her condition, not as the result of a virtuous character in the Aristotelian sense, which is the sense that Urmson has in mind with this variety of sainthood and heroism. It seems that we must be prepared to equate the relevant components of an autistic character with those of a virtuous character in identifying saints and heroes (2), which is the same problem that presented itself with regard to the first category above: the autistic condition cannot be equated to moral character. As in the case of sainthood and heroism (1), there are certainly autistic persons whose moral agency (in the sense described) would justify attributing to them sainthood or heroism (2), but based on the distinction between autistic condition and moral character, cases in which an autistic person effortlessly does a saintly (2) or heroic (2) deed in virtue of his or her condition cannot be counted as saints or heroes (2). The same interpretation used before can apply: in the context, if the context is taken to include the autistic condition, most if not all would succeed in doing the duty in question; therefore, the deed is not saintly or heroic (2). This argument can be extended to the case of sainthood and heroism (3b).
Thus we have seen the problems that arise when we reflect on the idea that autistic agents find some ordinary obligations (where ordinary obligations are those obligations that belong to ordinary agents) to be extraordinarily difficult to fulfill and some obligations that ordinary agents would usually find difficult to be rather easy to fulfill. It seems we can deal adequately with those obligations that autistic agents can fulfill more easily than ordinary agents, but a problem lingers with respect to those ordinarily easy obligations that autistic agents find difficult. The first issue that needs to be addressed is the sense, if any, in which autistic agents have such obligations. Two possibilities present themselves: either they are nonexistent or they are more minimal than those of an ordinary agent. In either case, the successful fulfillment of the ordinary obligation turns out to be a supererogatory act; it is something that is beyond the obligations of an autistic agent in the sense that such an act could not properly be demanded of the autistic agent. An autistic person who does such a deed is a good candidate for sainthood or heroism (3a), one who goes beyond the call of duty by way of abnormal self-control. The claim, then, is this: some autistic persons can achieve moral sainthood or moral heroism by fulfilling an ordinary obligation, if the autistic person’s obligation in the same context is less demanding than the ordinary obligation, since in that case the fulfillment of the ordinary obligation is an act of supererogation, which is achieved with “abnormal self-control.”[27] In addition, it is important to note that many autistic agents of this sort no doubt consider themselves obligated to fulfill some of the ordinary obligations that no one could properly demand that they fulfill; however, Urmson points out, “that there is no action, however quixotic, heroic, or saintly, which the agent may not regard himself as obliged to perform, as much as he may feel himself obliged to tell the truth and to keep his promises.”[28] Just because an autistic person thinks he or she is obligated to fulfill even an ordinary obligation, this is not necessarily the case.
Let us now consider more closely how an autistic agent’s completion of what would ordinarily be a merely obligatory act can become a saintly or heroic act of supererogation. A very good way of looking at this is through the concept of sacrifice. Vanessa Carbonell construes sacrifices as “gross losses of well-being,”[29] which of course is to allow that a sacrifice might not represent a net loss of well-being. With respect to well-being, Carbonell makes reference to Darwall’s rational care theory, saying, “a person’s welfare is whatever it is rational for us to desire for her insofar as we care about her.”[30] In addition, in much the same way that a supererogatory act can be thought of as obligatory by the agent, certain losses can count as sacrifices even when the agent does not consider them to be sacrificial, or in Carbonell’s words, “we must be willing to accept that an agent need not be aware of a given cost for that cost to count as a sacrifice.”[31] This is an objective account of sacrifice, which “requires that individual tastes and preferences be at least somewhat intelligible to others, and it accords them value in virtue of that intelligibility.”[32] In addition, a sacrifice in this sense is possible both in the completion of an obligatory act and in the completion of a supererogatory act. As such, sacrificial acts are one way in which an agent can become a saint or hero in all three of Urmson’s senses. With regard to the first sense, if an agent makes a sacrifice that most would fail to make in order to complete a duty, and the agent does so with effort, then an agent is either a saint or a hero (depending on the nature of the sacrifice). The second category can accommodate this sense of sacrifice just as well. The fact that the sacrifice is made without effort is no reflection on whether or not there is, objectively, a sacrifice being made. Lastly, both senses of the third category of saints and heroes can accommodate sacrifices such that they are supererogatory acts, in the sense that the gross well-being lost could not be exacted as a debt.
This account of sacrifice is advantageous in that it does not take the loss of unintelligible or even harmful things that an agent might consider good or valuable to be a legitimate sacrifice. Interestingly, the example given to illustrate sacrifice in this sense is an autistic example: Raymond, of Rain Man fame. Raymond has a rigid schedule for television viewing, which, if broken, leads to harmful consequences. If we try to understand Raymond through his autistic love of rules, patterns, routines, and the like, we can see his behavior as intelligible, and on this basis it can be considered a sacrifice for Raymond to miss his scheduled programming.[33] Sacrifice is thus highly applicable to our account of autistic sainthood and heroism (3a). For an ordinary agent, it is obligatory to miss a favorite television program in favor of certain other demands, such as picking a friend up at the airport. For someone like Raymond (someone who also fits the profile of an autistic agent in our sense), the obligation to miss a television program does not exist; this level of sacrifice is not warranted by a friend’s request. Should our agent decide that it is better to pick his friend up, being motivated by a general desire to do the right thing, the sacrifice would render what would for an ordinary agent be an obligation a supererogatory act for the autistic agent. Additionally, it is easy to see that this kind of behavior and the sort of consideration behind it can meet the conditions for moral heroism and perhaps even moral sainthood (3a). Through great self-control, the autistic agent has gone beyond the call of duty in doing something that is just obligatory for an ordinary moral agent. This is why autistic persons often seem worthy of admiration for behaving even somewhat clumsily in some moral situations.
Bibliography
Adams, Robert. “Saints.” The Journal of Philsoosphy. Vol. 81, no. 7 (Jul., 1984), pp. 392-401.
Baron-Cohen, Simon. Autism and Asperger Syndrome (The Facts). Oxford, New York: 2008.
Carbonell, Vanessa. “The Ratcheting-Up Effect.” (forthcoming)
Kennett, Jeanette. “Autism, Empathy, and Moral Agency.” The Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. 52, no. 208 (Jul., 2002), pp. 340-357.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. “What Morality is Not.” Philosophy. Vol. 32, no. 123 (Oct., 1957), pp. 325-335.
McGeer, Victoria. “Varieties of Moral Agency: Lessons from Autism (and Psychopathy).” Moral Psychology, Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders, and Development. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ed. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA: 2008.
Urmson, J. O. “Saints and Heroes.” (? [1958])
Wolf, Susan. “Moral Saints.” The Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 79, no. 8 (Aug., 1982), pp. 419- 439.
[1] Baron-Cohen (2008), pg. 6
[2] Ibid. 25
[3] Ibid. 12
[4] It seems likely that at least some cases of Baron-Cohen’s medium-functioning autism could be appropriate objects for this enquiry. By no means will I deny this, but I need not worry much about the fine distinctions of autism as long as I can point to at least some appropriate objects of enquiry.
[5] Kennett construes empathy as an “imaginative process of simulation” with “resulting emotional contagion and reciprocal awareness.” (2002) pg. 345
[6] Kennett (2002) pg. 345
[7] McGeer (2008) pg. 240
[8] Ibid. 242
[9] Ibid. 232-233, also in Kennett 351
[10] Ibid. 243
[11] Ibid. 243-244
[12] Ibid. 244
[13] Kennett 352
Kennett goes on to argue that autistic persons like Sinclair are operating in an essentially Kantian framework, but we need not commit to either side of that debate. McGeer’s paper argues the Humean line in a direct response to Kennett.
[14] McGeer (2008) 234-235
[15] See Wolf (1982)
[16] See Adams (1984)
[17] Urmson (1958) pg. 200
[18] Ibid. 200
[19] Ibid. 201
[20] Ibid. 214
[21] MacIntyre (1957) pg. 328
[22] Urmson (1958) pg. 203
[23] Ibid. 208
[24] Kennett (2002) pg. 352
[25] This is a plausible move. We frequently invoke conditions like physical injury (to choose a relatively arbitrary example) by which to render the fulfillment of an obligation more praiseworthy, perhaps even heroic or saintly. A soldier who has been severely wounded but continues to fight, according to his orders, may be a hero (though probably not a hero (1)), where his wounds are taken to be part of the context of the situation. This would seem to make the relevant question for sainthood and heroism (1) whether most autistic persons would fulfill a particular obligation. This does seem to be a way in which autistic persons can achieve sainthood or heroism (1), if indeed there are obligations for which autistic persons are responsible but most of them fail to fulfill, which sounds problematic. After all, if all obligations can be exacted as a debt, then I fail to see what we could demand of autistic persons knowing most of them would not be capable of fulfilling the obligation.
[26] Ibid. 349
[27] If the autistic person could fulfill an ordinary obligation without effort, then that just would be the autistic person’s obligation. Thus only ordinary obligations that the autistic person finds difficult qualify.
[28] Urmson (1958) pg. 204
[29] Carbonell (forthcoming) pg. 6
[30] Ibid. 6
[31] Ibid. 4
[32] Ibid. 5
[33] Ibid. 6
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