Many philosophers (e.g. Chalmers, Dennett, Crick, Blackmore, Penrose) have entered onto the psychological field and become interested in consciousness. Hence thinkers like Chalmers et al are happy to be called philosophers of the mind. Thinkers such as these tend to focus on questions such as What does it feel like to be a bat? And Why do we have emotional subjective experiences at all? Personally, I immersed myself in Jungian analytical psychology in order to attain psychological knowledge and perspective. Whilst I am no longer a Jungian I maintain some of what I learned from my study in that field… one of which is the logic of looking into what is not rational, not normal and not healthy. The reason why I maintain this position is because… in order to determine what is rational, is normal and is healthy we need contrast, comparison.
[...] Children with autism mostly fail to pick up that gaze can be an indicator of what a person might want.”14 Autistic children often fail to distinguish between something deliberately done to cause harm and an accident.15 Autistic children can't lie and can't deceive others.16 This is an inevitable consequence of being devoid of a theory of mind. Autistics are unaware of other minds and their thoughts, beliefs. Meanwhile, normal four year old children demonstrate a keen awareness of the mind's of others by being able to regularly lie and make up stories. [...]
[...] But when this test was given to a sample of children with autism a large majority of them 'failed' this test by indicating that the character thinks the object is where it actually is.4 Hence Baron-Cohen writes that implication was that the ability to infer mental states may be an aspect of social intelligence that is relatively independent of general intelligence [ ] and that children with autism might be specifically impaired in their consciousness of the mental.”5 That experiment is just one experiment of a great many that produces that result. [...]
[...] Exploration of the autistic child's theory of mind: knowledge, belief, and communication. Child Development 689-700 Phillips, Baron-Cohen, & Rutter, M (1995) To what extent do children With autism understand desires? Development and Psychopathology 151- 170. Phillips, Baron-Cohen, & Rutter, M. (1998) Understanding intention in normal development and in autism. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 337-348. Reed, & Peterson, C. (1990). A comparative study of autistic subjects' performance at two levels of visual and cognitive perspective taking. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 555-568 Sodian, & Frith, U (1992). [...]
[...] Psychiatrists diagnose a child as autistic when they observe symptoms of abnormal development of communication, impoverished development of imagination and abnormal social development.1 Simon Baron-Cohen says that the impoverished development of imagination is inextricably linked to the extreme repetitive behavior that is so often associated with autistics.2 Leo Kanner (who incidentally was the discover of autism) refers to the autistics “insistence on sameness.”3 Hence autistic children not only fail to experience normal social interaction with other children but they are also distressed by change in their environment and hence become extremely self- absorbed in their life of repetition and sameness. [...]
[...] That is precisely what the autistic child fails to do. From this the reader should be able to see that there is an unconsciousness of everyday mental thought processes in the autistic. Obviously if there is an unconsciousness of mental processes then there is a lack of consciousness. In a problem like the above (involving the friendship) it can only be resolved through the two people talking to one another. (communication). Given that the autistic isn't willing to communicate we can also observe social problems. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
