Disability, diversity, and autism: Philosophical perspectives on health

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the connection between health and developmental disorders, particularly in regard to the notion of 'neurodiversity', which considers high-functioning autism not as a lifelong disability but a neurological form within a diversity of human minds. In recent years, autistic activist movements have called for a more positive, humanizing, identity-first language when describing this condition, rejecting negative language such as 'disorder', 'deficit', and 'impairment', and instead describing autism as a way of being, part of one's personal identity, which does not always need to be cured. Is a different form of neurodevelopment necessarily a degenerate one? Is well-being mostly affected by disability itself or by its being classified as abnormality? Drawing on philosophical insights, as well as autism research papers and popular science, I explore advantages and disadvantages of these classifications and the connections between health, autism, personhood, and disability.