in press), ‘Understanding interpersonal problems in autism: Interaction theory as an alternative to theory of mind’, Philosophy

ABSTRACT: I argue that theory theory approaches to autism offer a wholly inadequate explanation of au-tistic symptoms because they offer a wholly inade-quate account of the non-autistic understanding of others. As an alternative I outline interaction theory, which incorporates evidence from both developmen-tal and phenomenological studies to show that hu-mans are endowed with important capacities for in-tersubjective understanding from birth or early infancy. As part of a neurophenomenological analysis of au-tism, interaction theory offers an account of interper-sonal problems that is fully consistent with the variety of social and nonsocial symptoms found in autism. THEORY OF MIND, which includes explana-tions grouped under the heading “theorytheory, ” is one of the most widely dis-cussed approaches to explaining the cognitiv