Autism and the Pseudoscience of Mind

This paper critically examines the theory-of-mind-deficit explanation of autism—a cognitive explanation of autistic behaviour that has significantly influenced empirical research and philosophical discourse surrounding autism. However, the claim that autistics lack a theory of mind is false. Part of the purpose of this paper is to describe how. First, a theory-of-mind deficit is inadequate as an explanatory model. Second, prior research has demonstrated the empirical failures of experiments intended to measure theory-of-mind abilities. These facts together suggest that the science of theory of mind in the context of autism is bad science. I argue that it is pseudoscience. This view has important consequences for philosophers who uncritically invoke autism (qua theory-of-mind deficit) as a thought experiment