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...are tasked with the enormous and near-impossible job of ‘educating them’ (and blamed for failing when they don’t manage to).
But, sadly, the privileged ones are selectively deaf or you didn’t use the right tone or… or… well, I think you get the gist.
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#EpistemicInjustice #Racism #BlackLivesMatter #Patriarchy #GenderEquality #TransLivesMatter #LGBTQ+
Here’s an alternative take.
(Note: These are just my thoughts, I’m very open to discussion and other suggestions!)
It may be – though we can’t know this, since participants weren’t asked – that autistic people in the study didn’t lack anything, but rather tended to reason in logical terms.
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This would mean:
- responsibility should be proportional to agency, influence, and ability to change outcomes (this would be not just logical but also extremely useful),
- individual / exclusive moral condemnation or punishment is not required in all situations where harm occurs,
- responsibility to take appropriate action is not the same thing as blame, and conflating the two is an error.
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Autistic people, after all, are known for preferring logic (I certainly do).
And we’re also known for thinking outside the box – meaning that if we’re forced to make false decisions based on faulty assumptions, then we are quite likely to make the ‘wrong’ choice.
Interested to hear others’ thoughts on this! And I’ll be looking for another influential study to look closely at.
I really enjoy analyzing things! 😊
End of thread. 🧵
@KatyElphinstone really interesting.
My thoughts; the theory of mind impairment interpretation requires the assumption that the only morally relevant feature was Janet's belief state, when in fact participants may have been rating her process of belief formation as a separate moral dimension.
The study did not control for the source of the belief. If Janet made her recommendation to swim based on personal experience instead of relying on a book, I bet the study would have different findings.
@KatyElphinstone @hallvors @MaidenCatladyCrone I also have to say, the sample size in this study is literally ridiculously small if it is such an influential study. The only valid takeaway at the scale of 13 would be a call for a larger scale study.
They did a bunch of repetitions in different ways.
Different scenarios. One of the earlier ones was that Sally's friend was stung by a jellyfish and she poured something on it which, instead of healing it, killed the friend.
I wonder they maybe changed it to 'swimming with jellyfish' because it seems a very silly thing to do (advise your friend to swim with jellyfish) whereas the first scenario was a bit more of a "oh dear but fair enough" mistake?
@KatyElphinstone i think the only differences i would have with you are semantic. in fact the whole problem seems to be one of semantics: what does "blame" mean?
Yes, Janet is "to blame"; her advice directly lead to a death. That doesn't mean that she should be punished! that's a whole other question!
i think the questioners are failing to recognise that "blame" has a variety of different meanings here — as many autists would have happilly pointed out to them…
@fishidwardrobe @KatyElphinstone
Exactly, "blame" is an imprecise term used to mean be at fault, or have responsibility, or be a causal factor, or be a scapegoat, or combinations thereof.
@KatyElphinstone from my point of view, you're 100% correct in your take. They leave out a lot of information because they want to isolate the issue, but they forget that they need to do so in a way that doesn't make the test overly vague. It would have been simply resolved by defining 'blame' or by explicitly stating that punishment is part of assigning blame here.
Our culture generally tends to conflate punishment, deterrence, & retribution, with all sorts of nasty results. I think Katy's analysis above neatly unpacks that.
