Doctors are 'failing to spot Asperger in girls'

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No I did not. Do you think I did not know what I meant, or might have forgotten, or do you imagine I am so suggestible I will take your word for it over my own knowledge as to what I asserted?


It's still not entirely clear what you are claiming. Perhaps you think pre-modern society was kinder to outliers? Perhaps you think Bedlam was a nice holiday camp or "ship of fools" is merely a pop song with a pleasant melody? Perhaps you would rather be a Nigerian witch in modern day Africa or the same in 17th century Salem? Or perhaps you just like to rant and rail at the moon and cry victim and oppression? In all honesty it is not clear quite what you are arguing for or against, other than you seem quite vehement about whatever you are arguing for or against or in the vague direction of.

In the meantime I would suggest that it is disrespectful to assert that your erroneous inference is what someone else was saying despite being repeatedly informed otherwise, and utterly counter-productive to effective communication. My message originates with me and I am therefore the expert on what my message is, not you or any other external agent.

It is disrespectful, dishonest, and somewhat desperate to deliberately take a single word out of context for the sole purpose of misconstruing someone else's argument so you can rattle a metaphorical saber at a strawman of your own making.

Whichever of these two things you are doing, it's also rather boring, since you could just dispense with me and carry on making up arguments no one has argued, so you can argue against them without my or indeed anyone else's participation. There's not much point to my being involved if you are going to render me redundant by making up my arguments for me (contrary to anything I might advise regarding what I am arguing) off the top of your own head.

I am aware of what I typed Ounion, and I am not in the least bit confused about the words used in my earlier post or the message those words were constructed as a conveyance for.

Do you truly not comprehend that the linguistic construction "he is simply a man" does not convey identical information as "he is a simple man"? Honestly? Or are you just pulling my leg?

I understand the difference very well, which is why I brought it up.

It is a way of reducing the complexity of an issue, of suggesting that there is no room for debate, that the conclusions are obvious, that there is no ambiguity, nothing further to discuss, etc. As in "He is simply a man".

Using the word "simply" about the Autism Spectrum, ( or any important issue, like sex and gender ), is seriously inaccurate, and dangerously, ( perhaps deliberately ), misleading, because it implies that this, ( whatever ) is really all there is to it.

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If you understand the difference then why ever have you been pretending otherwise?

Is it? Good thing you told me then. Of course arguably this might be what you mean when you use the word rather than a necessary implication of the word's use. I am less than confident how sensible it is to suggest there is no debate in the course of a debate (this would seem to me to be an utterly untenable premise in such a context), but if you choose to use the word to assert as much, that is your choice.

Nothing you could ever say or type will ever convince me that your interpretation of my words is better than my own in determining the message I sought to convey. You do not know my intent better than myself, and it is beyond arrogance to actually believe you possibly could better know someone's intent than they themselves do. In fact it is frankly deluded.

It does not necessarily imply anything of the sort and if you inferred as much that is your responsibility. Perhaps you slide all sorts of insinuations into every word you employ, but if this is the case, then that is your behavior, not mine.

To re-re-reiterate, I am quite confident that I am correct about my own intentions, and quite confident that of the two of us, it must be you who is mistaken about that. If you choose to believe you know the intentions of others better than they do, that is your choice.

Either way, I do not see what you are actually intending to prove? Assume I had intended to describe any kind of thinking or any creation and dissemination and adoption of a medical conceptualization as being "simple", how would this prove some vague argument that has something to do with personality and AS and teh ebil modern society?

A very different kind of human construct. Gravity is an explanation, it is a theory that has evolved under test. The theory can be falsified.

The Autism Spectrum is not an explanation, it is a description. It predicts nothing. It explains nothing as it is need of an explanation itself. It may be possible to falsify it, but with the lack of discipline in the mind 'sciences', I doubt if anybody would notice anything untoward about it anyway.

If a theory doesn't make testable predictions, or if the tests are not practical, or if the tests cannot lead to a clear outcome that supports or falsifies the theory, the theory is not scientific. The theory of gravity is clearly sound science. It's got us to the moon and explains a myriad of observations that would be mysteries without that theory. The scientific method behind "The autistic spectrum" and rather too many of all the theories about autism/AS is totally lacking when compared to the theory of gravity. "One writer had an idea and a few others agreed" is not science.

My "problem" is not that I have a conclusion or theory, but my irritation at some people quoting as 'scientific fact' what even the professionals caveat with words such as "it is believed", "it is possible that", "it is speculated that". I am not taken in by those who 'borrow' the language of real science to hide the paucity of anything other than "personal agendas", as you said, behind their theories.

Ah, so first the problem was that it merely a human construct, now the problem is that it is some specific kind of human construct. And still there is no indication whatsoever as to the relevance of whether it is a human construct (it is) or the relevance of what kind of human construct to whether or not Asperger Syndrome is something or other to do with personality rather than a medical condition.

Assume the Autism Spectrum is whatever kind of human construct you are arguing that it is. What precisely does prove about Asperger Syndrome in regards to your assertion that AS is a personality type that is not well accepted within modern culture (rather than being a medical condition)?

Perhaps this is why I am mystified as to what you imagine is proven about Asperger Syndrome by referencing the Autism Spectrum concept. Perhaps you would care to explain what is proven about Asperger Syndrome by proving something about the evidential state of the Autism Spectrum concept?

I am not confident that it is falsifiable; since the spectrum is what it is defined as, (conditions entailing the autistic triad of impairment), and since all the theory really asserts is that conditions characterized by the Autistic triad of impairments are "on the spectrum", how could it be falsifiable? It is entirely circular in that it would be true even if in fact the spectrum were empty. If there were no conditions featuring the Autistic triad of impairment, the spectrum would not be falsified, just empty.

The Autistic Spectrum is not a scientific theory, it is an organizational concept. You might as well complain that the organization of a library or file cabinet cannot be falsified and therefore are not scientific theories.

It does not need to be a scientific theory to be useful for thinking and communicating about something.


I am uncertain of the relevance since I unfamiliar with claims that the Autism Spectrum is a scientific fact rather than an organizational concept. If the Autism Spectrum is not a "scientific fact" then what does this prove about Asperger Syndrome being a personality type that modern culture is not accepting of?

Yet again, I ask you to assume whatever you wish to posit about the spectrum concept as true for the purpose of demonstrating the relevance of this for the conversation at hand.

Assume that the spectrum is whatever you want to assume it is and explain what relevance this would have for Asperger Syndrome being a personality type that is culturally not well accepted (rather than a medical condition) because at this point, it looks very much like you know very well that you cannot argue your conclusion in this regard using facts and reason (which makes your claims about why you believe your conclusion dubious at best), and are engaging in distraction with irrelevant argumentation about a much "softer target".

In words much better than I could ever articulate:
http://www.outsider-insight.org.uk/arti ... =0031#head

Do you mean the excellent article, " Rethinking Autism" , ( the first one in the list at the bottom of the Heterodoxy piece )?

It is great. Thanks for the link. It's a shame that the html doesn't link directly to that one, because the "Heterodoxy" one isn't quite as relevant.

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Ooops.. I meant to link to "The Arbitrary Extension of the Autistic Spectrum" :

http://www.outsider-insight.org.uk/article.php?id=0033

Good grief. You take this kind of incoherent jumble seriously?

Makes more sense than the average psychology paper. Yes people take them very seriously indeed.

Really? Well the average psychology paper must be very poor indeed. I seem to be rather fortunate in that I must have predominately only encountered the exceptional ones. What are the odds?

As I said, wrong link - that piece is actually satire!! !

I reacted with good grief as well. And some other one on autism wasn't any better; probably worse as it's meant to be serious.

This is not unknown to me.