Disability, Human Nature, and Rethinking Neurodiversity
Recent attention to autism at the federal level has reintroduced important questions about disability and development to the public consciousness. One underdiscussed but important influence on public attitudes toward disability is the relatively new concept of neurodiversity, frequently invoked in contemporary discussions of autism.
“Neurodiversity,” a term credited to activist and scholar Judy Singer, is the concept that all individuals vary in abilities, with that variance representing a natural part of being human rather than a deficit. Based in disability rights and critical theory, neurodiversity-based approaches are increasingly common in healthcare, advocacy, and education. If your child receives special education services in school, there is a good chance his or her teachers have learned about neurodiversity at some point. While many advocates support such approaches, experts have noted that the idea of neurodiversity is not necessarily based on high-quality medical or psychological evidence. This critique is worth exploring further in a separate discussion, but neurodiversity approaches are problematic for an even more significant reason: both their philosophical foundations and their implications are inconsistent with the reality of objective truth.
The Neurodiversity Shift
The idea of neurodiversity has gained popularity in recent years with the advent of autism advocacy, identity politics, and social justice movements. The concept moves away from relying solely on medical models of disability, which frame disability as a condition to be remediated, and instead draws on sociocultural theories in which disability exists because our world is insufficiently accommodating to those who function differently. A neurodiversity-based view of learning disabilities, for example, might de-emphasize differences in brain functioning and instead focus on ways to modify classroom instruction to support everyone with learning difficulties. In a neurodiversity-focused approach to autism, a therapist might accept a young child’s preference for solo play while a more traditional behavioral approach would focus on teaching him or her to engage in play with others.
This line of thinking has some clear benefits: who wouldn’t want to support students and honor their unique preferences? Indeed, the idea of neurodiversity resonates with many families and individuals with disabilities because for generations, those with disabilities were poorly served by medicine, schools, and policy. Disability rights activism in recent decades has helped to correct this problem and ensure that individuals with disabilities are respected, valued, empowered, and supported. But in reflecting on evolving social understanding, it is also important to understand where we may be overcorrecting. Neurodiversity framing often questions the very idea of absolutes or norms, making it difficult to identify any behavior or attribute as typical or desirable. For example, a neurodiversity-based approach might posit that anxiety or perseveration on a topic is not a deficit but a value-neutral variation in functioning. This line of thought leads to several conclusions: some people are anxious or obsessive, and some aren’t (true). Institutions and individuals should value and support all people, regardless of their mental health (true). And finally, being anxious or obsessive may not be a problem to be addressed or a sign of an underlying issue; it’s just an alternative way of being (debatable). In this view, if teachers or clinicians see anxiety or obsessive behavior as a negative, that probably reflects their own ableist biases rather than valid professional insight.
Building on this idea, some (though not all) neurodiversity advocates believe it is harmful to use evidence-based approaches such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to change an individual’s atypical functioning (Autistic Self Advocacy Network, 2017; McLennan, 2024). They instead endorse social support and interventions that are agreeable to the individuals involved, that feel collaborative, and that minimize distress. Again, there’s an element of truth there—we should prioritize challenges that actually have an impact on individuals’ functioning, include individuals in planning that affects them, and affirm the dignity and value of each individual. And interventions should always take each person’s individual needs and goals into account; with few exceptions, it is considered unethical to force people to undergo treatment or therapy against their will. But a critical neurodiversity paradigm, at its core, goes beyond acceptance and autonomy, suggesting not just that people may vary from the norm, but that it’s harmful to assume there are universal norms at all. Norms are assumed to result from centuries of marginalization and oppression of those who may be different.
This paradigm prioritizes lived experience over objective data and focuses on individuals’ perceptions rather than using evidence to guide decisions. In this case, the ultimate arbiter of what to believe is one’s experience and feeling; it is impossible to refer to any kind of objective truth because objectivity is part of an ableist and inequitable system.
What Happens When We Reject Objectivity?
There is real tension, in many neurodiversity frameworks, regarding whether to offer intervention or treatment at all for attributes related to disability. As an example, one philosopher and neurodiversity expert suggests that individuals with autism who choose to engage in treatment are probably exhibiting “internalized ableism” and should be regarded as having “neurotype dysphoria.” Another scholar seeking a middle ground between neurodiversity-based and medical models of disability cautions us to first acknowledge that “research is not an objective process.”
This abandonment of objectivity leads to entertaining additional extreme ideas: that interventions for some disabilities should be considered “neurotype transitions” similar to gender transition rather than medical treatment. Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism are examples of neurodiversity that “might” need to be treated. Some might consider anorexia a “positive lifestyle choice” so long as it does not become dangerous. And researchers should refrain from publishing any findings that may be “harmful” to neurodiverse individuals. Even with the explicit aim of finding a middle ground between traditional science and neurodiversity, the lack of grounding in objective reality makes it impossible to justify any consistent belief about intervention. Moreover, it requires one to give serious consideration to ideas that the average person on the street could instantly identify as preposterous.
Further, though advocates may rarely acknowledge it, neurodiversity paradigms tend to diminish the experience of those with moderate or significant disability. Because it emphasizes social support and acceptance, the concept of neurodiversity is most applicable to those whose needs can be met through accommodation or changing of social or behavioral expectations. It is far less applicable to individuals or families who are dealing with significant needs or who require intensive interventions to address basic functions (feeding tubes, communication devices, intensive medical management, or inpatient psychiatric needs). Think, for example, of a teenager with significant motor and developmental disabilities who cannot walk, eat, or speak independently. Addressing discriminatory attitudes is important, but it is certainly not sufficient to support this person. We see this tension in recent discussions of the growing movement to separate out diagnostic categories for autism, where neurodiversity advocacy sometimes crowds out the voices of those with more significant impacts on functioning.
Such marginalization further legitimizes our society’s all-too-common devaluing of individuals with significant disabilities. It ignores the experiences of families, who often share financial, logistical, and emotional responsibility for loved ones whose significant needs cannot be met simply through “acceptance” or “awareness.” A speech therapist working from a neurodiversity paradigm might not intervene to change a child’s dysfluent speech and instead might help the student find strategies to communicate in different ways. That approach might be appropriate at times for children with mild or moderate needs. But a child with autism who is unable to speak verbally at all, or a student with significant motor disabilities who cannot use the bathroom independently, might need and welcome medical or behavioral interventions to improve adaptive functioning. In fact, it seems unethical, in such situations, to presume that families’ primary concern must be social acceptance. As a parent once commented to me, “Feeding tubes are not socially constructed.” In failing to speak persuasively to the concerns of these individuals and families, the neurodiversity movement undercuts the spirit of inclusiveness that it claims to promote.
Finally, neurodiversity-based paradigms can be problematic not just because of whom they exclude but also because of what they imply about human nature and identity. Advocates often avoid “person-first” ways of referencing individuals with disabilities (“person with autism”; “student with a learning disability”) in favor of identity-first framing (“disabled person”; “autistic student”). While well-intended, this can frame disability as an intrinsic and “inseparable component of one’s identity.” One seminal disability-rights essay exploring autism describes it as a “pervasive” “way of being” in which “it is not possible to separate the autism from the person.” In other words, identity and even personhood are functions of membership in socially determined groups (“disabled people,” “autistic people,” “oppressed group,” and so on). But if we frame identity as entirely dependent on group membership, we de-emphasize individuals’ common human nature and, by extension, those common rights and values that transcend identity groups and categories of oppression.
Identity-first framing can feel positive and supportive toward individuals who have disabilities. But it also opens difficult questions. What about the human nature and dignity of individuals who try to minimize, treat, or even cure aspects of their disability? What rights do individuals have who cannot articulate their needs or preferences, or whose support needs are so significant that they place claims on others’ rights and personal fulfillment? What if a society decides that particular disabilities are inconsistent with its priorities? That is, are the rights of that community contingent on social consensus and acceptance?
The neurodiversity movement does not present clear or consistent answers to these problems. If anything, it leads us to minimize transcendent rights in favor of social consensus. One recent legal analysis, for example, invoked “procreative pluralism” and neurodiversity to conclude that selective embryo implantation based on disability status was acceptable as long as parents were free to select embryos with disabilities as well as those without disabilities. Such framing minimizes the substantial ethical complexities of this issue by using a critical equity lens: it is immaterial whether a practice is moral or immoral, so long as we are equally immoral toward the disabled and non-disabled.
Moving Forward with Evidence and Objective Truth
Concerns with the philosophical underpinnings of neurodiversity framing have not been widely articulated in social services or clinical spheres, where responses to a concept often focus on concrete applications rather than underlying belief systems. Teachers and clinicians are, generally, practical people. We enter helping professions to solve problems and make the world a better place, not to theorize or debate. Practitioners may embrace neurodiversity because it offers a positive and welcoming way to interact with individuals and families, focusing on relationships rather than philosophical implications and critical foundations. But engagement with underlying philosophies is essential, as those core foundations often determine how a concept develops and is applied over time. We can learn from the neurodiversity movement’s emphasis on individualism, self-determination, acceptance, and support. We should, however, reject the unscientific relativism that forms the conceptual foundation of neurodiversity paradigms and points us away from evidence, universal norms, and objective truth.
Instead, we can value the strengths and perspectives of those with disabilities and their loved ones while affirming objective reality and universal human dignity. This should lead to discussions across the field that reframe our conceptual approaches to disability, keeping human dignity and disability rights central; that revise discourse and policy language to prioritize evidence and remove pseudoscience; that ground approaches and interventions in high-quality empirical evidence; and that create nurturing environments where individual needs can be addressed in a manner consistent with human flourishing.
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