Re: McCloskey & Post-Autism

[Doyle Saylor]

Title: Re: [PEN-L:30109]  McCloskey & Post-Autism

Greetings Economists,
JD got back to me quickly about my remarks on 'Autistic Economics'.  He plans on replying to my economic thoughts later, but first JD writes,

JD
Though I say below that "autistic economics" is bad economics, I don't think autism is "bad" in any moral sense. The latter is only bad in the sense that it's bad _for them_ if some people are unable to survive in society by their own efforts rather than being treated all the time by parents and/or experts of one sort or another. A hard-core individual with autism cannot survive without a lot of help, continuous help.

Doyle,
I agree this is not a moral issue.  When I talk bigotry I mean the social structure that reinforces oppressive structures.  The prejudicial thinking process that cannot bend and accept reality.  Moral thinking gets us nowhere in regard to understanding what happens to disabled people.  However you drift here toward a stereo type about disability.  You focus upon the need for support a disability requires, and forget in saying that none of us in this system can survive with a lot of continuous help.  The image you conjure is that an able bodied person can be turned out into the world naked (without substantial attachment to their society) and survive.  I have a car to drive to work that major industries produce, and a bus to work that I do not drive.  None of that would I have without the current economic system.  Keep that in mind when you start talking about the tremendous support a disability requires.  Your comment stigmatizes the support system disabled people have in relation to the support system able bodied people use and equally depend upon for their survival.  Louis Proyect often writes about the devastating consequences of dependence upon petroleum products.  Are any of us any different in dependence upon the global energy regime?

JD,
"Autistic economics" is not an "anti-disabled phrase" as much as the application of a general term (autistic) to two separate phenomena, a brand of economics (also called Boubakism) and a kind of neuro-biological disorder.

Doyle,
This elides where the term came from to apply to economics, i.e. a French fashion to attack the exclusive use of mathematics as a means of analyzing economics as being like autism syndrome.  The phrase, 'Autistic Economics', was characterized in the capitalist press:

The New Statesman
21 January 2002

The Storming of the Accountants
David Boyle
...
Called "post-autistic economics" - "autistic" is intended to imply an obsessive preoccupation with numbers...

The phrase "post-autistic" has a touch of Gallic cruelty about it...

Doyle
...as a typical cruel French remark upon economic theory (see below my references to the concept that Autism represents 'obsession').  No one can seriously suggest in some reasonable fashion the phrase, Autistic Economics, was invented independent of comparison to Autistic people.  That is absurd.  

But returning to the pejorative content of the label or phrase, especially if the global press has made the point publicly, I find it incredibly hard to understand how you would not see the obvious connection.  The formula is clear enough, that a form of economic theory is comparable to syndromes associated with Autism.  I.e. the problem with this economics is the same problem one encounters with a disabled person who are Autistic.  In essence relying upon stereotype to create  a negative condemnation of a trend or fashion in economics.

JD,
Perhaps we should invent the category "sociopathic economics" to refer
to the empirically-oriented version of Chicago economics. After all, the
DSM-IV, the diagnostic bible of psychologists, has more disorders than
simply those on the autistic spectrum.  

Doyle,
Well if you shift how you label this problem with that sort of economics by going to the DSM-IV for other ways of labeling something 'sociopathic' you end up doing what I am saying is common practice, that is using disability as a means of tarring and stigmatizing a political opponent.  In other words I know something is 'bad' if it clearly relates to a human disability.  That is a political problem for the disabled community (54 million people in the U.S.).  On the one hand everyone by habitual practice and communal approval reaches into the grab bag of anti-disabled babble for labels to show what we mean when we reject some other position.  On the other hand is Autism really appropriate way to think about this problem?  For example if we look at the recent Scientific American article:

Scientific American, June 2002 article Savant Syndrome, Darold A. Treffert and Gregory L. Wallace, pages 74 through 85.  Especially page 82 subsection "Looking to the Left Hemisphere".

"Although Specialists Today are better able to characterize the talents of savants, no overarching theory can describe exactly how or why savants do what they do.  The most powerful explanation suggests that some injury to the left brain causes the right brain to compensate for the loss.  The evidence for this idea has been building for several decades.  A 1975 pheumoencephalogram study found left hemispheric damage in 15 of 17 autistic patients; for of them had savant skills.  (A pneumoencephalogram was an early and painful imaging technique during which a physician would inject air into a patient's spinal fluid and then x-ray the Brian to determine where the air traveled.  It is no longer used.)

...

"In the late 1980s Norman Geschwind and Albert M. Galaburda of Harvard University offered an explanation for some causes of left hemispheric damage-and for the higher number of male savants.  In their book Cerebral Laterialization, the two neurologists point out that the left hemisphere of the Brian normally completes its development later than the right and is therefore subject to prenatal influences-some of them detrimental for a longer period.  In the male fetus, circulating testosterone can act as one of these detrimental influences by slowing growth and impairing neuronal function in the most vulnerable left hemisphere.  As a result, the right brain often compensates, becoming larger and more dominant in males.  The greater male-to-female ratio is seen not just in savant syndrome but in other forms of central nervous system dysfunction, such as dyslexia, delayed speech, stuttering, hyperactivity and autism.

Doyle,
The contemporary theory about the language related problems Autistic persons have with social interactions is pointed at.  Specifically damage to the left hemisphere and why that damage happens more in males than females.  Etc. though hypothetical this theory points at why someone might presume to use Autism as a metaphor for 'bad' economics.  I.E. the incapacity of such thinking to respond to real peoples social condition.  In other words the economic theory come hell or high water is right, and if people complain about the consequences they are the problem not the mathematics.  Using mathematics in this manner seems somehow associated to math skills in Autistic Savants at the expense of social ability to not just communicate but engage in democratic dialogue.

This desire to make a point using Autism then does not explain anything.   I am describing a symptom as a doctor when the term is first invented.  That perhaps is the purpose in Medicine to label a symptom, but once associated with a disability and then used for the purpose of stigmatizing something economic is a political tool to associate something with disability in order to negate that position.  The disabled then always suffer the consequences of being used this way.

thanks,
Doyle Saylor

http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/

http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/topics.cfm

articles and topics on savant mental skills

http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/hyperlexia.cfm

Hyperlexia,  Reading Precociousness or Savant Skill?

http://www.hyperlexia.org/hyperlexia.html

detailed article about hyperlexia

With regard to obsession;
New Statesman,
"autistic" is intended to imply an obsessive preoccupation with numbers

The article from the New Statesman remarks that there is an element of 'cruelty' about it.  So there is some minimal degree of awareness of bigotry in the term.  Let's just review the formula, disabled means the lowest rung of society in most usage's, and if you imply your opponent is disabled that hurls them into the abyss.  However, that sort of word policing doesn't reveal anything positive about the particular disability being 'cruelly' disparaged.

Autism is not a product of obsession. Autism was not even identified as such until the second half of the twentieth century long after obsession had emerged in European thought about human behavior.  

The primary issue though in the labeling of economics as 'autistic' is to discern what would be a more realistic way of understanding the economy given the current theories about autism.  In other words if one must for whatever reason use a disability metaphor about economics what would a more realistic way of thinking about the economy produce?  Shared attention (Joint Attention theory) does not have the emotional frisson of the bigots cry "autism", but it at least has some economic sense to it.  For example shared attention shapes how teleconferencing is constructed.  Producing information about human beings who share communications through teleconferencing has great deal to do with understanding what exactly it is that language does through these sorts of tools.

The critical issue in using mathematics is again 'shared attention'.  That is the language like sharing of attention and how mathematics either works that way or not is the most salient issue about the problem with too much mathematics in economics than is the concern about obsession or Autism.