autism and its discontents

My general approach to this sort of thing is to let the informalists keep whatever name they want, and use a new name for the formal treatment.

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Again, just separate the domains of discourse. You can have a political caucus as broad set of activity, and a clinical practice as a narrow set, and there will be some overlap. But the clinicians have little interest in the non-clinical bits until they're formalised.

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The philosophical detour is the only part of this I really care to comment on. A movement that consists of self-identified individuals, with no formal criteria, is of no interest to formalists 😂

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There are two things about this political concern.

1. If the self-identified autists reject the clinical definitions, then the clinicians should just pick a different term to do their work, and so autism ceases to be clinically defined.

2. If the self-identified autists include themselves in a group based on a common view about (i.e. in reaction to) clinical practice, then the self-identified autists can come up with some recommendations ( which is probably the middle ground ).

2.continued. it however starts leaning from (2.) towards (1.) if the recommendations refuse the notion of formalisability. So the harder the action about defining what autism is not, without defining what it is, the stronger the case to just change the name of the clinical practice.

Of course, such discourse evolves - many permutations, many deaths, something survives. Wait and see i guess.