• Theory of Mind, Phenomenology, and the Double Empathy Problem
    Journal of Neurophilosophy 2 (1). 2023.
    According to some neurocognitive studies, autistic people do not have a theory of mind (ToM); this means that they are unable to interpret the thoughts, beliefs and intentions of others just by observing their behaviour and/or listening to what they say and how they say it. By contrast, researchers from phenomenology claim that autistic people experience issues in earlier forms of intersubjectivity and that in some cases a ToM may be used to compensate for issues in empathy. My purpose is to pre…Read more
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    Despite the belief that autism is an empathy disorder, autistics declare their ability to empathize. To explore this experiential vision, we present the alternative explanation for social impairments in autism offered by the Intense World Theory (IWT) and substantiate it through the phenomenological analysis of empathy as an experienced phenomenon. According to IWT, autistics are characterized by hyper-emotionality and therefore their detachment is not the sign of a disrupted empathy, but a stra…Read more