We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2009
What has to be accepted, the given, is – so one could say – forms of life.
L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1955The statement ‘Corgis and basset hounds have ears of different lengths’ is meaningful and useful when it comes to recognizing these life forms, but is uninformative about their hearing ability. ‘Sharks have longer flippers than whales’ also has some kind of meaning, even if the life forms belong to different families, but fails to indicate which one is the better swimmer. However, ‘squid have more fingers than humans’ is a somewhat misleading statement (squid hardly ever wear gloves, even in cold seas), and it is difficult to find a context where such a statement would be useful. The usefulness of a statement about one form of life using descriptive units relevant to another form of life depends on how members of these families resemble one another, and such a statement is not informative about the consequences of the described difference.
À la manirède L. WittgensteinNormocentrism and deficit-oriented explanations: ubiquitous problems in neurocognitive research in autism
Cognitive neuroscientists working on autism are looking for an ‘uneven cognitive profile’ (Happé, 1999) characterizing the specificity of autism compared to typical development and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Similarly and at a finer scale, thirty years of research on memory in autism has resulted in the compilation of a complex profile of ‘spared’ and ‘impaired’ areas in memory (see Bowler & Gaigg, this volume, Chapter 17).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
