This struck me as suitable for a legal definition, maybe, if "theory of mind" needed one.
However, I don't know how someone could be diagnosed as "autistic" such that you could say "autistic people don't have a theory of mind." I mean, how did you decide they were "autistic" in the first place?
All you have to do is read some documentation written by a technical person to see that they have no sense of what other people know. Arguing whether that should be called "theory of mind" or if it needs some other name strikes me as just semantics -- useful for a researcher or the DSM, maybe, but of no value to the lay person. For an ordinary person, we can just say, "yeah, they can't put themselves in someone else's place."
However, I don't know how someone could be diagnosed as "autistic" such that you could say "autistic people don't have a theory of mind." I mean, how did you decide they were "autistic" in the first place?
All you have to do is read some documentation written by a technical person to see that they have no sense of what other people know. Arguing whether that should be called "theory of mind" or if it needs some other name strikes me as just semantics -- useful for a researcher or the DSM, maybe, but of no value to the lay person. For an ordinary person, we can just say, "yeah, they can't put themselves in someone else's place."