Recent work in artificial intelligence claims that large language models (LLMs) may exhibit theory-of-mind abilities, based on their performance on classic experimental paradigms from psychology, such as false-belief tasks. However, instead of revealing emergent machine cognition, these results expose the normative, exclusionary, and linguistically biased assumptions embedded in how theory of mind has been operationalised and measured.

Travis LaCroix

Presented at the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science (Halifax, 2026)

Draft forthcoming!

Experimental ‘evidence’ for the theory-of-mind-deficit explanation of autism amounts to pseudoscience.

Travis LaCroix

2025. Psychological Inquiry. 36(4): 229–261.

Presented at the Durham University Philosophy Seminar (Durham, 2025)

Presented at the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science (Toronto, 2023)

Presented at the Dalhousie Philosophy Department Colloquium Series (Halifax, 2023)

This article responds to commentaries on my analysis of the theory-of-mind-deficit explanation of autism, using Lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programs. The commentaries largely agree that the theory-of-mind paradigm faces serious problems, but shift focus from whether the framework is scientifically defensible to why it persists despite mounting counterevidence. Engaging with these responses, I clarify that the theory endures less because of its evidential strength and more because of historical, institutional, and epistemic dynamics that insulate research programs from falsification. Building on the commentators’ themes, I extend the original argument and defend the relevance of the pseudoscience thesis.

Travis LaCroix

2025. Psychological Inquiry. 36(4): 306–320.

This paper provides an empirical analysis of philosophical engagement with autism and autism research. We conduct a comprehensive scoping review to systematically map and summarise the philosophical literature on autism. Initial data suggest that philosophy has done an astonishingly poor job of keeping up with critical and conceptual developments about autism. We take these results to be particularly relevant to the philosophy of science insofar as many false or misleading claims about autism (including claims about defining characteristics, causal explanations, prevalence rates, etc.) come directly from scientific research on (e.g., nosology, aetiology, epidemiology, etc.). Consequently, it is somewhat surprising that philosophers of science have had relatively little engagement with autism and autism research.

Travis LaCroix, Alexis Amero, and Benjamin Sidloski

2025. Synthese. 206(63): 1–47.

Presented at the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science (Montréal, 2024)

Presented at the Dalhousie Philosophy Department Colloquium Series (Halifax, 2024)

The main goal of this paper is to explore the value-ladenness of scientific inquiry by examining some key moments in the history of autism research. Autism research has, historically, encoded the values of non-autistics. However, rejecting the value-free ideal of science opens the door to examining competing sets of (non-epistemic) values that might influence and direct scientific research. Using formal diagnosis and self-identification as a case study, I argue for the prioritisation of the values of autistics and autistic communities.

Travis LaCroix

Presented at the Dalhousie Philosophy Department Colloquium Series (Halifax, 2024)

Draft forthcoming!

In her book, The Ethics of Autism: Among Them but Not of Them, Deborah Barnbaum suggests that there cannot be a community of autistic persons. This paper demonstrates that the argument Barnbaum forwards in favour of this claim is unsound.

Travis LaCroix

Presented at the Dalhousie Philosophy Department Colloquium Series (Halifax, 2022)

Draft forthcoming!