Conative hormophoria: A dynamical-regime hypothesis for intra-spectrum differentiation in autism

Abstract

Background: The 2013 removal of Asperger’s syndrome from DSM-5 was defended on evidential grounds that were, at the level of measurement, sound: inter-rater reliability for the distinction was poor, and symptom distributions across the autism spectrum are continuous. From these findings the field drew a further conclusion — that no distinct kind existed to be named. Summary: This paper examines the step from the first claim to the second and argues that it does not follow. The inference requires an unstated identity criterion, namely that a psychiatric kind, if real, must appear as a bounded region in a space of additive symptom coordinates. That criterion is not entailed by the data; it is a methodological commitment, and it is demonstrably inadequate to systems whose identity is carried by the structure of their dynamics rather than by the values of their variables at a moment. The paper does not claim that questions posed in symptom space are meaningless — they are intelligible and have answers, and the continuity findings are those answers. It claims something narrower and defensible: that a negative answer at the symptom level licenses no conclusion at the dynamical level. On that basis I propose a candidate intra-spectrum kind, named here conative hormophoria, specified not by symptom counts but by a four-family dynamical fingerprint (long-range temporal correlations, functional excitation–inhibition ratio, neuronal avalanche statistics, and the dynamics of metastable connectivity). The construct is advanced as a hypothesis, not a finding, and is deliberately constructed to be orthogonal to ability level and support needs — a stipulation that makes it refutable in a specific and consequential way. Key Messages: (i) Reliability failure at the symptom level does not refute the existence of a kind specified at the level of dynamics; the two claims concern different invariants. (ii) A construct in this domain must be named without inheriting either the eponymic debts of Asperger’s syndrome or the privative morphology by which difference is silently converted into deficit; the paper states the constraints such a name must satisfy and defends its proposal against them. (iii) The hypothesis makes explicit, falsifiable predictions, including the decisive prediction that the dynamical signature will not track intelligence quotient or support level — a result which, if it obtained, would collapse the construct into the discredited high-functioning distinction and refute it.