"Conceptualizing the Ecological Model As demonstrated above, the leading physiological and evolutionary accounts are too individualistic, encounter multiple conceptual and epistemic problems, and may reinforce the undue pathologization of minorities. However, there is no obvious reason not to apply an ecological rather than evolutionary functional framework to human thinking. Indeed, although it is true that the human mind is the product of evolution and surely can be analyzed as such, it is also the product of, and sustained by, socioecological scaffolding and is always situated in a broader culture (Fuchs, 2017; Oishi & Graham, 2010). Consequently, whether we adopt an analysis more in line with individual biology (as the DSM, Boorse, and Wakefield do) or an analysis more in line with ecology (as neurodiversity proponents suggest) is not necessarily set by the subject matter. Given the problems with the evolutionary framings, it seems especially worth asking whether the neurodiversity framing might provide a viable alternative, particularly because this question aims to acknowledge a much broader range of functioning than the orthodox accounts and hence purports to avoid the issue of undue pathologization. In this section I clarify a version Neurodiversity and the Social Ecology of Mental Functions 1365 of this idea by adapting accounts of ecological functions to apply to mental functions. I then spend the rest of the article arguing that the ecological model may have greater utility than the accounts reviewed above. In ecology, etiological accounts of functioning are less popular than systems accounts, mainly because reproduction and selection are less relevant and harder to conceptualize at the level of the ecosystem. Thus, systems-based analyses have generally been preferred, more in line with Boorse’s definition of functions (Boorse, 2002; Dussault, 2019; Dussault & Bouchard, 2017; Maclaurin & Sterelny, 2008; Nunes-Neto, Moreno, & El-Hani, 2014). Perhaps the most relevant account comes from Dussault and Bouchard (2017), who suggest that the function of any given unit of biodiversity is best defined by its contribution toward a “systems’ ability to thrive and perpetuate themselves in the future” (p. 1117). Here the emphasis is on how units of biodiversity (organisms, species, etc.) contribute to the ecosystem’s “propensity to persist” (p. 1122) in the face of change. From this point of view, functions are relational and contextual rather than intrinsic (p. 1118), which means that no unit can be functional or dysfunctional as such. Moreover, the propensity for an effect will be intrinsic to the unit, but the function or dysfunction will always be relational and depend on actual behavior at a given time. Turning from ecology to human mental functions, the emphasis on the propensity to persist fits well with claims made by neurodiversity proponents in at least two ways. First, note the following claim from Blume (1998): “Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general. Who can say what form of wiring will prove best at any given moment?” (para. 4). The phrases “will prove” and “at any given moment” indicate a future-oriented perspective, moving away from selection history or present averages toward what is likely to prove adaptive given our changing environment...This may be analogous to how genetic diversity is adaptive for the propensity of the species to persist given the likelihood of new viruses, regardless of whether the genetic diversity itself was an adaption (i.e., a product of selection). Second, in an important respect this fits well with the social-relational model analysis because one way of putting the core insight of the social-relational model is that the minority propensity for adaptiveness is often stifled both through a combination of societal disablement and epistemic oppression. For instance, it has often been assumed that people with developmental or cognitive disabilities will be naturally ineducable, and therefore they are not given access to education. Because a propensity account can take contingently stifled propensity resulting from oppression or marginalization into account, it may have the benefit of moving toward acknowledging contingently stifled propensity, which may help to avoid the reification of social facts. Beyond the forward-looking nature of this account, equally relevant to propensity is that in ecology functional roles are multilevel and relational rather than restricted to individuals.3 That is, they are attributed either when some part of the ecosystem plays a role within biodiversity or ecosystem functioning or when biodiversity itself, or its component parts, plays a role (Nunes-Neto et al., 2014). It is worth noting here that neurodiversity proponents have indicated that we can similarly understand mental functional propensity on at least three levels. First, mental traits can contribute to the persistence propensity of the individual (Robertson, 2010). This is much like what we see in the individualist accounts but aims to be more sensitive to minority modes of functioning that fall outside of species norms by focusing on strengths as well as limitations. Second, we can also take specific cognitive dispositions to contribute toward what Singer (1999) called an ecological niche. (Here I focus on what I call “niche contribution,” rather than the typical “niche construction,” to emphasize the specific functional roles enabled by disabilityinclusive niche construction: Although Singer’s point also regarded how the niche construction of environments either enables or disenables, I do not focus on the theme of construction here because it is already covered by the social-relational model of disability.) This would be when they contribute to a specific role in the collective, for instance, such as when Blume (1998) claimed that “cybernetics and computer culture, for example, may favor a somewhat autistic cast of mind” (para. 4). Third, we can understand the functional propensity traits as emerging at the group level. By analogy, genetic diversity in a species is adaptive, but here the robustness of the species is an emergent group trait that is not derived from any single member of the species. Likewise, as Hoffman (2017) has proposed, it may be that there are collective cognitive traits that are more or less adaptive for the collective, in relation to the environment, that emerge from the group rather than being directly traceable to individual members. The ecological model allows for any trait to contribute to relational functions or dysfunctions at any level. Indeed, it may contribute to functions or dysfunctions at all levels, or it may contribute to both functions and dysfunctions simultaneously. A tentative definition of function from the neurodiversity perspective could thus be as follows: To contribute to a function, a mental trait, cognitive style, or group must have the propensity to perform an effect that contributes either to individual or group persistence, or both. By contrast, dysfunction will occur whenever there is a relational clash between any of these levels that hinders the propensity to persist. From this point of view, it is not only that cognitive traits can contribute to both individual and collective functions or dysfunctions but also that groups themselves have traits that are functional or dysfunctional in relation to the group or individual persistence. This would be partially analogous to how we talk of malfunctioning at the ecosystem level. I give some examples to show how this kind of analysis may help to capture the complexity of psychological ability and disability in the following sections''.

Chapman