Some disability activists argue that disability is merely a difference. It is often objected that this view has unacceptable implications, implying, for example, that it is permissible to cause disability. In reply, Elizabeth Barnes argues that viewing disability as a difference needn’t entail such implications and that seeing such implications as unacceptable is question-begging. We argue that Barnes misconstrues this objection to the mere difference view of disability: it’s not question-begging to regard its implications as (...) unacceptable, and the grounds that Barnes offers for potentially blocking some of these implications fail to explain our conviction that it’s impermissible to cause disability. (shrink)

There are two ways to tell the story of disability in the phenomenological tradition. On the first, disability has always been a theme, albeit often described using related terms such as impairment, illness, pathology, abnormality, or bodily variation. It has always been so in part because embodiment and its relationship to the social world regularly appear as a theme in the work of many central figures and across multiple debates in the tradition. On the second way of telling (...) the story, phenomenological analysis of disability is relatively new, kicked off by the work of S. Kay Toombs in the early 1990s. Phenomenologists historically ignored disability as a fundamental aspect of being human because they either ignored disabled people’s testimony concerning their experiences or because they understood the description, reconstruction, and resulting knowledge of variations of norms, normality, and the normate, however defined, as mere stepping stones on the way to understanding the general (normal) structures of lived experience. Instead of picking one way of telling the story over the other, I will thread the needle between these ways of framing the complex relationship between the phenomenological tradition and inquiry into disability, for each harbors important insights. (shrink)

The so-called Disability Paradox arises from the apparent tension between the popular view that disability leads to low well-being and the relatively high life-satisfaction reports of disabled people. Our aim in this essay is to make some progress toward dissolving this alleged paradox by exploring the relationship between disability and various “goods of life”—that is, components of a life that typically make a person’s life go better for her. We focus on four widely recognized goods of life (...) (happiness, rewarding relationships, knowledge, achievement) and four common types of disability (sensory, mobility, intellectual, and social) and systematically examine the extent to which the four disability types are in principle compatible with obtaining the four goods of life. Our findings suggest that that there is a high degree of compatibility. This undermines the widespread view that disabilities, by their very nature, substantially limit a person’s ability to access the goods of life, and it provides some guidance on how to dissolve the Disability Paradox. (shrink)

Recent years have seen increased interest among 4E cognition scholars in physical disability, leading to the development of the EE-model of disability. This paper contributes to the literature on disability and 4E cognition in three key ways. First, it examines the relationship between the EE-model and social constructivist views that address the bodily reality of disablement, highlighting commonalities and distinctions. Second, it critiques the EE-model’s focus on individual strategies for expanding disabled persons’ affordance landscapes, arguing that (...) class='Hi'>disability policy should integrate insights from both the EE-model and social constructivist approaches. Finally, it assesses the EE-model against the 'dogma of harmony'. We argue that while the EE-model’s focus on active human-environment collaboration is valuable, it can inadvertently perpetuate this dogma. We contend that integrating certain social constructivist insights can help the EE-model avoid the dogma of harmony. (shrink)

What has come to be called critical disability studies is an emergent field of academic research, teaching, theory building, public scholarship, and something I'll call "educational advocacy." The critical part of critical disability studies suggests its alignment with areas of intellectual inquiry, sometimes awkwardly called identity studies, rooted in the political and social transformations of the mid-20th century brought forward by the broad civil and human rights movement. These movements pressed both the law and the social order toward (...) an expansion of rights for people previously marginalized or excluded from full participation in exercising the obligations and benefits of equal citizenship. The ideas of... (shrink)

In this essay, we suggest practical ways to shift the framing of crisis standards of care toward disability justice. We elaborate on the vision statement provided in the 2010 Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Medicine) “Summary of Guidance for Establishing Crisis Standards of Care for Use in Disaster Situations,” which emphasizes fairness; equitable processes; community and provider engagement, education, and communication; and the rule of law. We argue that interpreting these elements through disability justice entails a commitment (...) to both distributive and recognitive justice. The disability rights movement's demand “Nothing about us, without us” requires substantive inclusion of disabled people in decision‐making related to their interests, including in crisis planning before, during, and after a pandemic like Covid‐19. (shrink)

Disability rights (DR) advocates have consistently opposed the legalization of physician-assisted dying (PAD) on the grounds that it wrongly discriminates against the disabled. This chapter distinguishes three variants of this objection. The first and perhaps primary one, based on “soft paternalism,” claims that PAD should not be legalized for the sake of those who might choose it. The second alleges that the laws harm all disabled people by encouraging support for PAD as the cheaper alternative to providing the disabled (...) more social support and protection from discrimination. The third alleges that legalized PAD harms all disabled people by expressing the denigrating message that their lives are less valuable than those of the able. The chapter finds that whatever the merits of the first two objections, DR advocates cannot consistently accept them while maintaining support for a legal right to reject unwanted treatment. It also finds grounds to doubt the cogency of the third objection. (shrink)

This chapter canvases a number of ways that issues surrounding disability intersect with social epistemology. We begin with a discussion of how social epistemology as a field and debates concerning epistemic injustice in particular would benefit from further (a) engaging the fields of disability studies and philosophy of disability and (b) more directly addressing the problem of ableism. In section two, we turn to issues of testimony, “intuitive horribleness,” and their relationship to debates concerning disability and (...) well-being. We address how the regular lack of uptake of disabled people’s testimony can lead to a number of structural rather than merely individual epistemic injustices, and we also consider how the very nature of some disabilities make testimonial issues more complicated. We conclude by discussing various norms of social interaction and how they can systematically disadvantage Autistic people in particular with respect to all the issues discussed herein. (shrink)

Since the early 1990s, one of the most prominent objections to the use of prenatal or pre-implantation testing to prevent the birth of children with disabilities has focused on the negative judgments it expresses to and about existing persons with disabilities. Commonly known as the expressivist objection, it is based on the conjunction of two key claims: (1) the use or provision of tests to select against disability in offspring expresses negative judgments about existing persons with disabilities; and (2) (...) the expression of these judgments itself constitutes a wrong to those persons. Despite depending on both claims, however, philosophical discussion of the expressivist objection has largely centred on the first: while commentators continue to debate whether disability screening does or does not express negative judgments, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining how the expression of those judgements wrongs persons with disabilities. In this paper, I argue both that whether or not the expressivist objection succeeds will ultimately depend on whether a plausible explanation can be supplied for how persons with disabilities are wronged by the expression of negative judgments, and that the existing literature surrounding relational egalitarianism can provide such an explanation, albeit with important limitations. (shrink)

If we were to write down all those things that we ordinarily categorise as disabilities, the resulting list might appear to be extremely heterogeneous. What do disabilities have in common? In this paper I defend the view that disabilities should be understood as particular kinds of inability. I show how we should formulate this view, and in the process defend the view from various objections. For example, I show how the view can allow that common kinds of inability are not (...) disabilities, can allow that minor kinds of inability are rightly not described as disabilities, and can allow that socially imposed inabilities need not be disabilities. In the second half of the paper, I show that this theory is superior to rival theories. I criticize the wellbeing theory of disability (Kahane and Savulescu 2009, Savulescu and Kahane 2011, Harris 2001) and conventionalist theories of disability (e.g. Barnes 2016). Finally, I show how the inability theory is consistent with the best versions of the social model of disability. (shrink)

Introductory and advanced textbooks in bioethics focus almost entirely on issues that disproportionately affect disabled people and that centrally deal with becoming or being disabled. However, such textbooks typically omit critical philosophical reflection on disability, lack engagement with decades of empirical and theoretical scholarship spanning the social sciences and humanities in the multidisciplinary field of disability studies, and avoid serious consideration of the history of disability activism in shaping social, legal, political, and medical understandings of disability (...) over the last fifty years. For example, longstanding discussions on topics such as euthanasia, physician aid-in-dying, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, prenatal testing, selective abortion, enhancement, patient autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and health care rationing all tend to be premised on shared and implicit assumptions regarding disability, especially in relation to quality of life, yet with too little recognition of the way that “disability” is itself a topic of substantial research and scholarly disagreement across multiple fields. This is not merely a concern for academic and medical education; as an applied field tied to one of the largest economic sectors of most industrialized nations, bioethics has a direct impact on healthcare education, practice, policy, and, thereby, the health outcomes of existing and future populations. It is in light of these pressing issues that the Disability Bioethics Reader is the first reader to introduce students to core bioethical issues and concepts through the lens of critical disability studies and philosophy of disability. The Disability Bioethics Reader will include over thirty-five chapters covering key areas such as: critical histories and state-of-the-field analyses of modern medicine, bioethics, disability studies, and philosophy of medicine; methods in bioethics; concerns at the edge- and end-of-life; enhancement; disability, quality of life, and well-being; prenatal testing and abortion; invisible disabilities; chronic illness; healthcare justice; genetics and genomics; intellectual disability and neurodiversity; ethics and diagnosis; and epistemic injustice in healthcare. (shrink)

When thinking about disability in the context of justice, our focus should not be on the ways in which people’s bodies and minds function differently. Instead, we should shift our focus to the limitations that this leads to—for particular people, in particular contexts. And, at least from the perspective of justice, only a subset of these limitations matter. Specifically, those that prevent individuals from having control in certain domains of their life, by restricting the availability of acceptable options or (...) the ability to choose between them. Our theory of justice should be concerned with the lives individuals can lead, and not with whether their bodies and minds function typically. What matters is that people can be mobile, form relationships, engage in leisure, and so on—not how they achieve these things. The problem that disability raises is not the mere fact of difference, but the ways in which that difference is accommodated (or not) and the limitations it may cause. Indeed, on my definition of disability, to be disabled just is to be unable to exercise the control over our life that everyone should be able to. Our focus, then, should not be on whether someone has received a particular diagnosis, or on the most visible deviations from what we take to be the species norm, but on whether people have access to central capabilities. Achieving justice does not require ‘normalisation’, or the elimination of difference, but enabling all individuals to control their lives as they choose. (shrink)

One challenge in providing an adequate definition of physical disability is unifying the heterogeneous bodily conditions that count as disabilities. We examine recent proposals by Elizabeth Barnes (2016), and Dana Howard and Sean Aas (2018), and show how this debate has reached an impasse. Barnes’ account struggles to deliver principled unification of the category of disability, whilst Howard and Aas’ account risks inappropriately sidelining the body. We argue that this impasse can be broken using a novel concept: marginalised (...) functioning. Marginalised functioning concerns the relationship between a person’s bodily capacities and their social world: specifically, their ability to function in line with the default norms about how people can typically physically function that influence the structuring of social space. We argue that attending to marginalised functioning allows us to develop, not one, but three different models of disability, all of which—whilst having different strengths and weaknesses—unify the category of disability without sidelining the body. (shrink)

One criticism of medical aid in dying (MAID) is the expressivist objection: MAID is morally wrong because it expresses judgments about disabilities or persons with disabilities, that are offensive, disrespectful, or discriminatory. The expressivist objection can be made at the level of individual patients, medical providers, or the state. The expressivist objection originated with selective abortion, and responses to it in that context typically claim either that selective abortion does not express specific judgments about disabilities, or that any judgments expressed (...) are not offensive. This response is inadequate: MAID often does express negative judgments about disabilities, which could reasonably be seen as offensive. But, does this offensiveness make MAID wrong? Drawing on Joel Feinberg’s account of offense, I argue that it is unlikely that the offensiveness of the judgments expressed by individuals who seek MAID or through the state’s legalization of MAID is enough to make it morally impermissible. (shrink)

Introduction ADAM CURETON AND KIMBERLEY BROWNLEE Disability and disadvantage are interrelated topics that raise important and sometimes overlooked issues in...

Many endorse the Bad-Difference View of disability which says that disability makes one likely to be worse off even in the absence of discrimination against the disabled. Others defend the Mere-Difference View of disability which says that, discounting discrimination, disability does not make one likely to be worse off. A common motivation for the BDV is the Options Argument which identifies reduction in valuable options as a harm of disability. Some reject this argument, arguing that (...) disabled people's prospects aren't hindered by having fewer options. In this article, I defend the Options Argument by arguing that, in disability cases, possessing a greater number of valuable options seems to overall improve well-being prospects. As such, the Options Argument appears to be sound and – although it doesn't establish the BDV – it lends plausibility to the BDV by identifying a potentially significant cost of disability. (shrink)

Musing for Puncta special issue on "Critically Sick: New Phenomenologies Of Illness, Madness, And Disability.".

Dehumanization Studies is a burgeoning field that has much to teach Critical Disability Studies and philosophers of disability. Conversely, a critical disability perspective can inform and challenge theoretical approaches to dehumanization. This paper attempts to forge a conversation between these interdisciplinary areas by exploring the phenomenon of dehumanization in relation to people with intellectual disabilities. It begins with a definition of disability dehumanization, and then explores the ways in which this form of dehumanization functions dynamically at (...) multiple levels, drawing from the history of ID and contemporary examples in moral philosophy. Ultimately it argues that it is essential to recognize the moral relevance of being human in order to challenge and prevent forms of disability dehumanization and de­fends this idea in the face of two objections (speciesism and posthumanism). (shrink)

This paper argues that disabled people can be healthy. I argue, first, following the well-known ‘social model of disability’, that we should prefer a usage of ‘disabled’ which does not imply any kind of impairment that is essentially inconsistent with health. This is because one can be disabled only because limited by false social perception of impairment and one can be, if impaired, disabled not because of the impairment but rather only because of the social response to it. Second, (...) I argue that it is often wrong to use the term ‘healthy’ in a way that makes health inconsistent with any degree whatsoever of health-relevant bodily dysfunction. Whether someone is ‘healthy’ properly-so-called depends on standards of health presupposed in conversational context. Sometimes, I argue, these standards are or ought to be lax enough to allow some people with some health deficits still to count as ‘healthy’ per se. Taking inspiration from David Lewis and Mary Kate Mcgowan, I go on to argue that denying that someone is ‘healthy’ in a context typically succeeds in shifting going presuppositions to require standards strict enough to make that denial acceptable. And this, I conclude by arguing, often constitutes an abuse of conversational power. (shrink)

The medical model of disability views disabilities as biological dysfunctions of the individual’s body. Historically, this has been unpopular in the literature, but that is at least partly because it has also been associated with objectionable moral or political ideas. As such, it’s not clear that the core view about the nature of disability has received a fair hearing. This paper meets the medical model on its own terms. I argue that there is no available naturalistic account of (...) biological functioning such that disabilities can plausibly be understood as biological dysfunctions. (shrink)

John Dewey’s theory of communication supplies the basis for a response to the exclusion of the experiential perspectives of persons with intellectual disabilities and those on whom they depend for advocacy and care in philosophical conversations about intellectual disability. Drawing from the work of Licia Carlson and Eva Feder Kittay, we shall begin by exploring some assumptions about epistemic authority which appear to motivate this problematic pattern. We will show that Dewey’s understanding of communication provides tools for explaining how (...) firsthand accounts of living with intellectual disability or caring for someone who does can guide philosophical inquiries about intellectual disability. (shrink)

The strategy of developing an ontology or models of disability as a prior step to settling ethical issues regarding disabilities is highly problematic for two reasons. First, key definitional aspects of disability are normative and cannot helpfully be made value-neutral. Second, if we accept that the contested concept of disability is value-laden, it is far from obvious that there are definitive reasons for choosing one interpretation of the concept over another. I conclude that the concept of (...) class='Hi'>disability is better left ethically open-ended or broad enough to encompass the examination of various ethical issues. Alternatively, the concept of disability could be altogether abandoned in order to focus on specific issues without being hindered by debates about the nature of disability. Only political costs, rather than conceptual considerations internal to the models, could be weighed against such a conclusion. (shrink)

Philosophers have debated on the “mere‐difference” view of disability, according to which disability as such is neutral in terms of well‐being, just like race and gender. It is contrasted with the “bad‐difference” view, which holds that disability is bad for its possessor even in a non‐ableist situation. We first illustrate how neither view can be sensitive to the diversity of disabled people and their disabilities. Subsequently, we propose an alternative outlook—the conditional bad‐difference view of disability: a (...) disability is bad for its possessor if and only if it hampers her aspired way of life, even without ableism. In addition to being theoretically moderate and thus more plausible than the existing outlooks, this view also offers a robust ethical case for policies and practices catering to the varying needs and values of disabled people, such as personalized healthcare and the user‐led research of assistive technologies. (shrink)

Disability rights activists often claim that disability is not—by itself—something that makes disabled people worse off. A popular objection to such a view of disability is this: were it correct, it would make it permissible to cause disability and impermissible to cause nondisability. The aim of this article is to show that these twin objections don’t succeed.

Pandemics such as COVID-19 place everyone at risk, but certain kinds of risk are differentially severe for groups already made vulnerable by pre-existing forms of social injustice and discrimination. For people with disability, persisting and ubiquitous disablism is played out in a variety of ways in clinical and public health contexts. This paper examines the impact of disablism on pandemic triage guidance for allocation of critical care. It identifies three underlying disablist assumptions about disability and health status, quality (...) of life, and social utility, that unjustly and potentially catastrophically disadvantage people with disability in COVID-19 and other global health emergencies. (shrink)

The social model of disability claims that disadvantage from disability is primarily a result of the social response to bodily difference. Social modellers typically draw two normative conclusions: first, that society has a responsibility to address disability disadvantage as a matter of justice, not charity; second, that the appropriate way of addressing this disadvantage is to change social institutions themselves, to better fit for bodily difference, rather than to normalize bodies to fit existing institutions. This paper offers (...) a qualified defense of both inferences. Social institutions have reasons of justice to fix disability disadvantage, because the choice of institutions that contingently favor those whose bodies are statistically typical incurs responsibilities to compensate those who disfavored, in that choice. Among other things, this responsibility implies that societies should not simultaneously materially disadvantage disabled people, and also withhold symbolic resources, by demanding a presumption in favor of personal transformation – thereby, undermining the social conditions for disability pride. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that medical professionals should protect a future child's rights by prohibiting disabled parents from using technology to deliberately have a disabled child because disability is taken as an inevitable, severe threat to a child's otherwise “open” future. I will first argue that the open future that allegedly protects a child's future autonomy is precluded by the very conditions needed to develop that future autonomy. Any child's future will be narrowed as they are socialized in a (...) way that gives them the capacity for autonomous choice. However, oppressive master narratives can diminish a future child's autonomy by distorting their narrative identity and constricting their agency. In fact, the open future argument does just this by advancing one of the most damaging master narratives about disability: that disability inevitably and severely restricts a person's autonomy and closes their future. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that morally justified healthcare rationing must be non-discriminatory and cost-effective. However, given conventional concepts of cost-effectiveness, resources spent on disabled people are spent less cost-effectively, ceteris paribus, than resources spent on non-disabled people. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that standard cost-effectiveness discriminates against the disabled. Call this thedisability discrimination problem.Part of the disability discrimination involved in cost-effectiveness stems from the way in which health-related quality of life is accounted for and measured. This paper offers (...) and defends a patient-sensitive account of health-related quality of life, which can effectively make cost-effectiveness less discriminatory against the disabled and thus more morally justified. (shrink)

A persistent paradox apparently infects disability civil rights claims. On the one hand, these rights claims are often understood to apply only to those who are sufficiently impaired in body or in mind to qualify for them because of the disadvantage they endure. On the other hand, asserting significant impairments threatens to undermine the plausibility of these claims as civil rights rather than as welfare for those who are dependent and in need of extra help. Behind this paradox lies (...) a type of categorical understanding of disability civil rights: that disability civil rights are only for those who fall into a category of disability and that this category should be defined in a particular way, in terms of disadvantaging disablement. In this article, I dispel this paradox by deploying a critical analysis of Elizabeth Barnes’s account of physical disability in her recent book, The Minority Body. In her book, Barnes makes the important critical point that disability is not “bad” difference. Instead, she argues that physical disability is a physical condition that the disability rights community is working to promote justice for. I argue that this account fails as a project of ameliorative social metaphysics because it fails to understand the role of impairment in the construction of disability antidiscrimination law. I also argue that her account risks privileging physical disability and is thus problematic as a starting place for examining disability justice. (shrink)

It is widely known that Black people are significantly more likely to be killed by the police in the United States of America than white people. What is less widely known is that nearly half of all people killed by the police are disabled people. The aim of this paper is to better understand the intersection of racism and ableism in the USA. Contributing to the growing literature at the intersection of philosophy of disability and critical philosophy of race, (...) I argue that theories concerning white supremacy should take more seriously the ways in which it functions as a process and apparatus of making abled and disabled. I conclude by discussing how understanding white supremacy in this manner is a valuable coalitional tool in fights for social justice. (shrink)

According to a popular line of thought, being excluded from interpersonal life is to be exempted from accountability, and vice versa. In ordinary life, this is most often illustrated by the treatment of people with serious psychological disorders. When people are excluded from valuable domains on the basis of their arbitrary characteristics (such as race and sex), they are discriminated against, prevented from receiving the benefits of participation in those domains for morally irrelevant reasons. Exemption from accountability—via exclusion from the (...) interpersonal domain—seems to prevent exempted parties from receiving crucial human goods for morally irrelevant reasons. This chapter discusses two widely deployed ways of trying to ameliorate morally costly disabilities. Both fail to apply viably to various psychopathologies. The solution involves disentangling accountability and interpersonality in a way that also provides insights into our shared human nature. (shrink)

Contemporary bioethics has been somewhat skewed by its focus on high-tech medicine and the resulting development of ethical frameworks based on an acute-care model of healthcare. Research and scholarship in bioethics have payed only cursory attention to ethical issues related to disability. I argue that bioethics should concern itself with the full range of theoretical and practical issues related to disability. This encounter with the disability community will enrich bioethics and, potentially, society as well. I suggest a (...) number of items that the bioethics agenda should include, such as the development of a casuistry of the right to healthcare and to community integration and an advocacy role in fostering an understanding among the public and policy makers of the need to reform research and treatment related to disability. (shrink)

Intellectual Disability: Ethics, Dehumanization, and a New Moral Community presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the roots and evolution of the dehumanization of people with intellectual disabilities. Examines the roots of disability ethics from a psychological, philosophical, and educational perspective Presents a coherent, sustained moral perspective in examining the historical dehumanization of people with diminished cognitive abilities Includes a series of narratives and case descriptions to illustrate arguments Reveals the importance of an interdisciplinary understanding of the social construction of (...) intellectual disability. (shrink)

It may seem obvious that causing disability in another person is morally problematic in a way that removing or preventing a disability is not. This suggests that there is a moral asymmetry between causing disability and causing non-disability. This chapter investigates whether there are any differences between these two types of actions that might explain the existence of a general moral asymmetry. After setting aside the possibility that having a disability is almost always bad or (...) harmful for a person (a view that we have critiqued at length elsewhere), seven putative differences are considered. Ultimately, it is concluded that none of these seven factors can ground a general moral asymmetry between causing disability and causing non-disability, though each factor can provide some moral reason to avoid causing disability in certain particular cases. (shrink)

Cinema serves as a mirror, reflecting the development or state of society. It plays an important function in entertainment and education and can bring about a shift in our perspectives and attitudes. The article includes a descriptive analysis of Deaf Culture as a prominent subject in the movies Sound of Metal () and CODA () and clarifies the most prevalent misconceptions about disability in both films. In recent years, filmmakers have made an effort to create true and authentic representations (...) of Deaf Culture, moving beyond the notion of a tokenized portrayal of the Deaf. They shifted the emphasis away from unwarranted sympathy towards perceptive analyses of Deaf characters with the aim of dismantling the embarrassing perception of deafness. Filmmakers have provided the Deaf population with a voice by giving real-life Deaf performers a place in mainstream cinema. Even though many efforts have been made, the article also shows that the mainstream media have not generally represented the Deaf Community favourably. Furthermore, the article looks at the psychological conflict that arises when hearing people and hearing-impaired people share the same room. (shrink)

In recent years, an array of critical emotion theorists have emerged who call for change with respect to how emotion theory is done, how emotions are understood, and how we do emotion. In this chapter, I draw on the work that some of these authors have produced to analyze how emotional marginalization of trans and disabled identities is experienced, considering in particular how this emotional marginalization results from the long history of pathologization of trans and disabled people. The past and (...) current pathologization of trans and disabled people is produced through normative assumptions, values, and beliefs that uphold systems of normalcy, including assumptions, values, and beliefs about how we feel and express emotions. In order to examine these issues, I identify three different stages at which emotional marginalization may take place: emotion experience, emotional display, and emotion recognition. In other words, emotional marginalization of trans and disabled people can occur at any of these stages. The central concern of my chapter is thus to show how emotional marginalization, at each of these stages, affects trans and disabled people. (shrink)

This chapter explains how issues of disability should be approached in a society consisting of equal and moral persons. Capabilities are defined in terms of genuine opportunities for secure functioning which are not vulnerable to exceptional risk. It should be done in ways that reduce the negative effects that social structures and the average person's natural and social endowments have on the life prospects of the disabled person. He or she must have genuine opportunities to avail of non-risky functionalities (...) when considered against basic and social institutions. In this way, a person with a disability can function at the same level that an average person without any disability can achieve in similar environmental circumstances. Equal recognition and acceptance of all persons should be promoted. Thus, we can remedy a disability either by relieving a person's impairment or by affording him material resources. (shrink)

In developed economies, powerful legislative and regulatory frameworks, for people with disability over the last five decades, have provided major motivation for business compliance with disability in the workplaces. However, developing economy like India is marked by emergent disability legislation, weak institutional enforcement and an evolving disability rights movement. In the absence of strong institutional expectations, the private sector’s role in mainstreaming the disability agenda has been largely an act of voluntary participation. Drawing upon an (...) in-depth, multilevel, cross-functional qualitative study of four Indian information technology sector companies, this paper explores why these companies engage in pro-social corporate behaviour in favour of disability. The study locates itself in the context of conceptualization of PWD as employee stakeholders and the literature on strategic CSR. The findings reveal that strategic factors promote voluntary business engagement with disability at workplaces and contribute to understanding of workplace integration of minority employees. (shrink)

This paper builds on the work of Tuffrey-Wijne et al. and explores the issue of vulnerability and persons with disabilities in relation to Euthnasia and Assisted Dying. The commentary draws on both the literature and on case examples from Canada. Specifically, it considers the issue of EAS as an alternative to, or substituted for, appropriate disability supports. Secondly, it considers the issue of the devaluation of disabled lives in general and within health care practice and ethics. It concludes that (...) current safeguards are inadequate and that as EAS regimes become more permissive the risk to disabled persons will increase. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the impact of disability on one of life’s goods: achievement. Contra Campbell, Nyholm, and Walter, I argue that construing the magnitude of achievements in terms of subjective effort trivializes what it means to achieve. This poses a problem for the authors’ argument that disability, in general, does not reduce access to this good. I draw on an alternative construal of achievement that I have proposed elsewhere in order to show that, indeed, many disabilities (...) do not restrict access to achievement. I defend this argument against an objection that it problematically relativizes the achievements of persons with disability, and I close with general lessons for future work. (shrink)

This article develops a detailed, empirically driven analysis of the nature of the transition costs incurred in becoming disabled. Our analysis of the complex nature of these costs supports the claim that it can be wrong to cause disability, even if disability is just one way of being different. We also argue that close attention to the nature of transition costs gives us reason to doubt that well-being, including transitory impacts on well-being, is the only thing that should (...) determine the wrongness of causing or removing disability. Non-welfare considerations also defeat the claim that it is always wrong to cause disability. The upshot of these conclusions is that closer attention to the nature of transition costs supports disabled people who strenuously contest the assumption that their well-being is lower than nondisabled people. It also suggests that, in addition, disabled people should contest their opponents’ narrow account of how we should make ethical decisions regarding causing or failing to prevent disability. (shrink)

While rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) hiring tools promise to transform the workplace, these algorithms risk exacerbating existing biases against marginalized groups. In light of these ethical issues, AI vendors have sought to translate normative concepts such as fairness into measurable, mathematical criteria that can be optimized for. However, questions of disability and access often are omitted from these ongoing discussions about algorithmic bias. In this paper, I argue that the multiplicity of different kinds and intensities of people’s (...) disabilities and the fluid, contextual ways in which they manifest point to the limits of algorithmic fairness initiatives. In particular, existing de-biasing measures tend to flatten variance within and among disabled people and abstract away information in ways that reinforce pathologization. While fair machine learning methods can help mitigate certain disparities, I argue that fairness alone is insufficient to secure accessible, inclusive AI. I then outline a disability justice approach, which provides a framework for centering disabled people’s experiences and attending to the structures and norms that underpin algorithmic bias. (shrink)

The current public health crisis has exposed deep cracks in social equality and justice for marginalised and vulnerable communities around the world. The reported rise in the number of ‘do not resuscitate’ orders being imposed on people with disabilities has caused particular concerns from a human rights perspective. While the evidence of this is contested, this article will consider the human rights implications at stake and the dangers associated with using ‘quality of life’ measures as determinant of care in medical (...) decision-making and triage assessments. (shrink)

Disability is often defined as deviation from putative norms of physical, cognitive, or affective function. This definition is normatively laden, causing people with disabilities to be thought of as “different” and treated with pity. We address the predominant theme of this issue on “Disability Identity”: defining and imposing the category of “disability” and attempting to overcome it through medical intervention. The issue culminates in a call for courageous humility as the proper response to encounters with disability, (...) providing medical professionals with the disposition to resist medicine’s inherent drive to fix what is perceived to be broken—that which strays from the norm. We hope that this issue might act as a clarion call to medical professionals to reevaluate how they see and interact with “disability” as a category, and ultimately with people with disabilities, especially with respect to what may be owed to persons with disabilities from society. (shrink)

What is it for something to be a disability? Elizabeth Barnes, focusing on physical disabilities, argues that disability is a social category. It depends on the rules undergirding the judgements of the disability rights movement. Barnes’ account may strike many as implausible. I articulate the unease, in the form of three worries about Barnes’ account. It does not fully explain why the disability rights movement is constituted in such a way that it only picks out paradigmatic (...) disability traits, nor why only the traits identified by the movement as constituting experiences of social and political constraint count as disability. It also leaves out the contribution of people other than disability activists, to the definition of disability. I develop Barnes’ account. On my account, a person is disabled if she is in some state which is constitutive of some constraint on her legitimate interests. This state must be the subject of legitimate medical interest and be picked out by the disability rights movement as among the traits for which they are seeking to promote progress and change. My account addresses the worries about Barnes’ account. It is also able to include all disabilities, rather than only physical ones. (shrink)

This book uses insights from disability studies to understand in a deeper way the ethical implications that genetic technologies pose for Christian thought. Theologians have been debating genetic engineering for decades, but what has been missing from many theological debates is a deep concern for persons with genetic disabilities. In this ambitious and stimulating book, Devan Stahl argues that engagement with metaphysics and a theology of nature is crucial for Christians to evaluate both genetic science and the moral use (...) of genetic technologies, such as human genetic engineering, gene therapy, genetic screenings, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and gene editing. Using theological notions of creation ex nihilo and natural law alongside insights from disability studies, the book seeks to recast the debate concerning genetic well-being. Following the work of Stanley Hauerwas, Stahl proposes the church as the locus for reimagining disability in a way that will significantly influence the debates concerning genetic therapies. Stahl's project in "genethics" proceeds with an acute awareness of her own liberal Protestant tradition's early embrace of the eugenics movement in the name of scientific and medical advancement, and it constructively engages the Catholic tradition's metaphysical approach to questions in bioethics to surpass limitations to Protestant thinking on natural law. Christianity has all too frequently been complicit in excluding, degrading, and marginalizing people with disabilities, but the new Christian metaphysics developed here by way of disability perspectives provides normative, theological guidance on the use of genetic technologies today. As Stahl shows in her study, only by heeding the voices of people with disabilities can Christians remain faithful to the call to find Christ in "the least of these" and from there draw close to God. This book will be of interest to scholars in Christian ethics, bioethics, moral theology, and practical theology. (shrink)

This paper begins by saying enough about eugenics to explain why disability is central to eugenics (section 2), then elaborates on why cognitive disability has played and continues to play a special role in eugenics and in thinking about moral status (section 3) before identifying three reasons why eugenics remains a live issue in contemporary bioethics (section 4). After a reminder of the connections between Nazi eugenics, medicine, and bioethics (section 5), it returns to take up two more (...) specific clusters of issues at the intersection of eugenics, disability, and bioethics. These concern questions of life, death, and reproductive value (section 6) and the value of standpoint theory and epistemology for understanding some of the tensions between bioethics and disability in light of a shared eugenic past (section 7). (shrink)