Disability: a justice-based account

Abstract

Most people have a clear sense of what they mean by disability, and have little trouble identifying conditions they consider disabling. Yet providing a clear and consistent definition of disability is far from straightforward. Standardly, disability is understood as the restriction in our abilities to perform tasks, as a result of an impairment of normal physical or cognitive human functioning (in combination with our social, political, and environmental context, and our resource share). However, which inabilities matter? We are all restricted by our bodies, and are all incapable of performing some tasks, but most of these inabilities are not considered disabilities. If, then, we are to avoid the category of disability becoming overly broad—and thus politically and practically useless—we need some way of picking out the specific inabilities that are disabling. I argue that our answer should be informed by an account of the opportunities individuals are entitled to be able to perform as a matter of justice. Thus, to be disabled is to have these opportunities restricted, and not to deviate from the species norm or lack any ability that might improve our well-being.

Public Justification, Evaluative Standards, and Different Perspectives in the Attribution of Disability

“…Instead, the focus should be on specific impairments or incapacities and on the difficulties people encounter in their lives. 3 We think that this view can be compatible with the model of public justification that we propose. We elaborate on this below.…”

“…In some cases, arbitrary psychiatric classifications have assumed the most brutal forms of political repression: ""Misfits" and politically unwanted citizens were regularly deemed psychiatric patients because of their deviant behavior" ( [2] p. 258). Additionally, recent contributions highlight the importance of a fair definition of values and entitlements of justice for the determination of disability [3][4][5][6][7] and the social and political components of mental disabilities [8,9]. Moreover, the political dimension is underscored by activists who reject the qualification of disability for their condition, which they instead describe as minority 1 , diverse, or atypical.…”

“…To establish that a person has a mental disability, we need to determine that her deprivation of capabilities (for example, for working and socializing) below a certain threshold is not caused by the absence of external dimensions of capabilities at the required level (because of dysfunctional social conditions or environments) or economic deprivation. In this case, we would have an unfair attribution of disability and a dysfunctional society, as denounced by Begon [3][4][5] and Glackin [6].…”

Against Intuitive Horribleness

“…No. There is a significant body of work showing such a claim to be false (e.g., Barnes 2016;Begon 2020). This research demonstrates that the relationship between various impaired/disabled states and well-being is instead extremely complicated (Campbell and Stramondo 2017).…”

“…As I hope is clear at this point in the argument, the cognitive dissonance explanation is merely another case of able-bodied people engaging in epistemic injustice against people with disabilities, a case, like the others, that gains steam through charges of "intuitive horribleness." 30 This holds whether one defends a mere-difference, justice-based, or other sort of empirically informed theory of disability (Barnes 2016;Begon 2020).…”