Transhumanists and other proponents of enhancement have been criticized for their attitude to disability. Melinda Hall argues that transhumanists denigrate disabled people by devaluing interdependence and vulnerability, and implying that disabled people are dangerous. It might also be thought that further development of enhancement technologies would have bad consequences within current, ableist and otherwise oppressive social contexts. This paper responds to these objections, arguing that enhancement needn't be in conflict with disability justice. While enhancements can be used and promoted in (...) ways that reinforce ableism and other oppression, ways of mitigating these problems might be found by drawing on ideas from the disability rights movement, and social justice movements more broadly. The development of more accessible environments, and a general openness to surprises about which traits promote well-being, can help to create conditions under which people have genuine choice over which enhancement technologies, if any, to use. (shrink)

This paper assesses how views of disability and enhancement can combine. It is hard to maintain that disabilities and enhancements are both undesirable. Disability-positive views can combine with support for or opposition to enhancement, but not with the view that enhanced traits reliably increase well-being. It is consistent to hold that disability is bad and enhancement good; the plausibility of this combination depends on whether it is better to have more options and fewer limitations. Understanding these combined positions makes it (...) easier to check for consistency by evaluating positions on disability and enhancement against each other. (shrink)

This thesis has three aims. Firstly, to make the case for considering disability and enhancement in parallel. There is an ethical need for debates on enhancement to incorporate disability perspectives, concepts of enhancement depend on concepts of disability, and drawing the two together can help us avoid biases. Secondly, to investigate which views on disability are consistent with which views on enhancement. It is difficult to oppose enhancement while holding that it is bad to be disabled. While some accounts that (...) take a more positive view of disability or impairment, such as the strong social model, might imply that we should change society rather than using enhancements, other disability-positive views, such as the value-neutral model, leave room for the possibility that enhancement is beneficial for some people. Support for enhancement can thus be accompanied by a nuanced understanding of the relationship between disability and well-being, and enhancement need not be in conflict with disability justice. Third, to develop a substantive view on disability and enhancement. Disability, understood as socially salient limitation, is somewhat bad in general or on average, but the position defended leaves room for many cases in which disability is neutral or desirable. This view can thus capture what is right in both bad-difference and mere-difference views. Enhancements, understood as capacity-increasing technologies, are likely to be beneficial to many people, and are important to develop and make widely available. Nevertheless, individuals are not obligated to use them. Developments in these technologies should therefore be accompanied by concrete steps to ensure that society remains as accessible as possible for those who do not use them, just as we should promote accessibility for people considered disabled now. (shrink)