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Sean Aas, Dana Howard, and Leslie Francis raise compelling and interesting objections to the definition of disability I defend in The Minority Body. In this paper, I reply to these objections and elaborate on my criticisms of the disability/impairment distinction.
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Notes
See my (2016): ‘Realism and Social Structure’. Philosophical Studies Volume 174, Issue 10, pp 2417–2433 for elaboration. See also, most especially, Sally Haslanger (2012): Resisting Reality. Oxford: OUP.
See, for example, Quayshawn Spencer (2014): ‘A Radical Solution to the Race Problem.’ Philosophy of Science 81 (5):1025–1038.
As in, e.g., Chike Jeffers (2013). ‘The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois's “The Conservation of Races”’. Ethics 123 (3):403–426.
See, for example, Tommie Shelby (2002). ‘Foundations of Black solidarity: Collective identity or common oppression?’ Ethics 112 (2):231–266.
See especially Naomi Zack (1994): Race and Mixed Race. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
It’s no part of the metaphysical commitments of racial error theory, for example, that racial categories like ‘black’ shouldn’t be invoked in our current census, public health surveys, and so on.
Interestingly though, the ADA’s regulations specify that ‘cosmetic disfigurement’ [my emphasis] can count as an impairment.
See my The Minority Body, Oxford: OUP, p. 13–38.
The ADA’s regulations specify that impairment should be understood as including: ‘any physiological disorder or condition, cosmetic disfigurement, or anatomical loss affecting one or more body systems, such as neurological, musculoskeletal, special sense organs, respiratory (including speech organs), cardiovascular, reproductive, digestive, genitourinary, immune, circulatory, hemic, lymphatic, skin and endocrine. They also cover any mental or psychological disorder, such as intellectual disability (formerly termed mental retardation), organic brain syndrome, emotional or mental illness, and specific learning disabilities.’ [Section 1630.2(h)] So impairment is defined by ostension, with ‘disorder or condition’ left open to interpretation.
The Minority Body, p. 46.
Mike Rea pressed me on this point when I was working on this material, and I didn’t listen to him. I’m sure I’m not the only person who finds themselves wondering, several years down the line, if Mike Rea was right all along. Mike, if you’re reading this, mea culpa.
Aas and Howard (this volume).
US Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, ‘Questions and Answers on the Final Rule Implementing the ADA Amendments Act of 2008’ https://www1.eeoc.gov//laws/regulations/ada_qa_final_rule.cfm?renderforprint=1.
As such, they’re right to note that being gay isn’t properly understood as an impairment. My appeal to orientation in the book, however, was specifically to raise a problem for Boorse’s original (and still popular) account of normal function in terms of contribution to survival and reproduction. As I note explicitly (The Minority Body, note 14, p. 15), Boorse’s later discussions of his normal function account suggest ways to avoid this problem, but only by making the account more teleological and thus, to my mind, less plausibly naturalistic.
See especially Tamara Kayali Browne (2015): ‘Is Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder Really a Disorder?’ Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 12 (2):313–330.
See especially Allan Horowitz and Jerome C. Wakefield (2007): The Loss of Sadness. Oxford: OUP.
This is not to say that the person experiencing depression is in the same psychological state as the person experiencing intense sadness—these states may be neurochemically or phenomenologically very different things. But Aas and Howard’s model requires only that a psychological state be regularly regarded as an impairment, not that the state actually be an impairment. And it since contemporary psychiatric diagnostic practices struggle to differentiate depression from ordinary sadness, it seems plausible that ordinary sadness—when intense or particularly visible—can often be regarded as an impairment, and stigmatized as such.
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Barnes, E. Against impairment: replies to Aas, Howard, and Francis. Philos Stud 175, 1151–1162 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1075-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1075-x