Abstract
In asking scholars to reflect on the “structures and practices of academic knowledge that render alternative knowledge traditions irrelevant and invisible,” as well as on the ways these must change for the academy to cease “functioning as an instrument of westernization rather than as an authentically global and diverse intellectual commons,” the editor of this special issue of the Journal of Academic Ethics is envisaging a world much needed and much resisted. A great deal of the conversation about diversity in higher education emphasizes, rightly, the need for an international and ethnically diverse population of scholars and students. Less attention is paid to the value of cognitive diversity—the diversity of cognition generated by cognitive disabilities. As one aspect of intellectual diversity, cognitive diversity promises novel ways of thinking and new understandings of what knowledge is, who makes it, and how it is made. The unique value of cognitive diversity is its insistence on a radical shift in our conception of who can know and who can produce knowledge. Insisting on the inclusion, as scholars, of persons with minds labelled disabled, an epistemology of disability pushes us to reform the much criticized but still dominant notion of the expert and scholar as able-bodied and hyper-rational.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
While autism is not considered an LD by most people, there is significant research of late that suggests autism and ADHD are part of the same spectrum disorder, and, in addition, LDs are common comorbidities for autistic persons. In September 2008 the Help Group sponsored the summit, “Advances and Best Practices in Autism, Learning Disabilities and ADHD,” to further explore the intersections of these three types of disability.
References
Asch, A. (2001). Critical race theory, feminism, and disability: Reflections on social justice and personal identity. Ohio State Law Journal, 62(1), 391–424.
Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Boxall, K., Carson, I., & Docherty, D. (2004). Room at the academy? People with learning difficulties and higher education. Disability and Society, 19(2), 99–112.
Carruthers, P. (1996). Autism as mindblindness: An elaboration and partial defence. In P. Carruthers & P. K. Smith (Eds.), Theories of theories of mind (pp. 257–275). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cassuto, L. (2002). Oliver Sacks and the medical case narrative. In S. L. Synder, B. J. Brueggemann, & R. Garland-Thompson (Eds.), Disability studies: Enabling the humanities (pp. 118–130). New York: Modern Language Association of America.
Crane, T. (2001). Elements of mind: An introduction to the philosophy of mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cruickshank, W. M. (1984). Definition: A major issue in the field of learning disabilities. Journal of Rehabilitation, 50(2), 7–18.
Cunningham, S. (2000). What is a mind? An integrative introduction to the philosophy of mind. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Deal, M. (2003). Disabled people’s attitudes toward other impairment groups: A hierarchy of impairments. Disability & Society, 18, 897–910.
Dreyfus, H. (2005). Merleau-Ponty and recent cognitive science. In T. Carman & M. B. N. Hansen (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Merleau-Ponty (pp. 129–150). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, S. (1998). The body as object versus the body as subject: the case of disability. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 1, 47–56.
Elkins, J. (2007). Learning disabilities: Bringing fields and nations together. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 40, 392–399.
Fish, S. (2004). Intellectual diversity. The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/article/Intellectual-Diversity/44764/. Accessed 15 May 2010.
Frith, U. (2003). Autism: Explaining the enigma (2nd ed.). Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Frith, C. (2007). Making up the mind: How the brain creates our mental world. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Gallagher, S., & Varela, F. (2001). Redrawing the map and resetting the time: Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. In S. Crowell, L. Embree & S. J. Julian (Eds.), The reach of reflection: Issues for Phenomenology’s Second Century. Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology. http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~gallaghr/G%26V01.pdf. Accessed 3 July 2009.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2001). Re-shaping, re-thinking, re-defining: Feminist disability studies. Waxman Fiduccia papers on women and girls with disabilities, Center for Women Policy Studies. http://www.centerwomenpolicy.org/pdfs/dis2.pdf. Accessed 6 December 2009.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2002). Integrating disability, transforming feminist theory. NWSA Journal, 14(3), 1–32.
Gertler, B., & Shapiro, L. (2007). What can pathological cases teach us about the mind? In B. Gertler & L. Shapiro (Eds.), Arguing about the mind (pp. 279–388). New York: Routledge.
Gregg, N. (2007). Underserved and underprepared: Postsecondary learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 22, 219–228.
Gualitieri, C. T., & Johnson, L. G. (2005). ADHD: Is objective diagnosis possible? Psychiatry MMC, 2(11). http://www.psychiatrymmc.com/displayArticle.cfm?articleID=article87. Accessed 14 September 2009.
Haier, R. J. (2009) What does a smart brain look like? Scientific American Mind November/December.
Heshusius, L. (2002). More than the [merely] rational: imagining inquiry for ability diversity. Disability, Culture and Education, 1(1), 95–118.
Institute of Education Sciences (2000). Percentage of graduate and first-professional students with disabilities, percentage distribution of students with disabilities according to main disability, and the percentage of students who considered themselves to have a disability, by degree program: 1999–2000. 1999–2000 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/das/library/tables_listings/show_nedrc.asp?rt=p&tableID=239. Accessed 15 July 2009.
ISNT: Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical. http://isnt.autistics.org/. Accessed 30 May 2010.
Izzo, M. V., Hertzfeld, J., Simmons-Reed, E., & Aaron, J. (2001). Promising practices: Improving the quality of higher education for students with disabilities. Disability Studies Quarterly, 21(1). http://www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/251/251. Accessed 25 July 2009.
Jones, S. P. (2008). From marginalization to participation and back again: Including people with learning difficulties in research—But for how long? Disability Studies Quarterly, 28(2). http://www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/95/95. Accessed 25 July 2009.
Kavale, K. A., & Forness, S. R. (2000). What definitions of learning disability say and don’t say. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 33, 239–256.
Kavale, K. A., Spaulding, L. S., & Beam, A. P. (2001). A time to define: Making the specific learning disability definition prescribe the specific learning disability. Learning Disability Quarterly, 32, 39–48.
Kittay, E. F., & Carlson, L. (Eds.). (2010). Cognitive disability and its challenge to moral philosophy. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Kelman, M., & Lester, G. (1997). Jumping the queue: An inquiry into the legal treatment of students with learning disabilities. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Lindemann, K. (2001). Persons with adult-onset head injury: A crucial resource for feminist philosophers. Hypatia, 16(4), 105–123.
Linton, S. (1998). Disability studies/not disability studies. Disability & Society, 13, 525–540.
Lloyd, J. W., & Hallahan, D. P. (2005). Going forward: How the field of learning disabilities has and will contribute to education. Learning Disability Quarterly, 28, 133–136.
McCarthy, M. (1998). Whose body is it anyway? Pressures and control for women with learning disabilities. Disability & Society, 13, 557–574.
Metzinger, T. (2003). Phenomenal transparency and cognitive self-reference. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2(4), 353–393.
Molloy, H. A., & Vasil, L. (2002). The social construction of Asperger syndrome: The pathologizing of difference? Disability & Society, 17(6), 659–669.
Nagler, M. (1990). Perspectives on disability: Text and readings on disability. Palo Alto: Health Markets Research.
O’Hear, A. (2003). Minds and persons. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Parfit, D. (1987). Divided minds and the nature of persons. In C. Blakemore & S. A. Greenfield (Eds.), Mindwaves (pp. 19–28). Oxford: Blackwell.
Parmenter, T. R. (2001). Intellectual disabilities-quo vadis? In G. L. Albrect, K. D. Seelman, & M. Bury (Eds.), Handbook of disability studies (pp. 267–296). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc.
Peters, S. L. (1993). Having a disability ‘sometimes’. Canadian Woman Studies, 13(4), 26–27.
Poplin, M., & Rogers, S. M. (1996). Alternative views of learning disabilities. Austin: PRO-ED, Inc.
Poplin, M., & Rogers, S. M. (2005). Recollections, apologies, and possibilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 28, 159–162.
Proctor, R. N. (2008). Agnotology: A missing term to describe the cultural production of ignorance. In R. N. Proctor & L. Schiebinger (Eds.), Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ignorance (pp. 1–33). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ramachandran,V. S. (2003). Lecture one: Phantoms in the brain. Reith Lectures 2003, BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture1.shtml. Accessed 20 July 2009.
Raymont, P., & Brook, A. (2009). Unity of consciousness. In B. P. McLaughlin, A. Beckermann, & S. Walter (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind (pp. 565–577). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Revensuo, A., & Kampinnen, M. (1994). Consciousness in philosophy and cognitive neuroscience. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Robertson, S. M. (2010). Neurodiversity, quality of life, and autistic adults: Shifting research and professional focuses onto real-life challenges. Disability Studies Quarterly, 30(1). http://www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/1069/1234. Accessed 3 April 2010.
Robertson, S. M., & Ne’eman, A. D. (2008). Autistic acceptance, the college campus, and technology: Growth of neurodiversity in society and academia. Disability Studies Quarterly, 28(4). http://www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/146/146. Accessed 25 May 2010.
Sample, P. (1996). Beginnings: Participatory action research and adults with developmental disabilities. Disability & Society, 11(3), 317–332.
Seelman, K. (2004). Trends in rehabilitation and disability: Transition from a medical model to an integrative model (part 3). Disability World, 22. http://www.disabilityworld.org/01-03_04/access/rehabtrends3.shtml. Accessed 31 July 2009.
Shakespeare, T. (1996). Review of Oliver Sacks’ An anthropologist on Mars. Disability & Society, 11, 137–139.
Sideridis, G. D. (2007). International approaches to learning disabilities: More alike or more different? Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 22, 210–215.
Silvers, Anita. (2009). Feminist perspectives on disability. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, Summer 2009 Edition. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/feminism-disability/. Accessed 4 October 2009.
Sleeter, C. E. (1987). Why is there learning disabilities? A critical analysis of the field in its social context. In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), The formation of school subjects: The struggle for creating an American Institution (pp. 210–237). Philadelphia: The Falmer Press, Taylor & Francis Inc.
Stevens, L. M., & Höien, T. (2001). Learning disabilities in the Netherlands. In D. P. Hallahan & B. K. Keogh (Eds.), Research and global perspectives in learning disabilities (pp. 273–290). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Tait, G. (2007). Free will, moral responsibility and ADHD. In B. Gertler & L. Shapiro (Eds.), Arguing about the mind (pp. 352–371). New York: Routledge. Originally published in International Journal of Inclusive Education, 7, 429–446. (2003).
Tsuge, M. (2001). Learning disabilities in Japan. In D. P. Hallahan & B. K. Keogh (Eds.), Research and global perspectives in learning disabilities (pp. 255–272). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Walmsley, J. (1997). Including people with learning difficulties: Theory and practice. In L. Barton & M. Oliver (Eds.), Disability studies: Past present and future (pp. 62–77). Leeds: The Disability Press.
Wasserman, D. (2001). Philosophical issues in the definition and social response to disability. In G. Albrecht, K. Seelman, & M. Bury (Eds.), Handbook of disability studies (pp. 219–251). London: Sage Publications.
Williams, L., & Nind, M. (1999). Insiders or outsiders: Normalisation and women with learning difficulties. Disability & Society, 14, 659–672.
Woodcock, S. (2009). Disability, diversity, and the elimination of human kinds. Social Theory and Practice, 35(2), 251–278.
Wong, B. Y. L., & Hutchinson, N. (2001). Learning disabilities in Canada. In D. P. Hallahan & B. K. Keogh (Eds.), Research and global perspectives in learning disabilities (pp. 197–216). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
I would like to thank Paul Breines for all he has done to support me. His feedback on earlier drafts of this paper was invaluable, as is his ongoing belief in this project.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
O’Donovan, M.M. Cognitive Diversity in the Global Academy: Why the Voices of Persons with Cognitive Disabilities are Vital to Intellectual Diversity. J Acad Ethics 8, 171–185 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-010-9116-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-010-9116-x