Exploring normativity in disability studies

Abstract

Normativity is a concept that is often misapplied in disability studies, especially in ‘postconventional’ accounts, where the concept is conflated with ‘normal’, ‘normate’, or ‘standard’. This article addresses this confusion, explores the meaning and use of ‘normativity’, and presents some analytic tools to discuss normative issues of right and wrong. The article finishes by discussing examples where conceptual confusions result in confused normative judgments focusing in particular on agency, responsibility and moral status. The article argues that disability research should carefully consider the use of theories and empirical knowledge in the light of their ethical implications as well as the lived experiences of disability.

Keywords:

• Ethics
• moral responsibility
• moral status
• posthumanism

Points of interest

•	This article explores the uses of normativity in disability studies.
•	It is argued that theorists in postconventional disability studies have misconstrued the meaning of normativity and incorrectly conflated it with normality.
•	The article argues for the importance of normative, especially ethical, engagement in relation to disability, and provides some conceptual tools for the examination of moral right and wrong.
•	Posthumanist appeals for collective responsibility, and especially for the pursuit to nullify the separation between humans and animals, may put many disabled people at risk.
•	Finally, the article offers insights about the ethical implications of the use of theories and empirical claims.

Introduction

In their recent paper critiquing critical disability studies, Vehmas and Watson (2014) expressed concern about the theoretical accuracy and practical feasibility of this approach. One area they specifically concentrated on was the neglect of the normative; namely, the ethical and political dimensions that relate to disability. They argued that an adequate examination of disability requires engagement with such moral and political issues. This is because disability both as a phenomenon and as a concept is in its essence normative; it expresses normative ideas and assumptions concerning what kinds of capacities or possibilities people should have or be afforded in order to lead a good life, and/or how society ought to be organised in order to treat its members equally and fairly.

In the traditional medical, individualistic approach, disability is the result from impaired functioning or being and is ameliorated through the promotion of interventions that remove or reduce the impairment. In contrast, social understandings of disability, such as the social model of disability and postconventional or critical disability studies (Shildrick 2012), do not equate impairment with disablement. Disability – that is, the disadvantage experienced by disabled people – is seen to arise from unjust social arrangements and ableist ideologies. Impairment is bracketed and neither the social model or postconventional disability studies say much about the normative issues surrounding impairment; their role in promoting or hindering well-being and people’s pursuit of a good life (Shakespeare 2014; Vehmas 2004; Vehmas and Watson 2014). The social model has concentrated on the societal and material causes of disability whereas postconventional disability studies has mainly produced genealogies and cultural analyses exploring the origins of ableist, discriminatory and oppressive ideas and values. Whilst both of these accounts have a normative motivation in that they seek to promote a society in which the disadvantage experienced by disabled people is removed, the normative dimension in the approaches goes virtually unacknowledged.

It is our aim in this article to address this lacuna and discuss the conditions for the normative scrutiny for disability studies. The first step of establishing such scrutiny is to define what normativity is and to rectify the confusion that currently exists in the way disability studies (especially postconventional accounts) conceptualises normativity and the concept of ‘normative’. In postconventional disability studies the concepts ‘normative’ and ‘normativity’ have become conflated with ‘normal’ or ‘normate’, a conflation that is both unnecessary and false. ‘Normative’ and ‘normality’ do not necessarily relate to each other, and making the false comparison between the two may serve to restrict or even prevent fruitful evaluative discussion on important ethical and political issues that relate to disabled people’s lives. The article then moves on to present some methodological considerations necessary for examining normative issues.

We suggest that the best way to deal with such issues is to resort to the methods provided by philosophical ethics and we propose a conventional analytic philosophical method to address ethical issues related to disability. After this, the article will discuss briefly two examples in postconventional accounts where the conceptual confusions and inadvertent application of theoretical ideas have resulted in confused normative judgments. In particular we will focus on defining agency and responsibility, and the recent posthumanist turn in disability studies and its pursuit to nullify the separation between humans and animals. We will argue that whilst these theoretical openings are interesting, they contain questionable elements which, without further explication, may unintentionally risk the moral agency and rights of some disabled people.

Our aim is not to provide an argument regarding responsibility or moral status (that is beyond the scope of this article) but, rather, to unpack the problematic relationship postconventional approaches have with normativity and its implications. In the final section we offer some reflections on a crucial, related matter; namely, the use of empirical claims in making normative arguments. We will argue that selective and simplified use of empirical knowledge easily misconstrues the normative issues under discussion. Making normative analyses and judgments related to disability cannot be disconnected from the lived experiences of disability. This implies that sound normative analysis requires a sound use of empirical data.

What is ‘normative’ and what it is not

The usage of the term ‘normative’ or ‘normativity’ varies in disability studies. Postmodern formulations have confused the issue by attaching unconventional meanings to the concept, and it has joined Enlightenment as almost a term of abuse. Smith (2004), for example, seeks to oppose definitions of disability based on what he calls ‘normative, positivist, monosemic, professionally-mapped thing founded in disease and filth metaphors’. Garland-Thomson describes how, for her, disabled people are employed as ‘a synecdoche for all forms that culture deems non-normative’ (2013, 335). Normativity and the normate are seen as products of contemporary post-enlightenment science (Dolmage 2014) and as a major source of the oppression faced by disabled people. Because of this, Goodley (2014, 158) calls for what he terms a non/normative dis/ability studies, and states that ‘disability demands non-normative and anti-establishment ways of living life’ (Goodley, Lawthom, and Runswick-Cole 2014, 348). The concept ‘normative’ thus is often used confusingly and has become a synonym for ‘normal’, ‘normate’ or ‘standard’ in disability studies.

This usage of the concept ‘normative’ is misguided in these accounts and it unwarrantedly confuses and complicates the issue. Normativity is an inescapable part of social life – it pervades our lives:

We do not merely have beliefs: we claim that we and others ought to hold certain beliefs. We do not merely have desires: we claim that we and others not only ought to act on some of them, but not others. (O’Neill 1996, xi)

Meaningful dialogue requires mutual agreement of the meaning of words, concepts, laws and so forth; it requires a normative agreement and commitment that a particular word, for example, has one meaning rather than another or that a particular law either condones or judges some actions:

… the successful performance of any speech act presupposes norms of truth, comprehensibility, truthfulness, and appropriateness. Such norms make communication possible, but only by devaluing and ruling out some possible and actual utterances. They are what enable us to speak, at the same time and insofar as they constrain us. (Fraser 1981, 285; original emphases)

On the basis of such normative agreements, we are able to judge statements as correct or incorrect, just or unjust, right or wrong, valid or invalid, and so on. In other words, the normative is a special realm of fact that validates, justifies, makes possible and regulates rules, meanings and reasoning. Where there are humans and social life, there is necessarily normativity as well (Fraser 1981, 285; Sayer 2011, 23; Turner 2010, 1–2).

This is the way the concept ‘normative’ is conventionally used in philosophy; normative judgments, properties, propositions, facts and the like are those that fall on the ought side of the is–ought distinction and on the value side of the fact–value distinction (Enoch 2011, 2–3). Paradigmatic examples of normative propositions would be ‘we ought to support gender equality’, ‘women have a moral right to practice procreative autonomy’ and so on. There are, of course, controversies about how best to make theoretical sense of the ‘fact–value distinction’ or ‘is–ought distinction’, whether such distinctions can justifiably be made in the first place, and whether normativity is a feature of the world or feature of concepts and words (Finlay 2010). However, we are not and we do not need to be concerned about these controversies in this article.

We use the term ‘normative’ here rather broadly to include all evaluative judgments of an ethical sort. We concentrate on a particular subset of normative propositions; namely, ethical judgments concerning disability (political statements are often also normative, but due to the lack of space we will concentrate on ethics). There are various alternative ethical frameworks (e.g. religions) to address issues of moral concern but, in our view, the best way to approach ethical issues is to resort to the analytic tools provided by philosophical ethics.

The field of philosophical ethics is usually divided into three subject areas: meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. Meta-ethics examines the origin and meaning of ethical concepts covering metaphysical issues such as whether morality exists independently of human beings, and psychological issues about the mental basis of moral conduct and the motivation to be moral (for example, Sayre-McCord 2014). Normative ethics is the general study of goodness and right action that aims to formulate moral standards which regulate right and wrong conduct. The main questions of normative ethics are: ‘What kinds of beings should we be like?’ and ‘How are we to live?’ Normative ethics thus aims to describe the best features of human character and manner in a way that could be the basis for normative rules and even law-making and jurisdiction that guide human conduct and behaviour (Frankena 1973; Timmons 2002, 3–4). Applied ethics, in its part, analyses specific, often controversial, practical issues such as abortion, euthanasia or disability rights – the kinds of issues that are largely seen to have a special moral significance. One characteristic of ethical norms regarding cases of special social importance is their compelling and even overriding nature compared with other norms; morality concerns universally or generally obligatory practices (Hare 1963; Scanlon 2000). Moral norms thus may override legal norms should they happen to conflict with moral sentiments. For example, homosexuality was until relatively recently illegal in many western countries but was finally legalised due to the changed general moral convictions. Jurisdiction that conflicts with morality lacks credibility and authority, and people in general are reluctant to knowingly support initiatives or policies that they see to be morally wrong.

Normativity as an inescapable dimension of disability

Disability studies has always included a strong normative dimension, founded as it is on a belief that life for disabled people could be better coupled with a desire to identify and challenge what are seen as discriminatory practices and beliefs. All theoretical accounts in the field contain either implicit or explicit normative judgments about the ethical or political issues that affect disabled people’s lives. Without considering properly the normative dimension related to disability, disability scholars cannot fulfil the practical and theoretical aim of disability studies, namely: to understand disability better, to develop and design appropriate policy responses, and, in general, to make things better for disabled people (Vehmas and Watson 2014).

Postconventional disability studies is not keen to make normative arguments and judgments. This does not, however, mean that it does not adopt a normative stance; it is after all opposed to the discrimination experienced by disabled people, seeks to promote disabled people’s well-being and improve their life opportunities. This is an example of ‘crypto-normativity’ where the normative judgments and their reasons are hidden, and the arguments are presented as if they were non-normative (Fraser 1981). This provides an incomplete and inadequate analysis. To paraphrase Fraser (1981), by rejecting normative scrutiny and the production of clearly articulated normative judgments, postconventional disability studies presumes that we all already agree about what it is that we are opposed to – discrimination against disabled people, hate crime, denial of opportunity, hierarchical treatment of disabled people and so forth – and also that we all agree on why they are bad (they deny opportunity, they remove rights, etc.). Normativity thus becomes a series of ‘oughts’ with little or no evaluation as to why they are classified as such (Sayer 2011). By taking this approach, postconventional disability scholars can no longer account for their own explicit normative judgment, as Fraser (1996, 216) argues in her critique of Butler.

Scholars working in this intellectual tradition typically insinuate how things, as they currently stand, are wrong whilst providing very little practical ethical guidance as to how things ought to be (Sayer 2011, 44 and 229; Vehmas and Watson 2014). Whilst postconventional disability studies clearly is an ethical and political project, exemplified in many recent works (for example, Goodley, Lawthom, and Runswick-Cole 2014; Shildrick 2012), these accounts lack an engagement with the normative issues of how things ought to be. Current postconventional normative analysis does not properly articulate the moral and political wrongs disabled people face, and neither does it give us practical guidelines regarding ways to right those wrongs (cf. Lundblad 2011, 146).

Goodley and Runswick-Cole (2015), for example, have recently produced an analysis of Big Society ideas in the United Kingdom and how the present neo-liberal agenda has damaged disability services and disabled people’s social status in general in the United Kingdom. They conclude that we should question ableist norms guiding social arrangements, and that we should ‘continue to question, destabilise assumptions that marginalise and exclude bodies and minds that are judged to fail to meet the expectations of ableist normativity’ (Goodley and Runswick-Cole 2015, 10). Using the schema developed by Fraser (2013), we would argue that there are two clear claims in the arguments contained in this and other works in postconventional disability studies (see, for example, McRuer 2013; Wolbring 2008). Firstly, disabled people emerge via regulatory systems and forms of normality, and it is only in these highly ableist regulatory schemas that the contemporary disabled subject is constructed. Disabled people become constituted through the power/discourse formations where all subjectivities are always already culturally constructed (Fraser 2013). There is in essence no doer behind the deed.

Secondly, by drawing on the ideas of Foucault, Butler and other poststructuralists, postconventional disability studies implies that the normality-driven practices of subjectification drive subjection. That is, the disabled subject emerges through normative practices that prioritise normality, which serves to exclude and silence ‘the disavowing quality of the normal’ (Goodley 2014, 157). It is only through the silencing of others that authorised subjects can emerge, or, as Goodley (2014, 166) puts it, production of the Über-able results in the production of the ultra-disabled.

This is all fine and good but what does this mean in practice? What kind of guidance does it offer in relation, for example, to impairment-related violence, or improving access to goods and services for those who harm themselves or who are at risk? What does this guiding principle imply in terms of social policy or how to best arrange our societies in order to meet people’s needs fairly? We are fully with Goodley and Runswick-Cole (2015, 10) when they argue that ‘theory can help us to create opportunities for the urgent acts of refusal, revision and resistance needed to bring people in from the cold’, but their words leave us in bafflement as they fail to explicate or offer concrete, constructive examples of how to refuse, revise and resist, and on what grounds. If disability is reduced to discursive norms it becomes difficult to see how policies (always being already normative) can emerge. There is little analysis within postconventional disability studies that explores the economic processes, the social relational and organisational life and the material interests and other non-discursive forms of power that create disability.¹

Here we may be accused of committing the ‘fallacy of externalism’, meaning that we criticise postconventional disability studies for failing to accomplish something which these theorists did not set out to pursue in the first place (Baert and Carreira da Silva 2010, 9). Is it not the case that postconventional disability studies mainly analyses and describes how certain ideas came about without even attempting to offer any normative guidance of how things ought to be? So is our criticism misguided? No, because postconventional accounts of disability highlight ableist ideas, ideologies, representations, policies and so forth that create and further disabled people’s exclusion, marginalisation and oppression. Thus, these accounts point out moral and social evils which means that normativity is at the heart of their analyses. This being the case, it is only proper to ask whether their theories provide us with any tools to settle the moral and political wrongs they have raised.

Methodological considerations

If we want to say something constructive and valid about whether certain practices or policies are morally right or wrong, we need appropriate analytic tools. Producing sound normative arguments regarding issues to do with, say, health, autonomy, dying and justice is admittedly very difficult. Whilst normative issues cannot be settled once and for all with simple knock-down arguments, it is possible to generate constructive normative arguments – a task that we should not give up entirely to philosophers, who often have very little awareness of the complexities of disability. We are highly sceptical whether poststructuralism offers sufficient tools to unpack such issues properly.

We will now outline briefly an application of the traditional analytic philosophical method which, in our view, provides a useful starting point for addressing ethical issues related to disability (see Tooley 1983, 11–18).² The first thing to do is to ‘clarify and evaluate statements and terms that are vague or ambiguous’. This point expresses an aspiration for conceptual clarity and logical soundness. For example, some prominent philosophers have argued that intellectual disabilities are relevant factors when considering abortion or infanticide and they have appealed to such vague and ambiguous concepts as ‘recognizably human life’ (Rachels 1986, 66), ‘normal life’ (Kuhse and Singer 1985, 143) and ‘full human existence’ (Kuhse and Singer 1985, 136). Clearly, these kinds of utterances express ideas of what kind of beings human beings ought to be and what kinds of lives they ought to live, but at the same time they are too vague to be used as a basis for normative judgments regarding, for example, end-of-life issues (Vehmas 1999). Second is ‘detecting and rejecting unreasonable factual claims of a non-ethical sort’. The use of factual, empirical claims inevitably directs the normative arguments and their conclusions. Thus, in the case of disability it is important to acknowledge in a balanced way relevant environmental (including social and geographical) circumstances, historical and cultural factors as well as individual factors (such as impairment effects) that ultimately give meaning to the phenomenon of disability. Third is ‘detecting inconsistencies in ethical positions’. Avoiding logical confusions is a prerequisite to the production of sound and valid (philosophical) argumentation (for example, Häyry 1994, 147–158; Tooley 1983, 11–18). Applying this tool to the examination of postconventional accounts of disability is challenging because of their opacity, even obscurity. We are not always certain what the normative premises of their arguments are, let alone the substance and the logic of their arguments.

One traditional way to produce normative arguments on practical moral problems is to apply an ethical theory to the issue under discussion. One could adopt Kantian premises as a basis for argumentation where certain principles as regards respecting humanity as an end itself, and the intentions of the agents, would be the central points determining the morality of actions (for example, Baron 1997). Or one could resort to consequentialism, which emphasises the obligation to do whatever will produce the best consequences, or the obligation to avoid creating bad consequences (for example, Pettit 1997). A third central approach to ethics is virtue ethics, an agent-focused account with the focus on the virtuous individual and on those inner traits, dispositions and motives that qualify her as being virtuous (for example, Slote 1997). Ethical theories give useful tools and elements for argumentation in applied ethics, but using merely one ethical theory as the criterion for moral judgments can result in simplified, one-sided arguments and views that fail to consider the complexity and variety of moral realm related to disability (a classic example of this would be Singer’s writing on disability; see later).

One fruitful way of unpacking, for example, the significance of impairment regarding well-being and a good life is to conceptualise the issue in terms of instrumental and intrinsic considerations and whether disadvantages related to disability are the result of impairment effects, disablism or a combination of both. Instrumental factors are those things that enhance human well-being, and provide the means to achieve things that are of intrinsic value. Intrinsic factors, on the other hand, are things that are intrinsically valuable; that is, valuable in a way that needs no further explanation or justification (such as happiness). These criteria are problematic in many ways but they are also inevitable: we do need to make judgments about what is good or bad for people in order to make decisions regarding, for example, medical treatment, public policy or education (Vehmas 2012; Vehmas and Watson 2014).

In the following sections we will discuss two issues recently raised within postconventional disability studies; namely, suggestions about new ways to conceptualise agency and responsibility, and human–animal relation. We have selected these examples because they contain normative elements which the authors of these accounts have ignored. This shortcoming is a logical outcome of the postconventional disability studies that plays with novel ideas without proper engagement with their normative implications. In what follows we employ these concepts to examine the soundness of these suggestions and their validity in making normative judgments. We will point out that these conceptualisations, whilst interesting, are also ambiguous and fail to take into account the following normative corollaries.

Responsibility and agency: ableist ideals of enlightenment?

The notions of competency and capability have long been used as a means of excluding disabled people from a range of different settings including education, work and leisure activities, as well as denying them access to opportunities such as relationships, parenting and friendships (Goodley 2014, 156). The response of much of postconventional disability studies has been to analyse the cultural origins of this exclusion, but whilst this genealogy may explain why this has happened and explore the ideological origins, it fails to unpack carefully why they are wrong. Goodley acknowledges that there is a need for a normative stance but argues that calls for normative judgments run the risk of ‘leaving dis/ability only in the realm of normative [sic] … [and] ignoring the productive potential of dis/ability to crip a whole host of norms that are, in actuality, limiting and stifling’ (2014, 158). These, he suggests, include characteristics such as rationality, capability, responsibility and competency; which he identifies as ableist ideals, part of the modernist humanistic subject (2014, 156). This raises a number of questions such as whether rationality and responsibility are normatively on a par with irrationality and irresponsibility. Surely not. Homophobia, for example, is an irrational and morally harmful mindset. It is based on irrational fears about contagion, divine retribution and so forth, and results in moral harms to sexual minorities such as discrimination, hate speech and hate crime.

How about (ir)responsibility? Imagine Bill is by himself taking care of his infant child at his family’s remote country house and all of a sudden feels an irresistible urge to drink three bottles of wine. Getting intoxicated is, perhaps, a perfectly legitimate interest as such, but in those circumstances it would compromise Bill’s capability to properly supervise his child and thus put the child at risk and in danger. In other words, rationality and responsibility in general are good, irrationality and irresponsibility are bad.

These ideals as such are not the problem; the problem is their application and the way they are used to discriminate against disabled people. For example, parents with intellectual disabilities are too easily labelled as incompetent and irresponsible because of their cognitive capacities, as Goodley (2014, 156) points out. But judging whether someone is fit to raise children does not necessarily need to involve disablism of any kind. Parents who neglect or maltreat their children for whatever reason may do so despite excellent support. In these kinds of undoubtedly very difficult cases, society has not just a right to intervene and take their children into custody, but actually a duty. Things like child protection as such are not about, for example, disability or drug abuse, they are about promoting children’s well-being (we are, of course, fully aware that in practice child protection does too often include disablism and other forms of prejudice). Thus, we should be careful not to throw out the baby with the water and we should not abandon a perfectly legitimate ideal due its occasional misplaced application. Removing disablism or ableism from the equation will not resolve all ethical issues related to disability.

Goodley, Lawthom, and Runswick-Cole (2014) argue that we should rethink the humanist notions of agency, responsibility and subjectivity, and they have drawn on Braidotti’s posthuman subjectivity, which argues for ‘partial form of accountability, based on a strong sense of collectivity, relationality … an affirmative bond that locates the subject in the flow of relations with multiple others’ (Braidotti 2013, 49–50). These kinds of formulations with references to partial accountability raise questions regarding moral and legal responsibility: should we abandon the idea of an individual as an agent who is responsible for his or her actions? It is not clear what Braidotti or Goodley et al. specifically imply with these kinds of formulations. However, their calls for posthuman subjectivity can, if consistently applied, be seen to include notions of collective agency and responsibility. Assuming this is the case, we will now briefly examine whether this would be a reasonable alternative foundation in understanding subjectivity, agency and responsibility.

Western philosophy and our legal system are based on the premise that we can reasonably ascribe praise or blame to autonomous people for their actions and omissions. Responsibility ascriptions require moral agency, meaning, the capacity to evaluate reasons for acting. Consider, for example, that your careless cat accidently breaks your valuable ceramic sculpture. Whilst the cat was causally responsible for the destruction and may well make you feel regret and even anger, to feel moral indignation would be clearly unwarranted. The cat is not a moral agent, a being that is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong. On the other hand, if the sculpture was deliberately broken by a neighbour who was envious and broke it in order to hurt you, resentment and moral indignation would be appropriate. In other words, judgments about individuals’ moral responsibility relate to views about, first, their relevant capacities to evaluate reasons for acting, second, their possibilities to act freely and, third, possible excusing factors (Eshleman 2009; Fischer and Ravizza 1998, 1–2). All of these three factors are relevant to disability studies and are unavoidable when considering praiseworthiness or blameworthiness. For example, what kinds of capacities are relevant for one’s responsibility and how do we measure them? Or what kinds of conditions may limit one’s capacity to act freely and in ways that are out of their control; are the acts of someone with, say, antisocial personality disorder merely involuntary reactions that stem from his or her brain functions – a bit like sneezes or seizures and thus forgivable (Arpaly 2005, 290–291)?

Issues to do with moral responsibility are complex but they are even more complex when responsibility is extended to groups: can we meaningfully talk about collective responsibility? Collective responsibility means ascribing causal responsibility and blameworthiness to groups and their collective actions. Ideas about collective agency and responsibility raise various difficult issues such as whether collective responsibility is an aggregative phenomenon, something that transcends the contributions of individual group members. Imagine several people overturning a police car in a protest; is it more accurate to describe this act in terms of shared responsibility where each individual taking part in the action is individually responsible for the state of affairs, or should we assign responsibility to a single entity, the collective, consisting of the number of people who constitute it? A related matter is that of agency. Moral responsibility can reasonably be seen as something that requires agency; that is, capability to act intentionally. If we assume the simple view that an ‘agent is, by definition, something that acts; and if, at a time, something acts, that thing is an agent then’ (Mäkelä 2013, 8), can collectives be seen as agents? It would seem peculiar to claim that groups think as groups or that they formulate intentions (i.e. mental states) that guide their actions. It seems more credible to think that it is the persons who constitute the group, and it is their individual intentions and actions together that form collective actions. But, on the other hand, there are cases that cannot be true of individuals but only of collectives; for example, a football match is won by a team and a president is elected by a nation. It is only collectives that can perform such acts and these acts are based on collective beliefs, intentions and agreements. At the same time, however, it would seem odd to infer that this proves the existence of a collective mind which guides the group’s actions. Instead, the group members’ individual minds produce beliefs, desires and so forth, and together they form a kind of derivative collective mind with concomitant collective actions. Even if it was correct to ascribe causal responsibility and blameworthiness, and thus moral responsibility, to a collective entity, various worries would remain; would collective responsibility have any moral, judgmental force and, if it did, how could we avoid injustices where agents were held responsible for someone else’s actions?

Talk about collective or shared agency and responsibility is by no means arbitrary in the case of, for example, ethnic communities and social movements, but it does include problems that should not be dismissed lightly in disability studies. If we are to apply these ideas to disability, we have to specify the ontology of such a conception (what is a collective agent as opposed to an individual agent) as well as the ethical issues related to it (how can we ascribe moral responsibility to groups). The idea of ‘expanded identity’ (Goodley and Rapley 2002) seems useful and plausible in the case of, for example, people with intellectual disabilities, but it should be implemented with caution because if we absolve someone from individual moral responsibility and individual moral agency, we might be seen to question and nullify that individual’s entitlement to moral rights.

Posthumanism and disability: why being human matters

Western philosophy and thought in general have traditionally emphasised certain characteristics that separate humans from non-human animals and what makes us distinctively human. In philosophy, the concept of a ‘moral being’ denotes a being that merits rights and is capable of acting morally. It has been argued that only rational beings can be moral, which allegedly implies that non-human animals as well as some people with cognitive disabilities are ‘amoral’ beings. Their behaviour, even if harmful or otherwise undesirable, is not seen as immoral but merely as regrettable, an unavoidable consequence of their not knowing better. In everyday morality and in moral philosophy (at least in the works of such classics as Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Mill), rationality and practical reason are attributed to adult human beings whose intelligence is ‘normal’ (Sapontzis 1980; Vehmas 2004). Thus, it can reasonably be argued that many disabled people are, according to some ethical theories, marginal human beings (Silvers 1998, 3). This moral philosophical tradition is found in contemporary philosophical ethics by such notable philosophers as Peter Singer (1993) and Jeff McMahan (2002).

Understandably, many disability activists and researchers have had a critical and hostile attitude towards philosophy and philosophers (Oliver 2007; Schöne-Seifert and Rippe 1991). Speculations about the moral significance of individual characteristics have been abandoned as disablist and even eugenic (Koch 2011), and the mere humanity of all disabled people has been seen as the axiomatic foundation of their equal, unquestionable moral worth. Considering this history, it is somewhat surprising that posthumanist accounts have gained increasing popularity in disability studies (Goodley, Lawthom, and Runswick-Cole 2014; Nayar 2013).

Posthumanism argues, among other things, that human beings should not have a priori ethical primacy over non-human animals, and that any moral hierarchy as well as the division between humans and animals is false and based on ‘ethical parochialism’ (Wolfe 2010, 61). Goodley, Lawthom, and Runswick-Cole have used Braidotti’s ideas of contesting anthropocentrism and the superior moral value of humans compared with other species, and valuing death as much as life, to claim that:

disability is the quintessential posthuman condition: because it calls for new ontologies, ways of relating, living and dying. (Goodley, Lawthom, and Runswick-Cole 2014, 348; original emphasis)

This contention is at best vague and equivocal and creates more questions than it answers.

If the humanist legacy and its conviction of the superior moral value of human beings over non-human animals are abandoned, postconventional disability studies ends up in the murky theoretical waters of moral status. This is clearly something they do not want to do, probably because their poststructuralist theoretical tools give them very little capacity to deal with such issues (see Sayer 2011). Imagine, for example, that you can save from a burning building either a human that is a stranger to you or your beloved dog. Should a paramount moral consideration in such a case be the biological species, or the presumably more advanced cognitive capacities of the human, or the special relation you have to your dog?

The most well-known and carefully articulated arguments with the aim to abolish anthropocentrism and speciesism in ethical thinking are those provided by philosophers promoting animal rights. Both Singer (1993) and McMahan (2002) have offered arguments to support the notion that belonging to the species Homo sapiens is morally irrelevant. What matters morally, they argue, are intrinsic psychological characteristics and other morally significant factors such as sentience. Based on such reassessments of moral status, being human no longer automatically secures one’s moral worth but, rather, their psychological and intellectual capacities.

It is easy to theorise that humans and animals form an assemblage of subjects with equal worth, but it is more difficult to put this ideal into practice. In a world with limited resources, should we prioritise, for example, the health care of animals rather than humans? If not, clearly humans are morally more valuable than animals. If one finds this widely held moral intuition unacceptable, one should come up with an argument that plausibly proves that moral worth should be distributed equally to different species, and accept the logical conclusions of such an argument. Toying with the ideas provided by posthumanism may be useful to disability studies, but in our view such ideas should not be adopted without caution. For example, what would be the implications of ‘the displacement of anthropocentrism and the recognition of trans-species solidarity’ and viewing ‘subjectivity as an assemblage that includes non-human agents’ (Braidotti 2013, 67 and 82)? Goodley, Lawthom, and Runswick-Cole seem to suggest that it is not problematic to make a comparison between non-human animals and disabled people, because all humans are ultimately animals too:

The problem is not that some categories of human are treated like animals; the problem resides in the unconscious desire of the human condition to treat animals in inhumane ways; and treat some humans as if they were animals. We think that reinvigorating discussion around human/animal relations around disability might provide the necessary conditions and impetus for revaluing animals and humans as sharing a posthuman space of becoming. (2014, 355)

This call for revaluing animals and humans as constituting a common posthuman condition somewhat resembles, again, the points raised by philosophers supporting animal rights and questioning the equal worth of humans with, for example, profound intellectual disabilities. We assume that posthumanist disability scholars do not wish to join Singer and McMahan in their ableist and disablist endeavour, and if so perhaps they should be a bit more hesitant in their embrace of Braidotti’s ideas. If we are to do away with categories and moral hierarchies between different biological species, and hold on to the idea of humans and non-humans constituting an equal moral class, one ends up in highly counter-intuitive conclusions (Curtis and Vehmas 2016). In this ethical scenario, it would be wrong to assume that human beings in themselves are morally more valuable than pet dogs, and pet dogs are more valuable to their owners (and possibly even in themselves) than vertebrates in general, and that vertebrates are more valuable than non-vertebrates. These kinds of hierarchies result from virtually all traditional ethical theories, albeit for different reasons (Curtis and Vehmas 2014). If these hierarchies are to be replaced with the notion of ‘posthuman space of becoming’, things such as sentience, capacity to reason and close relationships would perhaps no longer be morally paramount. But if that is the case, posthumanists need to argue in more detail exactly what should be the basis of the moral worth of different kinds of humans and animals.

Further, consider McMahan’s argument that those diagnosed with severe cognitive disability are psychologically comparable with non-human animals such as dogs, and are only able to achieve a level of well-being equal to that of ‘a contented dog’ (2002, 153). Most people would find this comparison at best questionable, if not offensive. This is because our collectively held ethical convictions are constructed narratively due to the various historical happenings and processes that have contributed to the general conceptions of right and wrong, good and bad. Particular historical episodes, such as the holocaust or the systematic mistreatment of disabled people in twentieth-century institutions, have had a tremendous effect on our moral thinking and at least in principle we consciously aim to prevent such atrocities ever happening again. One upshot of this is the general belief that we should pay special attention to protecting the equal worth of various minorities, including individuals with profound cognitive disabilities. In other words, regarding such individuals as morally more valuable than non-human animals is a reasonable upshot of the collective moral narrative of the western world. Naturally, this does not prove that maintaining such narrative ethical norms is philosophically justified, but pragmatically, and from the viewpoint of humans with profound cognitive disabilities and their families, it makes perfect sense. History has also taught us that it makes perfect sense to shun philosophical analyses that draw a parallel between individuals with such disabilities and animals – regardless of the empirical validity of the equation. Thus, perhaps there are, after all, good normative reasons to separate non-human animals from humans.

The humanist tendency to favour human beings compared with other beings can be seen as a prejudice similar to racism and sexism, or it can be seen as an inevitable part of morality being fundamentally a human endeavour; it is, after all, ‘closely tied to the human perspective and the human motivational capacity because its point is the regulation of human conduct’ (Nagel 1986, 186). Besides, by definition, being humane involves not only showing compassion and tenderness towards humans, but to non-human animals as well (we do not, however, wish to contradict the claim that humans do treat animals systematically in inhumane ways) (Williams 2006, 147).

All in all, posthumanism may provide useful insights and we agree that animality should be seen as a crucial part of humanity. This would not be a new idea; it would simply be a reformulation of Aristotle’s notion of humans as political animals. In this view, rationality, sociability and animality are aspects of humanity that are thoroughly unified. Our animality includes corporeality and the inevitable dependency on others and their care for us in the different phases of our lives (MacIntyre 1999, 81–98; Nussbaum 2006, 159–160). Also, perhaps we should reconsider the moral status of animals, how we treat them and live with them; for example, perhaps we should stop eating meat and grant at least some animals moral rights. But this should be kept separate from the moral worth of humans, and especially those humans who are in the most vulnerable position. Included here are disabled people, too many of whom are still forced to live in animal-like conditions. The superior moral worth of all human beings in comparison with animals is a widely accepted conviction that should not be lightly abandoned. Thus, we are not convinced that the posthumanist agenda to eradicate epistemic and moral division between humans and animals serves disability theory or the good of disabled people. Putting humans and animals in the same box opens up the door for speculations about moral worth where disabled people are likely to be on the losing side.³

Whilst there are good ethical reasons to reconsider the moral worth of animals, one should, however, be cautious to suggest the reconsideration of the dichotomy between human beings and animals, let alone the moral supremacy of human beings. The requirement that ethical decision-making should be made from an impartial viewpoint to consider all beings equally is impossible if it is not ‘involved in the peculiarities of the human enterprise’ (Williams 2006, 147). Bernard Williams (2006, 148) argues that this is the unavoidable consequence of the evolutionary plateau we live on at the moment, and the range of abilities it provides us with. In the disability context this makes perfect sense; we live in a disablist world that continues to question the moral worth of disabled people. When we pursue theoretical explanations that would reduce or hopefully remove this form of oppression, we have to take into account the reality where it is implemented. The reality, in our view, is still too ignorant and dismissing about disability rights in order to suggest comparisons between disabled human beings and non-human animals.

Conclusion: empirical claims and normativity

Philosophical ethics, particularly bioethics, has been criticised for construing disability in a reductionist manner and downplaying the social factors affecting people’s disablement. Disability is too often portrayed in a homogeneous, uncontextualised, uninformed and prejudiced way where the complexities of the lived experiences are ignored (Vehmas 2004, 2012). In short, philosophers have not let the empirical reality get in the way of argument. We are concerned, however, that the emphasis of the cultural at the expense of the material found in postconventional disability studies has a similar kind of tendency to emphasise one-sidedly only certain characteristics of disability whilst downplaying others, and this runs the risk of misconstruing not just the lives of disabled people but also the crucial ethical issues.

It is important to recognise the fine line between descriptive and prescriptive empirical claims. For example, to describe disability in terms of opportunity (Goodley 2014) or limited opportunity (Harris 2001) actually prescribes the empirical description either in a positive or negative fashion; Goodley (2014, 158) makes an explicit normative judgment by describing the lived experience of impairment in terms of ‘productive potential’ or ‘cripping potentialities’, whereas Harris (2001, 384) interprets similar empirical reality as a deprivation of possibilities. Bearing this in mind, it is crucial to pay attention to the way empirical data are used. We would suggest that there are at least three factors that should be born in mind when using empirical claims to support normative judgments. First, it is crucial to recognise the societal and cultural (usually disablist) reality where disability is defined and experienced. The surrounding social, cultural and ideological environment necessarily affects the subjective experiences of disablement. Secondly, as Thomas (1999) reminds us, impairments matter. The surrounding community, society and natural environment can make a dramatic difference in terms of impairment effect but, at the end of the day, one’s life in a society, in a culture, is an embodied existence which affects the way one deals with the environment and with others. This notwithstanding, we need to consider carefully the impact of different impairments in different circumstances and how subjective experiences reflect historical and cultural consciousness. Nevertheless, the difficulties that disabled people confront are not only matters of access to resources and public spaces – they are cultural and aesthetic as well, but importantly they are always embodied (Blume 2012, 354; Shakespeare and Watson 2001). For example, chronic pain can greatly affect disabled children’s subjective well-being (Colver et al. 2015). Fatigue, the gradual loss of muscular functioning, loss of memory, sight or hearing are central to the experience of impairment effects to many disabled people, and to ignore these experiences would be one way to produce skewed accounts of disability that fail to do justice to disabled people’s experiences. Thus, ‘the corporeal quality of disabled experience [should be] reclaimed’, as Stuart Blume (2012, 354) has put the matter. Giving more room to subjective voices will challenge theory, making it uncomfortably unpredictable as they may not submit to single theoretical accounts that emphasise the role of either material, cultural or structural in their constructions of disablement.

Third, empirical representations have normative implications. There is no absolute neutral ground, and because disability studies engages directly with those who suffer moral and political wrongs, research must be guided by a moral and political commitment to disability rights (see Oliver 1992). This means that whilst we can and should emphasise the positive potentialities of disability, we must not ignore or downplay the undesirable effects impairments sometimes have. Acknowledging the negative elements related to some impairments does not conflict with celebrating difference. It is only sensible and sensitive, and is required in order to ensure proper care and treatment. Our normative conclusion, thus, is that disability studies needs to maintain a normative commitment to benefit the well-being of disabled people without rejecting truthful empirical descriptions, and risking the integrity of academic research.

Funding

This work was supported by Kulttuurin ja Yhteiskunnan Tutkimuksen Toimikunta [grant number SA 275988].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Similar critiques have been applied to poststructuralist accounts of gender by Connell (2012).

2. This methodological outline is admittedly cursory. Owing to space limitations we cannot present various requirements related to philosophical argumentation regarding, for example, the role of thought experiments, common sense, scientific evidence, generalisations and so on (for example, Daly 2010; Walton 2006).

3. We admit that some forms of posthumanism may provide a positive potential for the re-evaluation of the moral worth of human beings and non-human animals. As Wolfe (2010) argues, posthumanism need not reject humanism and the many valuable ethical notions it has introduced, but it needs to be critical to the ideological, ethical and political conventions of liberal humanism that exclude non-human animals and many disabled people from moral worth. To paraphrase Wolfe (2010, 137), we ought not to succumb to the kind of pragmatism that achieves certain gains in the short run, but at the price of a radical foreshortening of a more profound pluralistic ethical project that acknowledges the value of (human) beings other than white, able-bodied, heterosexual and so on.