Disability and Mere Difference

Ethics 126 (3):774-788 (2016)
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Abstract

Some disability activists argue that disability is merely a difference. It is often objected that this view has unacceptable implications, implying, for example, that it is permissible to cause disability. In reply, Elizabeth Barnes argues that viewing disability as a difference needn’t entail such implications and that seeing such implications as unacceptable is question-begging. We argue that Barnes misconstrues this objection to the mere difference view of disability: it’s not question-begging to regard its implications as unacceptable, and the grounds that Barnes offers for potentially blocking some of these implications fail to explain our conviction that it’s impermissible to cause disability.

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Guy Kahane
Oxford University

Citations of this work

Disability, Transition Costs, and the Things That Really Matter.Tommy Ness & Linda Barclay - 2023 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 48 (6):591-602.
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Well-being, Opportunity, and Selecting for Disability.Andrew Schroeder - 2018 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 14 (1).
Expressivism at the beginning and end of life.Philip Reed - 2020 - Journal of Medical Ethics 46 (8):538-544.

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References found in this work

One principle and three fallacies of disability studies.J. Harris - 2001 - Journal of Medical Ethics 27 (6):383-387.
Non-identity, self-defeat, and attitudes to future children.Guy Kahane - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 145 (2):193-214.

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