Some moral issues in the correction of impairments

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 128-145

  Wasserman, David ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANALYTICAL APPROACH; ARTICLE; CHILD PARENT RELATION; COCHLEA PROSTHESIS; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; DISABLED PERSON; ETHICS; HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH; HUMAN; HUMAN RELATION; MINORITY GROUP; PATIENT; POLICY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; REHABILITATION; SELF CONCEPT; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; TREATMENT REFUSAL;

ANALYTICAL APPROACH; HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH;

COCHLEAR IMPLANTS; CULTURE; DISABLED PERSONS; HEARING IMPAIRED PERSONS; HUMANS; INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS; MINORITY GROUPS; PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS; PUBLIC POLICY; REHABILITATION; SELF CONCEPT; SOCIAL IDENTIFICATION; SOCIAL VALUES; TREATMENT REFUSAL;

EID: 2542553609     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.1996.tb00241.x     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. [B]lindness is an impairment but lack of access to written communication is a disability - a socially determined state of affairs that could be solved by more extensive braille production, more money to pay for "readers" and the greater use of taped material. Similarly, not being able to walk is an impairment but lack of mobility is a disability, a situation which is socially created and could be solved by the greater provision of electric wheelchairs, wider doorways and more ramps and lifts. Sally French, "Disability, Impairment or Something in Between?" in J. Swain, V. Finkelstein, S. French, and M. Oliver, eds., Disabling Barriers - Enabling Environments, (London, 1993), 17.
2. If, for example, an operation were introduced which transformed black people into white or men into women.[it] would be universally rejected by these groups," Vic Finkelstein, "The Commonality of Disability," in J. Swain, V. Finkelstein, S. French, and M. Oliver, eds., Disabling Barriers - Enabling Environments, (London, 1993), 9.
3. Edward Dolnick, "Deafness as Culture," Atlantic Monthly, (Sept., 1993): 37, 38.
4. Martha Nussbaum, "Aristotelian Social Democracy," in R.B. Douglass, G. Mara, and H. Richardson, eds, Liberalism and the Human Good (New York, 1990).
5. Martha Nussbaum, "Human Functioning and Social Justice: A Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism," Political Theory 20 (1992).
6. At an extreme, Mary Midgley suggests the hardship of living among creatures with whom one does not share the same basic endowment: [Zoology] would back our impression that, for a full life, a developing social creature needs to be surrounded by beings very similar to it in all sorts of apparently trivial ways, ways which abstractly might not seem important, but which will furnish essential clues for the unfolding of its faculties... [A child raised by wolves] would, presumably, have mixed imprinting and have gained some foothold in both worlds, but would be lonely in both - would be excluded from many central joys, and would keep getting himself misunderstood on both sides. Certainly he might gain some kinds of understanding which would be some compensation for this. But the price paid would be terribly heavy - a far deeper variety of "being at home nowhere" than that which afflicts people brought up to oscillate between two cultures. "The Significance of Species," in Eugene Hargrove, ed., The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate: The Environmental Perspective (Albany: SUNY Press: 1992). As Midgley suggests, the misfortune of hybrid creatures is not so much sterility as isolation. Obviously, people who lack an important species-typical function like vision do not differ as comprehensively from the other members of their community as a child among wolves. But their estrangement may still be quite profound.
7. John Hull, Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness, (New York, 1991), 195.
8. Harlan Lane, The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community, (New York, 1992), 18.
9. See Oliver Sacks, "The Revolution of the Deaf," New York Review of Books, 35(9): 23 (June 2, 1988), 26
10. Foreword to the Vintage Edition, Touching the Rock, (John Hull), xv.
11. Thus, P.F. Strawson has argued that it may not be possible to experience a world of objective, re-identifiable particulars through hearing alone. "Sounds," Ch. 2, in Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, (London, 1959)
12. Recent writing on "Molyneux's problem" - On whether a person acquiring vision for the first time as an adult would immediately recognize the shapes he saw as the same he knew by touch - suggests that the connection between visual and tactile experiences of the world is especially close, e.g., Judith Thomson, "Molyneux's Problem," journal of Philosophy, 71 (1974): 637
13. W.P. Grice, "Some Remarks about the Senses," in R.J. Butler, ed., Analytical Philosophy, (Oxford, 1962).
14. [T]he knowledge I have of my own body's movements and the movements of other things is not symmetrical.[T]he sighted person. can tell whether other things are moving and whether he is moving by the same faculty of sight. The different ways in which the blind person experiences motion indicate that the normal relation between the body and the world has been severed (quoted in Sacks, Foreword to the Vintage Edition, Touching the Rock, [John Hull], xii).
15. [T]he image of the Venus de Milo did not seem intended to have arms or legs, but was beautiful in its own right. The perspective reflected in our conversation permanently altered my conception of Diane as "disabled." Her body need not be seen from the point of view of its deficits but, rather, as integrated and complete. Geyla Frank, "On Embodiment: A Case Study of Congenital Limb Deficiency in American Culture," in M. Fine and A. Asch, Women with Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture, and Politics, (Philadelphia, 1988), 65. "Correcting" Diane's condition with prosthetic limbs, whatever the gain in mobility, might be as inappropriate as attaching arms and legs to the Venus de Milo.
16. A 1993 article in the Washington Post, described the remarkable self-sufficiency that had been organized by wheelchair-users on a reservation, "On Sioux Reservation, Transportation Literally Means Life or Death" (Sunday, Nov. 12, 1992, A25). But while this is an achievement in the face of adversity, it does not appear to be the germ of a distinct culture.
17. Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture, (Oxford, 1989).
18. If this seems presumptuous or condescending, it is worth recalling that sign languages for the deaf were developed and promoted by hearing as well as deaf people. Sacks, "The Revolution of the Deaf," 25.