Eva Kittay

The cognitive gain in the use of metaphor and simile is nicely elucidated by Tversky's theory of similarity. The features of the theory which are of special importance are the directionality and context-dependency of similarity judgments. These indicate the extent to which such judgments are classificatory and that similarity is not only the cause of an object's classification but is also a derivative of groupings. Metaphor and simile exploit certain cognitive features involved in the relation between classification, context and similarity judgments so as to make possible the creation of similarity, which, from a conceptual standpoint, is the prime motivation for metaphor.

In this article I examine the proposition that severe cognitive disability is an impediment to moral personhood. Moral personhood, as I understand it here, is articulated in the work of Jeff McMahan as that which confers a special moral status on a person. I rehearse the metaphysical arguments about the nature of personhood that ground McMahan’s claims regarding the moral status of the “congenitally severely mentally retarded” (CSMR for short). These claims, I argue, rest on the view that only intrinsic psychological capacities are relevant to moral personhood: that is, that relational properties are generally not relevant. In addition, McMahan depends on an argument that species membership is irrelevant for moral consideration and a contention that privileging species membership is equivalent to a virulent nationalism (these will be discussed below). In consequence, the CSMR are excluded from moral personhood and their deaths are less significant as their killing is less wrong than that of persons. To throw doubt on McMahan’s conclusions about the moral status and wrongness of killing the CSMR I question the exclusive use of intrinsic properties in the metaphysics of personhood, the dismissal of the moral importance of species membership, and the example of virulent nationalism as an apt analogy. I also have a lot to say about McMahan’s empirical assumptions about the CSMR

As the mother of a daughter who has and will always require care to meet her most basic needs, I have seen firsthand how critical it is to have adequate means by which to meet those needs—for her sake, mine, and my family’s. Her flourishing life has contributed to enhancing not only our own, but those of all who care for her and who enter our lives. I have wanted to see us do better by all the families who struggle and have to scratch and claw their way to access services and resources their children need. I have tried in my past writings to articulate the need and the reason why we as a society, as a community, are neither just nor caring as long as we leave their needs unmet. At the same time, I have watched as ..

Having encountered landmines in offering a critique of philosophy based on my experience as the mother of a cognitively disabled daughter, I ask, “Should I continue?” I defend the idea that pursuing this project is of a piece with the invisible care labor that is done by people with disabilities and their families. The value of attempting to influence philosophical conceptions of cognitive disability by virtue of this experience is justified by an inextricable relationship between the personal, the political, and the philosophical. If one grants that the “special relationship” between mother and child requires moral recognition, then I need first to make vivid the case that this relationship in the case of a child who lacks some “normal capacities” is indistinguishable from any mother‐child relationship. If this is so, then I believe I can make a case that has as its conclusion that the moral personhood of even the severely cognitively disabled must be granted. Moreover, such recognition, I argue, necessitates the recognition of others who bear no special relationships to the child.

Contemporary industrialized societies have been confronted with the fact and consequences of women's increased participation in paid employment. Whether this increase has resulted from women's desire for equality or from changing economic circumstances, women and men have been faced with a crisis in the organization of work that concerns dependents, that is, those unable to care for themselves. This is labor that has been largely unpaid, often unrecognized, and yet is indispensable to human society.

Equal moral status for all human beings does not commit us to the malignant exclusionary practices we find in racism and pernicious nationalism. Racism (like the other harmful “ism”) involves a group that is constituted by appropriating to one’s own “primal group” a set “desirable” intrinsic properties (or traits) and expelling from the primal group those with the undesirable properties through subjugation, exploitation, sterilization, or extermination. The moral harm in racism is practiced by a ‘constituted’ group that must always police its borders with violence and justifications for its privilege. The Nazi’s Project T4, which exterminated mentally disabled children born of German parents, and the subsequent exterminations of racialized groups, in particular the Jews, were regarded as the one process of cleansing Germany and its conquered territories of defective and inferior beings. Rather than being instances of “preferring one’s own,” the racist project was that of constituting the group by appropriating for itself all the desirable traits and expelling all undesirable ones, thus linking ablism and racism.

As parents of a young woman who very much resembles Ashley, we recognize the way her parents speak of their daughter’s preciousness, and of the love and joy she brings into their life. We know too well the hardships associated with rearing a child with severe physical and intellectual disabilities, especially in our own society, unyielding as it is to the medical needs even “normals” have. We would not have our daughter Sesha undergo similar interventions. We do not believe she is a perpetual child, even if her intellectual capacities do not exceed those of a child, for she has lived for thirty-seven years in this world and with that has acquired knowledge, sensitivities, and sensibilities that no child of “comparable” capacities could have.

A number of philosophers, linguists and psychologists have made the dual claim that metaphor is cognitively significant and that metaphorical utterances have a meaning not reducible to literal paraphrase. Such a position requires support from an account of metaphorical meaning that can render metaphors cognitively meaningful without the reduction to literal statement. It therefore requires a theory of meaning that can integrate metaphor within its sematics, yet specify why it is not reducible to literal paraphrase. I introduce the idea of a "second-order meaning", of which metaphor is but one instance, that is a function on literal-conventional, i.e., first-order meaning, and outline a linguistic framework designed to provide a representation of linguistic meaning for both. This framework is designed to represent linguistic units ranging from a single word to an entire text since I argue that the by-now familiar position that the sentence is the appropriate unit for metaphor has mislead us into asking the wrong questions about metaphorical meaning. With this apparatus, we can specify the conditions under which an utterance may transcend the constraints on first-order meaning (transgressions not always apparent on the sentential level), without thereby being "meaningless". Conversely, we can specify the conditions that may render apparently odd utterances first-order meaningful rather than metaphorical. In this way we see how metaphorical language differs both from deviant language and from specialized language such as technical language, fanciful and fantastical language (in fairy tales, science fiction, etc.).

All people spend a considerable portion of their lives either as dependents or the caretakers of dependents. The fact of human dependency—a function of youth, severe illness, disability, or frail old age—marks our lives, not only as those who are cared for, but as those who engage in the work of caring. In spite of the time, energy and resources-material and emotional, social and individual-that dependency care requires, these concerns rarely enter into philosophical, legal, and political discussions. In _The Subject of Care_, feminist scholars consider how acknowledgement of the fact of dependency changes our conceptions of law, political theory, and morality, as well as our very conceptions of self. Contributors develop feminist understandings of dependency, reassessing the place dependency occupies in our lives and in a just social order.

According to the most important theories of justice, personal dignity is closely related to independence, and the care that people with disabilities receive is seen as a way for them to achieve the greatest possible autonomy. However, human beings are naturally subject to periods of dependency, and people without disabilities are only “temporarily abled.” Instead of seeing assistance as a limitation, we consider it to be a resource at the basis of a vision of society that is able to account for inevitable dependency relationships between “unequals” ensuring a fulfilling life both for the carer and the cared for.**

Dependency is a keyword in disability studies. The article reviews the negative force of the term and why disability researchers and activists have made the case for the independence of disabled people. But dependency, I claim, is a feature of any human life and I argue that disability studies needs to neutralize the term and appropriate dependency as that which binds people, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. I argue that we can acknowledge dependency and work toward an ideal of "managed dependency."