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42The greater danger — pornography, social science and women's rights: Reply to Brannigan and GoldenbergSocial Epistemology 2 (2). 1988.No abstract
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118Rationality, personhood, and Peter Singer on the fate of severely impaired infantsPediatric Bioethics. forthcoming.
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363At the margins of moral personhoodEthics 116 (1): 100-131. 2005.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 i…Read more
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128In Whose Different Voice?Journal of Philosophy 88 (11): 645-646. 1991.This is an abstract of a discussion of Martha Minow's article "Equalities" in APA Symposium Eastern Division 1991
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13Caring for the long haul: Long-term care needs and the (moral) failure to acknowledge themInternational Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 6 (2): 66-88. 2013.
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7422 the personal is philosophical is political: A philosopher and mother of a cognitively disabled person sends notes from the battlefield Eva Feder KittayIn Eva Feder Kittay & Licia Carlson (eds.), Cognitive Disability and its Challenge to Moral Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2010.
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48The Creation of Similarity: A Discussion of Metaphor in Light of Tversky's Theory of SimilarityPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982. 1982.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 b…Read more
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28Self-Deception and Self-Understanding (review)Idealistic Studies 18 (1): 82-85. 1988.The volume of essays, edited by Mike Martin, is a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary interest in the topic. Martin has produced a helpful, if not penetrating, general introduction to the volume, and has prefaced each of the four parts of the book with a short orienting essay. The book is completed with an extensive bibliography that will well serve the student interested in pursuing the topic.
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32Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic StructureOxford University Press. 1987.Taking into account pragmatic considerations and recent linguistic and psychological studies, the author forges a new understanding of the relation between metaphoric and literal meaning. The argument is illustrated with analysis of metaphors from literature, philosophy, science, and everyday language.
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34Deadly Medicine: Project T4, Mental Disability, and Racism A very early version of this paper was inspired by the Deadly Medicine Exhibit 1, which was held at Stony Brook University 1, Spring 2009, and was presented at the 1 lecture series accompanying the exhibit, June 1, 2009 (review)Res Philosophica 93 (4): 715-741. 2016.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…Read more
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122(Re)fusing the amputated body: An interactionist bridge for feminism and disabilityHypatia 16 (4): 53-79. 2001.: Disabled women's issues, experiences, and embodiments have been misunderstood, if not largely ignored, by feminist as well as mainstream disability theorists. The reason for this, I argue, is embedded in the use of materialist and constructivist approaches to bodies that do not recognize the interaction between "sex" and "gender" and "impairment" and "disability" as material-semiotic. Until an interactionist paradigm is taken up, we will not be able to uncover fully the intersection between se…Read more
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62The Global Heart Transplant and Caring across National BoundariesSouthern Journal of Philosophy 46 (S1): 138-165. 2008.
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135Introduction: Defining Feminist PhilosophyIn Kittay Eva Feder & Martín Alcoff Linda (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2006.This chapter contains section titled: Gender in Canonical Philosophical Writings The Emergence of Contemporary Feminist Philosophy Reflexive Critique within Philosophy Refl exive Critique within Feminist Philosophy Feminist Philosophy as a Research Program Feminist Philosophy as Transformative Notes.
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165Cognitive Disability and its Challenge to Moral Philosophy (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2010.Through a series of essays contributed by clinicians, medical historians, and prominent moral philosophers, Cognitive Disability and Its Challenge to Moral ...
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244Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and DependencyRoutledge. 1999.Where society is viewed as an association of equal and autonomous persons, the work of caring for dependents, "love's labors", figure neither in political ...
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247The personal is philosophical is political: A philosopher and mother of a cognitively disabled person sends notes from the battlefieldMetaphilosophy 40 (3-4): 606-627. 2009.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, …Read more
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314. Metaphor as Rearranging the Furniture of the Mind: A Reply to Donald Davidson's "What Metaphors Mean"In Zdravko Radman (ed.), From a Metaphorical Point of View: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Cognitive Content of Metaphor, De Gruyter. pp. 73-116. 1995.
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98Contemporary 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 soci…Read more
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539The Body as the Place of CareIn Donald A. Landes & Azucena Cruz-Pierre (eds.), Exploring the Work of Edward S. Casey, Bloomsbury Publishing,. 2013.
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31Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure by Eva Kittay (review)Journal of Philosophy 88 (6): 324-330. 1991.
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111Forever Small: The Strange Case of Ashley XHypatia 26 (3): 610-631. 2011.I explore the ethics of altering the body of a child with severe cognitive disabilities in such a way that keeps the child “forever small.” The parents of Ashley, a girl of six with severe cognitive and developmental disabilities, in collaboration with her physicians and the Hospital Ethics Committee, chose to administer growth hormones that would inhibit her growth. They also decided to remove her uterus and breast buds, assuring that she would not go through the discomfort of menstruation and …Read more
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268Whose convenience? Whose truth?: A comment on Peter Singer's 'A convenient truth.'201The Hastings Center Bioethics Forum, Wednesday, February 28, 2007.The Hastings Center Bioethics Forum. 2007.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 ch…Read more
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60At the Margins of Moral PersonhoodJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 5 (2): 137-156. 2005.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 i…Read more
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State University of New York, Stony BrookDepartment of Philosophy
Stony Brook, New York, United States of America