Michigan State University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2015
San Diego, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics
Normative Ethics
PhilPapers Editorships
Disability and Well-Being
  •  425
    Disability Rights as a Necessary Framework for Crisis Standards of Care and the Future of Health Care
    with Laura Guidry-Grimes, Katie Savin, Joel Michael Reynolds, Marina Tsaplina, Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, Angela Ballantyne, Eva Feder Kittay, Devan Stahl, Jackie Leach Scully, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Anita Tarzian, Doron Dorfman, and Joseph J. Fins
    Hastings Center Report 50 (3): 28-32. 2020.
    In this essay, we suggest practical ways to shift the framing of crisis standards of care toward disability justice. We elaborate on the vision statement provided in the 2010 Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Medicine) “Summary of Guidance for Establishing Crisis Standards of Care for Use in Disaster Situations,” which emphasizes fairness; equitable processes; community and provider engagement, education, and communication; and the rule of law. We argue that interpreting these elements …Read more
  •  54
    Expressed Ableism
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (n/a). 2022.
    With increased frequency, reproductive technologies are placing prospective parents in the position of choosing whether to bring a disabled child into the world. The most well-known objection to the act of “selecting against disability” is known as the Expressivist Argument. The argument claims that such acts express a negative or disrespectful message about disabled people and that one has a moral reason to avoid sending such messages. We have two primary aims in this essay. The first is to cri…Read more
  •  16
    The hashtag #RepresentationMatters is widely used among disability activists on social media because disabled people are often simply ignored in popular culture. Several disabled characters inhabit the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe, but Toph Beifong is the most prominent. Toph is a major character who plays an essential role in the victory over the Fire Nation's imperialism. A rarity in media, Toph's character has as much depth as any member of Team Avatar. The “Irrationally and Infectious…Read more
  •  1
    This chapter argues that, sometimes, disabled bioethicists actually have a duty to do public philosophy. It contends that this duty can be justified with ethical, epistemic, and prudential reasons. Any triage protocol will discriminate against disabled people if one uses a broadly inclusive definition of disability that subsumes diseases or chronic illnesses that can be disabling in their effects, like cancer or kidney failure. The most obvious reasons justifying a duty to do public philosophy a…Read more
  •  325
    The Complicated Relationship of Disability and Well-Being
    Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 27 (2): 151-184. 2017.
    It is widely assumed that disability is typically a bad thing for those who are disabled. Our purpose in this essay is to critique this view and defend a more nuanced picture of the relationship between disability and well-being. We first examine four interpretations of the above view and argue that it is false on each interpretation. We then ask whether disability is thereby a neutral trait. Our view is that most disabilities are neutral in one sense, though we cannot make simple generalization…Read more
  •  12
    Bioethics and the Power Asymmetry Contextualizing Experience
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (1): 1-3. 2023.
    In “Bioethics and the Moral Authority of Experience,” Nelson et al. explore what they refer to as “The Paradox of Experience.” The authors characterize this paradox formally as follows:(A) Personal...
  •  1
    Expanding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to Disability: Opportunities for Biological Psychiatry
    Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging 7 (12): 1280-1288. 2022.
    Given its subject matter, biological psychiatry is uniquely poised to lead STEM DEI initiatives related to disability. Drawing on literatures in science, philosophy, psychiatry, and disability studies, we outline how that leadership might be undertaken. We first review existing opportunities for the advancement of DEI in biological psychiatry around axes of gender and race. We then explore the expansion of biological psychiatry’s DEI efforts to disability, especially along the lines of represent…Read more
  •  23
    How Disability Activism Advances Disability Bioethics
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (2): 335-349. 2022.
    In this paper, I argue that, even when disability rights activists are most clearly acting as activists, they can advance the scholarly activity of disability bioethics. In particular, I will argue that even engaging in non-violent direct action, including civil disobedience, is an important way in which disability rights activists directly support the efforts of disability bioethics scholars. I will begin by drawing upon Hilde Lindemann’s work on relational narrative identity to describe how ce…Read more
  •  11
    Rethinking systemic ableism: A response to Zagouras, Ellick, and Aulisio
    with Erin E. Andrews, Kara B. Ayers, and Robyn M. Powell
    Clinical Ethics 18 (1): 7-12. 2023.
    Introduction This article is a response to Zagouras, Ellick, and Aulisio who presented a case study justifying the questioning of the capacity and autonomy of a young woman with a physical disability who was pregnant and facing coercive pressure to terminate. Case description Julia is described as a 26-year-old woman with a neurological disability that requires her to receive assistance with activities of daily living. She was described as living with her parents who provided her with personal c…Read more
  •  34
    Tragic Choices: Disability, Triage, and Equity Amidst a Global Pandemic
    Journal of Philosophy of Disability 1 201-210. 2021.
    In this paper, I make three arguments regarding Crisis Standards of Care developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, I argue against the consideration of third person quality of life judgments that deprioritize disabled or chronically ill people on a basis other than their survival, even if protocols use the language of health to justify maintaining the supposedly higher well-being of non-disabled people. Second, while it may be unavoidable that some disabled people are deprioritized by triag…Read more
  •  78
    Bioethics, Adaptive Preferences, and Judging the Quality of a Life with Disability
    Social Theory and Practice 47 (1): 199-220. 2021.
    Both mainstream and disability bioethics sometimes contend that the self-assessment of disabled people about their own well-being is distorted by adaptive preferences that are only held because other, better options are unavailable. I will argue that both of the most common ways of understanding adaptive preferences—the autonomy-based account and the well-being account—would reject blanket claims that disabled people’s QOL self-assessment has been distorted, whether those claims come from mainst…Read more
  •  67
    It is commonly thought that disability is a harm or “bad difference” because having a disability restricts valuable options in life. In his recent essay “Disability, Options and Well-Being,” Thomas Crawley offers a novel defense of this style of reasoning and argues that we and like-minded critics of this brand of argument are guilty of an inconsistency. Our aim in this article is to explain why our view avoids inconsistency, to challenge Crawley's positive defense of the Options Argument, and t…Read more
  •  25
    The right to assistive technology
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 41 (5): 247-271. 2020.
    In this paper, I argue that disabled people have a right to assistive technology, but this right cannot be grounded simply in a broader right to health care or in a more comprehensive view like the capabilities approach to justice. Both of these options are plagued by issues that I refer to as the problem of constriction, where the theory does not justify enough of the AT that disabled people should have access to, and the problem of overextension, where the theory cannot adequately identify an …Read more
  •  52
    Disability and the Damaging Master Narrative of an Open Future
    Hastings Center Report 50 (S1): 30-36. 2020.
    It is sometimes argued that medical professionals should protect a future child's rights by prohibiting disabled parents from using technology to deliberately have a disabled child because disability is taken as an inevitable, severe threat to a child's otherwise “open” future. I will first argue that the open future that allegedly protects a child's future autonomy is precluded by the very conditions needed to develop that future autonomy. Any child's future will be narrowed as they are sociali…Read more
  •  40
    The Distinction Between Curative and Assistive Technology
    Science and Engineering Ethics 25 (4): 1125-1145. 2019.
    Disability activists have sometimes claimed their disability has actually increased their well-being. Some even say they would reject a cure to keep these gains. Yet, these same activists often simultaneously propose improvements to the quality and accessibility of assistive technology. However, for any argument favoring assistive over curative technology to work, there must be a coherent distinction between the two. This line is already vague and will become even less clear with the emergence o…Read more
  •  53
    Like any philosophically interesting health care practice, ethical analysis of Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis has produced a wide range of moral positions. For example, one might contrast David King's view that warns PGD should be strictly limited and regulated because it will soon result in the expansion of a troubling "laissez-faire eugenics" with Julian Savulescu's argument for the "principle of procreative beneficence" morally requiring parents to use information attained through PGD to …Read more
  •  20
    Doing ethics from experience: Pragmatic suggestions for a feminist disability advocate’s response to prenatal diagnosis
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 4 (2): 48-78. 2011.
    While disability theory and feminist theory share a great deal in their methodology and could potentially share quite a bit in their political commitments, there is a tension or conflict between these two approaches as they evaluate prenatal diagnosis. For the feminist disability advocate, this can be thought of as a type of ideological double bind. This paper will dissolve this tension by way of John Dewey’s version of American pragmatism. First, I will map out the landscape of the prenatal dia…Read more
  •  10
    Recent scholarship suggests that the practices of selling sex and selling kidneys can be understood as examples of serious harms that are sometimes chosen by autonomous individuals who find themselves in difficult straits. This analogy between kidney sales by live suppliers and prostitution deserves careful, rigorous consideration. Ideas about autonomy, paternalism, systemic oppression, commodification, and the human body are at the core of each controversy. This paper seeks to use the well-deve…Read more
  •  201
    How an Ideology of Pity Is a Social Harm to People with Disabilities
    Social Philosophy Today 26 121-134. 2010.
    In academic philosophy and popular culture alike, pity is often framed as a virtue or the emotional underpinnings of virtue. Yet, people who are the most marginalized and, hence, most often on the receiving end of pity, assert that it is anything but an altruism. How can we explain this disconnect between an understanding of pity as a virtuous emotion versus a social harm? My paper answers this question by showing how pity is not only an emotion, but also a power relation. Using the ideas of Sar…Read more
  •  71
    Why Bioethics Needs a Disability Moral Psychology
    Hastings Center Report 46 (3): 22-30. 2016.
    The deeply entrenched, sometimes heated conflict between the disability movement and the profession of bioethics is well known and well documented. Critiques of prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion are probably the most salient and most sophisticated of disability studies scholars’ engagements with bioethics, but there are many other topics over which disability activists and scholars have encountered the field of bioethics in an adversarial way, including health care rationing, growth-atte…Read more
  •  9
    Feminists have argued that oppressive socialization undermines the liberal model of autonomy. We contend that this argument can also be employed effectively as a challenge to the standard bioethical model of informed consent. We claim that the standard model is inadequate because it relies on presumptions of procedural autonomy and rational choice that overlook the problem of how agents are often socialized so that they adopt and internalize oppressive norms as part of their motivational structu…Read more
  •  43
    How an Ideology of Pity Is a Social Harm to People with Disabilities
    Social Philosophy Today 26 121-134. 2010.
    In academic philosophy and popular culture alike, pity is often framed as a virtue or the emotional underpinnings of virtue. Yet, people who are the most marginalized and, hence, most often on the receiving end of pity, assert that it is anything but an altruism. How can we explain this disconnect between an understanding of pity as a virtuous emotion versus a social harm? My paper answers this question by showing how pity is not only an emotion, but also a power relation. Using the ideas of Sar…Read more
  •  19
    Feminists have argued that oppressive socialization undermines the liberal model of autonomy. We contend that this argument can also be employed effectively as a challenge to the standard bioethical model of informed consent. We claim that the standard model is inadequate because it relies on presumptions of procedural autonomy and rational choice that overlook the problem of how agents are often socialized so that they adopt and internalize oppressive norms as part of their motivational structu…Read more
  •  97
    In his article "Markets and the Needy: Organ Sales or Aid?" T. L. Zutlevics briefly touches upon the conceptual link between the practice of living1 suppliers2 selling their kidneys and prostitutes selling sexual services. In an attempt to defuse Gerald Dworkin's (Dworkin 1993) appeals to autonomy that undergird his justification of establishing a controlled market in transplantable organs from living suppliers, Zutlevics writes:Whilst initially appealing, this argument is problematic in that it…Read more
  •  58
    Doing ethics from experience: Pragmatic suggestions for a feminist disability advocate's response to prenatal diagnosis
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 4 (2): 48-78. 2011.
    I have been acutely aware, too much so, doubtless, of a tendency of other thinkers and writers to achieve a specious lucidity and simplicity by the mere process of ignoring considerations which a greater respect for the concrete materials of experience would have forced upon them. In her chapter of Disability, Difference, and Discrimination titled “A Feminist Standpoint,” Mary Mahowald looks to feminist standpoint epistemology as a method for identifying, voicing, and mitigating the ways in whic…Read more