CLA SURP Research Project

The CLA Summer Undergraduate Research/Creative Activity Program at Cal Poly aims to promote CLA student engagement in faculty-led research and creative activities. ​

Abilities and Disabilities: A Metaphysical Investigation, Summer 2024

Project Abstract: It is often unreflectively assumed that disability is a kind of medical impairment. But there is a growing consensus across liberal arts methodologies that disability is to be understood as a kind of social exclusion or minoritization, an unjust mismatch between a person’s characteristics and their built environment or culture's social activities. The debate between the medical and social models of disability is longstanding. Philosophers have only recently begun to think seriously about this debate or about disability in general. Some philosophers have tried to define disability in terms of normal function or physiological or psychological impairment; others have suggested that disabilities are socially constructed. Some have even suggested that disabilities are nothing more than the expression of unjust power structures. One very recent philosophical approach to disabilities says that they are unique kind of inability. The difficulty with this kind of view is figuring out what makes disabilities unique. Why are disabilities a locus of injustice and discrimination? This recent approach has not drawn on recent developments in analytic metaphysics and the philosophy of action, however. In this project, we will investigate the connection between disabilities and the contemporary metaphysics of abilities. The goal will be to bring these disconnected literatures together, and so connect pressing social justice issues with cutting-edge work in theoretical philosophy. The main goal would be to help deal with pressing moral and political questions about disability by carefully analyzing the concept itself. Let’s figure it out together!