Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-d5ftd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-31T22:00:17.852Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How to (Consistently) Reject the Options Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2021

Stephen M. Campbell Open the ORCID record for Stephen M. Campbell [Opens in a new window] ,
Joseph A. Stramondo  and
David Wasserman
Stephen M. Campbell
Affiliation:
Bentley University
Joseph A. Stramondo
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
David Wasserman
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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 (formulated as the Options Argument) 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 to suggest that this general line of reasoning employs a double standard.

Information

Type
Reply
Information
Utilitas , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 237 - 245
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Asch, Adrienne and Wasserman, David. 2010. Making Healthy Embryos or Making Embyos Healthy. In The “Healthy” Embryo: Social, Biomedical, Legal and Philosophical Perspectives, ed. McLeod, Carolyn, Nisker, Jeff, and Karpin, Isabel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 201–18.Google Scholar
Barnes, Elizabeth. 2016. The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Stephen M. and Stramondo, Joseph A.. 2016. Review of The Minority Body. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, <https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-minority-body-a-theory-of-disability/> [accessed July 26, 2020].+[accessed+July+26,+2020].>Google Scholar
Campbell, Stephen M. and Stramondo, Joseph A.. 2017. The Complicated Relationship of Disability and Well-Being. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 27.2: 151–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chang, Ruth. 2002. The Possibility of Parity. Ethics, 112: 659–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawley, Thomas. 2020. Disability, Options and Well-Being. Utilitas, 32.3: 316–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kierkegaard, Soren. 1843/1988. Either/Or (Parts I and II) (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Mills, Claudia. 2003. The Child's Right to an Open Future? Journal of Social Philosophy, 34.4: 499–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moller, Dan. 2011. Wealth, Disability, and Happiness. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 39.2: 177–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nisbett, Richard E. and Ross, Lee. 1980. Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).Google Scholar
Schroeder, Andrew. 2016. Health, Disability and Well-Being. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, ed. Fletcher, Guy (Abingdon: Routledge), 221–32.Google Scholar
Stramondo, Joseph A. and Campbell, Stephen M.. 2020. Causing Disability, Causing Non-Disability: What's the Moral Difference? In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability, ed. Cureton, Adam and Wasserman, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 138–57.Google Scholar
Wasserman, David and Asch, Adrienne. 2013. Understanding the Relationship Between Disability and Wellbeing. In Disability and the Good Human Life, ed. Bickenbach, Jerome E., Felder, Franziska, and Schmitz, Barbara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 139–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar