(How) I Ruined the APA’s Reputation Amongst Disability Studies Scholars

I think it would be safe to say that I have ruined the reputation of the American Philosophical Association (APA) in the disability studies community. I admit it. Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that doing so wasn’t a difficult thing to do. My earlier uncoordinated complaints and criticisms notwithstanding, I first publicly tarnished the APA’s […]

Heading to the Pacific APA Next Month?

Maybe you are heading to the Pacific APA next month. You’ve considered checking out the symposium on Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability; but you haven’t read/listened to the book. So, you’re wondering if the session would be worth your while. Maybe you should go to another session instead. Maybe you should instead go outside […]

Signs of Blind People

If you used Google to get here and you are sighted, you might have noticed that the graphic for Google Doodle today commemorates the introduction of tenji block on railway platforms in Okayama, Japan, fifty-two years ago today. “Tenji block” is the name that Seiichi Miyake gave to the tactile paving slabs that he invented […]

Dialogues on Disability on Wednesday, March 21, at 8 a.m. EST

“I have read almost all of your interviews and they are always wonderful. …  I am really looking forward to the next installment of Dialogues on Disability.” — Adrian Piper “The Dialogues on Disability platform … has been very helpful to me, especially at times where I did not feel I belong in the world of […]

Helen De Cruz and Prestige Bias (in Canadian Philosophy Departments)

I greatly admire Helen De Cruz who, in my view, exhibits a genuine commitment to diversity and inclusivity in philosophy, something that is rarer than most philosophers want to acknowledge. I especially appreciate the empirical and analytical work on prestige bias in philosophy that Helen has initiated and developed. In particular, I want to commend […]

Disability and Inaccessibility at Yale

In March of 2017, I wrote a post at Discrimination and Disadvantage about the situation for disabled students at Yale and other elite universities, drawing upon an article in Yale News that documented recommendations made in the Yale Disability Resources Task Force Report. Almost two years later, the situation for disabled students (and staff) at Yale remains grim. […]

Using Phineas Gage for Questions on Personal Identity and Other Topics in Philosophy of Mind, Experimental Philosophy, Cognitive Science, etc.

Philosophers generally take disabilities (plural) and impairments to be self-evident, natural, and politically neutral human characteristics or attributes that certain people possess and embody.  In recent years, however, a growing number of philosophers have challenged this view, consolidating an area of philosophy for which I coined the name “philosophy of disability.” Many philosophers of disability, […]

Microaggressions and Implicit Bias

In two previous posts (here and here), I consider the tactics of force relations that have come to be referred to as “microaggressions”. In the first post, I discuss ableist language and ableist exceptionism as examples of microaggressions. In the second post, I discuss microaggressions as “intentional and nonsubjective” practices (tactics). I point out in […]

Ableist Language and Other Everyday Assaults on Disabled People (or, Stop Talking About “People with Disabilities”!)

Language, a ubiquitous sociopolitical mechanism, operates intentionally and nonsubjectively, and can produce microaggressions whose effects are far-reaching. Language, Lane Greene remarks, is a genius system with no genius. “Bound by rules, yet constantly changing,” Greene notes, “language might be the ultimate self-regulating system, with nobody in charge” (Greene 2018). In systems of language, words and […]