‘It’s Physical, Not Intellectual’: The Ethics of Correcting Assumptions About Disability

Graduate Highly Commended paper in the 2026 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. By James Forsdyke. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-2446-4586

In this paper, I will discuss ethical considerations when it comes to correcting assumptions about people with physical disabilities. In particular, I will discuss the assumption some individuals make that physical disabilities are necessarily accompanied by cognitive or intellectual ones. People with physical disabilities who face people making this assumption are often quick to point out that they are not cognitively impaired. Relevant moral questions may be raised here. Does this eagerness to correct the ignorant individual necessarily constitute a value judgement about the status of intellectual disabilities, or people with them? And if it does, is this necessarily a morally blameworthy speech act, or could it sometimes be considered permissible given the burden on physically disabled people in having to routinely deal with such assumptions? I shall offer some suggestions as to how we might respond to the different intuitions which come about as a result of our deliberations. I ultimately aim to make some practical ethical suggestions as to how people may wish to proceed when faced with others’ unwarranted assumptions about certain disabilities. These suggestions will, I hope, take account of, and respond appropriately to the different interests at play among people with different impairments.

Assumption-Making

As many physically disabled people will tell you, able-bodied people can sometimes, when interacting with physically disabled people, leap to unsubstantiated conclusions about the disabled person in question’s mental capacities. People can assume that physical disabilities are necessarily, or highly likely to be co-occurring with intellectual ones, such that, in short, they see the wheelchair and assume that its user is incapable of thinking for themselves. This is the type of prejudicial assumption that I will be considering.

As somebody with cerebral palsy, I can recall an incident which happened around a year ago, during which an individual, upon meeting me, decided to direct a plethora of questions about me to my former philosophy tutor, who explained that I had indeed graduated, and was now studying a master’s degree. At some point, I took over, answering the rest of the questions, but intriguingly, the individual continued to direct his enquiries towards my former tutor, and not me.

Now, without knowing exactly what was running through this individual’s mind, we can at least say that he must’ve had his doubts as to my ability to comprehend and formulate reasoned answers to his questions. His surprise at hearing that I had a degree could reasonably be taken to suggest that he perhaps thought that I had some kind of intellectual disability. And this is what prompted me to write this essay. Because his judgement of me constituted what is commonly called a ‘testimonial injustice’, within philosophical literature (Fricker, 2007). His consistent deference back to my tutor suggests that he assumed that my answers were less reliable than they might have been coming from my tutor, and this was highly likely to be based upon an ableist prejudice. This ableist prejudice is sometimes called the Ableist Conflation, a phenomenon whereby, for those things that society tends to view as disabilities, they are all identified as being necessarily characterised by some bads (Reynolds, 2017). In other words, the ableist conflation leads to conclusions such as ‘disabled people cannot be healthy’ and so forth. In my case, it might have been, ‘disabled people cannot be rational or intellectually competent’. But here, a difficulty arises. Treating a factor (a physical disability) as relevant in a context in which it is not (question-answering intellectual capacities) is certainly unjust, but in trying to make people understand this, we must not lose sight of the thought that we ought not to marginalise those with intellectual disabilities either.

Degradation

Certain language can degrade others. Slurs, for instance, can normalise the mistreatment of certain groups of people (Langton et al., 2011). Borrowing Austin’s typology, an utterance might constitute a locutionary act, an illocutionary act, or engender a perlocutionary act (Austin, 1962).

Let us suppose that Jim mistakenly judges Steve to have an intellectual disability on the basis of him having a physical one. Jim therefore speaks to Steve as though he were an infant. The words uttered by Jim have a literal locutionary meaning, but they also carry illocutionary meaning, insofar as they imply that Steve is intellectually impaired, and therefore have a demeaning quality. But more than that, they might engender a perlocutionary effect. If others witness this behaviour, it may normalise the making of the assumption, and the acting in a demeaning manner that Jim engages in. This could increase the frequency of such injustices.

Now, if language and tone of voice can have such an effect, then it is obviously desirable that we should refrain from communicating in ways which may generate injustices. So, when it comes to correcting Jim and challenging his assumptions, Steve must have certain duties as to how he goes about making his case. Even if Steve himself has been subject to an injustice here, morally, he is not exempted from the responsibility not to commit a further injustice of his own. This would be like claiming that a person, having just been released from prison after serving a sentence for a crime he did not commit, may permissibly walk past a drowning child.

One temptation for Steve might be to try to distance himself from the intellectually impaired. If the false assumptions held by Jim rest on the equivocation of physical and intellectual disabilities, then Steve might try to emphasise the difference between the two, and in particular, he might try to impress upon Jim the idea that he is not intellectually impaired. Often, within disability studies circles, it is argued that it is far easier to claim that certain physical conditions are value neutral, whereas this may be a much harder case to make for intellectual disabilities. Steve, in order to emphasise his capacities for independent thought may therefore say something along the lines of, ‘Hey, just because I use a wheelchair doesn’t make me a [insert a slur against the intellectually impaired here]!’ in an effort to both logically refute Jim’s assumptions and distance himself, as a physically disabled person, from the intellectually impaired. He might add tones of shock or disgust to his statement in aid of the latter aim. While this might achieve the aim that Steve has in mind, it also demeans those with intellectual disabilities. Even if we think that people with intellectual disabilities are missing out on some of the fundamental goods that intellectually able people have, we still ought not to express this in a way which belittles them. The use of a slur here, with its negative connotations, and the tone of disgust with which Steve expresses the sentiment, in terms of illocutionary meaning imply that intellectually disabled people are morally lesser significant beings, and in terms of a catalyst for perlocutionary consequences may normalise another ableist conflation, between intellectual disability and a lack of value, a universal lack of ability to contribute positively to the world, or a poor quality of life, all of which may in turn, change society in ways which makes things worse for people with intellectual disabilities. So, in order for this article to make a practical contribution, I will make some suggestions as to how physically disabled people can, in these situations, successfully challenge the prejudices of the assumption-maker, without thereby also alienating or demeaning the intellectually disabled.

How To Get It Right

“I have a physical disability, not an intellectual one” might be thought of as being sufficient to challenge the narrative that the two necessarily co-occur, without thereby stigmatising those with intellectual impairments. Tone would matter though, any stress on ‘intellectual’ might easily tip a locutionary statement into having negatively charged illocutionary meanings. But there is also an aspect to the problem that this response misses, specifically that people with intellectual impairments are, in many cases, still able to make autonomous choices and express their desires. Suppose that Bill is physically disabled, and Kieran is talking down to Bill, so Bill uses this response. The response implies that talking down to a physically disabled person is wrong, but also that talking down to an intellectually disabled person as a default is permissible. This normalises, at the very least, engaging in demeaning behaviour as a first resort when speaking to an intellectually disabled person, which may in turn offend many such individuals, and so will not do as an appropriate response either.

Instead, I believe that we ought to counsel a different response. I shall now discuss the benefits and drawbacks of two possible options.

The first response I call alienation-averse. Return to the situation Bill faces. If Bill were to simply continue conversing with Kieran, without explicitly challenging him, but rather answering honestly with precision and clarity of speech, then we might hope that eventually Kieran would come to realise that the measures he might be using to simplify his language and talk down to Bill are unnecessary. He might then, reflecting on the conversation, come to realise that he falsely equated physical and intellectual disability. This response has the benefit of being very mindful not to engage in alienation or demean others oneself, but it places a lot of faith in the person committing the injustice being sufficiently self-reflective to reconsider the ethics of their behaviour.

The second, I call doubt-averse. It would go something like this, “You are making the mistake of assuming that my physical disability entails that I have an intellectual disability. You are thus talking to me in a demeaning manner, which, by the way, would also be wrong of you if you were in fact talking to an intellectually disabled person, most of whom have desires, autonomy and fulfilling lives. You should be more considerate of the effect that your words may have on other people, and their propensity to ingrain prejudicial social attitudes.” This would succinctly explain the ethical wrong being committed without apportioning any shame towards those with intellectual disabilities. But, in order to be successful it relies upon: A) the speaker having the clarity of mind, in an unpleasant situation, to accurately state the problem with the attitudes of the person speaking to him, B) the wrongdoer not becoming defensive and refusing to properly consider his prejudices, perhaps as a result of social embarrassment, and C) there not being any risk to the speaker’s safety in doing this.

I would therefore consider the alienation-averse response to be most advisable. It reduces the risk of physical harm to the speaker, shows onlookers that disabled people can appropriately respond in difficult situations, thus creating positive perlocutionary effects, and hopefully will give cause for introspection on the part of the wrongdoer. Now, some physically disabled people may question whether they morally ought to have to deal with the burden of having to challenge ableist assumptions with such sensitivity at all. They may say that, counter to my argument, given that this injustice is a common occurrence for them, they should be allowed to deal with it in the easiest way available, which would likely be the simple, but offensive, distancing technique that Steve used. But this is equivalent to saying that, if Jill were unlucky enough to encounter a drowning child every day on her routine walk to work, she might eventually be exempt from doing the right thing. I find this difficult to accept. I believe that physically disabled people, in order to promote justice, morally ought to engage with people who make assumptions in a way which causes them to question those assumptions, without thereby demeaning others, such as those who have intellectual impairments. I hope that my recommendations are useful to those who commonly find themselves in situations such as the one I have described.

Bibliography

Austin, J.L. 1975. How To Do Things With Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. 1st ed. Oxford University Press. Oxford. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198245537.001.0001.

Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press.

Langton, Rae, Sally Haslanger, and Luvell Anderson. 2011. “Language and Race.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language, edited by Delia Graff Fara and Gillian Russell. Routledge Philosophy Companions. Routledge.

Reynolds, Joel Michael. 2017. “‘I’d Rather Be Dead than Disabled’—the Ableist Conflation and the Meanings of Disability.” Review of Communication 17 (3): 149–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2017.1331255.