Ethical issues and the intellectually disabled

In a challenge to current thinking about cognitive impairment, this book explores what it means to treat people with intellectual disabilities in an ethical manner. Reassessing philosophical views of intellectual disability, Licia Carlson shows how we can affirm the dignity and worth of intellectually disabled people first by ending comparisons to nonhuman animals and then by confronting our fears and discomforts. Carlson presents the complex history of ideas about cognitive disability, the treatment of intellectually disabled people, and social and cultural reactions to them. Sensitive and clearly argued, this book offers new insights on recent trends in disability studies and philosophy.

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Carlson's book is a significant addition to the welcome burgeoning of philosophical literature about disability generally and intellectual disability specifically.

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Licia Carlson's The Faces of Intellecual Disability breaks new ground in disability studies, bioethics, philosophy, cultural sudies, and social justice studies generally.

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[P]rovides a rigorous philosophical analysis of how the outsider's viewpoint of ID in particular (generalizable to disability as a whole) will blind, cripple, and even retard (puns intended!) theological work, and that only historical illumination and serious interaction with the perspectives of those with ID or their caretakers can help do justice to the issues at hand.

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Carlson provides a valuable, in-depth exploration of the philosophical and moral underpinnings of understanding of persons with intellectual disabilities. . . . This will be vital resource in a variety of disciplines. . . . Highly recommended.

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The Faces of Intellectual Disability illuminates exquisitely the epistemological and normative commitments and implications of various philosophical accounts. As such, it is a valuable addition to the philosophical literature on intellectual disability.

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Through her linguistic skill, Carlson renders complex ideas ascertainable. . . . [This] project is a sound and worthy foundation on which to build a more complete analysis in this growing area of scholarship.

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Will have a significant impact on philosophical bioethics.