Disability K Answers - Michigan 2024 CFMP

Framework—2AC
Clash link turns alt solvency. Any alternative to plan focus disconnects disability theory from lived experience.
van der Weele, 22—Assistant Professor, University of Humanistic Studies (Simon, “‘Doing’ normativity in disability studies: soft suggestions towards an empirical ethics of disability,” Disability & Society, June 15, 2022, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2022.2087492, dml)
My discussion of these three styles of ‘doing’ normativity has pointed at three problems disability scholars run into in their normative analyses. Let me briefly list them in turn. The first problem resides in the ‘top-down’ style of ethical analysis found in the materialist and critical realist approaches. By ‘applying’ moral principles to arbiter social practices, such analyses threaten to render moral theory static and irresponsive to the complexity of real-life moral tensions and dilemmas, and also leave little room for forms of normativity internal to practice. (Vehmas and Watson’s suggestion to engage with normativity through the analytical philosophical method seems to imply a similar ‘top-down’ style of analysis; hence my reservations about their proposal.) The second problem resides in the separation of ‘fact’ and ‘values’. I traced this problem explicitly in the critical realist approach, but it is in fact not considered carefully in any of the approaches. Here, the problem is that scholars are insufficiently aware that normativity is always already a part of the empirical reality we observe—a point that, if we want to ‘do’ normativity right, ought to be explicated and explored. The third problem has to do with the sort of ethical directives these approaches produce. I noted of the cultural approach that its suspicion of normativity does not allow for constructive normative conclusions, meaning that it has trouble providing meaningful normative guidance. By contrast, the opposite seems true for the materialist and critical realist approaches; their rigid use of moral principles makes it unclear to what extent these approaches can generate normative insights that are sufficiently complex, nuanced, and in tune with practice—and thus, provide insights that can actually help improve the lives of disabled people. In effect, disability scholars are torn between giving too much or too little in the way of normative directives.
My overarching concern in signaling these problems is that the conventional styles of ‘doing’ normativity in disability studies might fall short of what I believe should be their aspiration: that is, to generate normative insights that speak to the nuances and complexities of the lives of disabled people—and hence, that might help to improve these lives in practice. On an analytical level, these problems spring forth from the interaction between ethical ‘theory’ and empirical ‘data’ and the sort of conclusions this interaction can generate. This issue is also at the root of my hesitation regarding the method proposed by Vehmas and Watson (Citation2016), which in my view does not say enough about how empirical knowledge ought to inform moral reasoning.
In this section, I want to offer three suggestions to address these problems, by introducing a number of insights from the corner of moral philosophy known as empirical ethics (Ives, Dunn, and Cribb Citation2017; Landeweer, Molewijk, and Widdershoven Citation2017; Pols Citation2015; Musschenga Citation2005; van der Scheer and Widdershoven Citation2004). This field, which developed in the wake of the ‘empirical turn’ in bioethics and philosophy of science, grew out of a dissatisfaction with the normative insights produced by conventional philosophical methods that had dominated these fields. These insights, empirical ethicists argued, are not sufficiently sensitive to context nor to the reality of lived experience (Hoffmaster Citation1992; Musschenga Citation2005). In response, empirical ethicists began to consider how ethical and social-scientific inquiry might be combined to generate insights ‘more contextually aware and more grounded in the realities of lived experience’ than traditional normative theory (Davies, Ives, and Dunn Citation2015, 1). Normative inquiry, they argued, must involve qualitative research on the views, experiences, and practices of people who actually live with the moral tension or problem being studied. They thus frame their efforts as a correction of the tendency in moral philosophy to simply ‘apply’ moral principles to judge practices. Their methodological inventions for exploring moral tensions and answering moral questions have reinvigorated debates on how to ‘do’ normativity as I have defined it here.
The considerations of empirical ethicists may seem far removed from the field of disability studies, but they are not. After all, the purpose of all this is to generate context-sensitive normative insights about social practice—which is what disability studies, if it is dedicated to improving the lives of disabled people, should want to strive for as well. Some empirical ethicists are drawing on their methods to study issues around disability, mainly on the topic of care and support (Pols, Althoff, and Bransen Citation2017; Winance Citation2010). But these tend to be exceptions for now, and these authors do not typically frame their efforts as disability studies research.
Empirical ethics is a broad field encompassing many methodological approaches. It is not my aim here to rehearse their differences in detail. Rather, I want to highlight some ideas generated in this field that I believe are fruitful for opening up new avenues in disability studies research. I choose these ideas because they respond well to the problems I outlined above. They are not meant to represent the breadth of the field of empirical ethics; rather, they are suggestions that could aid disability studies in developing new styles of ‘doing’ normativity. Again, to demonstrate the benefits of these ideas, I will provide examples. This time, I will take these from empirical-ethical research on dependency and disability, some of which is my own.
Dynamism between ‘theory’ and ‘data’
A main preoccupation of empirical ethicists has been to rethink the relationship between ethical theory (in the form of principles, frameworks, and so on) and empirical reality (in the form of social-scientific empirical findings). Attempting to carve a space between the ‘top-down’ style of deductive reasoning that holds empirical reality to the standard of immutable ethical principles and a kind of particularist relativism that is satisfied with only describing the norms and values found in the field, empirical ethicists have been looking for ways to integrate ethical and empirical inquiry and thus create a more symbiotic relationship between the two. To be sure, a given moral theory or concept can still form the starting point of a normative inquiry; the point is rather that any such theory or concept itself becomes an object of critical interrogation, as the empirical analysis can lead researchers to interpret a given theory or concept anew, or even to reject it in favor of another. Hence, empirical ethicists do not merely allow their moral framework to be enriched or specified with empirical findings. They allow the empirical analysis to fundamentally question the moral framework they bring to the people and practices under study, so as to align normative insights more fundamentally with the vicissitudes of lived experience. There is no consensus as of yet on how this ought to be done, but there are plenty of ideas (see Davies, Ives, and Dunn (Citation2015) for a systematic review). Whatever the precise method, the goal is utilize empirical findings in the (re)shaping of normative ethical theory to produce normative insights that are attuned to practice and lived experience.
To appreciate the kind of work this dynamism between ‘theory’ and ‘data’ can produce, consider again the example of dependency. All authors I discussed above took a normative stance on dependency: Morris one of rejection and Gibson et al. and Shakespeare one of acknowledgement. However, none of them were able to say much about the variation in how care relationships are experienced, or how we might judge different dependency relationships differently, and on what normative basis. Integrating normative and empirical inquiry can allow for a more fine-grained account of dependency and its different normative dimensions.
Alt Fails—2AC
The alt fails. Ableism is material, not theoretical.
Vehmas and Watson, 16—Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Helsinki; Chair of Disability Studies at the University of Glasgow (Simo and Nick, “Exploring normativity in disability studies,” Disability and Society, Vol. 31, Issue 1, pp. 1-16, dml)
Scholars working in this intellectual tradition typically insinuate how things, as they currently stand, are wrong whilst providing very little practical ethical guidance as to how things ought to be (Sayer Citation2011, 44 and 229; Vehmas and Watson Citation2014). Whilst postconventional disability studies clearly is an ethical and political project, exemplified in many recent works (for example, Goodley, Lawthom, and Runswick-Cole Citation2014; Shildrick Citation2012), these accounts lack an engagement with the normative issues of how things ought to be. Current postconventional normative analysis does not properly articulate the moral and political wrongs disabled people face, and neither does it give us practical guidelines regarding ways to right those wrongs (cf. Lundblad Citation2011, 146).
Goodley and Runswick-Cole (Citation2015), for example, have recently produced an analysis of Big Society ideas in the United Kingdom and how the present neo-liberal agenda has damaged disability services and disabled people’s social status in general in the United Kingdom. They conclude that we should question ableist norms guiding social arrangements, and that we should ‘continue to question, destabilise assumptions that marginalise and exclude bodies and minds that are judged to fail to meet the expectations of ableist normativity’ (Goodley and Runswick-Cole Citation2015, 10). Using the schema developed by Fraser (Citation2013), we would argue that there are two clear claims in the arguments contained in this and other works in postconventional disability studies (see, for example, McRuer Citation2013; Wolbring Citation2008). Firstly, disabled people emerge via regulatory systems and forms of normality, and it is only in these highly ableist regulatory schemas that the contemporary disabled subject is constructed. Disabled people become constituted through the power/discourse formations where all subjectivities are always already culturally constructed (Fraser Citation2013). There is in essence no doer behind the deed.
Secondly, by drawing on the ideas of Foucault, Butler and other poststructuralists, postconventional disability studies implies that the normality-driven practices of subjectification drive subjection. That is, the disabled subject emerges through normative practices that prioritise normality, which serves to exclude and silence ‘the disavowing quality of the normal’ (Goodley Citation2014, 157). It is only through the silencing of others that authorised subjects can emerge, or, as Goodley (Citation2014, 166) puts it, production of the Über-able results in the production of the ultra-disabled.
This is all fine and good but what does this mean in practice? What kind of guidance does it offer in relation, for example, to impairment-related violence, or improving access to goods and services for those who harm themselves or who are at risk? What does this guiding principle imply in terms of social policy or how to best arrange our societies in order to meet people’s needs fairly? We are fully with Goodley and Runswick-Cole (Citation2015, 10) when they argue that ‘theory can help us to create opportunities for the urgent acts of refusal, revision and resistance needed to bring people in from the cold’, but their words leave us in bafflement as they fail to explicate or offer concrete, constructive examples of how to refuse, revise and resist, and on what grounds. If disability is reduced to discursive norms it becomes difficult to see how policies (always being already normative) can emerge. There is little analysis within postconventional disability studies that explores the economic processes, the social relational and organisational life and the material interests and other non-discursive forms of power that create disability.Footnote1
Here we may be accused of committing the ‘fallacy of externalism’, meaning that we criticise postconventional disability studies for failing to accomplish something which these theorists did not set out to pursue in the first place (Baert and Carreira da Silva Citation2010, 9). Is it not the case that postconventional disability studies mainly analyses and describes how certain ideas came about without even attempting to offer any normative guidance of how things ought to be? So is our criticism misguided? No, because postconventional accounts of disability highlight ableist ideas, ideologies, representations, policies and so forth that create and further disabled people’s exclusion, marginalisation and oppression. Thus, these accounts point out moral and social evils which means that normativity is at the heart of their analyses. This being the case, it is only proper to ask whether their theories provide us with any tools to settle the moral and political wrongs they have raised.
Methodological considerations
If we want to say something constructive and valid about whether certain practices or policies are morally right or wrong, we need appropriate analytic tools. Producing sound normative arguments regarding issues to do with, say, health, autonomy, dying and justice is admittedly very difficult. Whilst normative issues cannot be settled once and for all with simple knock-down arguments, it is possible to generate constructive normative arguments – a task that we should not give up entirely to philosophers, who often have very little awareness of the complexities of disability. We are highly sceptical whether poststructuralism offers sufficient tools to unpack such issues properly.
We will now outline briefly an application of the traditional analytic philosophical method which, in our view, provides a useful starting point for addressing ethical issues related to disability (see Tooley Citation1983, 11–18).Footnote2 The first thing to do is to ‘clarify and evaluate statements and terms that are vague or ambiguous’. This point expresses an aspiration for conceptual clarity and logical soundness. For example, some prominent philosophers have argued that intellectual disabilities are relevant factors when considering abortion or infanticide and they have appealed to such vague and ambiguous concepts as ‘recognizably human life’ (Rachels Citation1986, 66), ‘normal life’ (Kuhse and Singer Citation1985, 143) and ‘full human existence’ (Kuhse and Singer Citation1985, 136). Clearly, these kinds of utterances express ideas of what kind of beings human beings ought to be and what kinds of lives they ought to live, but at the same time they are too vague to be used as a basis for normative judgments regarding, for example, end-of-life issues (Vehmas Citation1999). Second is ‘detecting and rejecting unreasonable factual claims of a non-ethical sort’. The use of factual, empirical claims inevitably directs the normative arguments and their conclusions. Thus, in the case of disability it is important to acknowledge in a balanced way relevant environmental (including social and geographical) circumstances, historical and cultural factors as well as individual factors (such as impairment effects) that ultimately give meaning to the phenomenon of disability. Third is ‘detecting inconsistencies in ethical positions’. Avoiding logical confusions is a prerequisite to the production of sound and valid (philosophical) argumentation (for example, Häyry Citation1994, 147–158; Tooley Citation1983, 11–18). Applying this tool to the examination of postconventional accounts of disability is challenging because of their opacity, even obscurity. We are not always certain what the normative premises of their arguments are, let alone the substance and the logic of their arguments.
Fiat/Utopian Imaginaries Good—2AC
The history of disability activism proves that utopian imaginaries of policy change empower disabled people and undo ableist power structures.
Vogler, 24—Centre for Open Learning, University of Edinburgh (Gisli, “Acting as if: the utopian political thought and actions of the US disability rights movement,” Contemporary Political Theory, OnlineFirst, doi:10.1057/s41296-023-00675-9, dml)
One of the most famous centers was founded in Berkeley by students under the leadership of Ed Roberts (Levy, 1988). Roberts had successfully litigated his way into further education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s. The aim of the center was to serve the local community of disabled people, but it also played an influential role at the beginning of the disability rights movement, including in funneling federal and local funds towards supporting disabled people and activism and in forming a normative vision of a better society (Charlton, 2000, p. 132). The center offered one, important, launchpad for the leadership of the disability rights movement to launch protests, inform wider society about the efforts of the movement and changes to legal provisions for disabled people, and coordinate with other groups to develop and lobby for new legislative initiatives. The independent living centers are thus practical criptopias that used the material and ideational structures of their time (such as federal and local funding and consumer ideology) to produce concrete evidence that—with suitable community support for people with physical impairments to overcome social and physical barriers, such as inaccessible housing—a fully integrated society is possible and plausible.
Secondly, the movement pursued a grounded utopia by lobbying for the passing of legislation to enforce equal status as citizens and contributors to the economy. The focus on law may seem antithetical to the utopian project because laws serve to regulate conflict and disagreements which arise in imperfect societies, for instance about the distribution of limited resources. For this reason, classic writers such as More highlighted the absence of a comprehensive body of laws as a notable feature of their utopian society (Herman, 2016; More, 1685, p. 148). I introduced above how utopianism has since broadened beyond the articulation of universal blueprints of the perfect society and this move necessitates a greater concern with how to transform an unjust legal system. A broader conception of utopia also reveals the social dreaming that motivates legislation, most obviously in the articulation of, and struggle for the protection of, human and civil rights (cf. Moyn, 2012, p. 1).
Law’s utopian dimension has historically had a negative impact on disabled people. In the early 20th century, immigration and forced sterilization laws reflected societal anxieties about the decline of US society caused by rapid urbanization, immigration, and industrialization, and the subsequent popularity of eugenics (Nielsen, 2012, p. 100). Disability became a threat to the future wellbeing, or ‘purity’, of society (or specifically, elites) and laws served to manage or ideally eradicate the ‘problem’ of disability. However, just as citizenship was defined by excluding and controlling those deemed different, the dominated found in the language of rights and citizenship a framework to voice their oppression and how to transcend it (Nielsen, 2012, p. 133). The expanding welfare st

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