Intellect, Personhood, and the Coherence of Cure

Abstract

People tend to associate intelligence with personhood, and likewise, there is a tendency to tacitly deny personhood to those with intellectual disabilities. However, I
argue that this denial of personhood is not automatic, and I will draw from recent
work in the social psychology of autism to explain the role of empathy in ascriptions
of personhood. I will argue that the tendency to deny personhood to people with
cognitive and intellectual disabilities is the result of a lack of reciprocal empathy. I
will then describe how this is illustrative of key differences between how physical
disabilities and cognitive/intellectual disabilities impact one’s identity and explain
how these differences should inform our understanding of whether the idea of curing
cognitive/intellectual disabilities is coherent.