Intellectual Disability and The Philosophy of John Dewey

John Dewey’s theory of communication supplies the basis for a response to the exclusion of the experiential perspectives of persons with intellectual disabilities and those on whom they depend for advocacy and care in philosophical conversations about intellectual disability. Drawing from the work of Licia Carlson and Eva Feder Kittay, we shall begin by exploring some assumptions about epistemic authority which appear to motivate this problematic pattern. We will show that Dewey’s understanding of communication provides tools for explaining how firsthand accounts of living with intellectual disability or caring for someone who does can guide philosophical inquiries about intellectual disability.