A More "Inclusive" Approach to Enhancement and Disability

Discussions of enhancement and disability tend to draw a sharp line between modifications to the individual and modifications to her environment. According to one popular conception, an enhancement is an improvement to or within one’s body or mind that enables one to exceed species-typical functioning in some respect. The narrow focus on such “internal improvements” is shared by most proponents and critics of various forms of enhancement.[i]An equally sharp line between the individual and her environment is drawn in disability scholarship. Thus, the so-called “medical” model of disability identifies disability with a physical or cognitive impairment that places one below species-typical functioning in some respect. It therefore treats disability as a feature of the individual, not of her environment. The social model of disability, which arose as a critical response to the medical model, sees disability as emerging from the interaction between the individual’s condition and her environment.[ii] However, this view is standardly enlisted in support of modifications to the environment rather than modifications to the bodies or minds of disabled people. Thus, like the medical model, it embraces the strong distinction between environmental modifications and bodily modifications. But, unlike the medical model, it is sharply opposed to the push for human enhancement, narrowly conceived.We seek to complicate this picture by highlighting three types of enhancement that defy the narrow conception insofar as they go beyond mere bodily modification. They call for a broader, more inclusive understanding of enhancement. In arguing for this broader understanding, we also raise questions about the social model of disability. Without entirely rejecting a presumption in favor of environmental modifications, we contend that a sharp dichotomy between changes to the individual and the environment obscures significant conceptual complexities and moral tradeoffs and ignores the extent to which technology itself may blur the boundaries between the individual and her environment.