Thread by @shengokai

To be clear, I did not ask science or scientists to make policy: I asked that bioethicists consider the social implications of the research they produced.

Now, in doing so, I appealed to Dewey's conception of the responsibility of science to society for very good reasons.

First, many bioethicists seem to think of themselves as informing the deployment of science via philosophy. That's fine. But as purported experts on the ethical questions at the intersection of biology and ethics, they share responsibility for how the work is used.

This point is worth considering as the work of the authors of that paper is routinely circulated within the professional fields that emerge from the sciences. Here, I'm talking specifically about medicine, and the ways their work informs medical dispositions toward disability.

But that's neither here nor there. The question remains as to what I mean by responsibility here. As I said, I'm relying on Dewey who states the following in his 1931 piece "Science and Society:"

Bioethics as done in the mode of Singer and company still falls victim to Dewey's critique of science in a number of ways. Specifically, the work is employed "absent-mindedly" as far as its effects on human beings, particularly disabled humans, is concerned.

That is, as Singer and company's work reveals, we have extraordinary control over the organization of our bodies, and how that organization plays out, and yet out engagement with it is haphazard insofar as it does not take seriously the social effects of that control.

By "social effects," I mean the ways that much of the "eugenics" literature in bioethics relies on the organization of disability as a problem to be solved through elimination, which is a thoughtless way of understanding the experience of disability broadly.

Because of this thoughtlessness, and the repeated citation of this thoughtlessness, this idea that disability is something to be solved through better and better technology has taken root in society. The "disability dongle," as an unneeded remedy to disability, is one example.

Now, I am not laying the disability dongle at the feet of Singer and company, or bioethics broadly; rather, I am pointing out how Singer and company's work, as circulated, maintains a narrative about disability as a problem to be solved. It is "absent-minded" in its projects.

That said, there are several scholars who have written whole books on this phenomena in philosophy and its social implications. For example, Os Keys and Rua Williams' work on phrenological AI and neurodiversity; Shelley Tremain's ongoing work on disability in philosophy.

But let's put that aside for the moment: Dewey's other statement, that the aims which have decided the social results of these technologies aren't inherent to science, is worth considering. This raises the question of the source of the "aims" of defending "eugenics," via Singer.

I would argue that the source of these aims lies in the broad history of the pathologization of disability, something that scholars like Aparna Nair, for example, have engaged thoroughly with. That is, the aim of Singer and company's research is continuous with this history.

Specifically, I would go so far as to say that singer and company legitimize this historical aim of medical research under the auspices of "living a good life" via technological intervention because it is impossible to imagine being disabled and having a "good life."

The moral habits of pathologizing disability have served as a cultural mythoi (cf Thomas Alexander in "The Human Eros") which organizes the directions of bioethical work like Singer's and his coauthors which is then circulated through professional fields and shapes dispositions.

This, in turn, is part of the reason why there are so many horror stories, including some of my own, about the ways medical professionals treat people with disabilities. Our "treatment" is a result of the habits maintained by a field that takes work like Singer's uncritically.

But lets get back to the initial point. Scientists and science-adjacent folks have a responsibility to consider how their work would "extend enormously the scope and power of interests and values which anteceded its rise," values like ableism and racism in medicine.

To this end, I would say that bioethicists have an even larger responsibility to consider the above given the way that their work directly influences how we understand the "pecuniary aims" which direct the use of these technologies. They are the ones who could change these aims.

Unfortunately, few among them are willing to do the work to change these aims. Thus, I agree with Dewey:

For Dewey, "intelligence" is the ability to see the actual in light of the possible. Understood in this way, few bioethicsists have displayed the capacity to view the actuality of the lives and experiences of disabled folks in light of the possibilities of their work.

By which I mean, few bioethicists have taken the time to consider what the application of their work would mean for the lives of disabled people EXCEPT in the mode of eliminating disability for the sake of a better life.

So to quote a famous philosopher: