Moral status,epistemic agency,and the education of students labeled with intellectual disability

Abstract

Students labeled with intellectual disability, including those with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities, are subject to numerous practices that diminish or demonstrate disregard for their status as knowers. The widespread acceptance of epistemically undermining educational practices aligns with a prominent philosophical conception of equal moral status, which we reject. The alternative conception of moral status that we outline brings into view a developmental dimension that is often ignored in moral status debates. We argue that epistemically undermining educational practices are morally and epistemically demeaning toward intellectually disabled students when and because they betray a basic moral obligation to protect students’ formative opportunities within educational contexts. We show that epistemically undermining practices constitute a serious wrong to students in their capacity as knowers. Evaluating the moral adequacy of educational practices requires a concern for the diverse, pluralistic conditions under which students’ epistemic capacities might be enabled to grow and develop.

Introduction

Students labeled with intellectual disability, including those labeled with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD), ¹ are subject to numerous practices that diminish or demonstrate disregard for their status as knowers. For example, one of us has observed intellectually disabled students in sheltered workshops and school-based educational settings participating in menial tasks such as shredding paper with scissors, tying plastic bags together for recycling, and making ‘rubber band’ balls. Such epistemically undermining practices are widespread in schools, as evidenced by research documenting how academically challenging classroom activities are abridged or diluted for students with intellectual disability labels, so that they are completed with little if any intellectual engagement on the part of the students themselves (Ashby, 2010; McCloskey, 2022). In many other special education and nominally inclusive settings, significantly disabled students experience narrowed access to academic curriculum (Ballard and Dymond, 2017; Kurth et al., 2021), an emphasis on life skills or functional training (Ballard and Dymond, 2017), and an emphasis on highly repetitive tasks like naming objects repeatedly (McCloskey, 2022) or copying letters and notes (Ashby, 2010) in exchange for rewards like candy or playtime. Many of these practices are highly routinized forms of behavior modification that serve questionable educational purposes, but nevertheless remain commonplace.

Paternalistic educational practices that fail to show appropriate concern for students’ actual and developing epistemic capabilities, such as the ones outlined above, are normally condemned on moral grounds – for example as violations of fundamental obligations of respect for individual dignity and autonomy. Yet when such practices are imposed on students with intellectual disability labels they are often viewed as morally benign and even necessary, for example as means to facilitate adequate ‘socialization’ or to produce educational outcomes that serve curricular requirements (McDonough and Taylor, 2021). While the prevalence of such epistemically diminished educational practices does not imply that intellectually disabled students are thereby dismissed as subjects of moral concern, they do imply that their moral entitlements are curtailed compared to their non-disabled counterparts in educational contexts.

In this article, we argue that epistemically undermining educational practices are morally and epistemically demeaning toward students with intellectual disabilities when and because they betray a basic moral obligation to protect students’ formative opportunities within educational contexts. Specifically, we argue that the disparity in moral evaluation of such practices between labeled and non-labeled students is a symptom of a larger problem of injustice – namely, an injustice done to intellectually disabled learners as developing epistemic agents. Of course, not all forms of epistemic undermining are epistemically demeaning. If I set out to undermine your misguided commitment to a politically dangerous conspiracy theory, that undermining arguably evinces a morally salutary form of respect for your epistemic agency. The morally freighted term ‘demeaning’ refers to escalated forms of epistemic undermining that wrongfully neglect, suppress, or deny students’ epistemic capabilities because of their status as intellectually disabled students, and that thereby negatively impact their epistemic growth and development. We show that these practices constitute a serious wrong to students in their capacity as knowers.

Our main purpose in what follows is to challenge educational conclusions that some intellectually disabled students may permissibly be denied an epistemically enriching and stimulating education. We do so by criticizing the philosophical and moral assumptions about disability-based unequal moral status on which such conclusions are based. We assume without argument that educators have obligations to show respect for children’s emerging epistemic abilities. Developing such capacities is, after all, a fundamental and overarching aim of education. Nevertheless, it often remains unclear how educational practices that are addressed to and often imposed upon children who are understood to lack robust capacities of epistemic agency may in some cases be appropriately described as epistemically demeaning. One response to this question is that epistemically undermining educational practices can be demeaning toward children because they intentionally frustrate rather than enable the development of their epistemic capacities. In other words, education can do wrongful harm by disregarding children not in virtue of fully developed epistemic capacities, which they do not in any case possess, but in virtue of their potential to develop such capacities. This qualification affords a basis for justifying respect toward children – all children ² – who as yet lack highly developed epistemic capabilities. On this basis, educators can be said to have a moral responsibility to respect students by safeguarding and nurturing their epistemic potential. The educational practices we target as epistemically demeaning betray this responsibility.

Epistemically demeaning education and the moral status debates

The problem of epistemically demeaning education

It might be tempting to think that the problem of epistemically demeaning education is an artifact of history – that it happened in the past but no longer occurs, or at least is no longer assumed to be morally permissible in relatively rare cases where it does occur. We reject this assumption. As outlined above, epistemically demeaning educational practices remain worryingly pervasive in contemporary classrooms, often despite the best intentions of educators. Furthermore, changes in practice such as increased formal inclusion – students with and without disabilities occupying the same classrooms or even following the same curriculum (often with adaptations for students with intellectual disability labels) – can exist alongside significant disparities in disabled students’ access to high quality instruction, meaningful engagement, and challenging curriculum. In such cases, students can be and sometimes are asked to participate in what we consider epistemically demeaning activities. In other words, the problem we’re focusing on is not merely a practical one; it is a problem of what constitutes an appropriate moral orientation to educational practices that disregard students’ epistemic capabilities.

The idea that intellectually disabled students are owed equal moral respect might seem ‘blindingly obvious’ and therefore as needing no philosophical defense (Curtis and Vehmas, 2021: 186). However, according to a highly influential philosophical conception of moral status, at least some intellectually disabled persons lack characteristics that are required for equal moral status. ³ As such, the view that intellectually disabled people have diminished, subhuman levels of moral status is no fringe theory – it is part and parcel of ‘the most widely endorsed view’ currently on offer (Curtis and Vehmas, 2021: 187). This ‘standard’ view can be understood as an ‘individualist’ account of moral status (Curtis and Vehmas, 2021). It asserts that individuals acquire or forfeit moral status depending on whether they possess or fail to possess certain intrinsic properties such as the capacity for rationality. ⁴ According to McMahan, one of the main philosophical proponents of the standard view, moral status is conferred on the basis of certain intrinsic capacities of individuals – specifically capacities of rational autonomy, propositional knowledge, abstract reason and high-level critical reflection.

The standard view presents a serious philosophical challenge to our central claim that certain educational practices are epistemically demeaning because it denies that individuals with significant intellectual disabilities have equal moral standing. Not only does the standard view imply that students with intellectual disabilities are not owed obligations of respect in virtue of their equal moral standing. It seems to imply that the concept ‘epistemic demeaning’ is unintelligible when applied to students with intellectual disabilities, and particularly those with PIMD. After all, the claim that students are owed obligations of respect, and that they are demeaned when such obligations are withheld, presupposes individual capacities of rationality that many students with intellectual disabilities are presumed to permanently and irreversibly lack.

The assumption that students with intellectual disabilities are at best owed diminished moral concern compared to their non-disabled peers also arises in recent work by philosophers who address moral questions about special education for intellectually disabled learners. For example, Ladenson (2020) differentiates between two groups of students – those without intellectual disability (Group A) and those with PIMD (Group B) – in articulating a ‘basic right’ to an education that includes ‘minimum content’ requirements specified along a two-pronged normative axis. One prong concerns content relevant to the development of capacities necessary for the responsibilities associated with democratic political participation; the second prong concerns content relevant to the development of capacities necessary for self-fulfillment (Ladenson 2020: 22–27). Ladenson (2020) argues that students in Group A who do not receive such an education are unjustly ‘educationally deprived’ and that such deprivation makes students vulnerable to ‘deep-seated feelings of inadequacy, alienation, and/or hopelessness’ (p. 30). For this reason, Ladenson argues that access to these educational goods underpins a basic moral right to appropriate K–12 education. However, in line with the standard philosophical view of unequal moral status for intellectually disabled individuals, Ladenson (2020) also contends that the basic right to an appropriate K–12 education, defined according to his two-pronged objective, should be denied to students in Group B– those with significant intellectual disabilities: ‘neither the first nor the second prong of the two-pronged objective applies reasonably to children with severe or profound intellectual disabilities’ (p. 50). Group B students who are labeled with ‘severe and profound’ intellectual disabilities lack the same basic educational rights as those in Group A. This is because appropriate education for Group A students presupposes ‘abilities of logical inference and abstract reasoning the children simply cannot develop’ (Ladenson, 2020: 43). Ladenson defends a differentiated basic moral right to an appropriate K–12 education for Group B students. Although Ladenson argues that all students with intellectual disabilities have certain, albeit diminished, educational rights, his arguments nevertheless imply that intellectually disabled students warrant diminished moral concern as epistemic agents. In this sense, Ladenson’s arguments about differentiated educational rights for Group A and Group B students mirror arguments about the unequal moral status of intellectually disabled persons. Both Ladenson’s arguments and those of the standard conception of moral status imply that epistemically undermining practices imposed on students with PIMD cannot be intelligibly criticized on the grounds that they are epistemically demeaning.

Criticizing the individualist conceptions of moral status

The individualist view defended by McMahan, and others has been heavily criticized by philosophers of disability, in part because it explicitly excludes many people with intellectual disabilities from the scope of equal moral concern (Curtis and Vehmas, 2021). In this section, we elaborate the specific deficiencies of the individualist conception for assessing requirements of equal moral concern in educational settings.

The first point to highlight is that the individualist conception of moral status simply obviates the possibility that educational practices are epistemically demeaning toward some intellectually disabled students. According to the individualist conception, only individuals who possess substantially developed capacities of rational autonomy qualify for equal moral status. Those who lack such capacities (e.g. due to congenital impairments), or those who have been dispossessed of the relevant capacities of rationality (by injury, age, illness or other means), have correspondingly diminished moral status. If certain students are presumed to permanently lack the relevant cognitive or psychological capacities, and if these capacities are presumed to be irremediable through educational intervention, then such students must be presumed to lack epistemic potential. Students who lack epistemic capacities and epistemic potential cannot be demeaned as epistemic agents. To suggest otherwise is conceptually incoherent. Because labeled students are presumed to lack the potential to develop capacities of rational autonomy, the charge of moral contempt implied by the phrase ‘epistemic demeaning’ simply cannot gain a foothold, since moral contempt in this context refers to a form of disregard in virtue of precisely those capacities students are presumed to lack. It follows from this view that even when educational practices totally disregard the epistemic agency of some students – notably, students with PIMD – they cannot be condemned as epistemically demeaning.

Proponents of the individualist conception tend to adopt a cautious if not evasive approach when pressured to explain how specific individuals who fail to qualify for equal moral status are to be identified – that is, to explain who gets to have moral status and who doesn’t in practice. ⁵ Nevertheless, in most educational settings medical diagnostic criteria provide a convenient means for this purpose. Specifically, disability labels operate as a stand-in or shorthand for perceived/diagnosed lack of such capacities. Therefore, a student’s label ⁶ as intellectually disabled – and certainly as profoundly intellectually disabled – signals that the student lacks the potential to develop significant capacities of rational autonomy and, accordingly, differentiated forms of curriculum, instruction and institutional setting are thereby morally appropriate (Kliewer et al., 2015). As a result, the individualist conception of moral status teams up with diagnostic tools to justify educational practices that disregard and undermine the epistemic potential of some students – that is, those whose epistemic capacities are significantly limited.

The individualist view does not strictly rule out other moral grounds for criticizing practices that withhold epistemic development opportunities from students labeled with intellectual disabilities. It is conceivable that such practices may appropriately be subjected to criticism on moral grounds that need not involve considerations of students’ epistemic potential – obligations of compassion or benevolence toward morally dependent or non-equal human individuals, for example. However, such a view does not demonstrate an especially robust concern for the erecting of moral safeguards against abuse in the case of people with intellectual disabilities; the moral obligations of educators to respect intellectually disabled students may be akin to obligations to respect someone’s pet. The individualist conception of unequal moral status, which depends on assumptions of subhuman levels of epistemic incompetence and deficiency, falls within a long and troubling intellectual tradition that dehumanizes persons with intellectual disability – a tradition associated with eugenics, slavery, and colonialism (Carlson, 2009, 2023). In this light, it is hardly surprising that the individualist view might provide moral cover for educational practices that undermine and diminish the epistemic dimensions of education for intellectually disabled learners.

Intrinsic individual characteristics, which the standard conception of moral status posits as status-conferring properties, provide an inadequate and, as we’ll argue, conceptually impoverished standard by which to assess the moral adequacy of educational practices. When intrinsic individual characteristics – such as capacities of rational autonomy – are invoked by proponents of the individualist conception, the primary purpose is to mark the boundaries of equal moral status, boundaries that determine who is included and who is excluded from the scope of obligatory equal moral concern. However, when applied as tools of moral evaluation in educational contexts, intrinsic individual status-conferring characteristics become more than status markers; they also become reference points for determining characteristics and properties that are taken to be morally salient for educational purposes. These characteristics designate the particular epistemic behaviors or capacities that education and upbringing should seek to encourage and cultivate in order for children to become equal moral persons. Or, to put the point in a way that highlights its relevance for intellectual disability debates, the intrinsic status – conferring properties define epistemic deficits that are presumed to be insurmountable. As such, they provide grounds of moral justification for various forms of unequal, epistemically undermining, educational treatment.

When interpreted in educational terms, intrinsic characteristics associated with fully formed, ‘adult’ capacities for high-level thinking exert normative leverage over understandings of the aims of education. In doing so, they restrict in scope the forms of epistemic growth and development that are permissibly regarded as morally relevant for educational purposes. Adult capacities of abstract reasoning, critical reflection, and the like become the primary educational metric of epistemic growth and development. They also become the primary normative standard by which educators’ moral obligations toward intellectually disabled students are evaluated. According to this standard, only those forms of epistemic development that bear some predictable or presumed developmental relationship to idealized conceptions of adult rational autonomy and abstract reasoning count, morally speaking. When educational obligations of respect for students’ epistemic agency are interpreted in light of the individualist conception of moral status, the ideal of fully developed capacities of rational autonomy becomes the primary educational metric of epistemic growth, and correspondingly of educators’ moral obligations with respect to students’ epistemic potential. In other words, the conception of epistemic agency underpinning the individualist account provides a narrow and highly circumscribed normative standpoint from which to evaluate the epistemic adequacy of educational practices.

In what follows, we expand on this point, arguing that the conception of epistemic agency on which the standard conception of moral status is based is not only overly narrow, but also morally impoverished for educational purposes. In doing so, we follow social epistemologists who have emphasized the pluralistic nature of knowledge, arguing that it encompasses not only propositional, but also affective, tacit, embodied, and practical forms of knowing, among others. As we discuss later in this article, all students, including those with PIMD, may have epistemic capacities along some or all of these dimensions, and their capacities of epistemic agency may therefore be demeaned along any or all of them. As such, we argue that a more capacious and pluralistic epistemic framework is required for evaluating educational practices that may be demeaning toward intellectually disabled students.

Beyond the educational limitations of the individualist conception

Earlier, we suggested that the appropriate grounds of moral concern in educational settings include not merely intrinsic individual capacities but also the social and relational conditions in which such capacities may flourish and develop. By implication, moral assessments of educational inadequacy may also concern dysfunctional epistemic conditions – that is, social and relational conditions that characterize educational practices that actively undermine students’ epistemic capacities. Insofar as evaluations of educational adequacy concern epistemically dysfunctional settings, the mere fact that some students exhibit epistemic deficits cannot be attributed simply to ostensibly defective individual capacities such as those of rational autonomy. The possibility must be considered that such deficits are consequences or byproducts of an epistemically dysfunctional educational environment. And, insofar as such epistemically dysfunctional conditions are avoidable and changeable in ways that might enable students to develop capacities of epistemic agency that are otherwise neglected and suppressed, educational practices that instantiate such conditions are plausibly referred to as epistemically demeaning in those respects. In this section, we consider an alternative conception of moral status that may be promising as a way of accounting for the social and relational conditions of epistemic development in educational settings.

Curtis and Vehmas (2021) have criticized the individualist conception, advancing an alternative conception of moral status which purports to account for both intrinsic individual capacities of epistemic agency and their significance within human relationships and social arrangements (p. 209). Borrowing from Shelly Kagan, they identify ‘the property of possibly being a person’ as a criterion of equal moral status (p. 209). According to their account, to be a person in this philosophical sense is to be ‘an individual with reason and reflection, who is capable of entertaining propositional thoughts, planning for the future, and so on’ (p. 210). As such, their view of personhood, like the individualistic conception, presupposes a high level of epistemic competence as a centerpiece of moral worth. However, Curtis and Vehmas suggest that while people with significant intellectual disabilities may not actually possess the relevant intrinsic individual capacities, they nevertheless ‘could have been persons’ who possessed such capacities (p. 210). For Curtis and Vehmas, then, it is this larger ‘existential’ condition that confers moral status and not the individual capacities themselves. In sharp contrast to the individualist conception, which excludes many people with intellectual disabilities from the scope of equal moral concern, Curtis and Vehmas therefore propose what they regard as a more inclusive criterion of moral status – one that notably forestalls deficits of intellectual ability or disability as exclusionary criteria.

According to Curtis and Vehmas’ account, all human individuals share in common the property of ‘possibly being a person’, including those who have failed to actually develop the capacities of rational personhood. They note further that this shared property enables and justifies certain moral attitudes between morally equal persons. That is because the property of possibly being a person motivates claims of empathy in the form of moral judgments that attach normatively elevated weight to one’s response toward a being who could have been a person (they are quick to distinguish this moral motivation of empathy from pity). They also say this empathy implies a sensitivity to the ‘existential loss’ (p. 210) sustained by individuals who could have been persons but who are not, and demands ‘special concern for their well-being’ or ‘making an attempt to understand what that well-being consists in, and in attempting to make their lives go as well as possible’ (p. 211). Curtis and Vehmas’ hybrid account of moral status therefore specifies a criterion of moral personhood that references potentially shared capacities of epistemic agency, and which therefore includes all persons within the scope of equal moral concern, regardless of actual intellectual ability or disability.

Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether Curtis and Vehmas’ alternative conception rectifies the problems of the individualist conception outlined above; in particular, it is unclear due to an ambiguity in the proposed criterion of ‘possibly being a person’. One way to read their account is to view it as offering the property of ‘possibly being a person’ as a counterfactual moral ideal. On this reading, Curtis and Vehmas’ position might mean something like this: in the ‘real’ world some human individuals lack capacities of reason and rationality, such that they could not justifiably be categorized as morally equal persons if capacities of rationality were taken as criteria for personhood (i.e. on the individualist conception); yet we need not and should not think of these capacities as actual or even as realizable capacities. Instead, we might think of them in a larger and more abstract sense as applying in all relevantly similar logically possible worlds – including those in which different individuals were in different positions with respect to ability and disability. Because we can conceive of such a world – where people who are intellectually disabled in this world are not in some other world – we can empathetically imagine people with intellectual disability as possessing robust capacities of rational autonomy. On this basis, people with intellectual disabilities can be appropriately included within the scope of equal moral concern.

Putting aside an evaluation of its persuasiveness (and we have questions about their highlighting the moral significance of a sense of ‘existential loss’), our main concern is that on this reading of Curtis and Vehmas’ account, the property of ‘possibly being a person’ by itself offers scant guidance for outlining moral obligations in real-world educational settings, particularly since education involves non-ideal circumstances in which educators must be concerned not with other possible worlds but with the world – and the students – they actually encounter. Our criticism here therefore converges with the criticism we made of the individualistic conception: it is not the kind of ideal that offers apparent prescriptive force for addressing, criticizing and demanding rectification of dysfunctional social and educational conditions that undermine and neglect students’ epistemic development and potential. This seems clear considering that, for Curtis and Vehmas, the idea of possibly being a person, construed as a criterion of moral status, pertains not to actual capacities but to abstract ‘possibilities’ that such capacities might have existed. The moral loss, in other words, is an ‘existential loss’ and not a loss that might be represented by the wrongful and dysfunctional epistemic environments that characterize actual, existing educational communities and practices. As such, while the criterion of possibly being a person offers a possible basis for moral claims on the part of intellectually disabled students – claims to moral empathy, in particular – it remains unclear what changes to educational practices, if any, might be morally obligatory in light of such claims.

The problem we have highlighted with Curtis and Vehmas’ alternative conception of moral status is that, insofar as it is interpreted as a counterfactual moral ideal, the ideal it invokes provides no basis on which to evaluate or morally discriminate between the competing moral outlooks these varied educational approaches reflect. It is unclear how the property of possible personhood could provide a normative justification for condemning educational practices that provide negligible opportunities for epistemic growth; similarly, it is unclear why epistemically barren educational environments might, on this view, constitute morally egregious forms of educational deprivation and contempt. Thus, while the educational implications of Curtis and Vehmas’ alternative need not converge with those of the individualistic conception of moral status, it is not clear that their view provides any prescriptive moral guidance for criticizing the kinds of epistemically undermining environments that the individualist conception appears to mandate.

Moving beyond the educational limitations of the individualist conception

Despite these limitations, the central ambiguity surrounding the meaning of ‘possible’ contained in Curtis and Vehmas’ account offers an interesting application for our purposes; it points to a possible second reading of their view. This alternative reading of Curtis and Vehmas’ account highlights the developmental dimension of ‘possible personhood’. Rather than representing an abstract moral ideal, whose practical moral implications for real-world educational contexts remain radically underdetermined, this second meaning of ‘possibility’ refers simultaneously to an abstract moral ideal of human potential and empirical conditions by which such potentiality is realized in practice. On this alternative reading, the property of ‘possibly being a person’ designates complex and varied processes of becoming that may be facilitated through careful attention to environmental conditions and the interactions of those environmental conditions with individuals’ non-static neurological, physiological, social, and emotional particularities. At the same time, the moral force of human possibility is due to the fact that it represents a moral ideal that is shared across empirical variations of ability and disability. In this reading, the property of moral personhood is in part developmental and continuous, and represents capacities that fall along a developmental spectrum – that is, capacities that are developed and exercised in degrees or in part even if they are never exercised independently or maximally by actual individuals. Indeed, capabilities like propositional thinking or future planning are developmental capabilities – that is, capabilities that students can and do acquire through socialization and education, though the limits and direction of this development can only be tentatively known, and only partially realized in the lives of actual persons. Someone with robust capacities can have them stunted by an impoverished upbringing and education, while another can develop limited capacities beyond expectations through a rich and stimulating upbringing and education. An intellectually disabled student may not engage in verbal communication and display little or no capacity for mathematical or other forms of abstract reasoning, yet demonstrate considerable epistemic potential in other contexts like filmmaking and animation or music. On this alternative developmental reading, then, the property of ‘possibly being a person’ is metaphysically modest – representing a simple acknowledgment of children’s potential for epistemic growth in non-ideal educational circumstances. This second reading of Curtis and Vehmas’ conception of moral status, grounded in the shared property of ‘possibly being a person’, highlights the fact that human potential is, in one sense, acquired in varying degrees, and, in another sense, that these variations are particular instantiations of a general moral ideal that encompasses all possible persons.

This developmental reading helps to make sense of why epistemically undermining educational practices are morally condemnable insofar as they shortchange students in ways that stunt or impede their epistemic development to some degree. To disregard the epistemic potential of intellectually disabled students is morally problematic in this view even if those students are presumed to lack the potential to develop high-level capacities of abstract rational thought and autonomy. What matters, morally speaking, is not that educators or educational practices fail to offer students opportunities that approximate some ideal of adult rational autonomy. Rather, what matters is that such practices fail to offer students opportunities to develop their demonstrated epistemic capabilities. This neglect matters morally, on the developmental reading, because even limited capacities of epistemic agency are instantiations of the moral ideal of possible personhood.

The developmental reading also makes clear why judgments about the educational adequacy of educational practices require attention to details of the non-ideal educational contexts. According to the developmental reading, students are owed equal moral concern in virtue of the epistemic capacities they currently have, because these capacities are starting points of epistemic growth and development. Interpreting equal moral status in these developmental terms renders assumptions about epistemic deficits morally suspect. It cannot be morally acceptable to force intellectually disabled students to engage in epistemically empty tasks – shredding paper, for example – on the grounds that they lack the potential to become fully autonomous rational persons, particularly when they are somewhere within a developmental process of acquiring epistemic agency. What matters morally is their potential to further develop their epistemic capacities. Coercive imposition of mindless tasks implies that such potential is morally insignificant and a developmental reading rejects this conclusion. Instead, epistemic potential remains morally relevant for educators, however small or gradual degrees of epistemic growth might be. The developmental reading highlights the fact that human potential is always unfolding; that any person who has certain diminished capacities (e.g. of rational autonomy) does not nullify educators’ responsibility to support the development of the epistemic capacities they do have and might develop.

When applied to education, the property of possibly being a person need not call to mind ‘existential loss’, or at least not primarily that. A major part of education’s role is to stimulate growth ‘beyond the present and particular’ (Bailey, 2010 [1984]). Even if this cannot realistically mean ‘beyond’ in the sense of reaching full rational autonomy, all students have potential to move epistemically ‘beyond’ the present and particular of their existence. And the idea of ‘possibly being a person’ calls attention to the fact that education not only reflects and recognizes students in virtue of capacities that confer or deny moral status; it also shapes and influences those capacities. In doing so, education creates or denies the conditions by which students may be recognized as having moral status or not. Unlike the individualist conception, this educational point of view insists that we refuse to treat moral status as an all or nothing binary – some have it and others don’t. But, unlike the ‘metaphysical’ reading of Curtis and Vehmas’ alternative conception, it also insists that we recognize moral status as a developmental condition of the world we inhabit, and not merely an abstract possibility in some ‘possible world’.

In sum, on the developmental reading we are proposing for Curtis and Vehmas’ view, the ideal of ‘possibly being a person’ serves as an imaginative and moral reminder of the obligations educators have here and now – namely, ethical obligations to treat students in ways that adopt a generous and optimistic expectation of their epistemic potential, and not merely on the basis of some empirically static evaluation of their present capabilities (McDonough and Taylor, 2021). Given the tendency to treat intellectual disability as a ‘pessimistic fable’ (Kliewer et al., 2015) implying epistemic incompetence, this attention to students’ potential is important and valuable. We therefore see a developmental reading of Curtis and Vehmas’ account as providing a pathway by which to identify the morally relevant epistemic characteristics in virtue of which intellectually disabled/PIMD students are owed obligations of respect as epistemic agents.

Formative epistemic injustice and epistemically demeaning education

The developmental reading of the property of possible personhood as a criterion of equal moral status provides a basis for evaluating educationally undermining practices as epistemically demeaning practices. On this reading, one normatively salient feature of educational contexts is simply that they are formative. Schools and other informal environments of learning are concerned with cultivating students’ physical, intellectual, social, moral, and political capabilities; that is, they are oriented toward epistemic growth and development. Students do not enter schools as fully formed epistemic agents but rather develop that agency – to acquire, share, generate, evaluate knowledge – through learning. This concern for the developmental conditions of epistemic agency is especially salient in light of systemic barriers that harmfully impact individuals’ development of capacities of epistemic agency, particularly the epistemic capacities of members of unequally situated social groups. In contrast to the individualist conception, a developmental perspective of possible personhood underscores the fact that students are capable of developing and exercising epistemic agency to some degree. Where epistemic agency is acknowledged, wrongful distortions and oppressions of epistemic agency can be considered as genuine possibilities, worthy of moral concern.

Intellectually disabled students may experience forms of epistemic oppression and marginalization intersectionally, due to their disability labels and other potentially stigmatizing features of social identity, but also because they are children. Discussion of these factors has been at the forefront of philosophical work in contemporary social epistemology. In particular, philosophers have described the phenomenon of epistemic injustice as encompassing various forms of epistemic undermining that occur on the basis of stigmatized identity and which can diminish the moral status of the epistemic agent being targeted, perpetuate the diminished moral status of other members of that stigmatized identity group, and diminish the epistemic capacities of members of dominant social groups by reinforcing particular forms of ignorance that prevent them from discerning various forms of epistemic injustice when they occur. Disabled people constitute one such stigmatized identity group, with intellectually disabled people facing both elevated degrees and particular kinds of stigma that affects their recognition as knowing agents (Carlson, 2009; Peña-Guzmán and Reynolds, 2019; Scully, 2018). Within educational contexts, these forms of epistemic injustice can be considered a particular kind of harm done to students in their capacities as developing epistemic agents.

Martin’s (2018) articulation of ‘formative epistemic injustice’ offers further guidance in understanding how these forms of injustice constitute particular kinds of moral harms in educational settings. Martin offers what we might call a developmental argument for the inclusion of children within deliberative practices in classrooms and other educational settings. He writes that

The experience of being recognized as a reliable knower, even when one is not, plays a role in the development of one’s agency as deliberator. Accordingly, being systematically denied such experiences undermines the development of one’s deliberative agency and competence. (p. 9)

Importantly, Martin underscores that epistemic injustice should be understood not only in terms of forms of discrimination that undermine a person’s epistemic contributions, but also in terms of their opportunities to acquire the epistemic agency to make those contributions (p. 9). Certainly, it is appropriate to be ‘circumspect about children’s claims as befits their competence’, but such circumspection ‘writ large’ can undermine children’s development (p. 9). Nikolaidis (2021) expands on Martin’s framing by articulating the particular relational and intersectional ways that epistemic injustice and formative injustice interact with specific salience in educational contexts. Whereas epistemic injustices focus on wrongs done to a person in their capacity as a knower and in terms of their ability to acquire and share knowledge, formative injustices focus on wrongs done to a person in their process of self-formation or the ‘regulation of one’s development in line with one’s aims and dispositions’ (Nikolaidis 2021: 7). As Nikolaidis points out, the development of knowledge and the development of capabilities to acquire, share, generate, and evaluate knowledge – epistemic agency – is fundamentally a formative process:

Knowledge is not acquired for its own sake nor is the mind a repository for information that serves no purpose other than regurgitation upon demand. It has formative value and shapes one’s understanding of the world around them, informs one’s conduct, refines one’s purpose, and generates opportunities for new occupations. (p. 8)

Thus, epistemic injustices have formative effects (and vice versa).

The framework of formative epistemic injustice offers a way to articulate how intellectually disabled students are uniquely vulnerable to forms of miseducation that are epistemically demeaning, namely, because their epistemic agency is intersectionally threatened in virtue of their status as children/non-adults and in virtue of their intellectual disability labels. The articulation of formative epistemic injustice has two important implications for our account. First, it helps to identify why certain educational practices are epistemically demeaning toward intellectually disabled students. Practices that fail to treat intellectually disabled students as developing epistemic agents constitute a particular kind of harm because they position intellectually disabled people as, in a certain sense, non-learners. In other words, such practices show contempt to intellectually disabled students by refusing to acknowledge them as developing epistemic agents. Second, the concept of formative epistemic injustice underscores the sense in which intellectually disabled students’ treatment as lacking epistemic potential might actively lead to their inability to cultivate and pursue a range of desired ends, to participate in decision-making, or to explore possibilities for self-expression – that is, to form themselves as individuals. The individualist conception of moral status justifies epistemically diluted educational practices aimed at intellectually disabled students by reference to their alleged cognitive and intellectual deficits. A developmental perspective, by contrast, highlights the ways in which epistemically diluted educational practices enact formative epistemic injustices by contributing to and reinforcing cognitive and intellectual deficits between students of varying intellectual abilities. In short, educationally and epistemically differentiated practices are not simply moral outcomes due to unequal moral status; they are practices that produce and reproduce the kinds of capacities by reference to which moral status is perceived as unequal on the individualist conception.

By understanding the differential treatment of intellectually disabled students as lacking epistemic potential – as epistemic non-subjects – in terms of a formative harm, we underscore the sense in which such epistemic demeaning actually participates in creating and reinforcing diminished epistemic potential, which is in turn used as a reason to justify these same practices. In this sense, the denial of opportunity to cultivate epistemic agency constitutes a profound moral wrong of disrespect to students’ developmental needs and interests. Because of the particular kind of epistemic context that education is – that is, developmental – the failure to treat a person as having epistemic potential is to do them an injustice in the sense that it undermines their moral worth.

Developmental pluralistic epistemic agency

The kinds of formative epistemic injustices that we have been describing occur when a students’ epistemic potential is curtailed– when they are taken to lack the capacities for rational autonomy and are therefore denied opportunities to develop those capacities. However, we have yet to explore another important dimension of formative epistemic injustice, namely, that which results from an exclusive focus on capacities of rational autonomy and critical reflection in a way that marginalizes the moral salience of other dimensions of epistemic agency. Educational practices may be epistemically demeaning for reasons that pertain to developmental forms of epistemic agency – that is, dimensions that pertain not only to propositional knowledge but also affective, practical, tacit, embodied and other forms of knowledge. While our alternative reading of Curtis and Vehmas’ view of moral status allows for a developmental perspective, the criterion of personhood remains essentially the same as that specified by the individualist conception, namely, the possession of capacities for rational autonomy. In addition to being understood in developmental terms, we also see this criterion as representing an overly narrow and restrictive form of epistemic agency for evaluating morally salient conditions of students’ epistemic potential and development. In this section, we outline a pluralistic framework of epistemic agency that might provide educators with a wider and more expansive set of standards for evaluating their moral obligations toward intellectually disabled students, and for critically evaluating a range of epistemically demeaning educational practices. In short, we argue that because epistemic agency is not only developmental but also pluralistic, educators have moral obligations to address students as developing pluralistic epistemic agents.

Our view of pluralistic epistemic agency draws on recent work at the intersection of social epistemology and philosophy of intellectual disability. We highlight three aspects of a pluralistic epistemic agency, each of which carries distinctive educational implications that apply to all children. The first aspect of pluralistic epistemic agency concerns the pluralistic nature of knowledge itself. One basic premise of some recent work in this area is that knowledge can and should be understood as broader than merely propositional knowledge. Catala (2020), notes that much work in contemporary social epistemology adopts an implicitly ‘logocentric’ conception of knowledge as the norm in reference to which epistemic injustices – undue credibility and intelligibility deficits – can accrue. A logocentric norm, on Catala’s view, is one that implicitly or explicitly prioritizes ‘reason and verbal language’ and ‘propositional knowledge’ as reference points for determining epistemic injustices. The logocentric norm defines the scope of epistemic agency, thereby excluding many people with intellectual disabilities. Indeed, as Catala (2020) notes, ‘if people with intellectual disabilities do not qualify as epistemic agents, then any credibility or intelligibility deficit they may face cannot be said to be undue: there cannot be epistemic injustice in this case’ (p. 756). This abstract point about the exclusionary implications of a logocentric norm is important in light of a more basic empirical point about judgments of people’s rational capacities. Determinations of a person’s capacity for rational autonomy are largely dependent on their possession of some form of reliable and recognized communication, whether in the form of verbal speech, via AAC, or via sign language. As Kittay (2019) recently puts it,

Many with significant mental disability cannot ever hope to be independent or capable of participating in rational deliberation. Those who speak do so in a language not recognized – and even demeaned – by those who speak in the language of the public sphere. Without a claim to cognitive parity, even those who can speak are not recognized as authors or agents in their own right; that is, their voice is given no authority. Those who cannot speak must depend on others to speak for them. Perhaps there is no more disabling disablement. (p. 7)

The assumption that epistemic competence is only visible via legible communication is rarely questioned. However, the absence of recognized communication cannot provide conclusive evidence of a lack of rational capacities (see, for discussion, Kittay, 2019; Kliewer et al., 2015). Even significant limitations in communication, pace and independence of cognitive processing, and social engagement need not be interpreted as evincing a total lack of epistemic potential.

Catala (2020) describes that knowledge itself is pluralistic – propositional, practical, tacit, affective, embodied – and, as such, epistemic agency is pluralistic insofar as it includes capacities for communicating, producing, and using knowledge in its diverse forms. This point about the pluralistic nature of knowledge and epistemic agency is important in light of our earlier discussion of formative epistemic injustice. Martin and Nikolaidis’ accounts do not explicitly rule out the possibility that the formative dimensions of epistemic injustice should be largely or exclusively interpreted in light of something like a ‘logocentric norm’ of rational autonomy, verbal capacity, and propositional knowing. At the same time, their views also seem compatible with a more pluralistic conception, within which formative epistemic injustices may be evaluated and identified on grounds of conditions that undermine epistemic agency in its diverse forms. For our purposes, the notion of formative epistemic injustice should be interpreted in light of this pluralistic conception of knowledge and epistemic agency. Educational practices, on this view, may be epistemically demeaning toward intellectually disabled students along a range of ways that epistemic agency is expressed. In other words, evaluations of educators’ moral obligations toward students as epistemic agents should be interpreted capaciously, and not merely in virtue of an ideal of rational autonomy that may or may not be morally salient in all cases.

Students with significant intellectual disabilities engage in educational activities that are not solely or even primarily related to the development of rational capacities; musical engagement and other arts-based educational activities, horseback riding, and athletics are commonly referenced examples. Other examples might include a student learning to do yoga or make music with percussion instruments, engaging in the bodily movements and sensory experiences that such activities involve (see, for example, McCloskey, 2022). Students with limited or no verbal capabilities may learn to use video editing software or Google translate, thereby enabling them to develop and share more broadly their interests in various topics like ocean mammals or different languages. In these various ways, students may acquire, share or produce knowledge within arenas that take non-propositional forms. Correspondingly, these activities involve students in learning that may reflect and contribute to the development of their epistemic agency in ways that bear no direct relationship to ‘logocentric’ norms of rational autonomy and propositional knowing. The point here is not to endorse depriving students of traditionally academic forms of learning, but rather that epistemically engaged and directed learning may take a variety of forms, and in some contexts the boundary between academic and social or interpersonal learning may blur. Students’ learning may evolve and grow in various ways, however gradually or slowly, over time and with the introduction of new modes of engagement, new material, or new instructors. Even so, it would be appropriate to say that these students are developing plural forms of epistemic agency insofar as they are expanding their knowledge through educational engagement. Thus, pluralistic forms of epistemic development are morally salient in educational settings in ways that need not have any apparent relationship to the question of students’ potential or capacity as rationally autonomous agents.

A second aspect of pluralistic epistemic agency concerns a variety of relational contexts within which epistemic agency may be enacted and recognized. Vorhaus (2022) outlines how respect for students with significant intellectual disabilities need not arise from an assessment of the capacities they possess but rather because relations of respect and equality are what we aspire to, regardless of whether that equality is achieved:

How should I treat a profoundly disabled child if I treat her as an equal? I will treat her with love and care; with respect and without condescension; I will treat her interests and needs as being as important as my own; and I will approach her in a spirit of co-operation, encouraging an interaction in which we are both learning from and taking our cue from each other. (pp. 9–10)

Applied to our view, this passage suggests that respect requires an openness to a students’ emerging capabilities and the recognition of the ‘inclusive value of assisted human interaction’ (p. 8). For many intellectually disabled people, knowledge-sharing is heavily scaffolded by the care and interpretation of others (Kittay, 2019), and through intentional and ongoing efforts to make space for, interpret, and recognize epistemic contributions that do not take the form of verbal speech (Furman, 2021; Kliewer et al., 2015).

Within epistemically inclusive, pluralistic educational contexts, it can and often does matter morally that learning proceeds on the basis of some sort of mutual epistemic engagement between teacher and learner, or among students. For example, McCloskey (2022) describes how Suzy, a significantly disabled student, receives heavily scaffolded music instruction from her instructor Elena. Elena works collaboratively with Suzy to use and interpret facial expressions, bodily gestures, and careful pacing to enable Suzy to indicate musical and sound preferences. Of course, musical engagement can also be taught rotely, in ways that minimally engage the epistemic capacities of intellectually disabled students. In this sense, some ways of teaching and learning music can in some cases closely resemble meaningless tasks like shredding paper in a sheltered workshop. What differentiates such cases from contexts in which students are respected as pluralistic epistemic agents concerns how, and whether students are provided with substantive opportunities for epistemic engagement with the activities in which they participate. For example, being exposed to movements that allow exploration of the dimensions of their physical bodies or developing musical preferences can scaffold students’ development of practical skills, bodily agency, and further interests.

A third dimension of a pluralistic conception of epistemic agency concerns the communal-social contexts within which epistemic agency is enacted. This dimension encompasses the two dimensions so far outlined – the pluralistic forms of knowledge and the relational contexts of epistemic agency – but extends to wider and more complex networks of relationships as well as other social, political, economic and other circumstances. The communal contexts of epistemic agency may be defined at different levels – families, schools, cities, nations, or in broader ways when digital technologies are taken into consideration. Looking at the broader communal-social dimension of pluralistic epistemic agency can draw attention to how environments can contribute to formative epistemic injustice. Just as pedagogical practices may evince relational differences that expand or limit the epistemic richness of certain subjects or activities, broader communal-social and educational communities may also be organized and structured in ways that are epistemically rich, or impoverished. We have already noted how many epistemically demeaning educational practices aimed at intellectually disabled students are enacted within epistemically sterile communal environments, such as sheltered workshops or self-contained special education environments. Within these social-communal contexts, opportunities to engage in epistemically pluralistic and enriching activities are likely scarce, and may appear of negligible educational significance given beliefs about students’ capabilities. Moreover, activities that might otherwise engage students in pluralistic ways of knowing may be provided simply as cosmetic frills, perhaps to make a school more appealing to teachers, visitors, or donors/philanthropists than as places organized to ensure epistemically enriched opportunities for students. It is important, therefore, not to equate epistemic richness of an educational community with superficial adornments meant to signal a concern for embodied, affective and tacit dimensions of epistemic agency. Epistemically demeaning educational practices can come in attractive and expensive packages. The mere presence of a sensory stimulation room, or a well-equipped computer lab or video production studio does not by itself generate epistemic stimulation. Such resources can be used in ways that demonstrate negligible interest in or sensitivity to the epistemic dimensions of learning.

Other aspects of social and communal environment require attention as well, including the extent to which the social-communal environment interacts with the larger, public social sphere, provides opportunities for students/participants to network, publicize, and otherwise profit from their work, and involves students/participants in varied forms of decision-making and self-advocacy (among other things). Some educational environments or programs seek limited engagement with communities beyond their own walls, while others self-consciously adopt a more activist stance, establishing a role as a ‘bridge’ to wider social, artistic, intellectual, economic and political engagement for intellectually disabled students. Publicly engaged and participant-driven activities offer more complex and real-world opportunities for students to develop and exercise epistemic agency, whether that be through producing and showcasing artwork, networking with industry professionals, navigating emotionally charged relationships and new experiences, or developing new physical skills or forms of expression. As Clifford Simplican (2009) has argued, the simple fact that people with profound intellectual disabilities are present in political contexts can alter the epistemic conditions of political and social settings within which they are otherwise excluded, by forcing participants to ‘confront false assumptions and raise new avenues of dialogue’ (p. 14). A pluralistic conception of epistemic agency provides a basis for ensuring that educational practices acknowledge and respect this and other forms of epistemic agency.

The value of a pluralistic conception of epistemic agency for identifying and evaluating the moral obligations of educators, and for assessing the wider moral adequacy of educational practices, is an urgent one. Education’s role in equipping students with epistemic capacities of rational reflection, and of knowledge acquisition, are often portrayed as simply beyond the capability of many intellectually disabled students, as we saw with Ladenson in the introduction. As such, intellectually disabled students are excluded from educational aims and purposes that are indexed according to their value in promoting students’ epistemic capacities. Insofar as the (presumptively limited) epistemic capacities of intellectually disabled students are acknowledged, these capacities are interpreted as of limited scope and value – as capacities which might be meaningful, say, to parents and close friends but as irrelevant to the kinds of tasks for which schooling and adult education programs are designed. In short, we conclude that the educational value of a pluralistic conception of epistemic agency lies in its potential as a normative tool by which educationally demeaning practices may be held accountable and transformed.

The pluralist conception of epistemic agency we have outlined in this section provides a capacious and nuanced perspective from which to evaluate the moral adequacy or inadequacy of educational practices that cater to students with intellectual disabilities. A pluralist conception enables us to see that epistemically impoverished educational settings may be epistemically demeaning toward intellectually disabled students, that these students may be demeaned in diverse and variable ways, and that epistemically demeaning educational environments may powerfully contribute to the deficits of rationality and epistemic agency that are invoked to justify them in the first place. Correcting these unfortunately common, and morally egregious educational tendencies requires educators to acknowledge that their moral obligations to students as epistemic agents must recognize two important aspects of moral personhood. First, when viewed from an educational perspective, moral personhood must acknowledge the developmental conditions that enable epistemic agency. Second, this developmental criterion of personhood must be interpreted in light of multiple dimensions along which epistemic agency operates and according to which it develops. A pluralistic conception of epistemic agency therefore includes but goes beyond the restrictive role that capacities of rational autonomy play in defining the limits of epistemic potential and/or in shaping educators’ perceptions of the pathways that must be followed in order for educators to help students realize their epistemic potential.

Conclusion

We have argued that certain educational practices are epistemically demeaning because they demonstrate contempt for intellectually disabled students as developing epistemic agents. Such practices are demeaning because they loosen educators’ moral obligations to safeguard students’ epistemic potential. In contrast, we have argued that, since the developmental conditions of epistemic agency and subjectivity are morally salient to the education of all students regardless of their actually varying and diverse intellectual and cognitive abilities, intellectually disabled students are owed educational arrangements that respect them as knowers by upholding these developmental and pluralistic epistemic conditions.

The widespread acceptance of epistemically undermining educational practices aligns with a prominent philosophical conception of equal moral status. An individualist conception assigns intellectually disabled persons reduced moral status or excludes them from the scope of moral concern altogether, thereby rendering epistemically undermining educational practices morally permissible. An alternative and ostensibly competing conception of moral status, developed by philosophers of intellectual disability, establishes a more inclusive criteria of moral status by noting that moral status need not be assigned or withheld on the basis of individual cognitive capacities and capabilities; instead, assignations of moral status may be oriented to a broader ideal of human potential, which human capacities of rational autonomy and propositional knowledge represent regardless of whether they are realized in practice. Since all human individuals share a property of ‘possibly being persons’, including those with profound intellectual disabilities, the alternative conception succeeds in expanding the scope of moral concern implicit in equal moral status to include persons with intellectual disabilities. The alternative conception of moral status also brings into view a developmental dimension that is often ignored in moral status debates. What matter morally, for educational purposes, are the developmental conditions of epistemic agency not merely whether such an agency is now realized or not.

We have argued that merely acknowledging developmental considerations as an aspect of moral status is insufficient for educational purposes. What matters in educational contexts, morally speaking, is not simply the development of students’ epistemic capacities but also ensuring that educators act in light of a pluralistic understanding of what those capacities are, and with attention to the diverse developmental contexts within which students’ capacities are nurtured. To the extent that such conditions are under the control of educators and educational institutions, they are ethically salient for pedagogical, curricular and policy judgments.