John Vorhaus 
Relating to severely disabled people as equals

5:30-7:15 pm

 People whose intellectual disabilities are severe present a challenge to the belief in human equality: severely disabled people are thought not to have the capacities that equality demands. One way to think about equality is to consider how people relate to each other as equals, an idea I explore here as this applies to severely disabled people in relations of care. I aim to show that the ideal of relational equality applies to caring relationships involving this group of people: most severely disabled people are the relational equals of their carers, carers who also have reason to treat them as relational equals during periods when any such treatment is unilateral.

John Vorhaus is professor of moral and educational philosophy at the IOE and an affiliate member of the UCL philosophy department. He works in the areas of ethics, applied ethics and philosophy of disability.