Politeness question for little people

[RoJoHen]

Therefore the chain of logic, "I can't do calculus; other human beings can; therefore, I am disabled" must also be valid.

The human body is intended to be able to hear. If it weren't, we wouldn't born with ears. If a deaf person's ears do not allow him/her to hear, the ears are clearly not functioning properly. Hearing is not a learned skill. It is a biological function of the body.

"Disability" is not a moral or emotional judgment. It's simply a clinical definition. If any part of your body doesn't work as intended, that part of your body is disabled.

Your calculus analogy makes no sense.

 

[Myasishchev]

Sorry I deleted that. The same basic point had been made earlier, so I thought it was redundant.

Anyway: the ability to perform calculus is a biological function of the human body as well, of course. Unless you're some weird Cartesian dualist.

"As intended"? By whom?

But let's assume I could learn calculus. I'd never learn to be see the color red if I had color blindness. Disability? Bearing in mind of course that the color blind see a very slight percentage of the spectrum less than a typical human subject.

I'm content with saying that there is an objective disability when the sensory perception, cognitive ability, or physical capacity of a human being significantly and directly impairs the quality of life, but for most deaf folks this does not seem to be the case.

 

[RoJoHen]

But let's assume I could learn calculus. I'll never learn to be see the color red if I had color blindness. Disability?

Of course it's a disability.

The problem here is that you're all attaching a stigma to the word "disability" that the rest of us aren't intending. When I say you have a disability, I'm not making a judgment about you as a person or questioning your ability to function in society. I'm simply stating that your body is not doing something it's supposed to be doing.

You don't have a calculus organ. Nobody expects a baby to naturally have the ability to look at a graph and find the area under the curve. People DO, however, expect a baby to be able to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.

Babies are born with ears. If a baby can't hear, it means it's ears aren't working. The ears are disabled. And since the ears are a part of the person, the person is therefore disabled.