2025/01/01 by Osamu Muramoto · 1 voice
Medicine · #Cerebral Palsy and Movement Disorders #Biofield Effects and Biophysics #Traumatic Brain Injury Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.5840/jpd202612731
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2026/01/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This essay introduces the concept of naturally enhanced capabilities in several types of disability and argues that such instances are best understood as bivalent disabilities, where impairment and enhancement are causally linked and inseparable. Drawing on the theory of well-being from Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, I show that such capabilities as enhanced perception, creativity, and cognition derived from disabling impairment contribute positively to well-being despite the harm of impairment. Because the positive and negative aspects of well-being in bivalent disabilities originate from the same impairment yet in distinct domains, their value dimensions are incommensurable, resisting aggregation into a single evaluative scale. It challenges common frameworks that treat disability as inherently bad, neutral, or good. Rather than making “overall” assessments of well-being, we should adopt a pluralist and particularist approach to well-being—one that attends to the distinct structures of impairments and enhancements, and to each case’s internal and external environment.