Obligations to the Cognitively Impaired in Non-Structured Contexts

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on the obligations that individuals who are not designated care-givers have toward those whose disability involves severe cognitive impairment in “non-structured contexts”. This might include casual encounters in routine day-to-day activities. The argument is that familiar accounts of normative ethics, including virtue ethics and (broadly) utilitarian and Kantian views, if unsupplemented and unmodified, fail to provide an adequate account of both the content of and the ground for such obligations. A more promising alternative account suggests that such obligations should be seen as aiding the severely cognitively impaired in acquiring three important human goods: engaging in cooperative efforts, achieving some level of agency, and developing self-respect. Those of us who are not designated care-givers both can and should interact with the severely cognitively impaired in non-structured contexts in ways that assist them in achieving these goods.

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