Ally Peabody Smith is a visiting research fellow at the University Center for Human Values, and a Ph.D. student at UCLA's Department of Philosophy. Her primary research interest is intellectual disability (especially autism) and the concepts surrounding it. She explores how empirical research corroborates and challenges first-personal testimony of those with intellectual disability, as well whether emerging studies in neuroscience, psychology and evolutionary biology help or harm the socially ameliorative potential of a progressive understanding of human cognitive variation.