A B S T R AC TGiven that in our view the child has a fundamental right to be heard in all collective deliberative processes determining his or her future, we set out, firstly, what is required of such processes to respect this right -namely that the child's authentic voice is heard and makes a difference -and, secondly, the distance between this ideal and practice exemplified in the work of child welfare and child protection workers in Norway and the UK, chiefly in their display of an instrumental attitude to children's views.
We consider the problem of reconciling the two commitments to hear a child and to promote a child's best interests by identifying the principal issues at stake and illustrating them by reference to legal decision-making in the domains of health in the United Kingdom and custody and child protection in Norway. We agree that a child's views are not authoritative but dispute Harry Brighouse's claim that they are only of consultative value, affirming the fundamental right of a child capable of expressing a view of doing so and of thereby participating in the procedures where decisions affecting his or her interests are made. In conclusion we offer a checklist of questions that need to be asked about the way in which jurisdictions combine their explicit commitments to the two principles of best interests and hearing the child's views.
I argue that it is wrong deliberately to bring into existence an individual whose life we can reasonably expect will be of very poor quality. The individual's life would on balance be worth living but would nevertheless fall below a certain threshold. Additionally the prospective parents are unable to have any other child who would enjoy a better existence. Against the claims of John Harris and John Robertson I argue that deliberately to conceive such a child would not be to exercise the right to procreate. For this right is internally constrained by the requirement that any resultant child has the reasonable prospect of a minimally decent life.
Professional philosophers are members of bioethical committees and regulatory bodies in areas of interest to bioethicists. This suggests they possess moral expertise even if they do not exercise it directly and without constraint. Moral expertise is defined, and four arguments given in support of scepticism about their possession of such expertise are considered and rejected: the existence of extreme disagreement between moral philosophers about moral matters; the lack of a means clearly to identify moral experts; that expertise cannot be claimed in that which lacks objectivity; and that ordinary people do not follow the advice of moral experts. I offer a better reason for scepticism grounded in the relation between moral philosophy and common-sense morality: namely that modern moral philosophy views even a developed moral theory as ultimately anchored in common-sense morality, that set of basic moral precepts which ordinary individuals have command of and use to regulate their own lives. Even if moral philosophers do nevertheless have a limited moral expertise, in that they alone can fully develop a set of moral judgments, I sketch reasons - grounded in the values of autonomy and of democracy - why moral philosophers should not wish non-philosophers to defer to their putative expertise.
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