Responsibility and the Problem of So-Called Marginal Agents

Svirsky, Larisa

doi:10.1017/apa.2019.36

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(33 reference statements)

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“…Another recent reconsideration of our responsibility practices with regard to children has been proposed by Svirsky. She argues that a child may in fact be responsible to a parent before also becoming responsible to the moral community at large (Svirsky 2020). But the important qualifier here is that they are only responsible to caregivers or other persons that are in a position to hold them to norms.…”

Section: The Responsibility Of Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consequentialism and the Responsibility of Children: A Forward-Looking Distinction between the Responsibility of Children and Adults

Brandenburg¹

2021

The Monist

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In this paper I provide a forward-looking account of the difference between the responsibility of children and the responsibility of adults. I do so by means of criticizing agency-cultivation accounts of responsibility. According to these accounts, the justification for holding a person to a norm is the cultivation of their moral agency, and children are, just like adults, considered responsible to the extent that they can have their moral agency cultivated in this manner. Like many forward-looking accounts, these accounts claim that the purpose of holding adults to norms is similar to the purpose of holding children to norms. I argue that the justifications for holding adults to norms are different because of the particular ways in which adults can be in moral disagreement with one another, and the consequences that this has. Moral disagreement is relevant to consequentialist accounts because it impacts on whether and how we can secure beneficial outcomes via holding someone to a norm. One of the upshots of this analysis is that the forward-looking justification for holding adults to norms is qualitatively different from how and why we should hold children to norms.

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Section: The Responsibility Of Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consequentialism and the Responsibility of Children: A Forward-Looking Distinction between the Responsibility of Children and Adults

Brandenburg¹

2021

The Monist

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“…But first, it is worth pointing out that relational conceptions of the scope of permissible paternalism have much in common with Larisa Svirsky's fascinating and illuminating relationship‐based norms view of responsibility. Svirsky argues that “to be responsible for anything is always to be responsible to someone for something” (Svirsky, 2020, 2). So on her account, there can be important differences in the appropriateness of different people holding one and the same agent responsible for the same behavior that are not grounded in a single underlying status of the agent being unqualifiedly responsible, together with differences in the standing to hold her responsible—just as on my account there can be differences in the scope of when it is permissible for two adults to treat one and the same child paternalistically.…”

Section: Paternalism and Parentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Treating like a child

Schroeder

2020

Philosophical Books

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No one wants to be treated like a child. To be treated like a child offends our dignity-in many cases, it offends the dignity even of children. Certainly my four-year-old is not a fan of it, especially when his sister is the one doing the treating. Paternalism is often glossed as treating someone as a child, and many of the most illuminating discussions of the nature and moral significance of paternalism draw on an understanding of the distinction between children and adults and the fact that paternalism is not always wrong when directed toward children, in order to explain why paternalism is wrong, when directed toward adults.In this paper, I will be concerned to defend the flat-footed dictionary thesis that paternalism is not a matter of treating someone like a child, but rather a matter of treating someone like you are their parent. On this relational conception of paternalism, morally justifiable paternalism cannot be understood solely in terms of the status of the subject of paternalistic treatment, but rather must be accounted for in terms of the relationship between the subject and the paternalistic agent. As a result, the account requires no sharp adult/child distinction in order to make sense of the boundaries of justifiable paternalism, giving it an attractively continuous treatment of human development. In contrast to other developmental accounts, such as the influential account of Schapiro (1999), my account will also not draw any sharp lines between domains of appropriate paternalism toward children.The key ingredient in the relational account of paternalism that I will defend is my substantive explanation of why parenthood is the right kind of relationship to ground the appropriateness of some kinds of treatment that would otherwise be objectionable. On my account, this is because parenthood belongs to a class of committed, forward-looking relationships of influence. Objectionable paternalism interferes with agential autonomy, and autonomy is self-governance. But in committed, forward-looking, relationships of influence, the parties to the relationship have the power to cause and constitute one another as persons. Hence, they have the power to cause and constitute which actions comport with someone's self-and hence which turn out to have been autonomous. To the extent that a relationship is committed and forward-looking, therefore, and to the extent that it involves influence, there will be room for unobjectionable 1 paternalism-paradigmatically, but not exclusively, in the treatment of young children by their parents.

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Blaming Kids

Agule

2023

Palgrave Handbooks in the Philosophy of Law

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Responsibility and the Problem of So-Called Marginal Agents

Cited by 5 publications

References 20 publications

Consequentialism and the Responsibility of Children: A Forward-Looking Distinction between the Responsibility of Children and Adults

Consequentialism and the Responsibility of Children: A Forward-Looking Distinction between the Responsibility of Children and Adults

Treating like a child

Blaming Kids

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